True Story (The Deverells, Book One) (26 page)

Although she had dismissed her
stepbrother's concern with her usual defense of dry humor, she
understood that he worried not only for her reputation, but about
how her actions reflected upon him, since he was now the one
remaining male relative in her life. She was sorry if it caused him
any pain, but it would pass; he had hurt her feelings many times
and yet never seemed to know it and she concluded this was because
he never suffered deeply himself, never let anything sink in below
his well-maintained surface. He was lucky.

Could there have been anything more
behind his anger at losing her? Sometimes, she let herself imagine
that he had finally begun to appreciate her worth. A gratifying
idea, but not likely.

Well, it was done now. She had taken
herself out of the way. It was for the best. Christopher must learn
to look after himself, and his needy bride, without her.

Burden,
indeed. But he'd got it quite the wrong way
round.

Chapter Nineteen

"What do you plan to do when you leave
me, Mrs. Monday?" Deverell asked her one evening. "Shall you go
back to Chiswick happily?"

"Why would I not?"

"Living here with me, you might form a
thirst for adventure and the wilder side of life. You might be a
plant who, having stretched its roots, grows too big for its
pot."

"Perhaps I shall find another
position, similar to this." She hadn't thought of it until he
asked. "Mr. Chalke will help me, I'm sure." Yes, she liked the idea
of keeping busy with interesting work, using her mind.

Trouble was,
here
at Roscarrock there
was much more than the job itself that she found
enjoyable.

She looked at the man across the desk.
His head was bowed while he read over another Chapter and scribbled
a comment in the margin.

"Think you can put other men in order
too, just like me, eh?" he muttered, not looking up.

"Yes. I believe I can do a great
service to disorganized, distracted gentlemen all over the
country."

He dropped his pen and
there was a pause while he examined his knuckles. Then he said
abruptly, "If you find yourself in no haste to go home, I could
extend
our
agreement beyond the six months and take you to London with
me."

"For what purpose?"

Finally he looked up. "You could help
me there."

"Doing what?"

"This and that."

"Please be specific, Mr. Deverell. Do
you mean at the club?"

He scratched his cheek. "I'm not
really sure what I mean, Mrs. Monday." A naughty gleam had come
into his eyes, even though he tried to hide it by looking down at
the papers on his desk again. "You do bring me a feeling of
serenity which could be most useful...wherever I go. With you in
charge I can't go wrong, can I?" The corner of his lip turned
up.

"Oh, am I in charge now?" The idea
amused her greatly.

"I think I'm in danger of letting you
be," he replied gruffly, gesturing at his tidy desk. "I could
easily let you get away with...all manner of crimes."

Olivia counted her neat row of goose
quills and tried to calm the rush of light-headedness that swept
her so hard it almost lifted her out of her chair. "I can stay with
you only half a year, sir. As we agreed." To remain any longer than
that in Deverell's employ would make her into a creature too
dependent on him, and the whole purpose of this exercise was to
give herself a measure of independence from all men.

Then he said, "Perhaps my son Storm
will persuade you to stay in Cornwall, if I cannot entice
you."

"Why...why would he do that? He didn't
mention needing a secretary."

"He may have another purpose for
you."

"Such as?"

"Not for me to say," he
muttered. "He's old enough to speak for himself." Then he added
slyly, "I know how you like to be
useful
."

Olivia rubbed furiously at an ink
stain on her palm. "I hope I have been useful to you,
sir."

"In your own inimitable, damnably
annoying way— and despite all my attempts to distract you—
yes."

"I suppose that's something then." She
was far more pleased by it than she could allow him to
see.

After another pause, he said, "You
hint that we should negotiate a new salary, I suppose? To reflect
your hard work at all hours of the night, above and beyond the
terms of service."

"That is not what I—"

"Now that you've wormed your way in
and made yourself almost indispensable to me, you want to raise
your fee. How much would you charge for the occasional
smile?"

Very well, she would go along with his
teasing. "It depends what you mean by occasional."

"Shall we say, one a day? I imagine
your smiles are costly. Like your kisses. I don't want to ruin
myself."

Naturally, he thought money was the
answer to everything. Would buy him anything. "I'm sorry, sir. My
smiles cannot be bought."

"It's a good thing I can afford the
parts of you I have now at my disposal," he grumbled, scribbling
messily across the paper to correct something she wrote, his
letters tangling with hers. "I suppose I must be satisfied with
that."

She stared at his hand, watching as he
drew a thick line of ink through another sentence. "I'd rather not
talk of finances, sir." The teasing had ventured too far again off
the cleared path.

"Ah. One should not mention finances
to a lady. I forgot. Does Chalke handle all your
affairs?"

"Yes. He is a good family friend.
Before my father died he asked Mr. Chalke to look after
me."

"Then he did not trust your kindly
parson to do so? You were married to him by then, were you
not?"

"My father trusted William, of course.
But he had known Mr. Chalke for longer, and there can be no harm in
two caretakers."

"Seems excessively cautious to me.
Especially for a woman who says she is fearless, not in the least
delicate and dainty, and who seems capable of looking after
herself." Deverell glanced at her across his desk. "Perhaps your
papa had a suspicion that Kindly Parson Monday would meet an
untimely end as the other husbands did."

"Perhaps. Nothing is certain in life."
She didn't want to talk about that again. Her employer often edged
the conversation around to William. By doing so he had made her
think harder about that last morning. Of William putting on his hat
and grasping for his umbrella from the stand by the front door, of
the cold grey light falling through the arched fanlight, the moist
air clinging to everything like a very fine shroud of damp
lace.

That sensation she'd felt of something
being...off. If only she knew why such an awful chill had come over
her on that last morning, before—

Quite suddenly, Deverell reached
across the desk toward her face. Olivia froze, startled. The tip of
his finger stilled the little pearl hanging from her ear. He kept
it there a moment, his eyes narrowed. Did he look at her lips? She
could no longer tell what held his attention.

"Your mother gave these to you," he
said.

Her pulse skipped. "She
did."

"You didn't keep much of hers when she
died, because you're not sentimental. But these you held on
to."

"How could you know that?"

Slowly he smiled. "I have my ways."
His finger swept along her jaw to her chin and then pressed lightly
to her parted lips, before leaving her and returning to its work on
the manuscript.

Olivia's mouth felt too dry to
swallow. She couldn't speak. His son Damon had warned her that True
Deverell claimed to read the history of an object just by holding
it. Did that mean he knew her history now too? Would he know what a
naughty child she'd been and how hard she'd worked to amend her
ways since then?

"Good lord, look at the panic on your
face! Fret not, woman. It was an educated guess based on the
probabilities. Not witchcraft. Sadly." He stretched and put both
hands behind his head, leaning back against the dimpled leather of
his chair. "But if you dare tell anyone that, I'll have to punish
you."

"I see." The moment of anxiety passed.
"So it's not a secret you mean to divulge in your
memoirs."

"Certainly not. A man has to have some
mystery. You are privileged, Olivia, to be entrusted with that
particular secret. I don't know what came over me, but I had to
tell you. I fear you hold a key capable of undoing my very
soul."

She put her chin up, determined to
ignore the wicked sensation he left coursing through her body.
"Shall I be sacked if I tell your secret?"

"No," he replied smoothly. "But I
shan't let you leave my service. Ever. You will belong to me.
Entirely to me for the rest of your life."

She took as deep a breath
as she could manage. "That
would
be a punishment."

Yes, she was getting used to him now.
It was teasing. Merely teasing. And Olivia was learning how to
tease him in return.

* * * *

He knew he had to stop
doing that— looking for excuses to touch her— but he didn't want to
stop. In all likelihood he
couldn't
stop.

That night, unable to sleep, he took a
lantern and strode through the corridors to her room in the far
wing, where he stood outside her door.

There was no sound within, but he saw
a little flicker of light under the door. She must be
reading.

True sat on the hall carpet, his back
against her bedchamber door, the lantern beside him. He closed his
eyes and pictured her by the fire, turning the pages of her book. A
calm and quieting presence. She didn't demand that he talk, and she
didn't sulk when he was silent. Olivia did not require constant
attention to reassure her. She was very self-sufficient, which made
him wonder why she had married three times. It could not have been
for money, evidently, as there was none.

He remained there for some time,
arguing with the need to knock upon her door. Just to talk to her a
while longer. Or to sit and look at her. That was all he wanted—
her company.

Pah, who was he trying to
fool?

He wanted much, much more from her
than that. He wanted to possess her completely, inside and out. He
wanted to understand her, and that was a desire he'd never before
felt for a woman.

Chapter Twenty

One day Sims came to show him a letter
she had written.

"I thought you might wish to see this
before the Blewett woman carries it to the mainland with the post.
I noticed it left on the dresser in the kitchen, sir."

True studied the address written in
Olivia's neat hand. "Christopher Chesterfield, esq? Who might that
be?"

"I do not know, sir. She has made no
mention of a young man. A relative perhaps?"

He was curious. And
annoyed.

Sims added slyly, "I know
you don't approve of the female staff having
followers
, sir."

No, he bloody-well didn't
approve.

A man she hadn't mentioned, but who
was special enough to receive her one and only letter. Yet a man
who had not been able to stop her from taking this post.

The address was written with her usual
steady hand, but there were more curlicues and sweeping tails than
he had seen when she wrote for him. Clearly then, it was written
with extra special care.

No one ever wrote that way
to
him
.

True tossed the letter back to Sims'
tray with a terse flick of the wrist. It almost spun right off the
polished silver and over the other side, but the butler managed to
hold on to it, flipping the sealed missive like a
pancake.

"Yes, I see. Thank you, Sims. Diligent
as ever."

"Shall I send it with the other
correspondence of the house, sir?"

He ground his teeth, glaring at the
marks on his desk blotter. "Yes." He managed a tight smile. "Let me
know when she receives a reply."

"Certainly, sir."

That afternoon, torrential rain kept
him confined to the house. His secretary took advantage of the
weather and soon they were at work together in his library. For
once it was still light out when they began, but it was a gloomy
day, the rain making the clouds heavy, blurring the line between
sea and sky.

When he felt cheated out of a day like
this, True often became short-tempered over little things. As
winter ambled closer into his view, shortening the hours of
daylight, a general moroseness settled over him, made him want to
hibernate until spring.

He sank in the chair, his heels up on
one corner of the desk, chin on his chest, fingers restlessly
sending little balls of paper across the room via a slingshot he'd
once confiscated from his daughter.