He was white-faced.
Bob tutted. “Anyone dead?”
The hired footman turned to him, wide-eyed. “No?”
“Then best we clean up,” Bob said briskly. “You an’ me can help th’ gentlemen an’ the maids will do the washing, yeah?”
Bridget caught Bob’s eye and nodded approvingly before continuing on her way to Mrs. Bram.
The cook was bent, her reddened face gleaming, over a platter of tiny, delicate white candies. On each she was piping a minuscule pink rose.
Bridget kept her voice low as she asked, “You have enough food, you think?”
“Enough and just a bit more to be safe,” Mrs. Bram said with satisfaction. “But it were close.”
It had been very close. Simply acquiring and preparing all the food and drink needed for the midnight supper tonight had been no easy task and Bridget knew the cook had worked just as hard as she.
“Mrs. Bram, you are to be commended on an excellent job well done,” Bridget said.
“An’ you, Mrs. Crumb, an’ you,” replied the cook.
For a moment Bridget shared a weary smile with the other woman.
And then one of the maidservants touched her shoulder. “There’s a lady asking to speak to you, ma’am.”
Bridget looked at the girl, one of the servants hired for the night. “Me? She asked for me by name?”
The maidservant nodded. “Mrs. Crumb. That’s what she said.”
“Thank you,” Bridget said, and, nodding to Mrs. Bram, made her way to the door of the kitchens.
At first the hallway—admittedly ill lit—seemed crowded only with rushing servants.
But then an elegant figure in a cream-and-gold dress stepped forward. “Mrs. Crumb.”
Bridget recognized Miss Hippolyta Royle at once.
Bridget hurried to her. “Ma’am, this way, please.”
She took the lead silently, hoping that she looked as if she were helping a lady guest with a feminine need of some sort. At the end of the hallway, instead of turning right and taking the stairs up to the main floor, she headed left into a smaller hall. There were several doors here and she used her key ring to unlock one, glancing quickly over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t seen before ushering Miss Royle into a storage closet. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with cheeses, liqueurs, pickles, medicinal herbs and ointments, wax, oils, and vinegars.
There was a small window high on the wall, with shutters on the inside. Bridget opened the shutters to let in a little light from the carriage lanterns on the street before turning to her guest. “What did you need to see me about, ma’am?”
Miss Royle closed her eyes a moment, taking a deep breath. Her face was oval and quite beautiful, her complexion almost olive in the low light, her dark mahogany hair pulled back into intricate loops at the back of her head.
When she opened her eyes they looked desperate. “Oh, Mrs. Crumb, he told me tonight that he’ll be calling on me. That he means to wed me.”
Bridget stared, for she knew at once that Miss Royle was correct. She must be the mysterious fiancée that the duke had talked about. For some reason Bridget had never dreamed it would be someone she already knew. An unfamiliar emotion entered her breast, something akin to rage. She was too overworked, too exhausted from lack of sleep. This news shouldn’t affect her so.
The aristocracy married all the time and rarely for anything as mundane as affection. Of course the duke would blackmail Miss Royle—the most sought-after heiress in England—into marriage. Just because he’d saved Pip for Bridget, just because he’d rescued Mehmed from slavery and worse, just because he’d offered her the use of his library in such a lovely way didn’t mean he wasn’t essentially the same as he’d ever been.
Evil. Vain. Self-serving.
And any other consideration—any other emotion Bridget might have on the matter? Well, that simply wasn’t to be heeded.
Her feelings didn’t pertain.
She straightened, pulling her wandering thoughts together. “I take it that His Grace’s suit does not appeal?”
“No.” Miss Royle pressed her hand to her mouth for a moment before letting it drop again. “No, not at all.”
Bridget nodded. She did understand. The duke was a very mercurial creature—although that was somewhat balanced by great wealth, overwhelming handsomeness, and a magnificent library she hadn’t yet found the time to explore. Also, she secretly found his conversation amusing. Sometimes, at any rate.
Still. She wasn’t the one being blackmailed into a marriage she didn’t want.
Miss Royle took her hands. “You must find the miniature, you must, Mrs. Crumb. I cannot marry the Duke of Montgomery. He is a loathsome man. The mere thought of sharing a marital bed with him…”
She swallowed, closing her eyes.
Bridget squeezed the other woman’s hands. Miss Royle might be wealthy and far above a mere housekeeper in station, but at the moment Bridget felt sorry for her.
“I’ll do my best, ma’am, truly I will.” She hesitated, debating. She didn’t think telling Miss Royle that she’d actually had the miniature in her hands at one point would comfort the other woman—quite the opposite. Instead she said, “He isn’t really as awful as he makes himself out to be.”
Miss Royle frowned, withdrawing her hands. “What do you mean?”
Bridget blinked, feeling awkward. She shouldn’t have spoken so impulsively. “Just that he likes shocking people, I think. If you talk to him about something that truly interests him…”
She trailed away, for Miss Royle was looking at her rather oddly.
Naturally. How would a housekeeper know about conversing with a duke?
Bridget cleared her throat, folding her hands at her waist and saying more formally, “Yes, well. I had better return to my tasks and you to the ball, ma’am. Rest assured I shall look for your miniature.”
“Thank you.” Miss Royle took a breath as if bracing herself. “I feel as if you’re my only hope, you know. It’s as if I’m being stalked by some predator.” She flashed a not-very-convincing smile. “Wouldn’t want to be luncheon.”
Bridget smiled bracingly and opened the door for Miss Royle, watching as she disappeared down the corridor.
Then she closed the shutters of the window and locked the door behind her before leaving as well. No one seemed to particularly notice when she reemerged into the servants’ hallway.
Bridget eyed the hurried flow of maids and footmen and made a decision. She turned back down the hallway, and then took another passage. She walked along it alone, listening to the sounds of the revelries, took another turn, and came to a servants’ hall that ran behind the ballroom. There was a small door here and she turned the handle, opening it and slipping through.
She emerged in an obscure corner—this was a servants’ entrance, after all, meant for such as she. The musicians were directly to her right, a grouping of statuary and vases half shielding the door.
The ballroom was stiflingly hot—so many bodies massed together with innumerable flaming candles made it almost a natural inferno. Bright silks and velvets drifted slowly past. No one could move particularly swiftly due to the crush. She saw him at once, despite the fact that there must be hundreds of people present.
The Duke of Montgomery would always be the center of attention, after all.
He stood in a small group of gentlemen. An aristocrat in a complicated two-tailed wig was talking earnestly at his elbow as the duke surveyed the room. Montgomery wore a pale-blue suit especially made for the ball—she knew since she’d overheard the poor tailor being berated for the last two weeks. It really was a magnificent creation, with silver embroidery at cuffs and pockets and along the edges. His golden hair was tied back with a wide black ribbon and he held a gold walking stick in his left hand.
This was the man who had blackmailed the king of the land. Who had blackmailed her own mother—and still held the means to blackmail her in the future. Who aimed to blackmail Miss R
oyle into marriage.
He was a terrible, evil man, and most likely mad to boot. She knew that.
And yet.
As if he could hear her thoughts, his head turned and his eyes met hers.
She should’ve ducked before he could see her. That would’ve been the sensible thing to do—the smart thing to do. Instead she lifted her chin and stared back as if she were equal to a duke.
Without acknowledging the gentleman still talking to him, the duke pivoted and walked toward her.
Through that crowded ballroom, as if nothing stood between him and her. And all those people parted as if he were a ship cleaving the waves. Why shouldn’t they? He was the Duke of Montgomery. Nothing stood in his way. He made sure of that.
He made her side and took her hand and simply said, “Come.”
VAL CUT THROUGH his guests, something animal beating at his chest. He was dragging his housekeeper behind him, and if he received an odd look now and again he simply stared back, teeth bared. He took a glass of wine from a passing footman—his fourth of the night—and then he made the French doors that led out onto one of the balconies.
He let go of her hand only long enough to shove aside the gold draperies, open the doors, and pull her outside before shutting the doors again behind them.
It was too late in the season and too cold to open the doors for the ball. That was what they had decided. Or rather what she had decided. He, as he remembered the discussion, had been distracted by his tailor’s egregiously horrible placement of the buttons on his cuffs.
In any case, the result was that the balcony was deserted.
“It’s cold out here, Your Grace,” she said.
“Not with the warmth from the windows,” he replied, which was at least partially true. “Look.”
He turned her to face the garden and all that lay beyond.
“Oh,” she murmured. “The moon is full.”
“Yes.” He leaned his shoulders against the cold stone of his house, let his head fall back, and gazed over her crown at the celestial body. It seemed to hang, pale and glowing and monstrously large, over the rooftops of London. He took a sip of wine. It was tart and rich on his tongue. “I knew a girl once who liked to wish upon the moon.”
“What did she wish for?” Mrs. Crumb asked, her voice low. She had a lovely voice, he realized absently, here in the near dark. Feminine and grave. A voice to whisper secrets. A voice to console and give absolution.
He shrugged, though she couldn’t see. “I don’t remember. Girlish things, I think. I’d take her to the top of the widow’s tower at Ainsdale Castle, late at night, and we’d watch the moon rise. The widow’s tower was very high but she wasn’t afraid. Sometimes I’d steal a pie from the kitchens and we’d picnic up there. I brought up a blanket, too, so she wouldn’t have to sit on the bare stone floor.”
Mrs. Crumb made an aborted movement, as if she’d meant to turn to face him and then changed her mind.
He let the wineglass dangle by his side. “I told her a rabbit lived on the moon and she believed me. She believed everything I told her then.”
“What rabbit?”
“There.” He roused himself, straightening.
He drew her back, fitting her against his chest and setting his chin on her shoulder. She smelled of tea and housekeeperly things, and she was warm, so warm. He caught up her right hand in his and traced the moon with it. “D’you see? There the long ears, there the tail, there the forepaws, there the back.”
“I see,” she whispered.
“I told her the rabbit had lavender fur and ate pink moon clover up there.” His mouth twisted, as he remembered. “She’d watch me with big blue eyes, her mouth half-open, a bit of piecrust on her dress. She hung on every word.”
He could hear her breath, could feel the tremble of her limbs. Did she fear him?
“D’you believe me?” he asked against her ear, his lips wet with wine. She was a housekeeper and housekeepers didn’t matter in the grand schemes of kings and dukes and little girls who wished upon rabbit moons.
But she was silent, damnable housekeeper.
They breathed together for a moment, there in the night air, London twinkling before them, overhung by a pagan moon.
At last she stirred and asked, “What happened to the girl?”
He broke away from her, draining his glass of wine. “She grew up and knew me for a liar.”
He drew his hand across his face and pushed open the doors to his ballroom, striding in without looking back at her.
The heat was dizzying. The voices a grating cacophony. The stink of bodies, perfumed and sweating, nauseating.
Cal the bastard footman emerged from the crowd, a glass of wine in his hand. “Wine, Your Grace?”
Val took the wine and downed it in one gulp. “Get out of my sight.”
For some reason that made Cal smile.
Val shook his head and unhooked his gold walking stick from the loop at his waist. Then he lifted his head and grinned. He was the Duke of Montgomery. He’d successfully blackmailed the King. He was about to blackmail himself a wife. No one loved him.
And that was the way he liked it.
Chapter Seven
Soon King Heartless had merely to show himself in his shining golden armor for the opposing commander to turn tail and run and the enemy army to lay down their weapons. He didn’t even have to raise his sword.
And after that? Well, really, there was no one to gainsay him.…
—From King Heartless
Why did gentlemen always cast up their accounts in hidden corners? Bridget pondered this eternal housekeeperly question late the next afternoon as the maids found a belated mess in one of the drawing rooms off the ballroom. She saw to it that Alice and another maid had the cleaning well in hand and then made her way to the ballroom to check on the progress of putting everything to rights there. Pip trotted along busily beside her.
She—and most of the household staff—had had barely four hours’ sleep before they’d begun work this morning. The last carriage had pulled away as the sun was just beginning to rise over London.
She was overseeing Bob, on a very tall ladder, carefully taking down a swag of gold cloth from a crystal chandelier when Mehmed came into the ballroom. “Mrs. Crumb, I have need of you, please.”
She watched as the chandelier swayed ominously and Bill, holding the ladder steady, swore under his breath. “Just a moment, Mehmed.”
“It cannot wait, I think. It is the duke.”
She glanced swiftly at the boy and saw that his eyes were wide and solemn and fixed on her with a desperate pleading.
She motioned to a third footman. “John, please help Bill steady this ladder.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She drew the boy aside. “What is wrong with the duke?”
“I do not know,” Mehmed said mournfully. “He will not answer his door.”
“Well, where is Mr. Attwell?”
Mehmed shrugged. “This I do not know.”
“Cannot you get in to His Grace’s bedroom from the dressing room?”
“There is a lock on the door there, too.”
Bridget fought to suppress a sigh and an impending headache. “Mehmed, sometimes Englishmen like to drink to excess and then they lie abed for a very long time the next day. You needn’t worry. Aside from a headache and a foul temper, His Grace will be fine.”
She turned to resume her work, but felt a light touch on her sleeve.
Mehmed snatched back his hand as if touching her had burned him. “Lady, please.” There were tears in his big brown eyes. “Please. I hear a groan from room and sound like duke not well. Please. You must help.”
Well, sounds of being sick would only be the natural result of overindulging. Bridget and her minions had spent the morning being quite aware of that. This information only bolstered her case.
Still.
Despite her pragmatic, practical reasoning, her body had already turned toward the door, had
already started striding toward the stairs. What if he was truly ill?
Oh, he was going to laugh at her! When she opened his door and she saw him abed with two or three ladies of the night, all golden curls and pink nipples—theirs or his. He’d give her that cocky, sly smile, call her Mrs. Crumb or burning Séraphine, and flaunt his gorgeous nude body as she tried to usher his whores out the door. She’d become quite cross with him and he’d make her very flustered and everything would be all right.
She’d made the upper floor by this time, Mehmed at her heels, Pip racing ahead. She strode down the empty hall, the chatelaine jingling at her waist, until she reached the duke’s rooms.
Bridget knocked briskly. “Your Grace?”
There was no response.
She laid her ear against the painted wood and listened. All was silence and then she thought she heard a faint, dry wheeze.
She drew back, staring at the door.
“What is it?” whispered Mehmed.
“I don’t know.”
She picked up her chatelaine, quickly flipping through the keys until she found the proper one. She inserted the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the duke’s bedroom door.
The room smelled foul.
That was her first thought. It was dark, the drapes still pulled against the day, the fire cold. He’d been sick, that much was obvious, and more than once, by the stink.
She made her way cautiously to the bed. “Pull the drapes, please, Mehmed.”
Behind her Mehmed grunted and a bright bolt of sunlight hit the bed.
“Dear God in heaven,” she choked.
The duke was sprawled sideways on the bed, half on, half off. He wore his breeches from the night before and a sodden, filthy shirt, hanging from his shoulders. His hair was dark with sweat or some other matter and clung to his face and neck in damp ringlets. His face—dear God—his face was gray, his eyes closed and sunken, his mouth open, his lips pale and crusted, and she thought for a moment—a dreadful moment—that he was already dead.
Then she saw his chest, oily with sweat, move.
“Mehmed!” Her voice was high and shrill, but she couldn’t help it, she was panicking. “Run for a doctor now!”
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