“Travis!” he yelled.
No answer. The valet was doubtless rearranging his stockings. Marcus possessed the world’s most organized wardrobe in the world’s most broken-down house. He wiped his eyes and thanked Providence that the roof didn’t leak. Yet. Then the sound of the bell clanged from the hall. At least something in the house worked.
Better still, two women stood on the front doorstep. Things were looking up and he wasn’t about to suggest they go around to the back door. He’d take a pair of maidservants any way they cared to enter. The younger of the two wore a particularly ugly brown cloak of some hardy stuff. And a rather expensive bonnet. Only then did he look at her face.
“Are you going to hit me with that?” The genteel tones of Anne Brotherton carried a certain anxiety.
He lowered the large spanner he still carried. “I’m not likely to drive away additions to my household staff. Am I to gather, Miss Brotherton, that you have decided to accept my offer?
“Yes, since you’ve proved unreasonable. Maldon and I would like to come in out of the cold.”
“Excellent,” he said, ushering them into the hall. “Two for the price of one?”
“Maldon is here to lend me countenance. She is a lady’s dresser. Perhaps you don’t understand these distinctions, but she does not do rough work.”
“Believe me, I understand only too well. She’d better go round to the kitchen then. It’s the only warm room in the house. Unless you’re afraid to be alone with me.” The maid looked alarmed. “Don’t worry. I believe I’ll be able to resist the urge to force my attentions on your mistress in that fetching ensemble. Come with me. You’d better come too, Anne, and I’ll show you where the brooms and dusters are kept.”
“Miss Brotherton to you, Lithgow.”
“In this house junior servants are addressed by their Christian names.” Marcus was beginning to enjoy himself. “You may call me my lord.”
“It’s all right, Maldon,” she said to her maid, who looked as though she might faint. “Once Maldon is settled, my lord, we will discuss the terms of our arrangement.”
Marcus showed her where to hang her cloak and bonnet and wondered just how far he could push her before she exploded. He loaded her arms with a dustpan, rags, and other paraphernalia from the broom cupboard.
“Aren’t you going to carry anything, my lord?”
“Just this once, Anne, I shall carry the broom and save you a second journey. Be sure to note where everything is kept. They must be put away when you’ve finished.”
She followed him in a steamy silence to the drawing room. “The clock says ten past four. Is it wrong or has it stopped altogether?”
“Both. Don’t worry. I shall let you know when you’ve worked for two hours.”
“I don’t think two hours each day is fair. I’ll give you one. And I’ll start from when I walked in the door. I checked my watch and it was exactly nine o’clock.” She pulled a dainty jeweled timepiece from her pocket. “Quarter past now. I leave at ten.”
“One and three-quarters and we’ll count it from when you removed your cloak.”
He respected her for bargaining. Even in a cheap gown of a dull green cotton, she looked unmistakably a lady and an aristocrat. Perhaps it was because her tall, smooth forehead, defined cheekbones, and straight nose beneath flawless glossy braids wound around her head made him think of a portrait of a Tudor queen. Apparently centuries of breeding and privilege left their mark. As she argued, her hazel eyes snapped with golden lights, and he’d rarely seen her so animated, or looking prettier. If being thwarted made her so appealing, he’d be happy to provide further occasion.
They finally agreed on an hour and a half, measured from her arrival.
“You may start in here. Sweeping and dusting should be enough for today. The windows need washing but they will wait. Do you know how to wield a broom or shall I demonstrate?”
“How difficult can it be? I may as well get started. Lord knows there’s plenty to be done.” She stuck her nose into the air and took a derisive sniff. Then blanched when her eye caught the forest of cobwebs draped from the mantelpiece. “There are spiders in here.” Her voice wavered.
“My dear Anne. There are spiders everywhere in the house. Just sweep them up. They rarely bite and I don’t think there are any poisonous ones in Wiltshire.”
“I know that.” She sounded brave but doubtful.
“Surely you aren’t afraid of such tiny creatures.”
“Of course not.”
“Call if you meet a particularly large one,” he said with exaggerated concern. “I’ll come and save you.”
She glared at him, snatched the broom, and started swishing it over the floor in a haphazard fashion. He left her alone without any confidence that the drawing room would be cleaner by half past ten.
Sweeping seemed easy enough, but after about twenty minutes Anne examined her aching hands. Aside from the slight bump of the middle finger of her right hand where she held her pen, her hands were kept perfect by Maldon’s nightly application of a lotion. Now her palms and fingers bore angry red marks that could develop into sores. The dull wooden boards looked little better because there were little streaks and heaps of debris all over the room. With a sigh she stretched her back and tried pushing them into centralized piles. Her broom kept driving them into the edge of the carpet, which exuded further clouds of dust and a goodly population of moth. The carpet had once been handsome but the colors had faded and the worn pile was punctuated by large holes. When she bent to move a corner aside she found it heavy with dirt. Her eyes itched from sneezing. After extensive trial and error she managed to maneuver most of the dust from the floorboards into the dustpan, set it near the door to the hall, and surveyed her handiwork. Her shoulders ached but she felt a degree of satisfaction in a completed task.
She could do this. But the more she looked, the more she found to do. The floor needed polish. Moth had attacked the curtains as well as the carpet. The fireplace enclosed by Ionic columns would be handsome were it not for the soot that clogged the elaborate carving. The stone mullions on the windows were likewise blackened. She’d never thought much about the dozens of servants who kept Camber in pristine repair and felt a dawning respect for them.
Her terms of servitude had said nothing about the quality of work expected from her. Yet if she was going to undertake this humiliating labor she might as well do it well. In the time remaining she decided to assault the mantelpiece, spiders and all.
Holding her breath, she swiped a rag the length of the shelf, shuddering with loathing as the sticky cobwebs clung to her hands. When she realized one still contained its resident, an enormous brute with dozens of thick black legs, she could not restrain a shriek that competed with the crash of a porcelain vase shattering on the floor. Shaking her hand in panic, she dislodged the horrible beast.
“I’ll kill you!” she cried, and chased the speedy little monster over the floor, vainly slapping at it with the broom and knocking over the dustpan. Filth spewed over the threshold. On the brink of despair she stared at the ruination of her morning’s work.
A figure loomed out of the dark hall. “Is everything all right? You were making a terrible din.”
“Fine,” she said. She was absolutely not going to cry in front of Lithgow.
He came in and surveyed the wreckage. The hearth, on which she’d expended such effort, was strewn with cobwebs. Refusing to hang her head, she tilted her chin and awaited his well-deserved scorn.
“I should have dusted before I swept the floor,” she said, acknowledging her stupidity before he could.
“Never mind. You’re new to the job and it already looks better in here.”
His encouraging tone deflected her defiance. “I don’t think so,” she said despondently. “I knocked over the dustpan chasing a spider.”
“Better than a mouse, perhaps?”
“I’m not afraid of mice. Nor of spiders either,” she added hastily.
; His lips twitched but the expected sarcasm didn’t materialize. “Here,” he said. “I’ll hold the pan in place while you sweep the dust into it.”
He knelt at her feet, wet hair clinging to his forehead, the muscles of his shoulders and arms outlined by a damp linen shirt. Unwillingly she felt the stir of attraction return. He raised his cat-green eyes to her, watchful and serious. Her chest tightened. It had been easier to deal with him when he was ordering her around.
She’d wondered why, on her arrival at Hinton, his manner had been so different from the ruthless charmer of London. When she’d decided to accept his offer there’d been a certain equality in the transaction: an impersonal exchange of his needs and her wishes. She was confused by his switch back to amiability. Was he still playing a game, designed to win her over? She wished she were more experienced at reading the behavior of others.
She flicked the brush and drove as much dust over his shirt and breeches as into the pan. “I do beg your pardon.” It was safer to believe the worst and treat him with due disdain.
“I see you want me to be as dirty as you.”
She drove up another cloud of dust. “So sorry. You’ll have to return to your bath. I’m so glad you were occupied in comfort while I worked.”
“I have spent the last hour mending pipes, successfully I may add. Do you think you might get a little of this dirt where it belongs? Or do you intend to leave it until tomorrow?”
If she wanted that villa she would have to return and it was pointless to repeat work. Without saying another word she finished the job. About to consult her watch, she caught sight of her cloudy reflection in a mirror across the room and gasped. Her face was smudged and her hair a fuzzy rats’ nest of cobwebs. Luckily she didn’t care what Lithgow thought of her.
Marcus, fresh from his triumph over unruly plumbing, had expected to find a sullen Anne who’d made little or no effort to attempt the admittedly gargantuan task of getting his house in order. When he found her almost in tears, whether from the terrifying spider or the spilled dustpan he wasn’t sure, he’d wanted to offer comfort. For a sheltered miss who’d never attempted anything more taxing than embroidery or dirtier than flower arranging, she’d impressed him with her zeal.
She’d quickly climbed back onto the high ropes again and, having covered him with dust, was favoring him with what he dubbed her heiress look.
“I’ve done as you asked. Now it’s time I went down to the villa.”
He nodded. “I’ll show you the way.”
“Where’s Maldon?”
“Your maid has agreed to help my valet with the washing, now that the copper is working.”
“Really? She sees to my—er—delicate attire, but I can’t see her agreeing to help with the heavy laundry.” Her cheeks flushed faintly beneath the smudges.
“She and Travis have taken a liking to each other. He’s a very proper fellow.” He saw no reason to reveal that the pair of them were already acquainted.
“She will do nothing but complain about the cold if I take her, so I’ll leave her be. Will you lend me a spade?”
Marcus looked over the tools in the gardener’s shed. He handed Anne a trowel, slung a spade over his shoulder, and a rake for good measure. “This may be useful.”
As they approached the site of the villa, pale midday sunlight seeped through the massed clouds for the first time in a week. He breathed in crisp air and caught his companion’s palpable excitement. “The place looks like a big wreck,” he warned. “I don’t know when my uncle first discovered it, but he lost interest a long time ago.”
“The journal in which he reported the find was at least twenty years old, perhaps more.”
“The soil has filled in most of it, I fear. It’ll be hard work.”
“But just think of the splendid things that we shall find. I want to explore the whole place and make a full report to the journal. This might be one of the most important villas in all of England.” Her fine bonnet, jammed over disordered hair, slipped backward, and her cheeks were flushed as she hopped over a rut.
In this mood, if it lasted, wooing her would be a pleasure. Genuine enthusiasm tempered her arrogance and made her almost beautiful as she strode forward, her eyes sparkling with excitement. He wouldn’t mind seeing her passions take a more earthy direction.
“What?” she said. “Why do you smile?”
“It’s a beautiful day.”
“It is. And that is a beautiful sight!”
No one else of his acquaintance would call this disordered mass of soil and stones and grass beautiful. Possibly Sir William Hamilton, who had conducted Marcus about the ruins of Pompeii. But a field in Wiltshire couldn’t compare to the Bay of Naples. “Tell me what you see.”
As she explained her theory about the probable location of the chryptoporticus and the courtyard and the kitchen and the hypocaust, the shape of a Roman residence took shape before his eyes. She had studied her subject and knew what she was talking about.
“Where shall I begin?” he asked.
“Are you going to dig?”
“I thought I’d help get you started. The ground is probably hard.”
“I thought you were too busy for such foolishness.” She was pouting again.
“I can give you an hour or two.”
“I want to dig. I swept your floor and got horrid cobwebs all over me and now you want to have all the fun.”
Shaking his head in wonder, he handed her the spade with an exaggerated bow. “Never let it be said I would deprive a lady of her pleasure.”
She cast him a darkling look and accepted the heavy implement. Clearly she was as unfamiliar with garden tools as she was with domestic ones. After experimenting a little, she settled it to her satisfaction and stepped over a protruding section of foundation wall to the lowest section of the site. “Here. I shall start where there’s likely to be the least amount of soil to remove.” With a mighty swipe she thrust the sharp end of the spade into the dirt and almost fell backward with the force of the ground’s resistance.
When he jumped forward to steady her she shook him off. “I can manage.” My, she was a stubborn little thing.
She hacked at the hard ground for a few minutes without appreciable progress. “Why is it not working?” she groused.
“Very likely the soil has been packed down over the years. Would you like me to try? Come,” he said coaxingly, not liking to see her so despondent. “I agree that you are in charge but I could loosen the surface for you.”
“I suppose so. Gentlemen are stronger.”
The ground wasn’t that hard. She really wasn’t very strong, and why should she be? Until this morning she’d never done a minute of manual labor in her life. Working steadily, he scooped off the grassy sod in an area about two yards square. Then, without exerting any additional force, the spade hit a soft spot and plunged in deep, hitting something hard with a crack.
“Stop!” she cried. “You could break something. Suppose you’ve cracked the mosaic pavement.”
“Excuse me, Anne.” He enjoyed addressing her thus, knowing it irked her. “I’m trying to help.”
“Well stop it. Taking off the top layer must be done with the utmost caution and after that I believe I must use the trowel. Only by hand can I be certain nothing is damaged.” She fell to her knees in the dirt and began to remove the loose soil in minute portions, feeling as she went with the fingers of the left hand. Her pricey gloves would be ruined in minutes.
“Found anything?” he asked after a few minutes. While he quite enjoyed having her kneeling at his feet, he was getting cold.
“I don’t expect I’ll find any objects, if that’s what you mean. Anything in this part of the villa would have been dug up and taken away already. But I’m guessing this is the atrium and I may find the remains of the floor at any time.”
He took up the spade again and started to remove the top layer from another area. She cast an occasional eye on him and seemed to find his method satisfactory.
They worked away in silence for a while and he contemplated the mystery of Anne Brotherton. Spoiled willfulness wasn’t incompatible with a total absorption in her chosen area of interest. She’d agreed to the lowly cleaning task because it was the only means to get her own way. Yet she hadn’t needed to work so hard at it.
Then there were her capricious moods, swinging from the pleasantly shy girl he’d first encountered to the demanding witch. Unpredictable behavior was common among the wealthy women he’d encountered, but he couldn’t think of another who made his head spin. While at times he wanted to kill her, right now his thoughts ran more toward kissing.
Recalling a moment in the garden of Windermere House, his attention wandered from his digging. Once again the spade went in too hard and hit something.
“If you can’t be more careful you should stop,” Anne said, scowling at him through the dirt liberally streaking her face. “I’m sure you have many more important things to do.”
Back to Lady Haughty again, and he refused to tolerate it.
“Yes I do,” he said, “I’ll leave you to your grubbing and see to my estate. No doubt you’ll come in when it gets dark. If I don’t see you then, be sure to be here promptly in the morning.”
Feeling a little sad, Anne watched Lithgow stride away in the direction of the manor. She’d enjoyed their conversation and appreciated his help. That was the trouble. The more time she spent with him, the stronger the return of her insidious attraction. He’d listened to her ramblings with every appearance of interest. Her grandfather, the Earl of Camber, had been dismissive when she’d begged him to let her explore some of the thousands of acres under his care. Acres that were now hers and might as well belong to the Man in the Moon for all the good they did her. She could just imagine Lord Algernon’s attitude to her ruling passion. He’d refer with distant tolerance to her odd little enthusiasm, chide her gently for having dirty gloves, and start talking about his ancestors. The notion of him wielding a spade was absurd.
But Lithgow, after softening her up with his apparently genuine interest, had sent her senses whirling when he’d saved her from a fall. Then utterly disarmed her by doing exactly what she needed him to do. And looking very fine while doing it, a miracle of muscular efficiency. But some or all of it was part of his nefarious plan to win her and possess those very acres that seemed a yoke about her shoulders.
Miranda Neville Page 11
