The Charmer (4 page)

Then it will not be like it was
with Phillip.
Is
that what she meant or was that merely Susanna's interpretation?

She pushed her palms down her
thighs to still her shaking hands. Her father continued to sip his broth and Bessie
bent to the fire and stoked the glowing logs until a small flame leapt to life.
The room seemed unnaturally quiet, as if they both waited for Susanna's
approval and she realized with a start that she was mistress
and
master
of Stoneleigh. Her father wasn't capable of running the place anymore. It
wasn't just her home. It was her own little kingdom that she ruled over.

"Very well," she said.
"Bessie, please prepare the attic room for him." It was the smallest,
most dreary closet in the servants' wing. No point in letting Mr. Holt get too
comfortable. He would not be staying long.

***

Orlando found it difficult to
listen to Lady Lynden without being distracted by some feature of her face. Her
mouth was so expressive, her lips full and luscious, and her eyes changed
according to her mood. Sometimes light and clear, other times dark and
tumultuous. To his surprise, when she returned from the house, they were bright
blue and merry. Whatever her father had said to her, she now seemed to accept
Orlando's presence.

Unless she had got her way and he
was about to be dismissed.

"Mr. Holt," she said,
striding up to where he stood in the center of the walled garden. "Present
yourself to my maid in the kitchen at supper, and she'll direct you to your new
room."

He nodded, feeling a little
light-headed with relief. It would be easier to search the house if he was
actually living in it.
Thank you, Mr. Farley. You may have just saved your
daughter. Or condemned her.
Orlando would know soon enough if she indeed
deserved the Assassins Guild’s justice. Someone—their client—obviously believed
she did, but Orlando wanted no doubts before he'd act.

"Now, the rules," she began,
and he groaned. "You don't like rules?"

"I love rules," he said.
"My entire life has been governed by them." This at least was true.
His father's strict rules when he'd been a child, his brother's equally strict rules
after he inherited, and society's rules of what was acceptable for a man to do
when he was frustrated with all the other rules imposed on him. Hughe's rules were
lax by comparison, and they didn't come with a beating if he failed to follow them.
Or guilt.

So much guilt.

"We have some time left
before we should go in for supper," she said, pushing past him. Her hips
swayed, and he couldn't stop staring at the way the muscles in her calves moved
beneath her netherstocks. He'd seen women's calves before, but not a single one
could compare to Lady Lynden's exquisitely curved ones. 

"Mr. Holt," she
snapped. "You'll be useless to me if you continue to stare like
that."

He blushed like a bloody schoolboy.
"What can I do first?" he asked.

"These trees need to be
covered during the winter months. I have canvas in the barn and stakes to build
a structure. Can you hammer straight?"

"Of course," he said,
liking the way her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. She was trying to
categorize him, he guessed, to label him and put him in the appropriate box.
She'd already called him arrogant and charming with so much disdain that he
suspected his allotted box wasn't kept for her favorite people. He would have
liked to prove her wrong, but what was the point? Most likely she'd be dead
soon. If not, he'd be gone.

"Come with me," she
said and led the way out of the walled garden and around the side of the manor
house. At first glance it appeared to be a sturdy stone structure with much of
the front wall covered in ivy, but when he looked closer, he noticed rotting
window and doorframes. Long arms of ivy reached across some of the windows and
one slender stem threatened to get a hold in a large crack in the stonework.

She led him to the barn near the
stables. No sound came from the stables, no neighing or stomping or chatter of
grooms. There were no horses at Stoneleigh it seemed. No horses, no children,
no young men capable of helping in the garden. It was a tomb.

"You're employed for as long
as you wish to be, Mr. Holt," she said as they entered the barn. She
indicated the wooden stakes leaning against the far wall. "You'll be given
food and board and can come and go as you please in the afternoons as long as I
am happy with the amount of work you do in the mornings. If this arrangement is
not acceptable, you can go to Sutton Hall and ask for work there since it seems
they have plenty after all."

Orlando sent up a silent curse.
He should have learned more about Sutton Hall and its master before he used it
in his concocted story.

"I think I'll stay," he
said, gathering up the stakes. They were taller than he by half a body length,
but not heavy. He smiled at her because he wanted to smooth away the line that
had settled between her brows. "I like Stoneleigh."

"Oh?"

"I want to learn about
orange trees."

The line cleared and her eyes
brightened. "Of course. They're a fascinating plant." She picked up a
box, and he followed her out of the barn, back to the walled garden. "My
mother planted them almost twenty years ago," she said, her voice wistful.
"She'd always been a keen gardener and liked a challenge. When she heard
that her mother's kinsman, Sir Francis Carew, had brought several plants over
from the Continent, she asked for his supplier and bought some herself. She and
Sir Francis exchanged letters on their techniques for growing the trees here in
England. They are the first to attempt to do so, you know."

"Really?"

"It took some
experimentation, and they both lost plants to frost but they learned. And now
look at them!"

He did indeed look, but not at
the trees, at her. It was as if a candle had been lit inside her. Her eyes
shone and her cheeks flushed pink. Over a few trees! He didn't understand it.

Orlando dumped the stakes to one
side of the furthermost tree and Susanna placed the box next to them. It was
filled with hammer, nails, a pruning knife, and other tools.

"What does the fruit taste
like?" he asked.

"The ones from these trees are
quite sweet. The ones growing further down are the bitter Seville variety, which
Mama planted earliest of all. The first crop will be ready in about two months.
You'll be gone by then."

And so might she.

He crouched near the bundle of stakes,
pretending to inspect them, but in truth his gut churned at the thought of
ending the life of the extraordinarily beautiful and vibrant Lady Lynden.
Surely she wasn't guilty. How could such a creature be vicious enough to end the
lives of two husbands? She didn't fit the pattern of his previous targets. He'd
felt no qualms ending the lives of those who committed the basest crimes and
gotten away with it, but Lady Lynden was different. She couldn't possibly be
guilty. Could she? And if she was, could he do what needed to be done?

He drove a stake into the soft
earth, far enough that they wouldn't shift in anything less than a gale. After
the first one, he turned suddenly to ask if it was to her liking, and caught
her staring at him. Or at his arms, to be precise. He'd pushed his sleeves up
to above his elbows and her gaze was fixed on his bare skin.

"Are you pleased, my lady?"
he asked, his voice sounding thicker and more seductive than he intended. He
didn't mean to flirt with her but he found he couldn't help himself.

She blushed fiercely and quickly
looked away. "It will do, Mr. Holt."

He worked until all the stakes were
firmly in place at regular intervals along the line of trees. There were twelve
of them, all carrying green fruit the size of a child's fist. It wasn't until
he parted the branches that he became aware of the number of fruit. The crop would
be good if they didn't lose them to frost.

She explained all this to him as
he worked. She told him the canvas would protect them from the English winter,
so much colder than their native climate. She went on to tell him how Sir
Francis Carew had built a wooden structure around his trees which could be removed
when the weather warmed. The canvas was simply attached to the top and opened
on sunny days, even in winter, and replaced at night. He'd found this the best
method in England's cold winters.

"He wrote to me and said his
trees like the extra protection, and there is not the hazard of the canvas
sides being torn off in strong winds."

The trees
liked
it? She
spoke of them as if they were people. "You could build something like
that," he said.

"I could if I had six of you
here on a permanent basis," she said wryly.

He picked up a mallet and
hammered the last stake as far into the ground as it would go. He wished there
were six of him too. Then he could continue his investigation without wasting time
protecting bloody orange trees from freezing their delicate little twigs off.
It was ludicrous. They weren't supposed to grow on English soil, and he was no
gardener. He was the second son of a London merchant and a trained assassin,
skilled at everything from surviving in the forest to dancing in foreign
courts. Hughe had better be bloody appreciating the thoroughness with which he
undertook this assignment. If he didn't...

Orlando smiled ruefully to
himself. If Hughe didn't appreciate it, there was nothing Orlando would do. He
liked being part of the Assassins' Guild and he would never jeopardize his
position. The satisfaction of getting justice for victims overrode any qualms
he had about taking a life, but most of all, he liked the adventure working for
the Guild offered. It kept him from being bored, and being bored was something
Orlando needed to avoid at all costs.

He drove another stake into the
ground with all his strength, but it didn't drive the sudden, hateful memories
away, or the guilt. He'd always have those.

The shimmering golden sun was
hovering on the horizon by the time they returned the gardening tools to the barn.
The stakes were ready for the canvas to be attached to them, but first the
trees needed fertilizing and light pruning.

"We'll start tomorrow,"
Susanna said, walking alongside him to the house.

They skirted the perimeter of the
small kitchen garden and he breathed in the scents of sage and thyme. They were
the same herbs growing at his London home, and he felt a little nostalgic for
the days when he and his brother would play hide and seek among the rosemary.

"Thank you, Mr. Holt," Susanna
said at the door. "You're a hard worker. I'm sorry we cannot pay you
better for your efforts." She dipped her head, hiding those beautiful
eyes. Was she ashamed of her family's lack of fortune? Or ashamed she'd
misjudged him?

"You have saved me from
starving to death on a freezing night. I should thank you."

"Freezing? It's autumn, Mr.
Holt, not the depths of winter. And here I thought those muscles made you
tougher." She swept past him into the kitchen, leaving him staring after
her.

She was flirting with him. Wasn't
she? It was difficult to tell. Most women softened their caustic remarks with a
wink, and some even went so far as to lift their skirts when no one was
looking. Lady Lynden left him feeling uncertain and on edge. It wasn't a
feeling he was used to.

He removed his hat and went into
the kitchen, but Susanna had already passed through. A generously sized woman
stood at the central table pounding dough with her massive fists. She looked
up, not breaking her rhythm.

"You the gardener, eh?"
A tangle of thin red veins spread across her cheeks and nose, and her smile
revealed a gap in her front teeth. "M'lady said there'd be an extra mouth
to feed for a few days. She didn't say you had the face of an angel."

An angel? That was new.
"Orlando Holt at your service." He bowed, eliciting a surprisingly
girlish giggle from the cook.

"You can call me Cook,"
she said. "Everyone does. I've been called Cook for so many years now I
can't even remember my own name no more." She giggled again, making her
large bosom bounce beneath her apron. "Go and wash up outside." She
jerked her head at the door he'd just come through. "When Bessie's
finished with the mistress, she'll show you to your room. You're to have supper
here with Bessie, Mr. Hendricks and me, and breakfast too. We dine with the
mistress at midday every day in here."

"The servants dine with Lady
Lynden in the kitchen?"

"That's the way we do things
here at Stoneleigh. M'lady says it's too lonely now that Mr. Farley must stay
abed so she likes to dine with us. She has her supper with her father in his
room and breaks her fast in her own parlor, but for dinner we all come in here.
She says she's too dirty after working all morning in the garden to sit in the
dining room so the kitchen it is." She slammed her fist into the dough
then picked it up and placed it on a cloth laid out on the table. "I know
it's probably not how things are done where you come from." Her gaze was
challenging, defiant, daring him to make fun of the arrangement or her
mistress. He wondered what Cook would do if he did. Hammer him with one of
those paws?

"I think it's a fine
arrangement. I wouldn't want your mistress to be lonely." He ducked out
through the door and found a pail of icy water and a scrubbing brush in the
corner of the kitchen garden. He washed up and was about to return inside when
he heard a man speaking.

"...just turned up, out of
the blue," he said.