My Lady Below Stairs (13 page)

“Sybil was a selfish, spoiled b—” He caught himself, drawing his lips tight. The joy of literacy was obviously the last thing on Ian's mind. “She dinna do it out of the
kindness of her heart.”

“So you won't let me do this for her out of the kindness of mine?” She slid her palm down to his bare chest.
The warmth of his flesh called to her and she almost gave
answer.

“If Eddleton lays a hand on ye—”

“He won't,” she assured him. “A gentleman doesn't
compromise a woman he intends to marry.”

“Hmph!” Ian's mouth turned up in a wicked grin. “
Guess that makes me no gentleman.”

“No, thank heaven!” She arched a brow at him. There was another backhanded marriage proposal in there somewhere, but she didn’t have time to fish for it now. She stood tiptoe to peck his cheek. “Now let me go. And get yourself back into Charlie's livery before someone catches you here in the altogether.”

“Ye dinna want me to frighten the upstairs maid?”

“I don't want you to
anything
the upstairs maid,” Jane
said with mock sternness, before she slipped out the door
and down the dim hallway.

“

Is that a waltz?” Eddleton asked between gasping breaths.

“Why? Do you need music to keep the rhythm going?” Lady Darvish asked, grasping his buttocks and pulling him in deeper. “I'll hire a quartet full-time then, Bert! One-two-three, one-two-three...”

Jane was running now. It was like a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake! Hartwell
House was so huge and the hallways so convoluted, she couldn't find the head of the staircase they had come up. She couldn't even hear the music any longer. She skittered to the end of the hall and started trying doors. Finally one opened onto a dimly lit back staircase and she dove down it at breakneck speed.

“There's no door,” she said in despair when she reached
what should have been the second floor, the level of the ballroom. The staircase was obviously reserved solely for the use of those who served on the family's floor, so there was no need for another exit. She put an ear to the wall. Faintly, she heard the whine of violins. “There's still time.”

She turned and continued downward. “This staircase has to end somewhere.”

“Careful with that, my good man,” Giovanni said as he handed his top hat to Lord Hartwell's porter. “The beaver, she does not like to be crushed.”

“Of course, milord,” the servant said, bowing deeply. “Lord Hartwell is in his study with several other mem
bers of the House of Lords. Whom shall I tell him is calling?”

“The Count of Montferrat.” Giovanni flared his nostrils with aristocratic disdain, as if noticing for the first time that a grand fete was in progress. “But do not trouble his lordship. I can hear he has a small entertainment
under way. Perhaps I should return at a later time.”

“Oh, no, milord, he'd not want a gentleman of quality
such as yourself turned away. Not one who came all the
way from...”

“Tuscany,” Giovanni supplied helpfully.

“That near Wales, is it?” the porter asked.

“Near enough.”

Giovanni spied Sybil out of the corner of his eye. The little minx was scurrying toward the main staircase as if
her knickers were on fire. She was tugging on her second
glove. When she reached the foot of the steps, she cast a furtive glance each way, her gaze bouncing over Gio
vanni as if she didn't recognize him.

Did fine clothes really change a man that much?

She started in the direction of the music, nearly tak
ing the steps two at a time. Then she seemed to catch
herself and slowed to a more sedate pace. She looked like
sin with feet swaying in that scarlet gown.

“I believe I see someone with whom I am... well acquainted,” Giovanni said. “Tell his lordship I am at his disposal after he has finished with his other guests.”

He didn't wait for the porter's murmured “Yes,
milord” as he hurried after his wayward lover. He caught
up to Sybil before she reached the first landing.

“Well met, my Lady Sybil,” he said, snatching up her hand and bowing over it correctly, when he wanted noth
ing more than to scrape his teeth against her perfumed knuckles. “I hope you have saved a dance for me.” Then he lowered his voice to a furious whisper, because the porter was gawking up at them with deep interest. “Why not cut out my heart with my own palette knife,
cara mia?
It would be less cruel.”

Her hazel eyes registered shock.

“Si,
it is me.” Sybil had never suspected his locked trunk held velvets and gold brocade. Giovanni turned back to the porter. “The lady and I are old friends and have much to... how you say... catch down on? Is there
such a place where we may not be disturbed?”

“His lordship's library. Back down on this level. Round
that corner. Second door on the right,” the porter said. “If it please you, milord, I could have a bit o' rum punch sent in for you and the lady's refreshment.”

“No need,” Giovanni said, as he grasped Sybil's elbow
and was pleased by her little squeaking gasp. “The Lady Sybella's company, she is refreshment enough.”

The real Sybil picked her way through the labyrinthine corridors leading from the kitchen to the showier parts of Lord Hartwell's grand manor. Jane's homespun was scratchy against her skin as she walked.

The halls were better lit in this part of the house, but
dark doorways led off on either side. For a moment, Sybil fancied she was creeping past the open maws of slumber
ing beasts.

“That's what I get for bedding an artist,” she muttered. “More imagination than a body needs.”

She could hear the sound of music one floor above. In the ballroom, the string quartet would be competing with the low rumble of myriad conversations, clinking crystal and the swish of silk.
There was the grand foyer ahead, with the porter leaning indolently against the wall. She quickened her pace.

A footman was coming down the grand staircase, moving quietly as a cat, his gaze focused on the porter.

He doesn't want to be seen,
Sybil thought, wondering if
the man was making off with a pair of Lord Hartwell’s diamond studs. She squinted at him. There was some
thing vaguely familiar about him.

He's wearing Somerville livery, but he's not Edward or
Charles,
Sybil realized suddenly. Even though all foot
men tended to look alike, surely she'd have remembered that handsome face and broad-shouldered frame.

The floor creaked under her step and his gaze shot to her. A smile lit the man's face like a sunrise.

“Jane!” He abandoned stealth and bounded down the
rest of the stairs in a couple of leaps. “Janie, me love, I know ye enjoyed wearing that borrowed finery, but believe me, ye shine everyone else down in your own sweet
things. I knew ye'd see reason, lass.”

Suddenly Sybil was in the large man's embrace. His
lips covered hers in a deep kiss. She put up a token strug
gle, but his kiss was far from unpleasant, so she decided
to relax and enjoy it.

He'll have to come up for air sometime.

When he did, she ran her tongue over her bottom lip and said, “Well, that was interesting, but I think you
should know I'm
not Jane.”

“What are you two doing here?” the porter demanded,
leaving his post to close the distance between them. “If you're not in service, get you back to the kitchen. No, no. We can't have you wandering the halls. Take the
back way.”'

The porter pulled open a low-slung door along the side of the staircase to reveal a dim, narrow route disappearing beneath it. “And don't let me catch you in the public areas again or I'll toss you both into the snow
myself.”

Sybil grasped the handsome footman's hand and
pulled him into the small space after her. Once, when she
was ten, she had managed to sneak out of the most boring piano recital in human history and discovered the door beneath these main stairs. She'd spent the entire evening wandering the secret places of Hartwell House
and no one was ever the wiser.

“This might be just the thing for finding your Jane
without being seen,” she whispered.

The door closed behind them, casting them into dimness, broken only by thin shafts of light knifing through
the cracks in hidden doors.

“Then you must be Lady Sybil.”

“Brilliant deduction,” she said as she moved down the
narrow space. “Never let it be said Somerville doesn't
hire the brightest and best. Come. There's a dumbwaiter
hidden in the library. We can use it to get up to the ball
room level.”

A man's voice carried through the thick library door, his tone angry and growling. Eddleton couldn't make out all
the words, but he suspected some of them were foreign. Pity he hadn't paid more attention while he was on his G
rand Tour. Once he had picked up the best way to invite
himself into a lady's boudoir, his interest in other lan
guages waned.

“Someone's coming,” he whispered, pulling back and
adjusting his small clothes.

“But we're not done yet, Bert,” Lady Darvish com
plained. “Leastways I'm not.”

The crystal doorknob jiggled and began to turn.

“Quick! Through there.” Eddleton picked Lady Darvish up, clamping a hand over her mouth, and scut
tled toward the curtained alcove where French doors led
out onto a terrace. The last thing he needed was to be caught
in flagrante delicto
with the Black Widow of Wembley Street on the night he plighted his troth to
Sybil Somerville.

Just as he yanked the draperies closed, a man and
woman stormed into the room. Eddleton peeked through
a slit in the curtain.

And recognized the red gown. His nearly betrothed, b'Gad! With another man. Why, he ought—

Lady Darvish squirmed in his arms and grabbed one of his hands. After she slid it into the top of her bodice, she settled and gave him a wink and a shrug.

Eddleton sighed and began toying with her tight little
nipple. Anything to keep the woman quiet...

“Well?” the man demanded. His ensemble was cut in
fashion of the first stare, Eddleton noted. But he wore
the fine clothing carelessly, with none of the English
stiffness, as though the trappings of success were noth
ing.

“Well, what?” Sybil demanded with a quaver in her
voice. “You're the one who dragged me in here. What do
you want?”

“Wait.” In the hidden passage, Ian set his feet and pulled
the real Lady Sybil up short. “I hear Jane. On the other
side of this wall.”

Sybil scrunched down and peered through the narrow
slit around the hidden servants' door. A slice of the library and its occupants came into sharp focus.

“No wonder servants always know everything that
goes on in a great house,” she muttered. Then she blinked hard. “That's my Giovanni. He's only a poor painter. Where
did he get those clothes?”

Ian braced himself behind her to peek through the
same slit at a higher level. “A resourceful man will use
whatever he must to get close to the woman he loves.” He
frowned. “But that's not the woman he loves. That's my
Janie.”

“Are you not surprised to see me like this?” Giovanni
spread his arms and did a slow turn. “Allow me to intro
duce myself to you properly.” He executed a sweeping
bow with careless elegance. “I am Giovanni Baptiste Salvatore Brunello, Count of Montferrat. I posed as a starv
ing artist in your country so I could find a woman who would love me for myself, not my station.”

Sybil gasped. Jane only stared at him in puzzlement.

“And I thought I had found her, but now I know that
money is all you care for,
crudele.”

“No—” Sybil began, but Ian clamped a hand over her
mouth to keep her quiet.

“If I have caused you pain, milord, I'm truly sorry, but
I really must go,” Jane said, two frown marks drawing
her brows toward each other. “I'm determined to accept
a proposal of marriage from Viscount Eddleton during the last waltz and nothing you can say will make me
change my mind.”