It took her a moment to realize two very important things. First, that she was still clutching the Duke in way that was most unseemly. And second, that he seemed far more sober now than he had been moments ago. With a muffled cry she let go his fingers. “Your Grace! I beg your pardon…”
“’Tis a funny thing how danger will clear a man’s head,” he said as though it were the most natural thing to come crawling out of the bushes next to a ruined castle in the dead of night. “I daresay I am more myself than I was, though still drunk enough to wonder whether it would be wise or not to kiss the Lady of Ballyroyal.”
She flushed. “You shall kiss no one at all, but rather get yourself back to the manor before you are discovered to be drunk and acting in the most disorderly fashion. You will create a scandal appearing as you are.”
“As you will, if you are found in my company. I shall be fine, I should think, but I would be more easy of mind if you were to walk with me at least as far as the road. I dislike these woods greatly and would not leave a lady here alone.” He gestured toward the path that wound back toward the main road.
“I wish you would forget I said that,” she murmured, rather vexed with herself for having spoken so incautiously. “I am a servant in your house, nothing more.”
“There is much more to you than being a servant,” he replied, falling into step beside her. “And I think I should like to hear the story of how it comes to be that a Lady serves within my household.”
“I meant nothing by that title,” she exclaimed, frustrated now and feeling more than a little bit of panic.
“On the contrary, I think you did. Rest easy, for I will not winnow out your secrets in such a place as this. At any rate, I would want a clear head for this particular task.” He gestured at the road that lay ahead of them. The last dregs of light showed not only the manor in the distance, but one of his men approaching on horseback.
“If ‘tis all the same to you, I would remain here until you leave,” she said quietly, balking at the idea of going any further.
He gave her a troubled look. “I am not so inebriated as to leave a Lady stranded at the side of the road while I ride back to the house in comfort.”
“That creature can hardly carry three, and I will not have a pair of fine gentlemen walk on my behalf,” she said quickly, as she faded back into the trees. “And need I remind you, I am only a servant in your home.”
There was no time for further conversation. The rider was nearly upon him. Alicia held her breath as the Duke strode forward to greet the man, barely a trace of drunkenness in his step. Perhaps he had never been as befuddled by drink as he had first seemed.
If that were the case, it left her very uneasy, indeed.
Chapter 17
If Alicia lingered on the walk back, could she be blamed? The night was balmy and sweet, the message to her father had been delivered, even if not quite in the way she had expected it would be. Though in retrospect, was it not better to be free of her father’s wrath on this perfect night?
Her step was light as she came into the courtyard. She did not question her mood overmuch. Maybe it had to do with the brightness of the moon rising over the trees, or the fact that she could still feel the warmth of his hand in hers. These matters were not worth questioning, not here and now while the magic was still strong upon her.
The cobblestones beneath her feet told her she was back, though she had been walking with her head down, not thinking overly much about where she was going. So it was she had no idea that someone else was there until she heard his voice near her ear.
“The high and mighty Alicia come home at last. Tell me, Miss Price, where have you been so late? Obviously not doing yer father’s bidding, else you would be inside tending to the Duke’s high and mighty guests.”
Alicia gave a startled cry and whirled, seeing only the white of his shirt, the darkness of the eyes of the stranger until her brain caught up with the rest of her and defined the intruder as Elias Moore. Alicia had grown up with this fellow. He’d always been something of a bully, and so she’d been half afraid of him. Now, that half fear had turned to the full sort.
Why is he here? She hadn’t remembered hearing at any of the meetings of sending anyone else to Ravencliff. She had thought she was the only one to spy upon the Duke and his household. Was she wrong?
“What do you know of it?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. She cast an uneasy look at the house. “Has my father sent you?”
He only laughed in reply. “I work here the same as you, miss. What sends you to the fine manor house when you could be home warming the bed of my brother—”
Alicia reeled back as if slapped. “I turned your brother down, Elias, and dinna you forget it. I would as soon wed a sow as Moore. And Ian certainly was not so brokenhearted by my refusal that it stayed him from marrying Erin Scott the very next week. I daresay he is a man content enough.”
Elias’ face darkened, even as he stepped further into the light, coming too close, so that she could smell the garlic upon his breath. He constantly chewed it, for his health he claimed, though she knew it to be superstition, a piece of advice from the witch woman when they were children. She recoiled from him now. “I need to be away,” she said, pushing past him, and aiming for the house.
“You will go when I bid you to,” he said and reached for her, but she dodged out of the way.
“I will go where and how I choose. I am not one to be told anything by the likes of you. If you came here to work, then be about it. The good Lord knows your Da can use the extra coin, since his accident that left his back so crippled. If you came here for something else, then I have no wish to know it.” She glanced toward the house. The kitchen door stood open, safety and haven both.
“Aye, be off with you. But rest assured, you are not the only true Irish within the walls of that house. You might be wary just who you trust. There are those as would turn on you as like as not.” He turned, giving her a half wave over his shoulder that might have been a rude gesture though it was hard to tell in the dark.
Alicia drew herself up stiffly. “If you have something to say then say it!” she called after him.
He paused, halfway to the stables. “I have spoken my piece. Consider it a warning, given in return for a favor to be determined later.” She saw a bright flash of teeth in the moonlight, a grin that came and went like quicksilver before he disappeared from view.
Alicia shuddered and made for the door, pausing a moment in the kitchen garden. From the sounds inside, the clean-up had already begun. By now she would be missed. Oh, could nothing go right?
Taking a deep breath, she threw herself into the fray only to find that the kitchen was in a disaster, where one of the maids had been scorched by the fire and was crying profusely. Thinking rapidly, Alicia grabbed an onion from the rope of them strung near the door. “Here,” she said, grabbing a knife and cutting it quickly in twain. “Rub this upon it.”
“Bless you, child,” Mistress Marigold said, taking the bulb from her and applying it to the wound. “I had been despairing, for the box with the unguent we keep for burns was missing, and I could not think what to do.”
Alicia only ducked her head, excusing herself to her duties. She almost made it to the door before Mistress Marigold called her name.
For a moment Alicia couldn’t breathe. “Yes, Mistress?”
“This is the end of it,” the older woman said to her seriously, nodding toward the kitchen door. “I will not warn you again.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Alicia bobbed a quick curtsey and fled.
Chapter 18
They were not friends. Or even allies. But as Jacob moved among his guests, his mind was not on the revelry of those around him who were deeply involved in a game of Charades, but on the girl who moved among his guests seeing to their every need.
Alicia. Her name is Alicia.
Perhaps it was because she was a puzzle to him. How many times had he seen evidence of her tend
er heart? Or her bravery in the face of danger? That she had protected him from her father was not lost on him, though why she had reason to do so was beyond him. Her father had been trespassing upon his land. He could have and would have handled the situation without her.
She saw me as vulnerable. As needing protecting.
The thought chafed at him. He had not acted as a man of title and standing ought. He had given way to the basest of instincts, hiding in strong drink when he should have faced up to that which had left him…challenged.
On the whole, Jacob was disgruntled with himself. He had sent a man into the village to look for conspiracies, and then enlisted a serving maid to do the same in his home. He was thinking too much in the way that he had while aboard ship. His last three missions had involved working…not as openly as he had pretended to his peers. Few here knew the true nature of his work. That in fact, the last ship he had sailed had been a privateer.
The crown required that I be a spy. Now I see the devil in every shadow.
He looked around the room now, trying to see it through the haze of the innocence that he had once had. His mother held court in the center of the room, delighted with the game, and in the amiable company of the officer’s wives. She had been nothing but congenial toward his friends, even though there were few within the room of high title. A Baronet here, a Knight there. In fact, she seemed quite taken with several of the ladies.
Of course, they were proper English ladies, he noted with a trace of cynicism. Had any of them been unmarried, he had no doubt they would have been paraded before him with equal intensity. It would be interesting to see what happened when her own guests arrived in a few days.
Interestingly enough, Owen was likewise taking part in the game. He leaned in toward William, an officer with whom Jacob had served several times. William was an affable sort, and laughed now at something Owen said. Jacob froze when he realized that their eyes had been upon him as they had done so.
He forced himself to look away. To breathe normally. Was his mind overwrought? Had he become no better than other men who had served overlong and could not keep the war on the other side of their own doorways when they returned home? He had always pitied those souls, and thought it sad that they could not let go the battlefield trauma even when in the safest of environs.
There is no war here, he reminded himself. None. You see things that are not there.
He found himself wanting to reach for a drink again. It would not be wrong, to put an end to the game. The men could retire with him to his study, where they could spend the rest of the night comfortably over fine brandy and reminiscences about their command and the war they had so recently left behind them. Maybe to talk about it would lay those ghosts to rest.
The group erupted in laughter as the clue was unraveled and an accurate guess made. The next group took up positions, clumsily acting out Romeo and Juliet to the laughter of the rest of the group.
Why am I so uneasy? His eyes met Alicia’s from across the room. The girl’s hand was reaching to adjust the drape that covered the window, pulling it so that it lay more fully over the glass. His mother hated a chill room. There was nothing to be suspicious of, yet he could not shake the feeling of strangers hiding behind the curtain, of something terrible about to happen.
For a moment he could not breathe.
In that instant, Alicia was there, her hand brushing his as she bent to adjust the cushions on the couch behind him. “There is nothing amiss,” she said softly, her breath tickling his ear. In the next instant she was gone, hurrying to the side of one of the ladies who asked for a piece for a costume for the next charade.
He watched as Alicia went to a chest in the corner of the room that had been brought down to aid in the game. She rummaged through old clothing and came up with an ornate lady’s fan which the woman accepted gratefully before stepping up with her partner to perform the next charade.
How had she known? The phrase stuck in his head as he watched her carefully as the game progressed. How had she known the very moment he was in distress? How had she so easily come to his aid with exactly the right thing to say to help him?
Was she as aware of him, as he was of her? It was an unsettling thought. He, who had never noticed a lady except in passing, who danced at balls only as his duty bade him, had found in her a fascination for which he had no explanation. This thoroughly unsuitable girl had somehow become his obsession to the point where he saw no one else in the room, save her.
And that was a dangerous thing.
He cast his eyes over to Owen, who had taken his place in the charade that involved the woman with the fan and her husband, who appeared to be trying to row a boat down the center of the sitting room. Owen, in every respect, seemed as though he were enjoying himself thoroughly, throwing himself into the game as though he had not a care in the world. Had they quite nearly come to blows only this afternoon?
I am allowing myself to be distracted.
He tried to put his focus on the charade, speaking to those around him as they spoke to him, though later he would have no memory of their conversations. At the same time, he could have told in detail every instance in which those amber eyes had met his from across the room.
Eventually, the game ended. The group started to drift away to their rooms. His mother retired for the night. At some point Owen left. Alicia stayed, putting the room to rights as the last of the guests said their good nights.
He had no clear memory of any of it, though he knew for a fact he was quite sober.
“Did you have any other tasks for me, Your Grace?”
Alicia’s soft question broke him from his reverie. Did he? For a moment he wondered what would happen if he bid her to stay and talk to him. He wanted to know everything about her. What had she been like as a child? Which flower did she enjoy most? Did she enjoy poetry? Where was Ballyroyal?
In the end, though, none of his questions were asked. They were allies, and uneasy ones at that. He had done her a favor, and now she owed him one. She had kept him from her father, but they had made a bargain. Surely, that single act did not negate such things.
“Tomorrow…I want to know what Owen does,” he said softly and turned away before he said something foolish, something that exposed his heart for the weak thing that it was, beating so erratically in her presence.
He had not moved fast enough, for he saw the flash of pain in her eyes, and could not miss the hard note that crept into her voice as she answered, “As you wish, Your Grace.” And left the room.
Chapter 19
He had given her an impossible task. Lord Owen was a man of the outdoors. In the few days she had worked in the house, she had seen him seldom, at meals and tonight after dinner when he had been with the rest in the drawing room.
Now Alicia was left unsure how to proceed as the night drew on and she lay in the large bed she shared with Meghan, who seemed to have no such problems sleeping and lay snoring lightly beside her.
Tomorrow I will have my rooms to do up early, so I will be able to see who he talks to easy enough within the manor itself. Outside though…
She blanched and pulled at the blanket until she hid herself deep within the covers despite the room begin warm. Outside she would need help. Elias.
* * *
As luck would have it, Elias was the last man through the door for breakfast the next morning.
Alicia had arrived early, her excuses ready upon her lips, and was even met with an approving nod by Miss Marigold when she explained her desire to get started immediately after eating. The problem was, Elias was so long delayed that she had run out of excuses to linger and Miss Marigold was starting to give her suspicious looks from across the room.
“Why are you so late?” she asked him as she rose to get herself her fourth cup of water from the pump near the door.
He shot her a look and shrugged in that maddening way of his. It was as though he knew precisely that she had needed to talk to him today and stayed away delibe
rately just to give her further trouble.
“Let me get you some porridge. I am nearer to the pot than you and less likely to spill,” she said, taking a bowl and serving him, not waiting for his answer. He gave her a sharp look but said nothing as she set it before him. It took some skill to fumble the bowl so that it spilled, requiring her to get a cloth and to bend past him to clean the mess she had created, but she managed it somehow.
“I need you to tell me what Lord Owen does today,” she said quietly as she wiped at the mess.
“Old Owen?” He snickered, taking the bowl from her and adding salt and butter, without apparent interest.
“A favor. For me,” she insisted, and nudged him with her shoulder as she slipped past, to put away the rag, and make her escape now that her mission was complete.
Her time spent fooling about with Elias almost caused her to miss Owen entirely. He was already finishing his breakfast in the dining room as she slipped past on her way to tidy the parlor that the Duchess typically used. She chafed at this, wondering at his schedule. Would he go immediately outside from there, or would he find some other escape into the environs of the vast house?
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