But in the last three months, the ability to control his own life had begun slipping away bit by excruciating bit, chipping at his masculine vanity, crippling his sense of self-worth . . .
No longer did Troyce feel as if he captained his own destiny. In three short months, obligations and duty had forced him to leave a country he’d called home, sacrifice the modest fortune he’d spent years amassing, accept a title he’d loathed since childhood, and return to the place that had always made him feel like a prisoner.
The only bright spot since returning to England had come in the form of a sharp-tongued blighter who’d managed to surprise and delight him when he’d least expected it, and now, even that small pleasure was being whittled away.
A rap on the door created a welcome diversion from his troubling thoughts. Troyce raised his head toward the door just as Millie walked in.
“I beg your forgiveness, milord.” The housekeeper dropped a slight curtsy toward Devon. “Milady.”
“Is there a problem, Millie?” Troyce asked.
She hesitated a moment, then said, “Maybe you should judge for yourself, milord.”
He turned to Devon, relieved at the timely interruption. “Dear sister, as invigorating as I find these conversations with you, it seems my presence is required elsewhere.”
She looked as if she would argue further, but seemed to reconsider. “Very well,” she sighed. “But do not think this discussion finished.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
As he followed Millie out of the drawing room, he wondered at the housekeeper’s apparent distress. In all the years she’d worked for the de Meir family, he’d never once seen her anything less than calm and composed. That she would summon him for any issue spoke of a matter of great importance.
The minute he entered the kitchen, he understood.
Faith sat huddled in the corner of the pantry, shoveling mouthfuls of leftover stew into her mouth with a spoon, clutching a chunk of bread in her fist. Her hair was still a snarled mass, and she wore the same grubby clothes she’d been wearing since she’d accosted him in London. A quick survey of the kettles steaming on the stove explained her unchanged condition, but why was she eating off the floor?
He threw a questioning glance behind him at Millie, who lingered at the doorway, wringing her hands. She shrugged in silent, helpless response and shook her head. Troyce discreetly flicked his hand, permitting the housekeeper to leave them. After she’d backed out of the kitchen, he took a cautious step toward his young charge. “Faith?”
She glanced up. The moment he looked into her startled eyes, he was hit with a discovery that stole the breath from his lungs—this was no street-wild waif. This was a very angry, very bitter, very wounded young woman.
And he was in for the undertaking of his life.
“What are you doing?”
A flush crept across her cheeks. “She gave it to me. I didn’t steal it.”
“It pleases me to hear that, though I had not presumed otherwise.” He kept his voice calm, patient, gentle, as if trying to tame a wild animal. “But you need not sit upon the floor. Eat at the table.” She’d catch her death; a draft tended to blow in beneath the doors, and with her hair still damp from the earlier rains, she would be doubly susceptible to illness.
“The table?”
“Yes, like—” any normal, civilized human being “like the other servants.” He held out his hand to help her to her feet.
She shrank back against the wall. Her arm curled tighter around the bowl, and her expression went guarded. Never a man prone to soft emotions, the unaccustomed tenderness flooding his chest took him by surprise. “No one will take your food, Faith,” he assured her with quiet gruffness. Good God, what kind of life had she lived, where she didn’t sit at a table, and feared the theft of a meal?
A myriad of emotions flittered across her face. Mistrust. Apprehension. Suspended belief. Until, at long last, the fight return to her eyes. Lips pursing, she lifted herself off the stone floor in one fluid motion. Then, she tipped her chin and swept past him with a grace that would have done the Queen Mother proud.
And abruptly tossed her bowl onto the butcher-block table in the center of the room. Brown gravy spattered the surface. “Keep your bloody food, Baron. I don’t want any favors.”
A second later, she’d vanished out of the kitchen.
Troyce remained hunched down near the corner, too astonished by her behavior to speak, too baffled over what he might have done or said to scold her.
Then, a reluctant smile toyed at his lips. God, the girl was proud. She cowered, but she didn’t cave. She stole, but she didn’t beg.
Oddly enough, there was something to be admired in that.
It was two o’clock in the morning before Faith was finally released from Millie’s brutal ministrations and led down to a room in the servants’ wing on the third floor. Her skin had been nearly scrubbed raw, her head smelled as if she’d doused it in the pit of a coal mine, and her stomach ached for want of the stew she’d left behind. The bed she lay on was a far cry from her pallet in the tunnels. Six inches of soft ticking cushioned her body from the drafty floor and a pillow with a genuine slipcover felt like a cloud under her head. Across from her, Millie snored loud enough to jostle the dead while her granddaughter—Lucy, Faith believed was her name—tossed restlessly in her cot. It felt strange sleeping in a room with two women when most of her life she’d shared living quarters with a dozen boys.
She clutched her ragged doll close to her, and stared at the fancy molding joining wall to ceiling. Never had she slept in such a fine room, never felt such soft, clean fabric against her skin.
And yet, she was so homesick she could hardly bear it.
She missed the unruly noise of the band as they gambled on a roll of the dice, argued over chores, or yelled in triumph when one scored big. She missed her antechamber with its rattling pipes, concrete floor, and ratty pallet. But most of all, she missed Scatter. A tear slipped down the side of her nose, and she brushed it away. Why there’d be such an empty longing in her heart for the little leech she couldn’t figure. He’d been nothing but a thorn in her side since the day he’d turned up in Jack’s band.
Aye, it was utterly mad that she’d pine for the life she’d left behind. How could she miss Bethnal Green for even a moment? God’s teeth, what did she have to mourn? She’d dreamed all her life of escaping poverty; she had that chance now thanks to the baron.
Except, for all its shabbiness and chaos, the tunnels had been home to her for nearly ten years. At least there, she was accepted. She knew what the rules were and what to expect.
Here, she knew only a vast isolation. A bone-deep aloneness. Here, she was completely out of her element.
What had she gotten herself into? Living with a woman who hated her on sight and a man bent on making her his bondsmaid?
His image filled her mind and the leaden feeling inside her intensified. Oh, God. She couldn’t believe he’d caught her eating off the floor like a dog. She’d never been so humiliated in her life. Even the servants knew better behavior than she did. Bowing and scraping and calling the hoity-toities by their proper titles. He’d never understand that in the real world, manners didn’t exist, and something so simple as eating at the table got a bloke tumbled.
She ought to resent him for expecting her to be something she wasn’t. For dragging her here against her will. Forcing her into agreeing to live in his fine, fancy house and clean up his muck and obey him without question. She ought to tell him what he could do with his bloody claims of honest employment.
But despite it all—his judge-and-jury arrogance, his sister’s holier-than-thou haughtiness—a part of her was so bloody grateful to him that she could hardly bear it. If not for the baron, she’d no doubt still be waiting on a soggy street corner like a two-bit strumpet, waiting for crumbs. Or, and it made her cringe to think it, rotting away in a dank, dark prison cell. What makes you think I’m noble? He could eas
ily have hauled her off to Newgate, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d brought her into his home. Given her a true-blue job—even if it was indentured servitude—a clean bed, clean clothes, a clean start.
Why? What did he want from her? He’d said maid service, but no one extended such a kindness without expecting something greater in return. He’d also said he had no intention of making her lift her skirts. Ha! She believed that like she believed man could fly. He was a man, a nobleman, and an American at that. She knew their kind. Once he realized she wasn’t as young as he’d first assumed, he’d reveal his true colors. They all did.
Well, she wasn’t about to stick around and wait for it to happen.
She raised her head from the pillow. Millie snored on, dead to the world, and Lucy had finally settled into peaceful oblivion. She drew the soft cotton nightgown she’d been given over her head and started to shove it into her rucksack, then stopped. Do not steal from me. It was the nicest thing she’d ever worn, and she hated to part with it, yet she’d not give him any more reason to come after her than he already had. She got the feeling that the baron was not the sort of man to spout empty promises.
With one last, wistful glance, she carefully folded the gown and laid it on the pillow. It took only a few minutes to find her own clothing, and she recoiled at the stench. Just the thought of the stiff, filthy clothes against her clean skin made her want to vomit, but there was no help for it; the set in her rucksack was just as bad. She’d not leave with anything she hadn’t brought with her.
Faith dressed quickly and without a sound. With the rucksack looped across her shoulder, she crushed her hair and wrestled the too-silky curls under her hat, then tiptoed toward the door. Where she’d go and what she’d do, she had no idea. Going back to Jack was out of the question; she’d burned that bridge. He had three unbreakable rules: don’t get caught, don’t squeal, and don’t run away. She’d already committed two out of three. If she went back, they’d find her carcass floating in the Thames.
She supposed she could attempt a position as an orderly at the hospital—except, she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Applying as a governess was another possibility, but she’d need references, and she didn’t think petty thief would be the ticket.
Sadly, she really wasn’t qualified for anything besides picking pockets. It might not be a respectable means of making a shilling, but she knew every technique in the book. More, she was bloody good at it—even the baron thought so. And as long as she could filch, it kept her from living on the streets. Not such a bad prospect if there were more ways for a woman in her twentieth year to make a living than prostitution. . . .
Well, first things first. Get out of the house. Make her way back to London. Find Scatter. She’d take everything else one step at a time. At least the decisions would be her own.
She stepped out of the room and looked up one side of the hallway and down the other. The house was dark as pitch and quiet as a tomb as she made her way down the first flight of steps to the second floor. Solid wall waited behind her, a short, blackened corridor stretched ahead, and she could make out a dip in the floor where the main staircase would take her to the front door. A high sense of risk stole through her veins. Any moment she expected Jack Swift to fling himself into the foyer, barge up the steps, and drag her out of the house by the hair. Surely by now he knew of the incident at Jorge’s. . . .
Well, all the more reason to pad the hoof.
Ten years of creeping stood her in good stead as she made her way toward the staircase. The soles of her shoes were thin enough not to squeak on the hardwood floor, and her clothes were dark enough to blend well with the shadows. The baron no doubt rested behind one of the closed doors on either side of her, and if he caught her, she’d be hard-pressed to explain what she was doing, skulking about at this time of night.
She made it to the top of the steps without incident and blew a breath of relief between her lips. She was just about to begin the long descent to the main floor when the sound of a door opening below froze her in her tracks. A wedge of light spilled onto the foyer floor. A long shadow crossed the foyer.
Faith pressed herself against the wall. She glanced behind her toward the back set of stairs; too far to make it back safely. Ahead, beyond her stretched a dark passageway, more doors on either side. Which were occupied? Which were empty? Damn this house! Damn herself for not mapping out the place earlier—not that she’d had time; everything had happened so fast that she’d not had a chance. She was paying for that now.
Footsteps approached the stairs. Faith flipped herself around a corner, opened the closest door, and found herself in a cavernous room. A huge four-poster bed dominated the floor. A quilt-covered chest acted as a footboard. A scroll-topped secretary and one overstuffed chair commanded a corner. There was not a single place to hide.
The rhythmic beat of heavy heels in the hallway grew louder. She raced to the window beside the secretary and twisted the clasp. After several seconds of struggling, the pane finally slid up. The footsteps stopped outside the door. Glancing first left, then right, Faith saw what she was looking for and threw her left leg over the sill at the same moment she heard the door latch click.
She hadn’t thought there could be any worse humiliation than when the baron had caught her eating off the floor like a stray cur.
She’d been wrong.
Chapter 4
A dark and handsome prince should find a lady stitching delicate samplers on a drawing room divan. He should find her seated primly at a gleaming pianoforte or strumming the strings of a lute. He should find her gliding gracefully across a ballroom floor.
He should not find her hanging upside down from a rose trellis two floors off the ground.
“My, my, Your Majesty, you are quite full of surprises,” came his mirth-filled observation from the window directly above her where he leaned over the sill.
Fighting against gravity, Faith tried to curl upward in an attempt to salvage a measure of dignity and felt the trellis give another inch under her ankle. Falling back in defeat, she almost wished it would fall. Better to be buried in thorns than face another mortifying episode before the baron.
Unfortunately, she would not be spared.
“You wouldn’t by chance be trying to run away, would you, Highness?”
“Do I look like I’m running?” She sneezed, then cursed the reaction to the roses that had first caused her ungainly slip, then no doubt given her away. So much for her clever escape.
“Actually, you look like you’re about to break your crown. Come down from there, Faith.”
“I can’t,” she almost whimpered. “Me foot ’as gotten stuck b’tween the slats.”
She couldn’t be sure if he chuckled or sighed. Maybe both. The first touch of his hand around her ankle sent a shock of lightning coursing down her leg. Faith jerked; the trellis quivered.
The baron muttered a mild curse that echoed across the lawn. “I can’t seem to get a secure grasp to pull you up, so I’ll have to come down. Stay put, I’ll have you untangled in a jiffy.”
Stay put? Crikey, where did he expect her to go? She’d already discovered that she wasn’t strong enough to pull herself up and untangle herself, else she would have done so long before he’d discovered her hanging like a sea monkey from the fragile wooden ladder.
Several minutes later, she felt his presence below and sought out his lean figure. Little more than shadow seemed to appear at the base of the trellis. Then a dim curl of moonlight brought him into mellow focus. She watched him bend down and pluck her stocking cap from the ground, where it had dropped beside her pack. “Why, I believe you’ve lost your tiara!” Even in the tip-turned darkness she could see his eyes twinkling as he swung her limp wool cap back and forth from his forefinger by the brim.
She clenched her teeth together. “Just help me down.”
“Please?”
She glared into the laughing gray eyes and ground out, “Please.”
He chuckled
, then grabbed hold of the braces of the trellis, and after giving it a shake to test its sturdiness, began to climb.
And she began to sneeze.
And sneeze.
And sneeze. Her eyes watered, her nose ran.
“If you keep doing that, we’re both likely to take a tumble.”
“I can’t help it. It’s these bloomin’ flowers.” His weight seemed to dislodge every ounce of perfume in the blossoms.
“Ah, yes, the roses. My sister is very fond of them, as was my mother. ’Tis unfortunate they don’t agree with you . . .” His eyes became level with hers. “Wouldn’t you say?”
If she weren’t so afraid of him taking her with him, she’d have shoved him off the trellis. As it was, the blood was draining straight to her brain, and her leg was beginning to ache from being stretched beyond its limits. All she wanted was to feel solid ground beneath her feet once again—even if that meant being the brunt of Westborough’s humor.
He climbed another two steps until her upside-down body was faced with his right-side-up bum. Never in her life had she given a thought to a man’s backside, but the sight of this one, with its low snug curve shrouded in velvety dove gray, made her mouth go dry, her head swim, and strange sensations rise up her middle.
“Hold me about my waist so that you won’t fall.”
Hesitantly, Faith released the hold she had on the trellis to circle her arms around his stomach and back. No coat padded his form, just a simple shirt made of thin cotton separated the soft flesh of her arm from the hard plane of his belly.
Another step upward jarred the trellis. Her grip tightened about him, and she buried her nose against his thigh. The scent of roses vanished, replaced by the potent scent of heat and serried muscle. Crikey she liked the smell of him. So strong. So solid. So . . . manly.
She was dimly aware of his fingers prodding her ankle above her shoe and the instep of her foot. He cursed several times as he loosened the strings of her shoe. “Blasted thorns. Ah, yes, I think I’ve got it. Can you work your foot loose?”
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