by Carla Kelly
* * *
‘It’s a very good agency,’ MacDonald confided as they stood outside the door with its neat brass plate. ‘His lordship gets all his staff here.’
Twinford and Musgrave Domestic Agency. Est. 1790. It certainly sounded established and efficient, Tess told herself. They would guide her, which was a good thing, because she had only the vaguest idea of the details of a lady’s maid’s duties.
MacDonald opened the door for her. ‘Mrs Ellery from Lord Weybourn’s establishment, requiring a lady’s maid,’ he informed the man at the desk, who rose after a rapid assessment of Tess’s gown, pelisse and muff. She was grateful for Hannah’s insistence on good-quality clothes or presumably she would have been directed to join the queue of applicants lined up on the far side of the hall herself.
‘Certainly, madam. Would you care to step through to the office? My assistant will discuss your requirements and review the available—’
He was interrupted by a baby’s wailing cry. The door opposite opened and a young woman backed out, clutching the child to her breast. ‘But, Mr Twinford, I can turn my hand to anything. I’ll wash, I can sew, scrub—’
She was of medium height, neatly and respectably dressed, although not warmly enough for the weather, Tess thought, casting an anxious look at the baby who was swathed in what seemed to be a cut-down pelisse.
‘You’ve turned your hand to more than domestic duties, my girl.’ The voice from the office sounded outraged. ‘How can you have the gall to expect an agency with our reputation to recommend a fallen woman to a respectable household?’
‘But, Mr Twinford, I never...’ The woman was pale, thin and, to Tess’s eyes, quite desperate.
‘Out!’ The door slammed in her face and she stumbled back.
‘I do beg your pardon, Mrs Ellery. Shocking!’ The clerk moved round the side of the desk. ‘Now, look here, you—’
‘Stop it. You are frightening the baby.’ Tess stepped between them. ‘What is your name?’
‘Dorcas White, ma’am.’ Her voice was quiet, genteel, exhausted. Close up, Tess could see how neatly her clothes had been mended, how carefully the baby’s improvised coverings had been constructed.
‘Are you a lady’s maid, Dorcas?’
‘I was, ma’am. Once.’
‘Come with me.’ She turned to the spluttering clerk, who was trying to get past her to take Dorcas’s arm. ‘Will you please stop pushing? We are leaving.’ She guided the unresisting woman out to the street and into the waiting carriage. ‘There, now at least we have some peace and we are out of the wind. You say you are a lady’s maid and you are looking for a position?’
‘I was, but I can’t be one now, not with Daisy here. I’ll do anything, work at anything, but I’ll not give her up to the parish.’
‘Certainly not.’ All that was visible of the baby was a button nose and one waving fist. ‘Where is her father?’
Dorcas went even whiter. ‘He...he threw me out when I started to show.’
‘What, you mean he was your employer?’ A nod. ‘Did he force you?’ Another nod. ‘And his wife said nothing?’
‘He told her I’d... He said I had...’
She would get the full story later when the poor woman was less distressed. ‘Well, we won’t worry about that now. I need a lady’s maid. You can come and work for me. Or for Lord Weybourn, rather.’
‘You are Lady Weybourn?’ Dorcas was staring at her as though she could not believe what she was hearing.
‘Me?’ Tess steadied her voice. ‘No, I am his new housekeeper, but it is an all-male household and I need a maid for appearances, you understand.’ She looked at the thin, careworn face, the chapped hands gently cradling the baby, the look of desperate courage in the dark eyes. ‘It would be more like a companion’s post, really. Would you like the position?’
‘Oh, yes, ma’am. Oh, yes, please.’ And Dorcas burst into tears.
Chapter Nine
‘Where is Miss...Mrs Ellery?’ After the chaos of the morning, the previous day had passed uneventfully. Alex had dealt with his paperwork, visited some art dealers and then gone to his club, where he had dined and spent the evening catching up with acquaintances and what gossip there was in London in early December. A good day in the end, he concluded, one mercifully free from emotion and women.
He’d had some vague thought of calling on Mrs Hobhouse, a particularly friendly young widow. When he had last been in London she had sought him out, had been insistent that only Lord Weybourn with his legendary good taste could advise her on the paintings she should hang in her newly decorated bedchamber. It was so important to get the right mood in a bedchamber, wasn’t it? It had impressed Alex that she could get quite so much sensual innuendo into one word.
At the time he had considered assisting her with viewing some likely works of art from a variety of locations, including her bed, and yet somehow, when it came to the point of setting out for Bruton Street, he found he’d lost interest.
This morning’s breakfast had been excellent. Alex folded his newspaper and listened. Everything was suspiciously calm. It was surely too much to hope that Hannah had made a miraculous recovery and was back at her post.
‘Mrs Ellery is in the kitchen, my lord.’ Phipps balanced the silver salver with its load of letters and dipped it so Alex could see how much post there was. ‘Shall I put your correspondence in the study, my lord? Mr Bland said to tell you that he has gone to the stationer’s shop and will be back directly.’
‘Very well.’ Alex waved a vague hand in the direction of the door. His secretary could make a start on it when he got back; he wasn’t ready to concentrate on business yet.
So Tess had spent the night upstairs in the bedchamber above his own, had she? Alex picked up the paper, stared at the Parliamentary report for a while. Hot air, the lot of it. The foreign news didn’t make much more sense.
Spain, West Indies, the Hamburg mails... He hadn’t heard so much as a footstep on the boards overhead, but then she’d doubtless been fast asleep when he’d arrived home and had risen at least an hour before he was awake. So far, so good. The heavens hadn’t fallen and he had obviously been worrying about nothing.
Alex tossed down the Times. He was wool-gathering, which was what came of having his peace and quiet interrupted. What he needed to do was turn his mind to the possibilities for offloading a collection of rather garish French ormolu furniture that he was regretting buying. He made his way down the hall towards the study, then stopped dead when an alien noise, a wail, wavered through the quiet.
A baby was crying. Alex turned back towards the front door. Surely no desperate mother had left her offspring on his blameless front step? Well, to be honest it was hardly blameless, but he had made damn sure he left no by-blows in his wake.
The noise grew softer. He walked back. Louder—and it was coming from the basement. Then it ceased, leaving an almost visible question mark hanging in the silence.
When he eased open the kitchen door it was on to a domestic scene that would have gladdened the palette of some fashionable, if sentimental, genre painter. Tess was sitting at the table with a pile of account books in front of her. Byfleet was standing by the fireside, polishing Alex’s newest pair of boots, while Annie sat at the far end of the table, peeling potatoes.
And in a rocking chair opposite Byfleet was a woman nursing a baby while Noel chased a ball of paper around her feet. The stranger was crooning a lullaby and Alex was instantly back to the nursery, his breath tight in his chest as though arms were holding him tightly.
A family. They look like a family sitting there. Alex let out his breath and all the heads turned in his direction except for the baby, who was latched firmly on to its mother’s breast. The woman whipped her shawl around it and stared at him with such alarm on her face that he might as well have been bran
dishing a poker.
‘My lord.’ Tess sounded perfectly composed, which was more than he felt, damn it. ‘Did you ring? I’m afraid we didn’t hear.’
There was a pain in his chest from holding his breath and he rubbed at his breastbone. ‘No. I did not ring. I crossed the hall and I heard a child crying.’
The stranger fumbled her bodice together, got to her feet and laid the baby on the chair. ‘My lord.’ She dropped a curtsy and he noticed how pin neat she was, how thin. ‘I am very sorry you were disturbed, my lord. It won’t happen again.’ Her voice was soft and her eyes were terrified.
‘Babies cry,’ he said with a shrug. Admittedly, they weren’t normally to be found doing so in the kitchen of a Mayfair bachelor household. Himself, he’d been brought up in a nursery so remote from the floors his parents occupied that a full military band could have played there without being heard and he’d had his earliest lessons in a schoolroom equally distant where no parent would have thought of dropping by. ‘I was not disturbed, merely curious.’
‘This is Dorcas White, my lord.’ Tess moved over to stand beside the woman. Did she think she needed to protect her from him? ‘She is my new lady’s maid.’
‘And the baby?’
‘Is mine, my lord.’ Dorcas looked ready to faint.
Alex looked down at her hands, clutched together in front of her. No ring. He met Tess’s blue gaze and read a steely defiance in it that took him aback.
‘The baby’s name is Daisy, my lord.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Ellery. I am aware that babies are people, too.’ She coloured up. Annoyance, he supposed. That made two of them. ‘So we have acquired another stray, have we? I suppose I must be thankful that the baby is already with us or I have no doubt I would be expected to house oxen and a donkey in my stables come Christmastide.’
Tess drew in a deep breath through her nose and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I suspect that verges on blasphemy, my lord. Dorcas is very well qualified as a lady’s maid.’
‘And comes with excellent references, no doubt?’ It came out sharply and Tess’s chin jutted. So she didn’t like his tone? There was still an ache in his chest that he didn’t understand, memories of childhood he thought he had locked away in his head. His tight, small, bachelor household had become full of women, virtually a crèche. He was entitled to snap—he was amazed he wasn’t shouting.
‘Might we have a word, my lord?’ Tess enquired with a sweet, false smile. ‘Upstairs?’
He held the door for her and followed her stiff back along to the study. Tess did not wait for him to get behind the barrier of his desk and sit down before she attacked. ‘No, Dorcas White does not have references. A man who forces himself on a servant and then tells his wife that the slut flaunted herself at him when he’d had a few drinks, that she’d been asking for it, is not someone who writes a reference for his victim.’
‘Are you certain?’ Even as he said it he felt ashamed of himself. Those thin, desperate hands, those wounded eyes, the way she had held her child... No, that was not some little hussy who had taken advantage of Tess’s good nature. ‘Yes, of course you are, and I can see you are right,’ he said before the angry rebuttal was out of her mouth. ‘What does she need for the child? Buy it for her, whatever it is.’
If he had been looking for a reward, which he hadn’t, he told himself, he would have got it in the smile that transformed Tess’s face.
‘Who is the father?’ He suppressed his own answering smile. This was not a laughing matter.
‘I have no idea. I didn’t ask her. Why?’
‘Because he needs dealing with,’ Alex said, startling himself. What was he, some knight errant, dispensing justice for wronged damsels? ‘Still, I suppose you’ll never get the name out of her and I don’t want her worried that the swine will find out where she is.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ Tess said and clutched his hand. ‘Thank you for understanding. I knew you were Sir Lancelot really, however much you grumbled about Noel and things.’
Her hand was small and warm and strong in his and he closed his fingers around it, even as he said, in tones of loathing, ‘Sir Lancelot? Do I look like some confounded idiot clanking around in armour? And besides, he was a decidedly dubious type—making love to his king’s wife like that.’
‘I thought when you hit that sailor that you were a storybook knight and then you were grumpy with me so I changed my mind. But it is all a front, the grumpiness, isn’t it?’ Her eyes were dancing; it seemed she was as amused by her nonsense as he was.
His meek little nun was teasing him, he realised, and this time could not suppress the answering smile. Alarm bells were ringing even as he lifted her hand and pressed the back of it against his cheek, her pulse rioting under his fingers. Charm and sweetness. You cannot let yourself enjoy them, not for your sake and definitely not for hers.
‘Yes,’ Alex agreed. ‘It is all a front, but behind it is not your preux chevalier, there’s a real, live, flawed man with many masks and many, many faults.’ He moved her hand so he could nip lightly at her fingertips in warning and felt, more than heard, her shuddering indrawn breath. ‘A man who is hypocrite enough to despise the father of the child down there and yet who cannot forget the feel of your mouth under his, your body in his arms.’
Tess became still, her eyes wide and questioning. She’s an innocent, he told himself. Even if she can deal with illegitimate children and speak frankly about what has happened to Dorcas. She needs warning, scaring a little, even.
He loosened his grip on her fingers and her hand slid up to cup his cheek. She was not wary, not at all alarmed by him. The touch was not sexual, not even sensual. It was intended, he realised with something like shock, to comfort. When was the last time anyone had touched him like that?
‘You are very hard on yourself, aren’t you, Alex?’ Tess murmured. ‘You aren’t a saint, you certainly aren’t a monk, so why do you expect it of yourself?’
‘I am a gentleman,’ he said, his voice harsher than he’d intended. ‘The least I can do is try to behave like one around decent women.’
‘You are trying. Very hard, I think.’ She cocked her head to one side with that questioning look he was learning to beware of. ‘I may be a virgin, and that may have been my first kiss, but I am quite capable of recognising sensual attraction when I experience it. There is something between us, isn’t there?’
Alex found himself incapable of answering her as she wrestled so honestly with things no young lady was supposed to think about, let alone articulate.
‘I am quite capable of saying no, at least, I am when I haven’t been hit on the head and frightened half out of my wits,’ Tess said decisively. She lowered her hand and stepped away. ‘We got carried away, we both did. But the onus should not be all on you to be prudent.’
‘Prudent?’ Alex found he had to move away from her. If it was a retreat, he didn’t care, and the big desk was a reassuringly solid barrier. ‘Naturally it is down to me to behave properly.’
‘If I was the sort of young woman who has a hope of marrying, then of course it is,’ she agreed. Tess perched on the arm of a chair and he wondered if, for all her calmness, her legs were a bit shaky. ‘But I’m not, am I? So I need to make decisions based on different criteria, such as, do I want to be your mistress? What would make us happiest, while it lasted?’
‘Tess, stop this! You cannot discuss being my mistress, and happiness is the last thing we should be considering.’
‘Is it?’ She frowned at him, her brow wrinkled. ‘But what is the point of a...liaison if it doesn’t make people happy? What is the point of life, come to that?’
‘Frankly? I do not know about the meaning of life. I just get on with living it as best I can. But a liaison? It is about sex on one side and financial gain on the other,’ Alex snapped. He drove his fingers through his hair and
tried to get his feet back on solid ground. This was like finding oneself knee-deep in fast-flowing water when one thought all one was doing was having a stroll beside a stream. ‘It is commerce. It is not something you should even think about.’
Her expression seemed to indicate that she was thinking about it, very carefully, very seriously.
Alex fought the urge to run his finger around a neckcloth that seemed far too tight. He coped with sophisticated ladies, wanton widows, expensive high-fliers, all without turning a hair. Why the devil was he finding it hard to deal with one outspoken innocent? ‘Look, Tess, men and women find themselves physically attracted all the time. We have to deal with it like everyone else does. You just pretend it isn’t happening.’
She nodded. ‘I can see that is usually best. But this isn’t making you happy, is it?’
‘It is making me damnably confused, if you must know.’ Did she think he expected sexual favours as a payment for giving her shelter? Did she think that in return for shelter she had a duty to make him happy, whatever she meant by that? She certainly wasn’t casting out lures or flirting, although he doubted she knew how. ‘But that is beside the point. You are a lovely young woman, Tess. I would have to be a plank of wood not to be attracted to you.’
That made her smile, at least. ‘Thank you. It wasn’t that I had decided we should have an affaire, you understand. But I don’t want you feeling guilty all the time if things happen. I expect I will learn not to notice when we touch by accident, or when I meet your eyes and I seem to read things in them.’
She could read him like a book, he was sure, even if she didn’t understand some of the long words. ‘It will do me no harm to feel guilty occasionally.’ Alex made his tone lighter. ‘We’ll not speak of this again.’ Who do I think I am deceiving? ‘Now, about Dorcas—make certain she understand she’s safe here. I’m not going to throw her out if the baby cries. I won’t have her hiding it away for fear of that. A baby should be with its mother.’
