True Story (The Deverells, Book One) (27 page)

"You seem out of sorts today, Mr.
Deverell," his secretary observed coolly. "I was hoping we might
advance further with your story."

"I'm not in the mood."

"So I see." She turned to watch
another paper ball fly into the far corner, bouncing off a framed
map of the Empire. "Perhaps I should make myself useful elsewhere
until you are ready to work."

"No. You'll damn well sit there." He
glowered across the desk. "Where else could you be of use? I'm
paying you, aren't I? So sit there and do as you're
told."

"Excuse me for asking, sir, but did
you get out of the wrong side of the bed today?"

No
, he wanted to shout at her,
I got
out of the wrong bed
. "Damnable
rain."

"Yes." She sighed heavily. "I know
what you mean. I'm not fond of it myself these days." Her lashes
swept downward, secretive again.

He got up and paced around his chair,
trying to lift his mood out of this dark place. "I don't like to be
trapped indoors," he growled. Why was he explaining himself to her?
Perhaps she really did hold the key to unlock his soul.

Another wave of rain hit the window
like steel-tipped arrowheads. Behind him she was silent, waiting
patiently. All innocence, of course.

Finally he turned to face her again.
"I hear you wrote a letter, Mrs. Monday. "

Nothing. She was reading, her head
bent forward, eyes hidden.

"I hope you spoke well of me in this
letter, and did not feel obliged to tell your lady friend how ill I
treat you, keeping you up late, making you drink wine and sprain
your ankle."

She looked up, nudging her spectacles
back onto her nose with one finger in that gesture now familiar to
him. "Why would I tell anyone such a thing?"

He dropped back into his
chair. "You might regret coming here and start spilling your
troubles to a sympathetic friend, exaggerating. The way
women
do to each
other."

"You do not treat me ill at all, Mr.
Deverell."

Equivocation! Twice! Aha. Since she
wouldn't know he'd seen the address, he'd given her a chance to
confess that she wrote to a man, not a woman. Yet she skipped over
it.

True aimed another paper missile
across the library and it landed in the fronds of a potted plant.
"I don't, eh?"

"Not at all. You treat me with
prodigious care."

He was somewhat mollified by that.
But, still...."In what way, pray tell? I hope I haven't been
spoiling you."

A real smile at last. Just a little
one, shyly formed, rather ashamed of itself and half hidden by
streaks of shadow from the rain. "I meant, sir, that you take good
care of my appetite especially. I want for nothing. I am certainly
not overworked. In all honesty, I wish you would give me more to
do."

He dropped the slingshot and tapped
the edge of his desk with four fingers, drumming them in a fast
tattoo, mimicking the sound of rain hitting the window. "Hmm. What
else? What else do I do for you?" True liked hearing her talk of
these things she appreciated, he realized. Felt rather chuffed that
he pleased her. It wasn't an easy thing to do, as he knew already,
and on such a bleak day as this any good news was
welcome.

"My room is more than adequate, warm
and comfortable. Jameson brings up a fresh scuttle of coal every
evening so I never run out." Her clear eyes widened, shining
through the glass of her spectacles. "And I have two candles, in
addition to a oil lamp for my own use at night, which allows me to
read as long as I choose in bed."

Apparently she didn't need much to be
impressed, he mused.

The rain made lines of gray light
flicker diagonally across her face. She could be a ghost sitting
there, watching him, fading in and out, elusive. He wanted to put
his hands on her, to be sure she was still there. Suddenly the
thought of her leaving his house was intolerable. He curled his
fingers, cracked the bones.

"The offer of my former wife's room is
still open," he muttered. "There you could have even greater
comfort than a few extra candles and some coal."

"I'm afraid anything more would be too
grand for me. I wouldn't know what to do with myself in that much
luxury."

He scowled. "Well, if you
catch cold in that drafty wing this winter, don't blame me." Truth
was, he didn't like having her so far off in another side of the
castle. She was all alone down there, writing letters to other men.
And it
was
drafty. The old nanny used to complain about it all the
time.

Olivia showed him the empty inkpot.
"We've run out. I made it last as long as I could."

"There's more in the bureau. Take
whatever you need. No need to skimp."

Most women he'd known loved to be
pampered. This one was so painfully frugal anyone would think she
feared an extra bite of cake, or a softer pillow would lead her
straight to hell.

If only Storm pulled up his breeches,
polished his boots and finally got around to pursuing her properly,
she would stay there and True wouldn't have to worry about where
she went next or what sort of trouble she might encounter. Or
whether she would one day contract a deathly influenza from this
foolish insistence on drafty accommodation.

But Storm evidently needed more time
to win her over— and encouragement, which this prim secretary
wasn't giving. Her politeness, in fact, was more deadly than her
sharp tongue. At least when the latter came out of hiding one knew
a soft spot had been touched.

Unfortunately, he liked touching those
soft spots too much himself.

"Have you given any further thought to
staying in my employ a while longer, Olivia?"

She opened the bureau. "Must we talk
of this again? I cannot stay more than six months as we
arranged."

"Why? You haven't any plans." He felt
his frustration mounting again, as he thought of that
letter.

"But you can't even say why you would
want me to stay," she exclaimed. "Why would I agree when I don't
know what my duties might be? Your memoirs will be finished by
then."

He grumbled, "I may decide they're not
over yet. I may have more living to do, after all."

She said nothing, busy searching in
the bureau for more ink.

Through narrowed eyes he pictured her
without that awful gown, her naked body beneath his, lightning
decorating his bedchamber in pulsing silver lines, sweat gleaming
on his skin, her perfume surrounding him.

In bed he would conquer her. He would
write his memoirs inside her, just as he once suggested.

Too hot and uncomfortable suddenly, he
shifted in his chair and picked up his letter opener, tapping it
rapidly on the desk.

Damn her. He hadn't felt
like this about a woman in...appalled, he stabbed the silver letter
opener into the blotter. Ever. He had not
ever
felt this way about a female.
It was confusing, befuddling, humbling. In danger of making him
into a fool.

Even now he was a few breaths from
storming across the room and sweeping her over his shoulder, when
all she'd done was tuck a loosened wave of hair behind her
ear.

"So," he cleared his throat, "who is
this special friend to whom you wrote your one and only letter
since coming here?"

He waited for yet more cunning
evasion, but this time she replied, "Christopher Chesterfield is my
stepbrother. His mama married my father when I was sixteen. I'm
quite sure you read the address, so I don't know why you
asked."

A stepbrother. He stopped drumming on
his desk. Well, that was good news, wasn't it? For Storm. No prior
claim to get in Storm's way. There could be no romantic connection
between stepsiblings.

It
was
his son's future happiness he
was thinking of, when he first saw that neatly addressed letter.
There could be no other reason for his concern.

So he'd had a moment of madness,
imagining how he might keep her for himself. That was probably due
to the fact that he hadn't had a woman in his bed for quite some
time. It was nothing. He would amend that soon; he didn't really
know why it had taken him so long. His shoulder wasn't causing him
as much trouble now and he really ought to get back in the saddle,
so to speak.

Oh, for the love of ... would she stop
fiddling with that lock of hair?

He took a deep breath and adjusted
himself again. "Christopher, eh? Married?"

She hesitated. "Not yet. Soon to
be."

"Hasn't been as unlucky with spouses
as you then."

"No... he is favored with better
fortune."

Hmmm. What did that pause mean? He
took a deep breath and resumed tapping his fingers, this time with
better rhythm. The Sailor's Hornpipe again.

"Sounds like the rain isn't letting
up," he exclaimed jauntily.

Across the room his secretary had
suddenly frozen. The ink bottle slipped from her fingers and fell
to the carpet. Luckily the impact was not enough to break the
glass. Her face had gone pale. She stared at the bureau for a
moment, as if she saw something else there entirely.

"What's the matter now,
woman?"

She didn't answer. Olivia was staring
at the wall.

Worried, he got up and walked around
the desk. Were those tears in her eyes? He couldn't tell. Could be
the shimmer of reflected raindrops, he supposed.

It had better not be tears.

* * * *

Deverell didn't possess an umbrella.
Mrs. Blewett had commented on it that morning when the rain
started.

"The master says umbrellas are for
dandies afraid of getting wet," the cook had chuckled while
brushing her steak and kidney pie with beaten egg. "He says he can
manage without one."

"Naturally," Olivia had
replied.

But the rain today was joined by high
winds, so an umbrella would not have been any use to him, even if
he had one.

She had thought nothing more about it
until now. However, it must have lurked in the deep recesses of her
mind, waiting to pounce out on her again. For suddenly, as she
stood at the writing bureau that afternoon with rainy shadows
flicking around the walls, Olivia was transported back to another
time and place. She saw, once again, the image of William standing
by the parsonage front door, reaching into the umbrella stand. He
kept a plain black umbrella with a chipped and scratched wooden
handle. Not in the least decorative, but serviceable— like
everything he owned.

Yet, on that fateful day there was a
gleam of silver as he swept the umbrella out of the stand and
prepared briskly to go about his business. And suddenly Olivia
realized it was not his umbrella William took that morning; it was
Christopher's expensive umbrella with the silver swan-neck handle.
She remembered admiring it when her stepbrother surprised her with
a visit just a few days before. The umbrella handle even had
feathers carved into it and eyes of polished jet. He must have left
it there by accident and taken William's umbrella instead when he
walked out of the house. Perhaps Christopher was just as distracted
on the day of his visit as she had been, when she failed to get the
potatoes cooked in time for William's luncheon.

She closed her eyes, picturing the
ornate, curved silver head of that umbrella.

In the grief of everything that
happened after, she had completely forgotten.

So her husband took the
wrong umbrella.
That
must be what had struck her as out of place on that day!
William was a creature of routine, and any tiny diversion from it
was enough to be noticeable.

She exhaled in a rush, her fingers
squeezing tightly around the reclaimed ink bottle. Well, that could
explain the odd feeling that had lurked within her on the morning
he died. A small drop that upset the surface and made a bigger
ripple as rings spread and overlapped.

Thank goodness she knew now what had
caused that awful sensation. It was a relief to find a perfectly
reasonable explanation. She had never been able to explain it to
Inspector O'Grady when he questioned her. All she knew was that
something had struck her as wrong that day before William left the
house.

But how foolish she'd been not to tell
her husband that Christopher came to visit two days before while he
was out. There was no need for her to hide the fact. Even though
William didn't like her stepbrother he would never prevent her from
seeing a relative. She should have told William at once, but
instead she'd put it off, and the longer she waited, the less
reason she felt for telling him. And the more delay, the more it
would seem as if she had something to feel guilty about.

William hadn't even noticed that it
was not his own umbrella he took from the stand on that rainy
morning. At least, he didn't seem to notice the
difference.