by Jaimey Grant
Lord Steyne paled dramatically. Verena watched the man as he backed away, his bearing as straight as any duke. His fear seemed oddly out of proportion to the threat of a simple duel. She wondered at it.
“Not necessary,” he bit out.
Verena continued to stare at Steyne, very tense and unwilling to sheathe her blade until she was absolutely sure she faced no threat…from either man.
Lord Connor reached out to her. “My dear girl, he will not hurt you.” He waited, his hand outstretched.
Verena finally met his gaze, startled by the kindness in his cerulean eyes. There was something so familiar about him but she knew the first time she’d ever seen him was at the posting house.
Blinking, Verena dropped her hand, hiding her knife among the folds of her gown. Her other hand moved forward to clasp his, an action Verena was shocked to witness. What was it about this man that made her feel safe?
A warm, pleasant sensation worked its way up her arm. A little panicked, Verena attempted to retract her hand. Lord Connor held fast with a firmness that was startling. It should have frightened her. And yet…it didn’t.
“You will cease to annoy this maid, Steyne, or you will answer to me.”
Verena shivered at the threat in his voice, uneasy that he seemed to so easily intimidate others. Surely, this was a man she should fear?
“Very well,” the viscount said as he brushed off his jacket. “If I had known you had the prior claim to her…affections, I would never had favored her with my suit.” He stalked off down the hall, visibly annoyed.
“Now I shall have to acquire a new position,” Verena heard herself murmur. She tugged on her hand, relieved when he released her. The vague sense of loss she felt confused her.
Lord Connor looked at her, his sharp gaze missing little. She silently cursed her loose tongue. She knew how important it was for her to remain hidden, yet this man seemed to get past her guard—and she barely knew him.
“Do not worry about that. I’ll speak to Feldspar as well. He likes me a good deal better than the bloody viscount.” He said it without the faintest trace of boasting, merely stating a truth. Then, the faintest tinge of pink mounted his high cheekbones, his eyes widening just the slightest bit at his vulgar language. “Beg pardon.”
She smiled in response to his apology. Gentlemen were not so careful with their tongues when servants were about and if they did notice, they did not bother to apologize. “Thank you, milord,” she added so softly she wasn’t sure if she spoke or merely allowed the thought to enter into her mind. “That man has been bothering me since I came on here.”
“I have no doubt,” murmured his lordship. “You are very beautiful.”
As much as Verena seemed to instinctively trust this man, she could not prevent a tensing in her chest at his simple compliment.
“Do not distress yourself over the viscount, my dear,” he said soothingly. “I won’t let him frighten you again. Meanwhile, you look as though you could use a friend.”
She looked at him in shock. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This man was offering to be her friend? Only her friend? Or would he exact payment from her later in a way she dreaded to even think about? A slight shudder racked her frame.
Looking up into his kind blue eyes, she felt that odd pulsing of trust that made little sense. She of all people knew just how misleading appearance could be. Wasn’t her father a prime example of that?
She found herself saying yes to Lord Connor before she had really thought it through.
“Splendid! Let us start this friendship off on the right foot. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord Connor Northwicke. My friends, of which you are now one, call me Con.” He swept her a highly exaggerated bow and she felt a smile threaten.
Instead, she curtsied in quite the same exaggerated fashion and said, “I am Doll Rendel, milord.”
“Well, Miss Doll, where are you bound this glorious afternoon? And I must insist that you address me as Con or Connor if you prefer.”
Verena paused. “It would be most improper to be on such familiar terms with you, milord. Indeed, your own wife wouldn’t dare to address you so. I would lose my position for certain were someone to hear.”
Her companion’s eyes narrowed and he released an impatient sound. “Very well. If anyone is within hearing, call me whatever you feel is appropriate. But in private, I will brook no arguments.” He looked away, his stance casual but something in his manner most revealing. “I have no wife so one cannot say how she would address me.”
Verena had no response to that, nor an explanation for the sudden lightening she felt in her whole body.
“Now,” Lord Connor asked, “what are your duties for the day?”
Should she reveal her next task? He would probably follow her whether she told him or not. “I am to dust the upper guest chambers,” she said as she cast her glance back the way he had come. “Your room is one of them.”
As she met his eyes again, she attempted to feel as nonchalant as her tone suggested.
Lord Connor adopted a bantering tone and said, “I am ashamed to admit I have never dusted before. Mayhap you will teach me?”
His expression was sufficiently cajoling. She smiled very faintly and walked toward his room.
For the next hour, Lord Connor was tutored in the fine art of housewifery. Verena could tell he didn’t enjoy the work itself but he seemed to delight in making her smile or laugh. It was obvious to the veriest lackwit that he bungled his attempts at cleaning on purpose.
“Why do you never wear a hat?”
Lord Connor glanced up from his position on the floor before the empty fireplace. “Excuse me?”
Verena glanced down, her cheeks coloring at the forwardness of her query. “A hat. You never wear one.”
He chuckled. “I am in doors. Nobody wears a hat in doors.”
She glanced down as him as he polished the grate with a mixture of blacking, small beer, and soap. The muscles in his back and shoulders rippled beneath the thin shirt he wore, having discarded his jacket and waistcoat when she’d informed him of “his” duties. He smiled as he worked, then started chatting about something, she knew not what. She was too distracted by him to pay attention to what he was saying.
The sun streaming through the window played over his golden hair, giving him an unearthly halo like glow. She experienced a distinct sense of familiarity at the sight, almost as if she’d seen him thus once before. Shaking away the silly thought, she persisted in her previous line of questioning.
“I know gentlemen do not wear hats in doors. Why do you never wear one while out?”
Her voice rudely cut through whatever he’d been saying.
He stopped again, swiveling on his heels and giving her his full attention. Blue eyes twinkling merrily up at her, he replied, “The Corn Laws do not interest you?”
“Indeed they do,” she protested, turning away to hide her pink cheeks. She only partially lied. “They are unfair and unwise.” She picked up a small Dresden shepherdess and stared at it, wishing she’d never voiced such a personal question in the first place.
It was a pattern of sorts for their time together. He would settle in with whatever humiliating task she gave him—she’d even gone so far as to set him to scrubbing out the chamberpots—and she would proceed to try to embarrass him with impertinent questions, all in an unsubtle attempt to drive him away.
But even after daily mistreatment at her hands, he still sought her out, still chose to spend glorious days like the ones they were currently enjoying helping her with menial work. She was running out of humiliating tasks and he still stayed, working as though he received wages and showing no knowledge of her motives. He had to know how unconventional it was for him to do what he was doing!
“I hate them.”
Startled, she nearly dropped the priceless figure in her hands. “The Corn Laws?” she offered, carefully wiping the knick-knack and returning it to the relative safety of its mantel perc
h.
Tipping her head to gaze down at him, she couldn’t help but smile at the amusement filling his eyes.
“No,” he laughed. “Well, yes, of course I do but I was answering your impertinent question. I hate hats.”
“That’s as good a reason as any,” she told him, her own chuckles sounding a little strange to her ears.
Laughter hadn’t been the norm in her father’s house. After joining Feldspar’s household, she’d laughed more with Bri, despite the ofttimes hard work, than she’d ever laughed in her life. Yet another indication that where she was now was where she should be.
Still chuckling, albeit a trifle edged with sorrow, Verena gave the mantelpiece one last swipe with her feather duster, returning only to brush a trembling finger over the frilly gown of the shepherdess. Such a frivolous little trinket, one of many scattered throughout the great manor house. Funny, how such unimportant baubles brought such joy to the easily pleased Lady Feldspar.
“My mother had a little glass horse. I believe she loved it as much as Lady Feldspar loves each and every one of her trinkets. My father let me keep it after she died.” Tears threatened at the bittersweet memory, one of the very few times her father had shown her any kindness.
“Your father?”
Every muscle froze at the casual inquiry. “My father?”
“Indeed, yes. This is the first time you’ve mentioned him.”
Verena glanced down at her companion and quickly away. She couldn’t quite meet Lord Connor’s penetrating gaze, too aware that he’d read the wariness in her own. He was too careful around her for her not to realize that he sensed her unease.
What a silly, stupid mistake! “My father was a poor farmer, of course. He died.” Did her words sound as stiff and defensive to him as they did to her?
She didn’t dare look at him. Instead, she concentrated all her effort on the already spotless mantelpiece.
She was all too aware, however, that Lord Connor still crouched at her feet, unmoving, his eyes boring into her. Why, oh why, did she feel his presence so strongly?
“I believe this is done,” commented the nobleman. He rose, stepping back to allow her a closer look.
Thankful for the subject change, Verena inspected his work, smiling to herself as he glared at his blackened hands. “Indeed, milord, you are a natural. Are you sure you’re really the son of a duke?”
“Connor,” he said in a tone that suggested it was an argument they’d had often.
Frowning, she turned away, but Connor refused to let her dismiss him so easily. He captured her hand, his warm fingers enclosing her suddenly cold ones.
“Is it really so much to ask, Doll?”
Weeks had passed since Verena had adopted her new identity. Her name was a fanciful variation of her second name, Idalia. Doll had been her mother’s pet name for her and, until now, only two other people had ever used it, her brother and her best friend. Slightly distracted, her fingers rose to her bodice, to the simple pendant that nestled there, safe from view beneath layers of black fabric. The necklace her best friend had given her, long ago, always reminded her that no matter how bad things became, goodness still existed in the world.
“I don’t understand your determination that I do so,” she told Lord Connor, forcing her mind away from bittersweet memories. “It is of no consequence what I call you, surely.”
He drew her closer. “It matters to me. Are we not friends enough that you can humor me in this one matter?”
“Friends? You amuse yourself, nothing more.” She jerked her hand free, anger rising so quickly she could barely breathe. “When you leave here with your cynical friend, you will no more think of me than you’ll think of the peacocks who grace the lawns. I am something different in your idle life, a new conquest, a challenge. I am nothing to you, you spoiled dilettante!”
His face tightened, lips thinning and eyes narrowing. “You have a very low opinion of me.”
Verena laughed, the bitter sound sweeping out to echo in the furtherest reaches of the spacious room. She backed away from him. “Low opinion? How can I not? You spend hours with me, pretending an interest in my duties that you can’t possibly feel.”
Grimmer than she’d ever seen this perpetually cheerful young man, he observed, “Your voice changes when you’re distracted.”
“You drive me to distraction!”
His observation penetrated her anger a second after the words left her mouth. More angry with herself at that point, she stormed from the room, leaving him alone with his grim thoughts.
The time Connor spent with the maid caused much amusement for his host. Feldspar always was an odd eccentric, even going so far as to care about his servants’ welfare, a distinct difference between him and many of his contemporaries. The one conversation he’d had with Connor on the matter left an indelible mark on the young lord.
Connor and Adam had been enjoying a rare hour in the billiards room without the ladies or the gentlemen, a moment when they could speak of inconsequential matters and pretend the wall that had started between them did not exist. Connor had just been observing to himself that the ease that had once existed was probably gone forever. Saddened but resigned, he’d leaned in to take a shot when Lord Feldspar entered, his normally jovial features creased with grim determination.
“A word, Northwicke, if you please.”
Surprised to be singled out by his host, Connor relinquished his billiards cue to Adam, and followed the older gentleman from the room.
Feldspar’s study was just one door away from the billiards room. They entered, the door closed, and Connor’s host began without preamble.
“It has come to my notice that you are favoring one of the new maids with attentions. The one called Doll Rendel.”
When Connor said nothing, the portly gentleman blustered, “Well? What say you?”
“I am convinced my attentions are not unwelcome.”
Feldspar’s face contorted, his chubby cheeks growing red. “What are your intentions?”
“My intentions? What intentions could I have towards a maid?”
“I don’t allow trifling with my servants, Lord Connor. Cease whatever you’re doing and leave the girl in peace.”
“I am not trifling with her,” Connor said defensively. But if he wasn’t, what was he doing? Even he was a bit confused by how much he enjoyed her company, how much he longed to be with her when others demanded his time. It made little sense to a young man who’d taken the pleasures life offered as a matter of course. He’d never had to work for anything before and Doll’s constant aloofness intrigued him.
It was ironic that Feldspar chose now to speak to him, when he’d spent days away from her after she herself had taken him to task for his unaccountable behavior.
“If you do not trifle with her affections, why does she mope around here, spreading her misery to all and sundry?”
“I shall apologize,” Connor decided, feeling ungentlemanly joyful at the news of her misery. She missed him, surely!
Leaving Feldspar back to his jolly, undemanding self, Connor went in search of Doll that very moment to tender his deepest contrition for upsetting her.
He returned to Adam only long enough to inform that gentleman that he had business to attend to. Adam stopped him as he turned to go.
“Have you not grown bored with the company here?” he said, his tone clearly indicating just how bored he himself had grown with the company. “This party has gone on far too long and the company is deadly dull.”
“Soon, Adam, soon,” Connor assured him, edging his way through the doorway and into the corridor beyond. “Very soon,” he called again, letting the heavy oak door close on his words.
Escaping from the gentlemen of the house party was never too difficult. Connor didn’t care for hunting grouse and while riding was a pastime he enjoyed, he preferred to do so alone. Visiting the neighboring estates did not appeal nearly so much as seeking out the ebony-haired temptress he called friend.
/> The ladies posed a far greater obstacle. When a man was wealthy, titled, handsome, and unmarried, he was a sort of magnet for unmarried females and their matchmaking mamas. Eluding them was an art one developed with practice and Lord Connor Northwicke had been practicing almost since birth.
Adam was the real challenge. As soon as he’d noticed his friend taking up with a servant, he’d gone out of his way to protect Connor from what he called the maid’s evil clutches. Which only went to show how much the theater was rubbing off on the surly gentleman.
Unable to locate the only person whose company he craved, Connor threw caution to the winds and descended the servants’ stairs, caring little that a man in his position should do no such thing. He entered the kitchens, a wave of heat blasting over him.
Clattering pots, stern orders, and scurrying servants filled the space. Connor blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of the confusion and wondering if his mother’s kitchens boasted the same industrious chaos.
A pert maid with dark red hair and wary green eyes brushed by him, stopped, turned, and stared. Connor recognized her as one who was often with Doll, going about their duties. Mouth agape, she gestured at the other servants, her action catching the attention of one or two, whose own fevered gestures caught the attention of still more, until the room lay cloaked in silence.
Then, through the fog of steaming pots, he saw her.
Magnificent black tresses gleamed in the dim light, the absence of her usual white mobcap allowing the meager kitchen lighting to shine on her head. A few rebellious curls had escaped, no doubt due to the many duties she’d already performed that day and one of those ebony tresses lay against her cheek as she bandaged the hand of the little scullery maid. Her whole concentration centered on the child, not even the preternatural silence permeating her thoughts.
