Sighing, she made her way to the kitchen, loaded up a tray, then added a second glass of lemonade for herself and returned to the library. She had been away from her post for twelve minutes but returned to find the earl reading a handwritten note and looking more thoughtful than angry.
“One more note, Mrs. Seaton,” he said, rummaging in the desk drawers, “and then I will have something to drink.”
He retrieved a scrap of paper from the back of a drawer, glaring at it in triumph when his fingers closed over it. “I knew it was in here.” As he was back in his rightful place behind the desk, Anna repositioned the blotter, paper, pen, and ink on her side of the desk and sat down.
“To Drs. Hamilton, Pugh, and Garner, You will attend Miss Sue-Sue Tolliver at your earliest convenience, on the invitation of her father, Marion Tolliver. Bills for services rendered will be sent to the undersigned. Westhaven, etc.”
Puzzled, Anna dutifully recorded the earl’s words, sanded the little epistle, and set it aside to dry.
“I see you have modified your interpretation of the rules of decorum in deference to the heat,” the earl noted, helping himself to a glass of lemonade. “Good God!” He held the glass away from him after a single sip. “It isn’t sweetened.”
“You helped yourself to my glass,” Anna said, suppressing a smile. She passed him the second glass, from which he took a cautious swallow. She was left to drink from the same glass he’d first appropriated or go back to the kitchen to fetch herself a clean glass.
Looking up, she saw the earl watching her with a kind of bemused curiosity, as if he understood her dilemma. She took a hefty swallow of lemonade—and it did have sugar in it, though just a dash—and set her glass on the blotter.
“Tolliver is your man of business, isn’t he?” she asked, the association just occurring to her.
“He is. He sent word around he was unavoidably detained and would not attend me this morning, which is unusual for him. I put one of the footmen on it and just received Tolliver’s explanation: His youngest is coming down with the chicken pox.”
“And you sent not one but three physicians for a case of chicken pox?” Anna marveled.
“Those three,” the earl replied in all seriousness, “were recommended by an acquaintance who is himself a physician. Garner and Pugh were instrumental in saving His Grace’s life this winter.”
“So you trust them.”
“As much as I trust any physician,” the earl countered, “which is to say no farther than I could throw them, even with my shoulders injured.”
“So if we ever need a physician for you, we should consult Garner, Pugh, or Hamilton?”
“My first choice would be David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, who recommended the other three, but you had better hope I die of whatever ails me, as I will take any quackery quite amiss, Mrs. Seaton.” The earl speared her with a particularly ferocious glare in support of his point.
“May I ask an unrelated question, my lord?” Anna sipped her drink rather than glare right back at him. He was in a mood this morning to try the patience of a saint.
“You may.” He put his empty glass on the tray and sat back in his chair.
“Is this how you work with Mr. Tolliver?” she asked. “Dictating correspondence word-for-word?”
“Sometimes,” the earl replied, frowning. “He’s been with me several years, though, and more often than not, I simply scratch a few notes, and he drafts the final missive for my signature.”
“Can we try that approach? It sounds like my grandfather’s way of doing business, and so far, your correspondence has been perfectly mundane.”
“We can try it, but I am reminded of another matter I wanted to raise with you, and I will warn you in advance I won’t have you sniffing your indignation at me for it.”
“Sniffing my indignation?”
The earl nodded once, decisively. “Just so. I told you the other night I have parted company with my current chere amie. I inform you of this, Mrs. Seaton, not because I want to offend your sensibilities, but because I suspect the duke will next turn his sights on my own household.”
“What does His Grace have to do with your… personal associations?”
“Precisely my question,” the earl agreed, but he went on to explain in terse, blunt language how his father had manipulated his mistress, and how Elise had altered the plan in its significant details. “My father will likely try to find a spy on my own staff to inform him of when and with whom I contract another liaison. You will foil his efforts, should you learn of them.”
“My lord, if you wanted to elude your father’s scrutiny, then why would you hire half your footmen from his household and give him exclusive access to your valet for weeks on end?”
The earl looked nonplussed as he considered the logic of her observation.
“I made those arrangements before I comprehended the lengths to which my father is prepared to go. And I did so without knowing he already had spies in Elise’s household, as well.”
Anna said nothing and resumed her seat across the desk from the earl. He shuffled the stack, put two or three missives aside, then passed pen and paper to Anna.
“To Barstow,” he began, “a polite expression of noninterest at this time, perhaps in future, et cetera. To Williams and Williams, a stern reminder that payment is due on the first, per our arrangements, and sword-rattling to the effect that contractual remedies will be invoked.” He passed over the first two and went on in that vein until Anna had her orders for the next dozen or so letters.
“And while you obligingly tend to spinning that straw into gold”—the earl smiled without warning—“I will fire off the next salvo to His Grace.”
For the next hour, they worked in companionable silence, with Anna finding it surprisingly easy to address the tasks set before her. She’d spent many, many hours in this role with her grandfather and had enjoyed the sense of partnership and trust such a position evoked.
“Well, what have we here?” Lord Valentine strode into the library, smiling broadly at its occupants. “Have I interrupted a lofty session of planning menus?”
“Hardly.” The earl smiled at his brother. “Tolliver’s absence has necessitated I prevail on Mrs. Seaton’s good offices. What has you up so early?”
“It’s eleven of the clock,” Val replied. “Hardly early when one expects to practice at least four hours at his pianoforte.” He stopped and grimaced. “If, that is, you won’t mind. I can always go back to the Pleasure House if you do.”
“Valentine.” The earl glanced warningly at Mrs. Seaton.
“I’ve already told your housekeeper I am possessed of a healthy affection for pianos of easy virtue.” Val turned his smile on Anna. “She was shocked insensible, of course.”
“I was no such thing, your lordship.”
“A man can take poetic license,” Val said, putting a pair of Westhaven’s glasses on his nose. “If you will excuse me, I will be off to labor in the vineyard to which I am best suited.”
A little silence followed his departure, with the earl frowning pensively at the library door. Anna went back to the last of her assigned letters, and a few minutes later, heard the sound of scales tinkling through the lower floors of the house.
“Will he really play for four hours?” she asked.
“He will play forever,” the earl said, “but he will practice for at least four hours each day. He spent more time at the keyboard by the age of twenty-five than a master at any craft will spend at his trade in his lifetime.”
“He is besotted,” Anna said, smiling. “You really don’t mind the noise?”
“It is the sound of my only living little brother being happy,” the earl said, tossing down his pen and going to stand in the open French doors. “It could never be noise.” The earl frowned at her over his shoulder. “What? I can see you want to ask me something. I’ve worked you hard enough you deserve a shot or two.”
“What makes you happy?” she asked, stacking t
he completed replies neatly, not meeting his eyes.
“An heir to a dukedom need not be happy. He need only be dutiful and in adequate reproductive health.”
“So you are dutiful, but that evades the question. Your father manages to be both duke and happy, at least much of the time. So what, future Duke of Moreland, makes you happy?”
“A good night’s sleep,” the earl said, surprising them both. “Little pieces of marzipan showing up at unlikely spots in my day. A pile of correspondence that has been completed before luncheon, thank ye gods.”
“You still need to read my efforts,” Anna reminded him, pleased at his backhanded compliment, but troubled, somehow, that a good night’s sleep was the pinnacle of his concept of pleasure.
The earl waggled his fingers at her. “So pass them over, and I will find at least three misspellings, lest you get airs above your station.”
“You will find no misspellings, nor errors of punctuation or grammar.” Anna passed the stack to him. “With your leave, I will go see about luncheon. Would you like to be served on the terrace, my lord, and will Lord Valentine be joining you?”
“I would like to eat on the terrace,” the earl said, “and I doubt my brother will tear himself away from the piano, when he just sat down to his finger exercises. Send in a tray to him when you hear him shift from drills to etudes and repertoire.”
“Yes, my lord.” Anna bobbed a curtsy, but his lordship was already nose down into the correspondence, his brow knit in his characteristic frown.
“Oh, Mrs. Seaton?” The earl did not look up.
“My lord?”
“What does a child suffering chicken pox need for her comfort and recuperation?”
“Ice,” Anna said, going on to name a litany of comfort nursing accoutrements.
“You can see to that?” he asked, looking up and eyeing his gardens. “The ice and so forth? Have it sent ’round to Tolliver’s?”
“I can,” Anna replied, cocking her head to consider her employer. “Regularly, until the child recovers.”
“How long will that take?”
“The first few days are the worst, but by the fifth day, the fever has often abated. The itching can take longer, though. In this heat, I do not envy the child or her parents.”
“A miserable thought,” the earl agreed, “in comparison to which, dealing with my paltry letters is hardly any hardship at all, hmm? There will be more marzipan at lunch?”
“If your brother hasn’t plundered our stores,” Anna said, taking her leave.
She didn’t see the earl smile at the door nor see that the smile didn’t fade until he forced himself to resume perusing her drafts of correspondence. She wrote well, he thought, putting his ideas into words with far more graciousness and subtlety than old Tolliver could command. And so the chore of tending to correspondence, which had threatened to consume his entire day, was already behind him, leaving him free to… Wonder what gave him pleasure.
“I’d put John to setting the table,” Cook said, “but he went off to get us some more ice from the warehouse, and Morgan has gone to fetch the eggs, since his lordship didn’t take his ride this morning, and McCutcheon hasn’t seen to the hens yet.”
So I, Anna thought, will spend the next half hour setting up a table where his lordship will likely sit for all of twenty minutes, dining in solitary splendor on food he doesn’t even taste, because he must finish reading The Times while at table.
His crabby mood had rubbed off on her, she thought as she spread a linen cloth over a wrought-iron table. Well, that wouldn’t do. Mentally, she began making her list of things to send over to Tolliver’s for the little girl, Sue-Sue.
“You look utterly lost in thought,” the earl pronounced, causing Anna to jump and almost drop the basket of cutlery she was holding.
“I was,” she said, blushing for no earthly reason. “I have yet to see to your request to send some supplies around to Tolliver and was considering the particulars.”
“How is it you know how to care for a case of chicken pox?” The earl grabbed the opposite ends of the tablecloth and drew them exactly straight.
“It’s a common childhood illness,” Anna said, setting the basket of cutlery on the table. “I came down with it myself when I was six.” The earl reached into the basket and fished out the makings of a place setting. Anna watched in consternation as he arranged his cutlery on the table, setting each piece of silverware precisely one inch from the edge of the table.
“Don’t you want a linen for your place setting?” Anna asked, unfolding one from the basket and passing it to him.
“Well, of course. Food always tastes better when eaten off a plate that sits on both a linen and a tablecloth.”
“No need to be snippy, my lord.” Anna quirked an eyebrow at him. “We can feed you off a wooden trencher if that’s your preference.”
“My apologies.” The earl shot her a fulminating look as he collected the silverware and waited for Anna to spread the underlinen. “I am out of sorts today for having missed my morning ride.”
He was once again arranging his silverware a precise distance from the edge of the table while Anna watched. He would have made an excellent footman, she concluded. He was careful, conscientious, and incapable of smiling.
“In this heat, I did not want to tax my horse,” the earl said, rummaging in the basket for salt and the pepper. He found them and eyed the table speculatively.
“Here.” Anna set a small bowl of daisies and violets on the table. “Maybe that will give you some ideas.”
“A table for one can so easily become asymmetric.”
“Dreadful effect on the palate.” Anna rolled her eyes. “And where, I ask you, will we hide his lordship’s marzipan?”
“Careful, Mrs. Seaton. If he should come out here and overhear your disrespect, I wouldn’t give two pence for your position.”
“If he is so humorless and intolerant as all that,” Anna said, “then he can find somebody else to feed him sweets on the terrace of a summer’s day.”
The earl’s gaze cooled at that retort, and Anna wondered at her recent penchant for overstepping. He’d been annoying her all morning, though, from the moment she’d been dragooned into the library. It was no mystery to her why Tolliver would rather be dealing with a sick child than his lordship.
“Am I really so bad as all that?” the earl asked, his expression distracted. He set aside the pepper but hefted the salt in one hand.
“You are…” Anna glanced up from folding the linen napkin she’d retrieved from her basket.
The earl met her gaze and waited.
“Troubled, I think,” she said finally. “It comes out as imperiousness.”
“Troubled,” the earl said with a snort. “Well, that covers a world of possibilities.” He reached into the basket and withdrew a large glazed plate, positioning it exactly in the center of his place setting. “I tried to compose a letter to my father this morning, while you beavered away on my mundane business, and somehow, Mrs. Seaton, I could not come up with words to adequately convey to my father the extent to which I want him to just leave me the hell alone.”
He finished that statement through clenched teeth, alarming Anna with the animosity in his tone, but he wasn’t finished.
“I have come to the point,” the earl went on, “where I comprehend why my older brothers would consider the Peninsular War preferable to the daily idiocy that comes with being Percival Windham’s heir. I honestly believe that could he but figure a way to pull it off, my father would lock me naked in a room with the woman of his choice, there to remain until I got her pregnant with twin boys. And I am not just frustrated”—the earl’s tone took on a sharper edge—“I am ready to do him an injury, because I don’t think anything less will make an impression. Two unwilling people are going to wed and have a child because my father got up to tricks.”
“Your father did not force those two people into one another’s company all unawares and blameless,
my lord, but why not appeal to your mother? By reputation, she is the one who can control him.”
The earl shook his head. “Her Grace is much diminished by the loss of my brother Victor. I do not want to importune her, and she will believe His Grace only meant well.”
Anna smiled ruefully. “And she wants grandchildren, too, of course.”
“Why, of course.” The earl gestured impatiently. “She had eight children and still has six. There will be grandchildren, and if for some reason the six of us are completely remiss, I have two half siblings, whose children she will graciously spoil, as well.”
“Good heavens,” Anna murmured. “So your father has sired ten children, and yet he plagues you?”
“He does. Except for the one daughter of Victor’s, none of us have seen fit to reproduce. There was a rumor Bart had left us something to remember him by, but he likely started the rumor himself just to aggravate my father.”
“So find a wife,” Anna suggested. “Or at least a fiancée, and back your dear papa off. The right lady will cry off when you ask it of her, particularly if you are honest with your scheme from the start.”
“See?” The earl raised his voice, though just a bit. “Honest with my scheme? Do you know how like my father that makes me sound?”
“And is this all that plagues you, my lord? Your father has no doubt been a nuisance for as long as you’ve been his heir, if not longer.”
The earl glanced sharply at his housekeeper, then his lips quirked, turned back down, and then slowly curved back up.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked, his smiles being as rare as hen’s teeth.
“I found your little parlor maid in the hay loft,” the earl said, setting out his water glass and wine glass precisely one inch from the plate. “She discovered our mouser’s new litter, and she was enthralled with the cat’s purr. She could feel it, I think, and understood it meant the cat was happy.”
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