“I’m famished,” he said. “And in dire need of tea.”
“Lily’s brought some Lapsang Souchong for us to try. Will you have some of that?”
“Yes, thank you.” He went to the table where there were laid out several cheeses, some biscuits, bread, butter, a yellow cake, various jellies and preserves, and Devonshire cream. There were apples and grapes, too, as well as some early strawberries. “May I bring you anything, Eugenia?”
“No thank you, Mountjoy.”
He gathered a plate for himself. “Miss Wellstone?”
“Are there more grapes?” She did not look up from her paper. “I should love more grapes.”
Nigel said, “I’ll get them for you.”
“Lord Nigel,” Lily said sternly. She barely looked at Nigel. “Your brother is half an inch from the food. He can trouble himself to bring both of us grapes and perhaps a slice of that cake.” She glanced in his direction, but her attention was directed more at the food than at him. “And a bit of that delectable Devonshire cream.”
“I should be delighted, Miss Wellstone.” He only just stopped himself from rolling his eyes in self-disgust. Was that now his favorite phrase? I should be delighted. Lily Wellstone had his life turned upside down.
He brought her and Nigel plates with the requested items, then accepted his tea from Eugenia, which he took with him to study the paper Lily had spread over the desk. No one could think anything of his doing so since Nigel was doing the same.
“What do you think?” Lily asked him. She smelled good. Just enough of violets to be pleasant and to remind him of the scent rising from her skin, the taste of her flesh, and the sound of her sexual release.
“I can’t make heads or tails of what that is.” He nodded at her paper.
Nigel laughed at him. “She meant the tea, Mountjoy. What do you think of the tea?”
“Did she?” He took another sip, slowly because it was hot and Lily was watching him. “I still can’t make heads or tails of that.” There was a smokiness to the tea that he liked. The flavor hovered on the edge of too much. “It’s quite strong.”
“It is a bold tea,” Lily said. “And therefore not for everyone.” She put her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand. “I suspected you might like it.”
“Why?”
“You are like this tea. Bold. Opinionated.” Her lips quirked in a smile. “And something of an acquired taste.”
Nigel gave a yelp of laughter.
“Few people have acquired that particular taste,” Mountjoy said.
Lily met his gaze. “Perhaps they’ve not given you a sufficient chance.”
“Where do you get this?” No one could blame him for staring at her. Her smile could resurrect a dead man. “I should like to have a supply laid by.”
She reached across the table for another sheet of paper and wrote on it. “The name of the tea, and the tea merchant my steward swears by. If you write to him and tell him that I particularly recommended you to him, I’m sure he’ll sell you some.”
Mountjoy had been duke long enough to know he was unlikely to need any introduction or recommendation. His name would be more than enough. “It’s quite good.”
“But not a tea everyone cares for.” Lily sat at the table like a queen, in command of them all. “I recognize that and for that reason bring my own personal supply. Ginny, for example, did not care for the taste, and your brother, I fear, only pretends that he does.”
Nigel hastened to say, “There’s no pretense, Miss Wellstone.” He took another sip of his tea but it was obvious to all he was restraining a grimace. “Perhaps a bit,” he said with a shake of his head. “I have hopes it will grow on me. Like Mountjoy eventually did.”
“So very amusing, Nigel,” Mountjoy said.
“Don’t quarrel,” Lily said. She looked between him and Nigel, touchingly anxious. “Not on my account.”
“If I didn’t mercilessly tease him over something like that,” Nigel said, “he’d wonder what was wrong with me.”
“My dear brother, I have no need to wonder.” Mountjoy sipped his tea again. “I’ve known for years what’s wrong with you.”
“Gratifying to hear.” She gave the paper to Mountjoy. “I’ll write to my steward and have him send more. That way you will have some of your own after I’m gone and while we hope that Mr. Philby agrees to take you on as a client.”
“Whyever should he not?” Nigel asked. His eyebrows soared upward. “I can’t think of many merchants who would refuse my brother’s custom.”
“Mr. Philby is exceedingly particular. My great-aunt transacted all her tea-related affairs through him, and I suspect he only deals with me because he feels a sense of obligation to her memory. It’s rather sweet of him, actually.”
Mountjoy drank more of his tea. He did like the taste. If Lily had met Mr. Philby in person he knew exactly why she was his customer. One look at her, and only the most hard-hearted man could refuse her. “I hope your good word will persuade him to my side.”
She looked at him, and when their eyes met, she did not look away. Nor did he. The sexual thrill was familiar. Compelling. Addicting. She looked at the papers before her, and he felt in some absurd way that he’d won. “One hopes, your grace. One hopes.”
“May I ask what you are doing with these papers here?”
“An excellent question, sir. Marking down the likeliest spots for us to find ancient treasure. Your sister and I have done a preliminary survey of the property and determined where we believe some ancient tribe or Roman Legion might have had occasion to travel or live.”
“It’s all very scientific,” Nigel said. Mountjoy remembered the way Nigel had been leaning over Lily when he came in. Was it possible Nigel was developing tender feelings toward Lily?
“I am sure it is,” he replied.
Lily ate a grape, eyes closed, savoring the flavor as if she’d never tasted anything sweeter in her life. “They are ever so faintly chilled. Your cook keeps these on ice, I presume.” Slowly, she opened her eyes. Mountjoy was aware of his brother’s stare at Lily, and of his own. His gaze met hers, and he thought of sex. Hot, passionate, blood-burning sex. “Do you know,” she said, “that once I ate some grapes that had been frozen through? They were wonderful. Ginny, my darling”—she turned on her chair—“have you ever eaten frozen grapes?”
“I don’t believe so.”
She plucked another grape from the bunch Mountjoy had set on her plate. “I think I’ll write to Mr. Stevens and tell him I am quite settled that this year we shall have a new icehouse built. Our ice never lasts the summer. Late August becomes intolerable with nothing cold to drink.”
“And Mr. Stevens is?” Nigel asked too quickly.
She ate another grape, languidly and with as much single-minded attention as before. Mountjoy had the wicked image of her stretched out naked on a bed—his bed—enjoying grapes while he stripped to his skin and joined her.
“My steward,” she said, unaware of his wayward thoughts. “He’s absolutely devoted to me.”
And who, Mountjoy wondered, was not eventually absolutely devoted to her?
Chapter Fifteen
LILY STOPPED WALKING WHEN SHE HEARD THE ECHO of footsteps on the stone floor. Her pulse jumped with anticipation. She waited and, as she knew would happen, moments later the duke appeared from around the far corner. He held a shielded candle, and when he saw her he, too, stopped.
Of course the duke.
From habit, her fingers closed around her medallion. Who but the duke would she meet at this dark of night hour?
“Your grace.” She curtseyed to him, and he nodded and crossed the remaining distance between them. They were in a gallery hall of sorts, though it contained no paintings, with original to the-structure Gothic arched windows along one wall and a bare stone wall opposite. The ceiling was ribbed and domed in the Gothic fashion. Light from the duke’s candle and hers flickered off the walls and the window glass. Had it been daylight she would
have been able to enjoy sunlight rippling through the thick panes of glass instead of reflected candlelight.
“Wellstone.” He gave her a half grin that sent her heart pounding. “Imagine us meeting like this.”
“I’m not sure it’s entirely safe,” she said.
He gave her an inscrutable look then held up his candle to illuminate the windows. “Have you sketched this part of the house yet?”
“Several pages of my notebook are dedicated to this passageway.” Half a notebook, actually. “The masonry and stonework are exemplary. And quite beautiful.”
“What will you do with all your drawings?” Mountjoy stayed where he was. As did she. And yet, the connection between them tugged at her. She was more flustered by him than she cared to admit.
She shrugged. “Assemble them into a book I should think. I’ll call it A Study of England’s Ancient Homes, Volume the First, and publish under a man’s name. Professor L. Carter Farnsworth. What do you think of that for a scholar’s name?”
Mountjoy smiled. She did love the shape of his mouth. “That Professor Farnsworth cannot fail to find a publisher for such a work. There must be upward of half a dozen people in the whole of His Majesty’s Empire who would put such a book in pride of place in their library.”
“Would you?” She cocked her head. “Acquire me for your library?”
“My dear Wellstone, I would love to have you in my library.”
“Between the royal quarto sheets, your grace?”
He didn’t answer right away because he was trying not to laugh. “But of course.”
Lily was close enough to the wall to stroke one of the stone ribs that lined the windows. “I think this corridor is my favorite in the whole of Bitterward.”
The edge of his mouth twitched with a suppressed smile. “Yes. Just now this corridor is my favorite, too.”
“I can feel the past here. Can’t you?”
“No.” He reached out and tapped one of the windowpanes. “But I can feel someone calculating my window tax.”
She gave him a sideways look. “If ever there was a place to encounter a ghost, this precise spot is it.” In the quiet, she gestured toward the windows. “Sometimes when I find myself in a place like this, I feel as if the world is weary of we humans.”
“I as well.”
“Whenever I walk here, I imagine knights and their ladies, feudal lords walking past these windows on their way to the Great Hall for a meal where the food is flavored with salt and saffron and pepper that costs half a year’s income. I see Jesuits with prayer books in hand on their way to Matins.”
“I don’t believe Bitterward ever housed Jesuits.”
“That does not signify, your grace. That is what I imagine. I hear them speaking in Latin as they walk.”
“What an eccentric mind you have.”
“It’s an odd fascination of mine, I admit,” she said. His coat was atrocious, yet she itched to put a hand on his chest.
“Born in your father’s library.”
“Yes. And come of age after I moved to Syton House.” Her father’s housekeeper, the woman who had, in effect, raised her after her mother died, had not accepted Lily’s invitation to come with her. She had a husband and children who kept her there. “I found myself solely alone and in want of occupation in my free hours.” She smoothed a wrinkle from her skirt. She was glad she still wore her evening gown. One did so want to look one’s best at a time like this. “Out of sheer boredom, I inspected the house from top to bottom. I discovered the foundation was built on a Roman villa, or if not a villa, some such structure at any rate. There is a Roman bath belowstairs.”
“I should like to see that.”
Lily hesitated, on the brink of telling him that he must come to visit. She couldn’t say such a thing. That presumed too much. Far too much for them both, for it assumed the sort of friendship from which one could not simply walk away.
“Given your interests, Miss Wellstone, there is a room here I think might well send you into raptures.”
“Indeed?” She kept her hands buried in her skirts or she really would touch him. “Other than the east tower, I thought I’d been in every room in Bitterward.” A portion of that part of the house was inaccessible. When she had asked Doyle about the locked door that blocked her access, he had politely informed her that he did not have a key, which she had taken, sensibly enough, to mean that Mountjoy did not wish anyone to enter that part of the tower.
“Yes.” He held her gaze.
“Your grace. If you have a room in which to give me raptures, I should very much like to see it.”
“Lily,” he said, laughing at last. “Lily, you’ll drive me mad.”
“I don’t see why.”
“May I show you?”
She nodded, fully aware that she was agreeing to more than a tour of a usually inaccessible part of the house. “I should like that.”
“Come along then.”
She followed the duke out of the stone gallery hall. They turned a corner, then another, and at the end of that passage was a plain wooden door with a threshold worn to a curve in the middle from all the feet that had passed over it. Decorative ironwork covered the door from the hinges to the latch. Beside the door was an empty niche the height of her two hands with a scallop design carved into the stone above it. She took his candle while he fit a key to the lock and opened the door.
Mountjoy stepped across the threshold, his back to the door, keeping it open for her. Narrow stone stairs spiraled upward. As she went in, he pulled the door closed, and she said, “Do keep the key safe, your grace.”
“I will.” He took the lead in climbing to the very top of the tower. The passageway narrowed as they ascended. At the top was a door with no landing, just a stone threshold curved in the center simply from centuries of feet stopping there. Mountjoy opened that door, too. The latch operated by a simple rope one pulled to lift the bar on the interior of the door. He took his candle from her and they went in.
“I came across this room shortly after we moved here,” he said. Lily set her candle on a stone table by the door while the duke set his candle next to hers. The air inside was cool. She could not see much beyond a few feet, though she could tell the room was round and that there were windows in the opposite wall.
With a flint he took from the stone table just by the door, he lit a lantern. “Nigel was at Rugby by then,” he continued. “I don’t recall where Eugenia was. Visiting our aunt and uncle in Haltwhistle, I think.” He snuffed out their candles and lifted the lantern. “Mind your step,” he said. He walked farther in.
Lily, too, walked into the center of the tower room. “Oh.” The walls were bare stone, and it seemed that every inch was carved with fanciful figures, grotesqueries, and scrollwork.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She put a hand to her heart and found she could barely speak. “Magnificent.” She spared him a glance before she craned her neck to see the ceiling. “Thank you. Thank you for bringing me here.”
“You’re welcome.” Mountjoy crossed the circular room, which was not large, and lit a second lamp. Here, the windows were deep wells that narrowed to panes of glass. An archer could have stood in the well, before the glass had been installed, aiming at advancing hordes. But it was the carved stone in between the windows that caused her stunned admiration.
Mountjoy cleared his throat. “My apologies if you are offended.”
“I’m not offended.” She stifled the urge to giggle. “What a marvelous sense of humor the stonemasons must have had.”
“They’re lewd, Wellstone, not comic.”
“A fine line, sir. Very fine.” She took a step closer. “Marvelously fine.”
“In that case, I’ll give you a key so that you may take sketches at your leisure.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “For Professor Farnsworth, you understand.”
“Yes, thank you.” She looked at him from over her shoulder and returned his grin. “I think you
’ll find him very grateful.”
His gaze traveled slowly from her head to her toes. “I hope so, Wellstone.”
She went to stand beside him at one of the windows. “The view from here must be breathtaking during the day.”
“It is.”
She examined the room, aware that Mountjoy was watching her. The ceiling, too, was covered with stone figures and yes, some of the figures were engaged in sexual acts. “This is astonishing,” she said. She turned in a circle, slowly, taking in as much detail as she could.
“I hoped you might appreciate it.”
Absurdly touched that he’d thought to bring her here, to a room that was so plainly a private retreat, she could barely speak. There were Turkish carpets on the floor and blankets piled on a chest against the wall because with no fireplace the air here would certainly never be very warm. There was one chair that looked quite comfortable to sit on, and beside that a table with several books and near that a chaise that couldn’t be more than a few years old. On the table beside the door were a decanter, a humidor, a flint, glasses, and several bottles.
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