Merry found the older woman with her gaze. Seated at a round table, the countess remained engrossed in her task, not even bothering to lift her head in greeting. “You’ve hardly any time before the guests arrive, and therefore, you can hardly afford to stand there tarrying.”
Taking that as an invitation to join Lady Maldavers, Merry marched across the room, but not before she caught a commiserative glance from the butler as he took his leave, closing the doors behind him.
The click of Lady Maldavers’ pen filled the cavernous space.
As Merry stopped at the opposite side of the center pedestal table in mahogany, she craned her neck a fraction in a bid to see what so occupied the older woman’s attention.
She squinted. Alas, it looked like it could be Blackbeard’s map.
At last, Lady Maldavers set her pen down and looked up, a pair of spectacles perched at the far end of her hawklike nose. “I trust you’re quite speechless at the beauty of 1896 Pembroke Place,” she said, as if they’d been conversing the whole time on that very subject.
“It is impressive in its grandeur,” Merry murmured, unwilling to offer her true grim opinions.
Frowning, the countess removed her spectacles. “Sit,” she ordered, gesturing with those gold frames to the Louis XVI painted marquise chair.
Merry hadn’t even fully seated herself on the mustard velvet upholstery before the other woman began speaking. “The household must be completely transformed. There can be no doubting that the adjusted plans had anything to do with… ” Wonder of wonders, color splotched the other woman’s cheeks. “With… with…”
“Your desire to return to London for a lovely holiday season,” Merry neatly supplied.
The countess found her footing once more. “Precisely. As such, it is my expectation that the foyer, halls, and great ballroom are all fully decked for the Yuletide season.” She pushed that large paper that had previously commanded her attention over to Merry.
Why… it hadn’t just looked like a map. It was a map. Merry lifted a questioning gaze. “My—”
“It is a map, Miss Read. I trust you know something of maps?”
There would be a second wonder of wonders, because in that instance, the countess’ eyes twinkled. That glimmer was gone as quickly as it had come.
Surely a flicker of the light. For the other woman could not and would not know the fun Merry had enjoyed making maps as a girl. She’d spent countless days designing countless maps for scavenger hunts she’d played with Ewan. His older and younger brothers had both been too serious to ever take part. “Yes, my lady,” she finally said. “Maps are not foreign to me.”
“This,” the other woman went on as if Merry hadn’t spoken, but then, an answer would never have been required from the countess, “is the layout of the townhouse.” She turned the page around so Merry could see. “Bedrooms here.” She jabbed a finger at the area in question. “Guest suites”—she moved a long finger across the page—“here. And priority should be given to these following areas. The foyer.” She jabbed her finger at the crude map as she spoke. “The music rooms. The ballroom. The dining rooms. In that order, Miss Read.”
As the rapid-fire instructions flew, Merry struggled to commit the details to memory.
“There is, of course, no limit to what you may spend. You are free to decorate as you see fit. I’d only ask that it be tasteful and cheerful for the holiday season.”
Merry stole a sideways peek at the garish rooms. Given their vastly different views on design aesthetic, the countess’ ask seemed like a hard one indeed. “There is the matter of boughs and greenery and the yule log.” Those trappings came far easier in the country.
Lady Maldavers pointed to another area on the map. “We have gardens with everything you might require, Miss Read.” The countess proceeded to gather her things. “I suggest you begin by assessing the rooms you’ll be working with, and then you may inventory the gardens in order to ascertain you’ve everything you require.”
“Of course, my lady.” Of course they would have everything she’d need. How very plebian for Merry to even think anything to the contrary. In possession of a title that went back to William the Conqueror, the Holmans held a level of wealth that people like Merry and her family could never dare wrap their minds around. It had been just one reason why she’d never been so foolish as to entertain the possibility that there could be more between her and the middle Holman brother. She’d not been so naïve as to think their futures could intertwine.
The countess set her spectacles atop her neatly stacked folders. “In the unlikely chance you can’t find something you need, you may simply pass word to Blake, the butler, who will pass word to the maids and footmen, and they’ll procure it for you in an instant.” With that, Lady Maldavers started to sweep off. She paused in a whir of skirts. “Ah, there is one more thing.”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Lord Grimslee.”
Stiffening, Merry looked about for the gentleman and found just she and the countess remained the sole occupants of the room. “What of the viscount, my lady?”
“Lord Grimslee will be helping you.”
Merry had oft suspected that when the countess had welcomed her firstborn into the world, she’d likely greeted him by his title.
The countess had turned to go when the implications of the matriarch’s previous statement knocked Merry back on her heels. “I… what was that, my lady?”
The countess paused and faced Merry once more. “Is there a problem, Miss Read?” she asked in no-nonsense tones that brooked zero tolerance for so much as a question.
At any other moment, Merry would have cared about her place versus the countess’ in this household. This, however, was decidedly not one of those moments. She plastered a smile upon her lips. “It is just… I take it I heard you wrong. For a moment, I thought you said—”
“Lord Grimslee will be assisting you.”
“Your son?” Merry sought clarification, because… well, it really merited that elucidation.
Lady Maldavers sent a snowy-white eyebrow up in a terrifying arch. “I daresay there isn’t another Lord Grimslee?”
No one—and certainly not Merry—would ever dare construe that droll retort as warm ribbing. Merry turned a palm up. “It is just… I’d be more efficient if I were to see to this alone.”
“Ah, but you’ll be as efficient as I tell you to be, Miss Read.” Once more, the countess made to leave.
Merry quickly placed herself in Lady Maldavers’ path. Her mother would have been horrified by her insolence, but there was no way Merry would be saddled with an underfoot gentleman, particularly one wholly uninterested in mirth and merry cheer at the holidays—or for as long as she’d known him, really. “I’m so very grateful for that offer. However, I trust Lord Grimslee has far greater responsibilities to see to.”
The countess muttered something that sounded a good deal like One would think. Which was as preposterous an idea as the lady doing something as improper as muttering, and yet there it was.
Merry strained her ears. “What was that, my lady?”
“It wasn’t an offer,” the countess said coolly, perfectly composed once more. “As you well know, I do not make ‘offers.’ I place demands.”
She tried again. “My lady—”
“I’ve already advised Lord Grimslee of your arrival. He is, as we speak, awaiting your presence in the front hall. He will show you a proper tour of the household.” With a finality to those directions, the countess was gone.
Merry glanced down at the map in her hands. Frowning, she tipped it upside down and then right side up before abandoning those efforts. There were far more pressing matters to focus on—primarily the assistant she’d found herself saddled with.
Lucas Holman, the Viscount Grimslee, a gentleman she’d known since she’d been a babe. The earliest memory of her interactions with him went to the day she’d been fishing and had caught him lurking in the trees, all but crashing through t
he brush and leaving a calling card in the form of broken sticks and dried leaves. She’d called for him to join her.
“Do you intend to hide there all day, staring, or will you join me, Luke?”
There was a long pause.
Merry rolled her eyes. Did he truly believe she didn’t know he was there?
“I wasn’t staring. I have far more important things to do than hide or stare.”
Only, he’d lingered for a long moment, and she’d been so very convinced he intended to join her. In the end, he’d stomped off and rejoined his tutor for some natural science lesson. It had been foolish to expect or believe he’d ever engage in any frivolous activity, such as fishing, for the sheer enjoyment of it.
“And now I’ll be decorating the household with him?” Merry said quietly to herself.
She shuddered.
She’d been unable to reason with the mother, but mayhap she’d have luck with the son. After all, she’d known Lord Grimslee since they were children. As such, she’d wager her soul on Sunday that he had even less interest in assisting her than she had in having him underfoot while she transformed the earl and countess’ Mayfair residence.
With that plan formed in her mind, she set out in search of the viscount. Yes, he might not have been the friendliest of males to her growing up, but he had been nothing if not reasonable. He could be reasoned with. Merry made her way back down the same windy trail she’d taken, finding herself lost at only two turns, before she reached the corridor that spilled out into the massive foyer. And stopped at the sight before her.
Lord Grimslee. Never had the grim in his name suited him more.
This was the man she’d be taking her help from?
It had been bad enough when she’d imagined receiving help from the stuffy, proper, more than slightly condescending in his stare Lord Grimslee.
But this?
To be saddled with a slumbering, disheveled Lord Grimslee stinking of spirits?
As if adding a punctuation mark to her rapidly spiraling horror, the prone figure on the too-small-for-him wooden entryway bench emitted a shuddery snore.
Merry narrowed her eyes.
Well, be he a viscount or future earl or the damned King of England himself, she’d not spent all those years studying in Europe to return to play nursemaid to a spoiled, indulgent man-babe.
Marching over to the tall and narrow foyer table, with the expected gold inlay, Merry grabbed the tolling bell there. She caught the clapper to keep it from chiming just yet, and then standing over Lord Grimslee’s makeshift bed, she swung it hard.
With a gasping snort, the gentleman toppled off of the bench and landed hard on the floor.
Tightening her mouth, Merry leaned over her thirty-four-year-old charge. “Good morning, Lord Grimslee.”
Chapter Three
Luke had believed his body couldn’t ache any more than it had when he’d first opened his eyes that morning.
Only to find, sprawled upon the marble foyer of his Mayfair residence, just how wrong he’d been. From his hip on up to his neck and on to his skull, he ached from where he’d struck the floor.
Which begged the bloody question: Why in blazes was he in the foyer… on the floor?
He struggled to slog through a still foggy brain to make sense out of it all.
Ding-ding-ding.
Oh, good God. More of that ringing. Not the one to have greeted him that morn in his bed, but an altogether new and different chime, louder and more grievous.
Groaning, he closed his eyes. “Stop with that infernal ringing.” What might have otherwise been an impressive order was ruined by his gravelly tones, coarse from pain and lack of sleep.
A shadow fell over him. “Oh, my apologies for disturbing you.”
“You hardly sound apologetic,” he muttered. In fact, that distantly familiar, husky coloratura sounded anything but.
“Oh, that would be because I’m not really sorry,” the woman said dryly.
Who in hell was his latest tormenter? He forced his eyes open.
And found a stern, decidedly angry young woman frowning down at him. He blinked slowly.
Surely his eyes deceived him.
His steward’s eldest child, the once-precocious girl who’d sought out and found more trouble than he or all the Holman brothers combined. But it couldn’t be. She’d been gone now… he searched his mind. Three… mayhap four years. And mayhap he was having the most peculiar dream about the young woman. Her hair was drawn back in a serviceable plait, and a handful of curls danced about her shoulders that had that same nearly coal-black hue as Merry Read had possessed. “Miss Read?”
“The very same,” she said tightly, confirming she was, one, in fact, very real, and two, about as pleased with him as his father had been that morn. Alas, what other reaction should be expected of anyone who’d found a person sprawled upon the floor? His steward’s eldest child folded her arms at her chest. “Though I must say I hardly recognize you, my lord.”
For the first time, he felt a sentiment that had become so foreign, he’d doubted himself even capable of it.
Shame.
It clawed at his gut and made a mockery of the illusion that there was no opinion he cared for any longer. In fact, he cared a good deal more than he would have liked. A product, no doubt, of the longevity of his relationship with the woman before him… or, in this case, over him.
At the awkward lengthening of silence, he cleared his throat. “I was resting,” he said in perfectly crisp tones.
Merry snorted. “In the foyer?” She leaned down, that slight movement sending the bell in her hand to jingling. “Might I suggest your chambers next time, my lord?”
Heat slapped at his cheeks, and with all the aplomb a man could muster while sprawled on his arse, Luke pushed himself up onto his elbows. “I didn’t say I was sleeping,” he reminded her.
“No.” She paused. “Your snoring, however, did say as much.”
His mouth moved, but he couldn’t get a single word out. Nor did that struggle have anything to do with his night of excess. Never in the whole of his life had any man or woman dared to challenge him.
“Be that as it may,” she went on with a mastery of conversation that even his expert hostess of a mother would be hard-pressed to emulate, “as you’re well aware, I am here at your mother’s behest.”
Luke struggled to his feet. “Aren’t we all,” he muttered.
The lady drifted so close, her skirts stirred against his legs. “What was that, my lord?”
“Nothing at all.” Despite her belief, Merry Read couldn’t be further from the mark. He’d not been aware of either her presence in his household or any plans his mother had for him… or them? Or any of it. It was an admission, however, he’d not make. As it was, it was hard enough saving face from down on the cold, hard floor. “The countess may have mentioned something of it,” he lied.
Merry opened her mouth to say something, but her gaze lingered on his gaping jacket.
“I trust you are somehow displeased with your assignment?” With as much as a gentleman in dishabille could manage, he buttoned his jacket, or he tried to see to the damned eyeholes. Alas, his senses and motions were dulled by a night of excess, and the task was not made any easier with Merry Read’s eyes on his every movement.
She snorted. “Whatever gave you that opinion, my lord? You see, it is not that I’m…”
Only half listening, Luke struggled with a button. “Bloody hell,” he mumbled through the young woman’s ramblings. “Bloody buttons.”
“Oh, just stop,” Merry clipped out. “Here now. Let me see to that.” Knocking his hands out of the way, she undid his previous work… his previous uneven work. “And furthermore, it’s hardly the buttons’ fault,” she said coolly. “Now, as I was saying…”
Luke knew he should be wholly attending her, but he remained fixed upon the top of her bent head, entranced by the sheer intimacy of her movements. Any other lady would have averted her eyes. Nay, any
other woman would have rushed off in the opposite direction. Merry Read, however, had never been like any other woman of his acquaintance. She’d been bold, unapologetic, and spirited, and growing up all the way unto adulthood, he’d not known whether to be horrified or captivated by her.
“…I am unable to see how you might…”
As she buttoned his jacket, her callused fingers brushed the flat planes of his stomach, and the muscles there rippled under the inadvertent caress as his white lawn shirt proved little barrier to her touch. Heat. Pure, unadulterated heat washed through him.
Merry made quick work of what had been an otherwise impossible-for-him task and proved remarkably unaffected through it. “There,” she said with a little nod before taking a step away from him. She stared expectantly at him.
And he, who’d never lost track of any discourse or discussion, found his mind blank, and because of it, a proper response was absent. “Uh…”
Merry narrowed her eyes, and thick black lashes swept down like a blanket upon her cream-white skin. “You weren’t listening.”
“I was.” How easy it had become for the lies to simply roll from his tongue.
“Then what did I say?” she shot back.
However, he was rubbish at the skillful ability to prevaricate. By the sparkle in Merry’s chocolate-brown eyes, she knew it, too.
“You were expressing displeasure with your current assignment,” he ventured.
The young woman’s crimson rosebud lips formed a perfect moue of surprise. So, he was on the mark, then. “Though I did not say as much, I appreciate that you detected those undertones.”
Feeling pleased with himself for the first time since he’d chosen honor over happiness, Luke smoothed his lapels. “You’re welcome.”
“I wasn’t, at any point, thanking you,” Merry said, her expression deadpan. Sticking a foot out, she drummed that serviceable boot on the floor. “I would, however, like to ask what you intend to do about my concerns.”
Oh, blast and damn. This was where he really would benefit from those skills of prevarication. “Why don’t you tell me how you would like me to handle your situation, Merry?” The use of her name slipped out easily, a product of the lifetime they’d known each other.
Yuletide Wishes: A Regency Novella Duet Page 16
