Ever His Bride (15 page)

And now her earthy voice came unmuffled from
behind the screen. “And regarding the end of your nose, Mr.
Claybourne, I used it as a figure of speech. Your nose is quite
adequate for the size and shape of your face. What I meant was that
our situation is fraught with humor.”

“Is it?”

“It’s all around us. You may turn now, Mr.
Claybourne.”

He already had. Her watery footprints led
across the unpolished floor toward the screen. He wondered if her
bare feet matched the shape of the small imprints.

But damn the woman! She had distracted him
again from his purpose. “You are dancing around this dressmaker’s
bill, Mrs. Claybourne.”

Felicity would have thrown a pot of talc at
him from behind the tufted screen, but the pot was lead crystal and
must have cost an ordinary man’s annual salary.

“Then cancel the order if you think it’s too
much! I don’t want to argue about it. It just seems that dressing
the wife of Hunter Claybourne is an expensive endeavor. I’m truly
sorry, but I don’t know what I can do about the expense, or the
fact that, at the moment, I am your wife. Whether we like it or
not, we seem to be stuck with each other, like a train unable to
move forward or backward without its track. And please don’t ask
which of us is which, because I couldn’t tell you.”

She waited for his reply as she slipped into
her new chemise and petticoats and one of the day dresses Madame
Deverie had sold to her ready-made. It was a bit too spriggy and
yellow for her tastes, and the sleeves were too full for traveling,
but it would do for now.

She found herself wondering if Claybourne
would like it, if there was anything about her that he would find
at all attractive. He’d looked momentarily harmless standing near
the door when he’d first come in, peering at her as if she were out
of focus. She’d been angry at the time, and amused as well. And
even a little charmed.

Yet, he’d been too quiet in the last few
minutes. She came around the screen, stockingless and without
slippers. “Mr. Claybourne?”

The meddlesome scoundrel was bent over her
writing table, leafing through her travel folio! The very folio
that Giles had stolen and returned to her. If Claybourne had enough
sense to put the loss and the return together, he might—

“Put that down, Mr. Claybourne!”

“‘The weary traveler should keep in mind the
security of his or her baggage.’ If I’m not mistaken, Miss
Mayfield, this is your. . .”

He looked up at her and his words trailed
off. He seemed startled, not that she’d caught him reading, but by
something else, something that softened his face and brought color
to his brow. His fine mouth reshaped itself as he swallowed. When
he continued to stare without comment, Felicity touched the back of
her hair to see that it wasn’t standing on end.

It wasn’t.

So she dashed over to him and yanked the
folio out of his hands. “Keep your fingers off my belongings, Mr.
Claybourne.”

He looked down the length of his nose at her,
and followed her every movement as she straightened the stack of
pages. “I thought your little bandit had stolen your gazette when
he stole your portmanteau. What’s it doing here?”

Excuses clambered over each other in a
slippery hillside of possibilities until she came up with the
perfect explanation, one that bore a great deal of truth.

“It’s been returned to me.” She tucked the
folio into its sleeve. “Miraculously!”

“How? When?”

She tried to ignore the heat of guilt rimming
her ears and flooding her cheeks as he studied her profile in
conspicuous detail.

“Mr. Dolan had it.” One small lie wouldn’t
hurt anyone. And it was certainly safer for Giles than the full
truth. If Claybourne knew that the boy had been here at the
manor—

“How did this Dolan fellow come by your
stolen gazette?” He sat on the edge of the table and watched her
every move, watched her straighten her desktop. Yet all the while
she imagined his gaze on her mouth, watching for something only he
could see, though she could feel his interest as if he were drawing
his fingertips across her bare nape.

“Apparently the envelope was found by someone
and returned to the office of the
Hearth and Heath.
You see
the address here.” She pointed to the evidence on the front of the
folio sleeve. “Anyone could have slipped it through the editor’s
mail slot outside the building and gone about their business.”

That seemed the hardest for him to swallow;
he exhaled as if she’d worn out his patience. “Which person in all
of London would have gone out of their way to perform such a
charitable act?”

Here was a perfect place to advertise the
merits of her new little friend without giving him away. She tried
to look casual and speculative. “Perhaps little Giles Pepperpot had
a change of heart.”

Claybourne’s broad shoulders lifted with a
single grunt. “You expect me to believe that the boy has a
conscience,
and
that he can read?”

This wasn’t going badly, she thought. “Giles
might be able to read. He told me that he’d once been committed to
a workhouse and that he hated—”

Felicity clamped her hand over her mouth,
hoping to muffle the words she’d just said. But Claybourne had
heard them quite clearly. He leaned forward and tilted her chin so
that she was forced to look directly into those opaque eyes.

“You’ve seen that little thief again, haven’t
you?”

“Briefly.”

“Where?” he asked. Felicity twisted out of
his way, but he followed and turned her, holding fast to her arms.
“Where? You haven’t had any free time.”

She took a long breath while she concocted a
logical answer, one she could back up with the lies she’d already
spun. “I saw him with Mr. Dolan. Giles had arrived just before I
did.”

“Had he now?”

She might as well make the lie enormous. “He
was trying to extort money from Mr. Dolan.”

The obsidian in Claybourne eyes glinted. “Go
on.”

She tossed her head for effect and tried to
sound scandalized. “Imagine the audacity! He’s a lot like you, Mr.
Claybourne, willing to make money any way he can.”

“I don’t steal.”

“Never?”

He released her arms. “So once again, you let
the little thief go when you could have given him over to the
police?”

“Yes, I let him go, and if I see him again, I
plan to buy him a new shirt—to replace the one you tore.”

“Not with my money.”

“No, Mr. Claybourne, with my own.” Her
miserly husband wouldn’t even spring for a three-penny shirt for an
unfortunate child.

“So you’ve struck a vein of gold, have you?”
Claybourne planted himself on the blanket chest at the end of her
bed and stuck his heels into the carpet. His legs were long and as
well-muscled as his shoulders, fashioned of the same tethered
strength. “And to think, Miss Mayfield, your uncle had to go all
the way to San Francisco to find one.”

She picked her three guineas off the desktop
and dropped them into her palm one by one, pleased at the
satisfying clink as they hit against each other. “I’ve been paid in
advance for my travel guide of the Bennington Post Railway.”

“All of three guineas? How can you carry the
weight?”

His snort of laughter took a jab at her
pride, but she dodged it with growing resolution, relieved that she
had successfully led him away from the subject of Giles
Pepperpot.

“This is a goodly amount of money by my
standards. I’m not accustomed to earning it by the bushelful like
you are.”

“No doubt you’ll waste it all on that boy,
and have nothing to show for it.”

“I suppose you’d have me invest my three
guineas in one of your schemes?”

“A wise man looks always to the future.”

She stood eye-level with Claybourne for the
first time, and felt equal to his smugness—though a bit dismayed by
the fluttering in her chest as he stared at her from beneath his
lowering brow. She had planned her future; she didn’t need his
advice. She would find Giles in the next few days, settle her
husband’s debt with him, and then set out on her travels.

“And what is it you see in
your
future, Mr. Claybourne?”

He straightened, clamped his hands over the
edge of the blanket chest. “What do you mean, Miss Mayfield?”

“Oh, I know that the Bank of England would
collapse on itself if you should desert it. And that you are the
bedrock of the financial district. But I can’t help suspecting that
you anticipate a time when you’ll have to pack up all your things
and leave Hampstead in a great hurry.”

The accusation drew a growl from him. “Leave
Hampstead in a hurry? Why? What brings that fool question to
mind?”

“Come with me, Mr. Claybourne.” She deposited
the three guineas in the lotus bowl on her writing table, then went
to the door.

Claybourne stayed put on the chest, looking
too handsome in his dark suspicions.

She stretched out her hand and beckoned him.
“Come, come, Mr. Claybourne.”

Hunter decided his wife had become far too
resourceful, and far too inviting with her hair drying in curling
wisps around her face. And she was barefooted. It was strange
enough having a guest in his house; the fact that this particular
guest was his far too legal wife unsettled him completely. His
moods had become mercurial and unreliable, from irritation with the
woman’s self-assured independence, to an unwelcome response that
bordered on lust—and all this could manifest itself in a matter of
seconds. It would not do.

“This way, Mr. Claybourne.”

He reluctantly followed her out of the
chamber into the hallway, keeping his hands stuffed safely into his
coat pockets, and away from the single, undone button in the middle
of her back.

“What is all this, Mr. Claybourne?” She was
pointing impatiently at the crates lining the walls on either side
of the corridor.

“What is what?” Her question confused him,
left him wondering why the passage seemed suddenly so shadowed.

“When I arrived here yesterday, I asked
Branson if you were in the process of moving. He said no, that
you’ve lived here for five years.”

“Five years, three months on Saturday next.
Why?”

“Well, I’ve been here for less than two days,
Mr. Claybourne. And, granted, I only brought with me the clothes on
my back, but I have moved in.” She bent and blew dust off a crate.
“It appears that you have no intention of doing so.”

He bristled. “I am here to stay.”

“Then why all the boxes, if you don’t need to
move at a moment’s notice?”

He didn’t like this kind of breezy banter,
wouldn’t allow it but for the way her laughter brightened the
hallway. “Claybourne Manor will be my house until the day I
die.”

“Let’s hope the undertakers remember which
crate they put you in before they cart you off to be buried.”

He laughed ruefully. “It won’t really matter
much then, will it?”

She dusted at another label. “It certainly
will matter to your heirs and your family.”

“I haven’t any.”

“Well, you have me. . .” She stopped her
dusting and lifted her startled gaze to his.

Her words had come so easily, he knew she
hadn’t meant them for him. They were something she would say, and
mean, to that uncle of hers or to her feckless father. But they
pricked him, as a casual glance in the mirror reveals an
uncomfortable truth.

She seemed embarrassed and brushed her palms
together as if to dislodge the dust. “Most of these crates were in
my chamber, Mr. Claybourne. Dozens and dozens of them.”

“I’ll have Ernest remove them from the
corridor.”

“That’s not my point.” She looked
exasperated, as if he had spoken another language and she didn’t
understand him. “I merely wondered what you expect to do with all
of it.”

“Do?” He certainly didn’t understand her.

“Yes, do. The label on this crate, for
example, indicates that it came all the way from Turkey, two years
ago, and claims to contain carpet runners.”

“And?”

She lifted the hem of her soft yellow skirts
a few inches, and wriggled her bare toes against the floor. “This
very cold and dank hallway could stand a carpet runner, Mr.
Claybourne. Why not open the crate and lay it out here?”

“I’ll have Branson see to it come morning.”
He nodded and started down the hall, satisfied that he’d survived
another of her questions, mostly that he hadn’t acted on the urge
to thread his fingers through her hair.

“Mr. Claybourne, this barrel holds six copper
cook pots.”

He stopped and turned. Her hands were stuck
against her hips, her toes showing again. “And?” he asked, unable
to read a meaning beyond her simple irritation with him.

“Mrs. Sweeney could use them to cook that
delectable stew you seem so very fond of.”

“Then I’ll have Ernest deliver the pots to
her in the morning.”

“And what about all these the other crates
and barrels?” She lifted arms that seemed to encompass the entire
county, then went back to scrubbing her fist across the labels.
“Here are linens, and an umbrella stand, and more drapery, though
God knows why you think you need more protection from the sun
inside this house. And here is a cylinder lawn mower. Why do you
keep garden equipment in an upstairs bedroom?”

“I haven’t got a gardener.”

She blew a puff of air into her hair. “That’s
quite obvious. But what do you plan to do with it? What are you
saving it for, Mr. Claybourne? More’s the point, why purchase a
lawn mower or an umbrella stand if you’re not going to use
them?”

He hadn’t a single answer for her, so he gave
her none. Which ought to leave her silent and hanging onto her last
question long enough for him to gain the quiet of his library.

He started down the stairs, and was surprised
and strangely disappointed not to hear her quick, bare footsteps
following him. He found himself straining for the soft pad of her
tread as he walked the distance of the hall to the end of the west
wing.