Teresa Medeiros (7 page)

After the footpad’s abrupt departure, Mr. Benson sank lower and lower into his chair until it seemed he might vanish altogether. His damp hair clung to his
pate in defeated strands. The chronometer ticked away the minutes with ruthless efficiency as the Admiral lit a pipe and hunched behind the writing desk, puffing out billows of smoke like an angry dragon.

Lulled into near stupor by the potent combination of the fragrant smoke and the warmth of the autumn sun beating through the bay windows, Lucy was nodding over her cold tea when Smythe once again appeared in the doorway. His voice seemed to come from a great distance.

“A Mr. Claremont to see you, sir.”

Lucy frowned without opening her eyes. Was it her imagination or had Smythe lingered over the name as if it left a taste of foreboding in his mouth?

The Admiral’s voice dripped resigned contempt. “Send him in. He’s probably an escaped murderer or Captain Doom himself come to kill us all and put an end to this ridiculous farce.”

She heard Mr. Benson shift as if preparing to bolt. Spurred more by boredom than genuine curiosity, Lucy opened her eyes to lazy slits and peered through the haze of smoke to find a man standing beneath the archway.

A rather ordinary man, she thought sleepily. Her leisurely gaze drifted downward from his brown cloth cutaway tailcoat to the clinging doeskin pantaloons tucked into short leather boots. His garments were simple, but clean and neatly pressed. Even Smythe, who hovered in the doorway, eavesdropping shamelessly, would be loath to find fault with the crease in his trousers. His boots, though unfashionably scuffed, showed evidence of a recent buffing.

At the appearance of this model of presentability, Mr. Benson perked up, sniffing at the air like a hound on the scent of a fox.

The man was lean of hip and long of leg, but the
breadth of his shoulders lent him an imposing air. He moved past Lucy’s corner with casual grace to approach the writing desk. A whiff of bayberry shaving soap made her nose tingle.

Oddly relieved that she’d escaped his notice, Lucy continued to study him. A pair of steel-framed temple spectacles perched on his nose. He drew off his hat. His neatly clipped hair just brushed his nape. Ordinary hair, she echoed. The shadows had painted it an innocuous shade of brown, but a persistent ray of sunlight sought and found in its depths a ripe hint of ginger.

He offered the Admiral a tentative hand. “Gerard Claremont, sir, at your service. Or at least I hope to be.”

There was nothing ordinary about that voice. Its drawled cadences poured over Lucy, stirring her dormant senses like a forbidden swallow of Jamaican rum—rich, dark, and sparkling.

“So you’ve come about the position, have you?” The Admiral ignored the man’s outstretched hand.

Mr. Claremont tactfully withdrew it, using it instead to shape the wide brim of his tan-crowned hat. Lucy’s gaze was drawn to his hands. Their backs, too, were sprinkled with crisp ginger. “I have.”

“Speak up, lad. I’ve no tolerance for mumblers.”

Claremont met his gaze squarely. “I have,” he repeated, his voice ringing with clarity. “And I’ve brought references.”

The Admiral grunted skeptically and held out his hand. Ignoring it, Claremont drew a brown envelope from his coat and tossed it on the desk. Lucy held her breath, waiting for her father to dress the man down for his deliberate insolence.

The Admiral studied Claremont from crown to boots, lips pursed, before shaking his head. Lucy was surprised to see an admiring gleam burnish his eyes.

Claremont waited patiently as the Admiral pawed through his desk drawers, muttering loudly beneath his breath. “Damned careless girl. Lost my favorite letter opener. Ivory-handled. Shot the elephant myself during my last African jaunt.”

Lucy sank deeper into the corner. She’d neglected to tell her father that she’d used his precious letter opener to stab Captain Doom. Not even his forgiveness would have been worth reliving that grim moment.

She gasped as an object appeared in Claremont’s hand. Not a letter opener, but a knife, its lethal blade glinting in the sunlight only inches from her father’s face. Mr. Benson beamed openly at the man’s bold display of dexterity.

Claremont wryly lifted an eyebrow, toeing the line between respect and mockery with a dancer’s uncanny grace. “May I, sir?”

The Admiral raised both hands in surrender. “Be my guest.”

Claremont slit open the envelope. The knife disappeared back where it had come from while Lucy’s father perused his references.

He shot Claremont an approving look. “Former Bow Street Runner, eh? Admirable calling. Done a lot to make the streets of London safer. Don’t suppose you’ve had any military experience? Army perhaps?” Then more hopefully. “Merchant marines? Royal Navy?”

Claremont threw back his head and laughed. Dazzled by the warm, rich sound, Lucy tried to remember if she’d ever heard anyone laugh in that room before. If she’d ever heard anyone laugh at all before.

“I’m afraid not, sir,” he confessed, the very picture of sheepish charm. “I fear I’m prone to seasickness.” He flattened his palms on the desk and favored her
father with a conspiratorial whisper audible throughout the drawing room. “Why, just walking into this house almost made me ill.”

Lucy could see why. Her father had christened the house Ionia after the infamous sea where Rome’s naval supremacy over the world had first been established. He’d proceeded to decorate nearly every inch of it in the nautical style. Even after living here for most of her nineteen years, Lucy still expected the polished wood flooring to list beneath her feet.

The steering wheel from the Admiral’s first command, the
HMS Evangeline
, hung proudly over the mantel. Every piece of furniture was dark and heavy, polished oak or mahogany chosen for its utilitarian nature rather than for its beauty. There were no Oriental rugs, no vases of fresh cut flowers, no frivolous knick-knacks to mar the overwhelmingly masculine effect. Instead there were globes, compasses, maps, sextants, Lucy’s own watercolor seascapes, and glowering busts of her father’s seafaring heroes.

The gloom of the furnishings was offset by the airiness of the spacious rooms and the sunlight that poured through the generous bay windows. Their lead-glazed panes overlooked a sea of clipped lawn that had begun to trade its billows of summer green for the golds and russets of autumn.

At Claremont’s confession, Benson’s smile deflated. Fighting her own inbred flare of disdain, Lucy braced herself for her father’s scathing denouncement. She did not relish the idea of this bold soul being reduced to scampering away with his coattails between his legs.

The Admiral sighed. “Just as well, I suppose. I’ve no plans of taking to the sea until that rogue Doom is caught and hanged. You’re hired.”

This time the Admiral took the hand Claremont offered him. “You shan’t regret it, sir. I’ll do everything
in my power to keep you safe. Even if it costs me my own life.”

“Such sacrifices won’t be required, Mr. Claremont. It won’t be my life you’re responsible for, only my daughter’s.”

Lucy was still reeling from her father’s matter-of-fact announcement when Claremont pivoted on his heel, his gaze finding her with such unerring accuracy that she realized he’d been conscious of her presence from the moment he entered the room.

She stiffened to find his hazel eyes narrowed in flagrant dislike.

D
ISLIKE
WAS TOO MILD A WORD, GERARD Claremont loathed her.

Lucy knew she wasn’t particularly likable. She didn’t possess Sylvie Howell’s dimpled charm or even her father’s jovial bluster, but she couldn’t fathom what she’d done to earn this man’s contempt. As he approached through the lingering haze of sunlight and smoke, she was jarred by a disturbing sense of recognition.

The sun glinted off his spectacles, hiding his eyes and making her wonder if she hadn’t been cursed with her mother’s vivid imagination after all. She hadn’t thought him a very large man, but he seemed to tower over her. He reached down and captured her hand. For a disconcerting instant, she thought he was going to bring it to his lips. But he simply enfolded it in his palm in a perfectly respectable gesture of greeting.

“Forgive my negligence,” he murmured. “I had no idea my charge was to be such a charming one.”

Nor was he pleased by the discovery, Lucy deduced,
unnerved by the possessive warmth of his fingers. Her sluggish mouth refused to so much as stammer a response.

“Lucinda!” her father snapped. Lucy shot to attention as if someone had lit a charge beneath her chair. The familiar volley rumbled off the Admiral’s tongue. “Have you forgotten your manners, girl? Back straight. Head up. Knees together.” He rolled his eyes in one of his droll asides to the ear of God. “Heaven knows if your mother had done the same, it would have spared us all a great deal of scandal.”

Drawing the frosty veil of her dignity around her, she inclined her head. “How do you do, Mr. Claremont. Lucinda Snow. My—”

“Why, I’ll wager your friends call you Lucy,” he cheerfully interrupted. He cocked his head to one side and his eyes reappeared behind his spectacles, twinkling with humor.

Lucy coolly withdrew her hand. “Some do. You, sir, however, may address me as Miss Snow.”

“I’d be honored.” His crisp bow implied the opposite. His bold gaze mocked her, offering none of the deference she had come to expect from both servants and her father’s subordinates.

The mannerless clod hadn’t even the decency to excuse himself before presenting his broad back to her. Lucy glared at it, silently seething. How could her father have hired such an odious man?

He waited, hat in hand, while the Admiral cut Mr. Benson a banker’s draft of considerable worth before dismissing the delighted solicitor. At her father’s gruff invitation, Claremont commandeered Benson’s chair, stretching out his lean legs and crossing his booted feet at the ankle. The Admiral poured two glasses of sherry from the mahogany sideboard.

Claremont took a glass from her father’s hand.
“Your solicitor tells me you’ve made quite an enemy of this Doom fellow. Have you any idea why he bears you such animosity?”

“A man of my rank who has served his country so long and so faithfully is bound to have trod upon a few criminal toes.” The Admiral took a grudging sip of his own sherry. “ ’Tis my theory the scoundrel is French. God knows I’ve been fighting the French for half my life. When I wasn’t fighting those ungrateful Colonials, that is.”

“But, Father, I told you the man hadn’t even a trace of accent—”

“Hush, Lucinda. If I’d have wanted your opinion, I’d have solicited it.” He waved an impatient hand in her direction, relegating her to the same importance as the potted fern in the opposite corner.

Lucy subsided, knowing further argument would be futile. If she didn’t curb her tongue, he wouldn’t hesitate to remind her of the French blood lurking in her own veins.

Claremont tossed back his sherry in one swallow. “You’ll have to forgive my confusion, sir, but your solicitor led me to believe I was to serve as
your
bodyguard. Have you any reason to suspect Doom or one of his minions might make an attempt on Miss Snow’s life?”

“He’s already abducted her once, hasn’t he? That proves him to be the sort of scoundrel who would prey on an innocent young girl to achieve his own sinister ends. Lucy has also been privy to many covert military strategies while helping me gather material for my memoirs. Should she fall into Doom’s hands again, it could bode ill for His Majesty’s navy. I’ve found it necessary to prepare her for all eventualities. Lucinda, come.”

Lucy sprang out of her seat to stand before the
desk, feeling the same helpless rush of love she always felt when the Admiral displayed her as his daughter.

“Explain to Mr. Claremont what you’re to do should that nasty brigand kidnap you again.”

She studied her kid slippers in a vain attempt to dodge Claremont’s piercing gaze. “Resist giving him any information under torture and throw myself overboard at the nearest opportunity.”

The Admiral reached across the desk and gave her hands a benevolent squeeze. “That’s my girl.”

Flushed with pride at the rare tribute, she returned to her seat as her father and Mr. Claremont began to discuss terms.

“Your monthly wages, of course, will include board and lodging,” her father explained. “There’s ample room in the servants’ quarters belowstairs—”

“Won’t do,” Claremont said. Apparently the man had no qualms about interrupting her father either.

The Admiral’s left eyebrow shot up a notch. “Do tell?”

“Of what use will I be to your daughter if I’m buried in the cellar? I’ll require lodgings with an unhampered view of her window.”

Lucy made a mental note to keep her drapes drawn at all times.

The Admiral grumbled beneath his breath for a moment before surrendering. “Suppose that can be arranged. There is the gatehouse. Though Fenster won’t take kindly to being evicted.”

“Unless this Fenster wants my job, I’m afraid I’ll have to insist.”