Had she said yes or not? Sam felt he stood not on a hill but at the crumbling edge of a cliff that overlooked a deep and dark ravine. Not really knowing how to wring an answer out of her, he planted his hands at his waist and nodded over nothing. “Good. Good. That’s good to know. High marks.”
She chuckled at his expense. “Glad to hear you’re so pleased.”
He had to know. Yes or no. He sent her the most direct and sincere expression he could muster. “It’s all I’ll ever ask of you, Yancey. I swear it.”
“I believe you, Sam,” she said quietly, looking down and then away. “But you won’t try to keep me here … afterward, will you? Because I can’t stay, and I can’t be who you want me to be.”
“I know.” His heart leaped with joy and thudded with resignation, all at the same time. What had he expected, he asked himself—for her to say she loved him and would stay forever? Ridiculous. But wanting now to be gentle with her, Sam asked, “Is it too much, Yancey, what I’ve asked of you?”
She shook her head no and met his eyes. “No. It’s not too much. As long as we both know it’s not forever.”
Sam nodded and then stood quietly with her, wanting her, not knowing how to reach out to her, or even how to touch her at this moment. He just stood there on the side of a hill in the English countryside while the sun slipped stealthily down the unsuspecting sky. Sam thought about making love to Yancey. He could see it in his mind … their bodies intertwined, the feel of her under him, the way her satiny soft skin felt, the sounds she might make.
He’d said he would let her go. But he didn’t see how that would be possible, not after he came to know her in such an intimate way. He simply couldn’t get his mind to wrap around the idea of a life spent with her existing only in his memories of her. That was no life at all.
After a bit, Yancey turned to him. “We still have to do something about Roderick and your mother, Sam.”
How very practical of her. Here he was on fire for her, and here she was concerned about her job. Of course, that was only as it should be, given that her occupation placed her squarely in danger. “Yes, we do.”
Yancey smiled at him. “Go get your coat, Sam. Then we’ll go inside and face the music together.”
Just to lighten the mood and their burden, Sam teased, “Face the music? I thought you said you can’t play the piano.”
She chuckled. “Shut up, Sam.”
Chapter Seventeen
That evening, seated on the tiny cushioned stool that fronted the mirrored vanity in her stunningly feminine bedroom, Yancey was, for the most part, absorbed in her own thoughts of the coming evening she would spend with Sam. Such a delicious topic he was. So distracted, she was catching only snippets of Robin’s complaints as she handed the girl hairpins when needed.
“I tell you, Your Grace, they’ve no right to treat me so. Even Mrs. Edgars, who’s been ever so kind to me since I became your lady’s maid, said so. She told them I’m on a level with them now, I am, and they was to show me respect and courtesy.”
“Good for her,” Yancey commented distractedly. From what she had heard so far, Robin—who stood behind Yancey and brushed, combed, and curled her hair—was alternately fussing about the dowager’s maids’ shabby treatment of her and about Yancey’s too thick and troublesome hair. In the girl’s snit of a mood, she tugged Yancey’s head this way and that, leaving her to fear that she’d be bald before Robin was done.
Apparently, Yancey sighed, no one in the household had experienced a successful day. Still, a bright spot existed in the later evening for Yancey … and for the duke, if he only knew it. She smiled the secret smile of the seductress. Certainly her duke had an inkling of what was to come, being the one who had initiated their pending liaison. What the man didn’t know, however, was that she meant to make His Grace woo her.
He’d said there wasn’t time. But he was mistaken. There was. They had the entire evening before them. She intended to make him put it to good use, but without telling him, of course. Where was the fun of informing him? He was an intelligent man. Let him figure it out.
“… and them with all their traveling they’ve done with Her Grace the dowager,” Robin was saying. “I expect I’ll be doing the same with you one day.”
“I expect so,” Yancey idly mumbled, thinking now on the events from earlier this evening when she and Sam had come in from the hill.
She’d been spared from having to prove she could neither sing nor play the piano or even begin to discuss painting because Sam’s mother had already retired to her room for the evening and had sent word through one of her maids that she was not up to being sociable this evening. She cited her gruesome trip home in a jouncing carriage, followed so closely by the shocking revelations of the day, which had taken their toll on her strength. Therefore, she would stay in her bedroom and take her evening meal there.
When Robin raised her voice with a fresh complaint, Yancey blinked back to the moment. “…telling me, they were, all them snippy maids of Her Grace the dowager, that I was only a newly elevated lady’s maid. Like that makes a difference. And them thinking they can teach me the way of things. I told them I haven’t had any complaints from my lady.” Robin sought Yancey’s reflected gaze in the mirror.
“No. I have none. You’re doing a wonderful job.”
Clearly delighted, Robin executed a quick curtsy. “Thank you, Your Grace. That’s exactly what I told them myself.” Then she tsk-tsked and pulled on a hank of Yancey’s hair. “Will you look at this? It won’t do a thing I want it to do. Got a will of its own. Wants to be about its own business, I expect.”
Robin’s last comment recalled to Yancey how Roderick had also surprised her and Sam. He had saved them all an uneasy evening by announcing he’d sent word to a family in the area that he was at Stonebridge and he’d been invited to pay a call that evening. Sam had immediately offered to make available to him a carriage and driver, but Roderick had insisted a saddled horse would be just fine for his purposes. He fancied a bit of exercise and fresh air after the enclosed carriage ride here, he’d said. Besides, his friends lived close by and he would have a jolly evening with them and not return until late, maybe not even until tomorrow midday.
What the devil is that man up to? Yancey had wondered, somewhat alarmed not to have him where she could see him. She’d been instantly suspicious, of course, as had Sam, so she’d sought Scotty out and he had verified Roderick’s story of a message sent and an answer received. Still, she doubted that Cousin Roderick’s activities of this evening were as innocent as they were nefarious. The man was up to something.
Well, whatever it was, short of following him, she couldn’t know until he returned and said or did something to give himself away. Patience was the strongest virtue a Pinkerton operative could cultivate. How well she knew that. Besides, she was glad the man was gone because that left her alone with Sam, her current prey.
“What do you think, Your Grace?”
Yancey gave a start, having no idea to what Robin referred. “What do I think about what?”
“Why, your hair, of course.”
“Oh. My hair.” She appraised it critically in the mirror, turning her head this way and that. As always, Robin had piled it high atop her head and had cascading curls falling over Yancey’s shoulder. “It’s nice. I like it.”
“Well, I don’t,” Robin grumped, pulling pins out and fluffing the curling mass of long auburn hair all about, ruining the whole effect. “I want to try something else, if Your Grace wouldn’t mind.”
With her hair now completely wild and disheveled, with it looking much as if she’d been caught in a ferocious windstorm, there wasn’t much Yancey could say but, “No, I don’t mind.”
With Robin happily pulling, tugging, and twisting her hair again, Yancey was free to retreat back into her increasingly sensual thoughts that caused a tightening and a low, pulsing throb deep in her belly. She couldn’t stop the smile that claimed her lips. She would have Sam all to
herself this evening … and this night. He wanted to make love to her.
Yancey recalled for herself that wonderful speech he’d made standing there on that hill. So tall and handsome and sincere. He’d certainly won her over with his words. Making love to Sam … the very idea and the images it conjured up gave Yancey a case of the delicious shivers.
“Are you cold, Your Grace? You just shivered.”
“Oh. No, Robin, I’m fine.” Embarrassed, and feeling the heat of it bloom on her cheeks, Yancey said the first thing that came into her mind. “By the way, this mauve gown is a perfect choice for tonight. Thank you.”
Robin preened under Yancey’s compliment. “Oh, Your Grace, you look so lovely in it. The color is perfect. It’s a simple design, really. Very much the thing. And easy to get into and out of.”
Robin’s innocent comment acted on Yancey’s sensual frame of mind. Smiling into the mirror, she pictured Sam undoing her dress’s fastenings later. “Good,” she told Robin. “That’s perfect.”
Yancey’s next thought was that so many aspects of her own behavior since she’d been here at Stonebridge were unlike her. Here she’d readily turned over to a maid the intimate details of her toilette. She’d never been pampered before and had been certain she would hate it. But she didn’t. Just as she didn’t hate the idea of Stonebridge and of masquerading as Sam’s wife. And she’d thought she would.
She didn’t know whether to attribute the changes in her to the unique facets of this case, not the least of which was her setting herself up as the specific target for a murderer. She wondered what Sam would say if he knew that she had never done anything like this before, not on any of her cases. Always before, she’d simply adopted a disguise—like the elderly Christian lady one she’d used with Clara—and played a part to gain information from thieves’ wives, girlfriends, or mothers. Then she’d take that information back to Mr. Pinkerton and the male agents, so they could use it in tracking down the thief. But never before had Yancey actually been the lamb tied to the stake to attract the hungry predator.
But, came the startling thought, what if I’m not the lamb? What if Sam is? It made sense—sickening sense. Sam was the last in his line. His mother was no threat to anyone. She wasn’t likely to produce any further heirs. But Sam certainly could. And his wife, if the murdered woman proved to be her, had been with child, the heir. Tense with this new revelation, and fearing for Sam’s safety, Yancey told herself the first question she would ask him was: in the event of his death, who inherited Stonebridge? Yancey felt certain she already knew. Roderick Hamilton Harcourt, the Duke of Glenmore. “Diabolical bastard.”
“Excuse me, Your Grace?”
Yancey popped back to the moment and saw Robin’s smiling, questioning visage reflected in the mirror in front of her. Obviously she had muttered her curse aloud. “Nothing, nothing. Forgive me. Are we almost done, Robin?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Sorry to be taking so long. It’s your hair. It won’t…”
Yancey tuned the girl out, leaving her to fuss about Your Grace’s hair as Yancey returned to her mounting concerns for Sam. It was a very good thing, she decided, that she was playing the role of his wife. That way, she and her gun could be with him day and night. Day and night … the phrase echoed in her mind. Here she was pretending to be a married woman, something she never intended to be in reality. Certainly in the past, she’d adopted the role of a respectable married woman, but there had never been a husband. She had merely alluded to one.
But Sam was different. He was no illusion. He was very real. So she could lay these changes in her at Sam’s door, couldn’t she? His bedroom door, to be specific. That had her smiling. His bedroom door. She was going to allow him to make love to her. And that had nothing to do with the job.
Then she heard herself … allow him to make love to me. What an odd way of putting it. As if she were simply going to lie there and let him have his way with her. How … submissive of her. How wifely. Certainly, she’d never behaved that way before with a man, and she certainly didn’t intend to with Sam, a man she very much desired and a man this entire household believed already to be her husband. Oddly, that belief on their part lent her and Sam’s coming liaison the cachet of legitimacy. She had a husband. “My husband.”
“Pardon me, Your Grace? Did you say something?”
Dear God, she must have murmured that aloud, too. Yancey gave a quick, embarrassed shake of her head. “No, no, I didn’t. Well, I did. But just … carry on, Robin.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Yancey returned quickly to her thoughts of Sam, going so far as to stand him next to her in her mind’s eye so she could see him as her husband. Not so much as he was in this masquerade, but how he might be in actuality in her life—a life she would have to live here in England if they were truly married. As Robin continued her fussing over Yancey’s hair, she considered a life spent here with Sam. Lost in the image, a shimmering mirage of something that could never be, Yancey forgot herself and shook her head.
“Oh, steady, Your Grace,” Robin cried. “I’ve got a handful of hairpins here. I’d hate to scratch your head with one as I put it in place.”
“Sorry, Robin.” Yancey immediately straightened up, knowing the girl was still a bit pouty because of her shabby treatment by the dowager’s maids. As Robin gave her critical attention to different styles, still brushing and combing and piling Yancey’s hair this way and that, Yancey suddenly felt much like a bride preparing for her wedding night, except she was getting dressed instead of undressed. Still, the sensual specter of a honeymoon night loomed.
A parody of a loving couple, that’s what they were and nothing more. She needed to remember that. A spate of unexpected guilt assailed Yancey. She felt as if she had betrayed her mother’s memory by even thinking of being married. Yancey realized that not all men were like her father. But she did believe that all marriages were the same in some very basic aspects. They were restrictive for the female. They signified a loss of the woman’s independence. A subjugation of her will for his. No, Yancey couldn’t see herself ceding those freedoms to any man. Not even to Sam, as much as she wanted him.
And she did want him. She was more than eager to be in his bed. Or to have him in hers. Since she’d first laid eyes on him, this evening’s outcome had seemed inevitable. She’d been drawn to him, to his dark, handsome looks, to his air of potent sexuality, and to the aura of barely leashed sensual urges that emanated from him. How could she not be drawn to him? After all, she was a healthy woman of normal appetites.
Yancey stopped right there, marveling at her own attitude. How had it come about, given her mother’s marriage and the awful way her life had ended at the hands of Yancey’s father, that she, the daughter, would enjoy the pleasure of men’s company, much less those of the bedroom? She smiled a secret smile. Ah, but she knew how.
It came from working with the men who respected her. Her attitude also came from respecting herself, from making her own way in this world, from being independent, and from being the one to say yes or no. She and her sister agents were a breed apart from other women and prided themselves on that. A breed apart. Yancey frowned. Always before she’d gained much satisfaction from being different. From being tough-minded and independent. But now that she’d met Sam, now that she’d experienced Stonebridge and its strange and wonderful inhabitants, all she felt was lonely at the thought of the single room in the boardinghouse that awaited her in Chicago. Suddenly, for the first time, she felt as if her profession put her in danger of having love pass her by.
Oh, that would be awful. Yancey stared at the troubled young woman with the creased brow who stared back at her from the mirror. Awful? Since when? But the question wasn’t when. The question was who. Since who? And her answer was … since Sam. He scared her. What if he proved to be an appetite she could not satisfy? She feared she would want more and more of him. And that she wouldn’t be able to let him go when the time came. Or worse, that she would lose herse
lf in him. She hadn’t yet, but the potential to do so certainly loomed large. This sort of fear was a first for her. A frightening first.
Yancey stared wide-eyed at her reflection. Dear God, I’m falling in love.
Would that be so awful? her softly feminine side asked. What is there to go home to? it wanted to know. Think about it. A room in a women’s boardinghouse. And the next case for Mr. Pinkerton. No friends. No loved ones. No one she could be close to, or wanted to be close to. Certainly she felt gratitude and loyalty to Mr. Pinkerton, and a certain amount of daughterly affection. But beyond that, and beyond the job, she had nothing.
Until now, until Stonebridge—until Sam—she’d believed her life had begun in Chicago at the agency and would continue to be there. But not so much anymore. Now she wanted to be here … with Sam. And that meant the end of her as she’d been for the past six years.
“There you go, Your Grace,” Robin announced triumphantly, pulling Yancey yet again out of her troubling thoughts. “All done. And you look lovely, if I must say so myself.”
Smiling at her maid’s reflection in the mirror, and feeling her scalp tingling all over from the prolonged brushing her hair had just undergone, Yancey considered her new hairstyle. She’d be darned if she could tell any difference between this arrangement and the one Robin had pulled down a few minutes ago. But she’d also be darned if she’d voice that. “Lovely, Robin. Absolutely lovely. Much better. You’ve outdone yourself.”
The girl beamed, looking abashed as she shrugged her shoulders and proceeded to rid the brush and comb of a considerable amount of Yancey’s hair. “You’re very kind, Your Grace. And a great lady you are. We’re all most thrilled to have you here at last with us. Well, most of us are. Her Grace the dowager’s maids aren’t. They like lording it too much over the rest of us that they work for the lady of the manor.”
Finally, here was some ammunition Yancey could give Robin in her struggle for pecking order. “The lady of the manor? No, they don’t, Robin. Not with me here, as you said. I am now the lady of the house.” She tried not to feel guilty over the pretend nature of that designation—or its short duration. “And you are my lady’s maid,” she continued, feeling worse with every word for having started down this road. “I would think that gives you rank over them.”
The Marriage Masquerade Page 26
