The Danger of Desire (22 page)

It was just a foot. Just a combination of flesh and bone to be walked upon and to propel her across floors, through doors, and down alleys, but it was small and strong and arched just so, and it was hers.

My God, he wanted her. He wanted nothing more than the mindless oblivion that would finally come when he could look at her with nothing, no jobs, no distractions, no worries, between them. When he could sink himself into her narrow warmth and release himself into her.

But it was late, and she was asleep, and she was his charge. She had a long, important job ahead of her on the morrow. And she hadn’t asked him yet.

Still, he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

She sighed and rolled over, and in the warm, mellow spill of light from the candle, the gaping neckline of her night rail revealed one perfectly round, small breast, with a nipple the soft pink color of the inside of a seashell.

His mouth was suddenly very, very dry. He stared, finding the peak of her other breast through the sheer, batiste fabric of her nightdress and back to her bared flesh. Round as the palm of his hand. So pink. So improbably, incongruously soft. The air in the tiny room felt so hot it was a wonder he didn’t burst into flame.

But he did not move. He was calm. He was not going out of his mind with undisciplined need.

How in the hell had this waif gotten under his very skin, into every fiber of his being? How in the hell was he to keep his hands off her?

By being a professional. By remembering his duty and what he owed to his country and Admiral Middleton. By remembering Major Rawsthorne would be happy to see him strung up by his testicles if he failed. He had a job to do. And to do it, he needed to send her into danger. He needed to let her go.

But there was something about the cadence of her breathing.

“Meggs?” he asked quietly. “Are you awake?”

“Mmm.”

“Meggs, are you
letting
me look at you?”

She took two more deep breaths. “Are you looking?”

“Yes. I am.”

Her mouth curved into the slightest, almost secret smile.

He felt delight. She made him feel ridiculous, unreasonable delight. He settled his back against the wall and stood there, watching her breathing settle back into sleep, trying not to think about what it was going to feel like when she was gone.

“Cap’n?” she murmured. “You still here?”

“I am.”

“You gonna stay all night?”

Hugh’s breath bottled up in his chest. “If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.” She patted the top of the quilt before she rolled her back to him. “You can sit on top.”

It wasn’t what he had hoped for, but Hugh didn’t dare say a word as he eased his bulk down to sit on the bed next to her. His long legs reached all the way to the wrought-iron railing of the footboard.

“Good night, Meggs.”

“Night, Captain.”

Hugh crossed his feet at the ankles and shut his eyes. The scent of her soap, of roses and jasmine and something else, something uniquely Meggs, rose up around him. He put his head back to rest against the wrought iron of the headboard.

It was deucedly uncomfortable. And heavenly.

Himself wasn’t there when she finally woke up early in the winter dark. She had lain there beside him for hours, feeling the weight and press of his comforting bulk, afraid to move, not knowing what she should do to make him want her. Waiting for him to do something. But he hadn’t, and somewhere in the long, dark night she must have fallen back asleep.

And he seemed to have used up all his conversation in her room. He didn’t say anything through breakfast and kept silent all the way through the hackney carriage ride up toward Mayfair, until she got out along a deserted stretch of Hyde Park.

“The house is over there.” His voice was like the groan of an oak tree pushed too far by the wind—stretched hard. He stayed in the carriage, but he pointed the way, looking across the street at the house and scowling ferociously. And then he took her hand and squeezed it. Hard.

But that was all. Not that she was expecting anything else, but when he let her go, she felt the loss of him all the same. She was filled with the same inept indecision as last night, unsure of how to make him happy with her.

There was nothing to do but get on with it.

“Well, then. Best be off. Cheerio, Captain.” And with that, she dove into the traffic and into her new world.

The interview with the hatchet-faced housekeeper behind the big desk took only moments and went just as the captain had told her it would.

Mrs. Trim, the housekeeper, wore a plain black merino gown, a lace cap over her steel gray hair, and a look of unamused dissatisfaction. The clasp of keys pinned to her waist was, in Meggs opinion, conspicuously small. A housekeeper without keys was like a constable without a badge—responsibility without authority. Interesting. So who did have the keys?

“Your name, girl? And your references?”

“Meg, ma’am.” Meggs bobbed her head and passed over the letter the captain and Mrs. Tupper had contrived. “Only the one, ma’am, from London. Housekeeper I work for now, ma’am.”

“And why have you been let go?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. Closing up the house they are, on account of the master’s health and Mrs. Tupper going with the family back to Dartmouth. I didn’t like to leave London. Mrs. Tupper said she’d put it all in her letter, ma’am.”

Hatchet Face perused the letter for a few moments. “Seems in good order. She says you’re strong and obedient.” Hatchet gave her a look like a blade, trying to cut away the lies they’d concocted. Meggs attempted to look strong and obedient and have no opinion about anything whatsoever. “When can you start?”

“Straightaway, ma’am.”

“Good.” She rang a bell on her desk sharply. “This is Mrs. Cook. She will be in charge of you.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Meggs followed the silent cook back through the kitchens to a steam-filled corner, where two beefy-armed girls were toiling over basins filled with roiling water. “Here, ma’am? Right. I’m Meg.” She nodded to her girls. “What’s first?”

“You can scour that pan. Settle her in, Dorcas.”

Two full days of scrubbing and scraping, and nothing else. She could have been at the captain’s toiling away for all the difference it made, except for the feeding—and the kind words. Hatchet Face Trim was no Mrs. Tupper. No wonder the servants were all Friday-faced with no camaraderie. During those two days, Meggs wasn’t even let out of the kitchen unless it was to go to the servants’ privy or to climb the servants’ stairs to the attic room she shared with the two other scullery maids, Dorcas and Maude.

But it wasn’t all wasted time. Meggs found out a thing or two about the house without ever leaving the steamy environs of the scullery. The elaborate panel of bells calling for servants to attend to the rooms above was located to the side and above her station at the sinks. Two days gave her a fine idea of who was where, and when.

Lady Stoval didn’t breakfast till noon, and then she spent the hours before dinner taking the carriage out to make calls or receiving visitors in her private suite of rooms on the second floor.

Lord Stoval spent his days split between his office on the ground floor and Westminster and the House of Lords. But the study was still in use by his private secretary, Mr. Falconer, who had his own room below stairs—as did Mrs. Trim, the housekeeper, Mr. Lawson, the butler, and Cook. Mr. Falconer was said to be either very diligent or worked to death by Lord Stoval, for he was often heard working in the study well into the evenings while the other staff were preparing the dining room for dinner to be served just across the hall from the study.

In Meggs’s opinion, that study was the clear place to look for Stoval’s illicit secrets, for the simple reason that no one else in the house, not Lady Stoval, or the housekeeper, or even the housemaids, was allowed within its sacred walls. Word in the servants’ hall was no one but Lord Stoval, Mr. Falconer, and occasionally the butler were allowed inside.

People weren’t secretive unless they had secrets to keep, and it was a very secretive house, top to bottom. When Meggs was let up to her room the first night, they were even locked in by the housekeeper. She heard the bolt fall and immediately went to try the door.

“Don’t bother,” Dorcas offered as she slouched herself across her cot. “That’s Trim’s prevention against—what’d she call it, Maudie?”

“Amorous congress,” the other girl supplied.

“Yeah, that’s it. My old ma called it tupping, plain and simple. But there’s none of that under old Trim. So don’t even start thinking about the footmen. Not that they’d ever look at us lowly sculls.”

On the second night, after the family came in from their evening just as the clocks of St. Alban’s Chapel struck two o’clock, Meggs decided to give her lovely picklocks an airing.

In the quiet concentration of the dark, Meggs was able to pin the single bolt after a quick, silent conversation with the lock, who was a bit of a biddy, old and tired, and of the same low opinion about locking girls in. She was happy to give over her secrets on a quiet sigh and let Meggs slip out onto the narrow upper corridor with no one else the wiser.

There was a lantern on a small table at the top of the stairs. Meggs didn’t bother to light it—she’d learned well enough how to see in the dark—but she did take the new candle from the lantern, as well as the extra candle stubs stored in the drawer below. Something could always go wrong, and if anyone came looking for her, she wanted to make sure they’d have a hard time lighting their way.

She barefooted her silent way down the servants’ staircase to the ground floor, listening for a long moment for any sound of activity. But the household seemed to have settled down safe at rug, asleep, so she moved out through the swinging door and made a cursory inspection of the front corridor.

Damned if every door didn’t have a lock. Dining room, breakfast room overlooking the rear gardens, billiards room across the hall, and last but not least, His Lordship’s private study. Every single door held at least one lock, but the private office had two. Lord Stoval, it seemed, didn’t trust a single soul. And that made him untrustworthy.

These
locks, she found, were not in the least way related to the old biddies upstairs. They were of the newest design with shiny brass plates advertising their presence, and they were rather beefy, designed to impress as well as prevent. They were big bruisers that relied almost entirely on brute strength. No delicacy of touch was needed here.

She forced as much tension as she could muster on the gate and loosened the first big fellow up with a heavy raking before she set each of the tumble pins with a sharp jab. The bolt fell with a hearty click, and Meggs held her breath, stretching her ears out into the darkness to see if anyone would take notice. Evidently, no one but his Lordship cared enough about the household chattals to bother.

The second lock, on the door handle itself, was big but typical for a Mayfair household and was just a matter of form—a few moments of careful raking and she was in. She closed the door behind her and flipped over the deadbolt. And inhaled the redolence of pipe and cigar tobacco, wool and leather, while she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. And cloves—the air was heavy with the bitter tang of cloves. Someone had a sore tooth.

There was only a sliver of a moon hanging over the city, but it threw a weak silver light through the windows on the Park Lane side of the room. Meggs carefully eased the curtains closed so no one could see the light from her small lantern.

When she lit the little shuttered glim, the narrow beam of light illuminated a dark, wood-paneled room with a huge desk taking up most of one side. Rich, red and green Turkish carpets covered the floor, and two leather wing-backed chairs sat in front of the cold fireplace grate. Over the mantelpiece was a huge portrait of a be-wigged Restoration dandy in bright military regalia, all be-laced and be-jeweled. On either side were smaller oil paintings, one of a family group, all wide, bug eyes, and long, insect necks.

The things some toffs would rather have than money. Never ceased to amaze her.

It was a fine room, but dirty as a sty. The dust had to be inches deep. The housemaids had clearly never been allowed in to clean the place. Word was it was Mr. Falconer’s business to see this room was kept tidy, and it was Meggs’s professional opinion that Mr. Falconer was nothing but piss poor at the job. But that was all of a piece, because Mr. Falconer, she had found, was not at all well liked. In fact, he was just short of reviled. He did not associate with any of the other servants—he did not take meals with them. He did not use the servants’ stairs. He had his own key to the house, which he entered from the secondary entrance on Park Lane. Where, visitors with business with Lord Stoval could enter the study through a small vestibule attended by Mr. Falconer, rather than use the front door of the house. Mr. Falconer had his own small room below stairs, accessible by a separate, private exterior areaway stair below the Park Lane vestibule. He did not fraternize with any of the other servants.

As Falconer had gone out for the evening soon after Lord and Lady Stoval, and was not expected back, Meggs hoped to search the study without his interference.

It was easy to see what they did in here—there were almost tracks through the fine sheen of dust on the desk, chairs, and shelves. There was all but a rut in front of one book, Burke’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France
. It seemed to be the only book anyone bothered to read. What did it say that was so intriguing to Lord Stoval?

Right, then. To the business. Big desk—four top drawers and four more beneath on each side, all with small ward locks. The only good news was that the lower locks looked to take the same key—that made them immediately less important. But the top four looked, with the glim held up tight to the keyholes, as if they took different keys. Damn, but someone had secrets he wanted to keep. But simple little ward locks weren’t going to keep anyone who knew their business out. So, what else?