Harland stopped in the middle of the bedchamber and gazed at the chaos all around with an exasperated frown.
“Not finished yet, Fellowes?”
“I’m afraid not, my lord,” Georgy murmured, hastily buttoning up her waistcoat. Her coat was off and she knew that her face was rosy from her exertions, a sheen of sweat on her brow.
“I had planned to rest for an hour or so before taking a bath,” he said.
“Do you wish me to clear everything out of the way, my lord? I could take these things into the dressing room and deal with hanging them later. And while you rest I could take your clothes for this evening down to the laundry for pressing.”
“I wouldn’t dream of hindering you in your work, Fellowes. I will read my book while you finish what you’re doing.”
“Very good, my lord.” She did not enjoy working around him. Her awareness of him was too acute. And there was always the worry that if he watched her, he’d notice something wrong.
Harland sat down on the bed. “Help me off with these boots, there’s a good chap.” He stretched a leg out and leaned back, gazing at Georgy from beneath lowered lids.
Their eyes met for just an instant and Georgy felt a jolt in her chest. She looked quickly away, down at his booted leg. It was unlike him to look directly at her. She reached forward to grasp the heel of his boot in one hand and the toe in the other and pulled it off in one smooth controlled movement, placing the boot neatly on the floor beside her. He stretched the other leg out and she dealt with that boot too. Then she glanced back at his face again, expecting his attention to have wandered.
He was still looking at her.
Her heart skittered and she turned away from him, the boots in her hand. She placed them neatly on the floor next to the armoire. She had grown used to having the freedom to look her fill at Harland, certain of his attention always being elsewhere. His sudden attentiveness flustered her badly. Crossing the room, she stumbled over a hatbox.
“Are you all right, Fellowes?” Harland asked, his voice as languid as his carelessly sprawled body.
“Yes indeed, my lord. I should have tidied this hatbox away with the others. I shall do so now.” She busied herself with the task for needless seconds as she regained her composure, forcing herself to breathe deeply and evenly to ease the constriction in her chest, ridiculously aware of her bound breasts and their linen covering. When she turned around again, Harland was standing, shucking off his coat. She stepped forward to help him and bore it away to be hung in the wardrobe in the dressing room. When she returned, he had discarded his waistcoat and was removing his cravat.
She swallowed against the familiar thrum of pleasure she felt at the sight of him undressing. “Do you wish me to fetch your dressing gown, my lord?” she asked in a voice gone suddenly small and tight.
He smiled. “No. The fire has made it rather warm in here. I’m fine like this.”
Georgy had been cursing the fire as she sweated over shifting the heavy armoire. Now she cursed it again for another reason.
“Very good, my lord,” she murmured.
He removed his shirt too, holding it out to Georgy to take away. He settled himself on the bed, arranging the pillows until he had them as he wanted them. For a moment she stared at his naked chest, unable to look away. He assumed a half reclining position, opened his book and glanced up at her. Immediately she felt her cheeks heat and looked quickly away.
She got back to work. She identified everything that belonged in the wardrobe and carted it through to the dressing room, hanging each item carefully and sorting the items that needed pressing immediately. Then she wandered back to the bedchamber to put the mounds of linen away in the armoire.
After a few minutes of folding, she shot another glance at Harland. He was still looking at her. Mortified, she turned quickly away, certain he must be equally uncomfortable. But when she glanced over again a minute later, he had actually put the book down and was staring at her openly. Her cheeks flushed.
“Almost finished now?” he asked in an uncharacteristically friendly tone.
“Almost, my lord. I can take myself off if you’d rather be alone—”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” he smiled. “I’m quite happy sitting here watching you work. It’s quite soothing. Once you’re finished unpacking, perhaps you could arrange for some hot water to shave me?”
“Yes of course, my lord. I shall do so, directly.” She turned her attention back to the linen, but Harland wasn’t finished.
“It’s going to be rather cosy in here, don’t you think, Fellowes? Will you be all right in the dressing room? It looks awfully crowded already.”
“I’m sure I will be fine, my lord.”
“Well, if you’re sure. If you’d rather have proper servant’s quarters, I could speak with Lady Dunsmore—”
“No!” She interrupted him in her haste, then continued more quietly. “I beg your pardon, my lord, but that really will not be necessary. It is only for a few days. It is no trouble at all.”
When he stayed silent, she risked a glance at him. He half sat, half lay on the bed, regarding her with those pitch eyes of his, a lock of hair tumbling over his brow. He looked like a lazy pagan god, watching her. And Lord, but the desire she felt for him nearly floored her. It wasn’t fair.
“Well, if you’re content, Fellowes,” he said at last, reaching for his book once more. And then the unbearable heat of his gaze was off her again and she turned back to the linen.
Nathan observed Fellowes over the top of his book. It was plain to him she was a woman, now that he knew. Which was inconvenient. If she were less attractive, he might have found it easier to tear his fascinated gaze away. Still, he wasn’t the only one she’d fooled with her audacious hoax.
She was like that secret drawer in Lady Dunsmore’s tea chest. Now that he knew the secret, he wanted to know how it worked too. He wanted to see her with other people and watch how she did it.
Before his discovery, he had thought of his valet as a slight, slender, unbearded youth. The fact that she was so fair had helped. It hadn’t seemed odd that she had no obvious whiskers. And of course, he hadn’t been looking at her closely, at first because she was a servant, and later because he’d been much too scared of that pull he’d felt. Scared of what he’d discover in himself.
Clothes maketh the man. That was what Nathan’s father had always said. And it was true. People believed what was presented to them. He’d discovered, very quickly after his arrival in London, that if a young man wore expensive clothes, wandered around with an expression of boredom on his face and generally acted as though he was entitled to ride roughshod over everyone else, he would be assumed to be a fellow of considerable consequence.
It was the same with Fellowes. Nathan had believed her to be a servant because she was discreet and silent and blended into the background. He’d believed her to be a man because she dressed and spoke and behaved like one, and was accepted as such by all around her. But now that he knew she was a woman, the truth was plain to him. This woman’s figure was slender with narrow hips but there was a roundness to her bottom that now struck him as unmistakably feminine. And her features were far too fine to be male.
Her face did not call attention to itself. It was a quiet face. But now that he looked at her, really looked at her, he saw that she was not merely feminine, she was rather lovely, with a delicate jawline and a small pointed chin, a mouth that was sweetly shaped and vulnerable looking, eyes like a still lake. Wary eyes. And he saw that she was canny about hiding herself from him, ducking behind her fringe, casting her gaze downwards, turning her back to him. Becoming invisible.
He watched her bend over, her bottom straining against the snug fit of her breeches, emphasising that tell-tale roundness as though to underline the thought that had been running endlessly through his head all this long damned day: Fellowes is a woman.
In his own breeches, his cock was thick and hard. What if she caught sight of
him growing hard in front of her? He didn’t think he’d manage to keep his cock under control once she was leaning over him, wielding her razor. The thought excited him. He liked the idea of her looking at him. It had been interesting to see how often she glanced at him just now, her eyes flicking over him. Did she like what she saw? Or was she just being watchful? He wanted her to find him appealing. As he did her.
She straightened up again and turned to face him. “If you will excuse me, my lord,” she said, “I will fetch the hot water.”
She stood with her hands behind her back, tidy and alert, the perfect valet.
He wished he could say, No, stand there a moment longer. Or even better, Come here, Fellowes. Kiss me. Instead, he merely nodded. “Yes, do that,” he said. And then he lowered his gaze back to his book in dismissal, pretending to read the same page that he’d been looking at for the last half hour.
Chapter 10
Harland stayed in his chamber the whole time she worked. She asked him twice more if he’d prefer her to leave and twice he assured her it was perfectly all right and she should pay him no heed.
She stumbled through her tasks, clumsy and self-conscious, her eyes continually drawn to his relaxed body, flickering away when he glanced up from his book from time to time and caught her watching him. She wished he would leave, partly because he unsettled her and partly because she was anxious to get her bearings in the house and find out from the servants where the estate records might be found.
Eventually she was able to escape to fetch hot water. She made her way down to the unfamiliar kitchens to stand in line with a host of other visiting servants, none of whom knew anything about the house when she tried to question them.
By the time she got back upstairs, Harland had fallen asleep. The candlelight flickered its shadows over his smooth skin and his face bore a boyish, uncomplicated expression she never saw on him during his waking hours. She realised she was staring and looked away, hating her preoccupation with him when she had something so much more important to be thinking about.
The moment she’d laid eyes on this man, she’d found out what it was to want. What a time to discover the sharpness of desire. She was here to find proof of her and Harry’s birthright. Her ridiculous yearning for Harland—a man who was only supposed to be her pathway to this place—would not promote her purpose.
Irritated with herself, and with him, she clattered the kettle of steaming water down. The noise startled Harland awake. He rose up onto one elbow, his dark eyes disorientated for a moment, until he saw her.
“My apologies, your lordship,” she murmured, turning aside to open the shaving case.
“Not at all. I need to get ready.” Harland yawned widely then added, “Dinner is at seven.”
He levered himself off the bed and stretched his long body with languid grace while Georgy, who was trying not to look, brought a straight backed chair forward for him to sit on while she shaved him. As soon as he sat down she began to dab lather over his face, noticing that his eyes were on her own face as she did so. It was disconcerting. Usually he was inattentive, his gaze elsewhere, but today he followed all her movements, and when she finally leaned over him, brandishing a razor, he tilted his chin to stare up at her. The silence between them seemed to take on weight and charge—it became a physical thing with uncomfortable edges.
She tried to work round the silence, to ignore the insistent pull of his gaze. But eventually her eyes flickered to his and—she couldn’t help it—she faltered, her feet tangling in an uncertain backwards half step. Her grip on the handle of the razor slipped too, an alarmed cry leaving her lips. Desperate to prevent the razor falling on his upturned face, she fumbled to catch it, her hand fastening around the blade. She felt it slice into her skin and another cry emerged, of pain this time.
She stepped away and opened her hand to drop the razor on the floor, registering the fat drops of blood that followed it with odd detachment. Vaguely she was aware of Harland jumping up and the chair falling to the ground behind him. He whipped the towel from his shoulders and grabbed her hand, turning it over to display two parallel cuts, one bisecting the breadth of her palm, the other the mid-joints of her fingers. One cut for each side of the blade. Dark crimson blood welled sluggishly from the wounds and dripped down the side of her hand to land like fat ink blots on the floor.
“My god!” Harland exclaimed, wrapping the towel around her hand and pressing hard. “What happened?”
“I—I stumbled,” Georgy muttered, feeling lightheaded. “I’m sorry. So—so clumsy of me…”
“Don’t be absurd. Sit.” He pushed her backwards till the back of her thighs hit the bed. His right hand on her shoulder urged her to sit while his left gripped the towel. Once she was sitting, he took her uninjured hand and pressed it on top of the towel.
“Hold this.”
He fetched another towel and wiped the lather from his face, then crossed the room to pull the bell rope. A moment later he returned to her side and took her hand again, his dark silky head bent over, tantalisingly close. He was half naked still. Her eyes wandered over his smooth broad shoulders, the back of his neck, the strong line of his curving spine. Her mouth all but watered, the fingers of her uninjured hand tingling with the need to touch him. She wanted to protest when the knock came at the door and he stood to walk away again.
He sent the maid at the door for bandages and salve then came back to Georgy’s side to gently unpeel the towel and look at her bloody hand.
“Let’s clean this,” he said.
“There’s no need—”
“Be quiet, there’s a good chap.” Harland fetched the basin from the armoire and filled it with some of the still-warm water Georgy had brought up from the kitchens. He picked up the cravat he’d abandoned earlier, submerging the pure snowy fabric in the water.
“Not your cravat!” Georgy protested automatically, thinking of how difficult it would be to get the blood out. But he ignored her, wringing it out and using it to wipe the smears of blood that surrounded the cuts, careful not to touch the edges of sliced flesh.
The linen drank the blood up greedily, turning the water pink when he dipped it back in the basin. Georgy stared at the pink water, feeling woozy. She’d never been good with blood.
The maid returned with a bottle, a jar and an armful of bandages. After a brief discussion, Harland dismissed her and returned to Georgy’s side, dropping down to his knees and taking her hand in his.
“Try to keep still.”
The bottle contained a dark brown liquid that smelled acrid. He soaked a bit of bandage with it and dabbed it onto each cut, making Georgy hiss her breath in at that burn of it. The oily looking salve was more soothing. He lathered that on profusely and it numbed the sting within moments. He bandaged her hand then, laying a strip of linen across his knees then drawing her hand onto it before deftly wrapping. After securing it in place, he looked up.
“How does that feel?”
She lifted her hand and experimentally curled her fingers, feeling tenderness and pain.
“Better,” she said. “Thank you.”
He smiled. “You’re welcome.”
God, his smile. There was invitation in it. Or something. Something direct and real. Their gazes held for a long, heart-stuttering moment until she panicked and looked away, all confusion. And then he was standing up and lifting the ruined cravat from the bowl again, kneeling down to wipe up the drops of blood from the floor. When he was finished, he lifted the razor and cleaned the blade.
“Oh, please don’t,” Georgy protested, horrified. “I can do that later.”
“And I can do it now. I’m not completely helpless, you know. I can even manage to shave and dress myself without your assistance, when the occasion demands.” He grinned. “Well, with very little assistance anyway.”
“But I’m fine!”
“No you’re not. You’re as white as a sheet. Go and lie down for a while. I’ll get myself ready.” When she opened her mo
uth he held up a hand. “I’ll call you if I need help with my coat. Now go. Quite aside from this, you’ve been on the go for twelve hours at least.”
And with that unfamiliar bit of solicitude, he turned around and began to lather up his face again. She stared at his broad back for a moment. And then she walked wearily towards the dressing room to lie down on her narrow truckle bed.
After Harland had gone down to join the other guests, one of the maids knocked on the door to tell Georgy that the kitchen would be serving dinner for the upper servants shortly. Georgy took the opportunity to quiz the girl about the layout of the house under the guise of asking directions to the kitchens.
It seemed she was in luck. Some of the guests’ chambers were on the floor above, but Harland was one of the guests who had been given rooms on the same floor as the family. The maid happily informed her that all the master’s rooms—his bedchamber, dressing room and study—were further down the corridor, just round the corner from Harland’s own.
Georgy assured the maid she would be down shortly, then waited until the girl had been gone several minutes before emerging from the chamber. But instead of turning left towards the servants’ staircase, she turned right, following the corridor into the east wing of the house where the family’s rooms were.
Half a dozen identical closed doors lined the hallway. She was staring at them, wondering which were Dunsmore’s rooms, when one of them unexpectedly opened and the man himself emerged. The candles in the wall-sconces flickered from the sudden draught and Georgy took an alarmed step backwards.
“Who are you?” Dunsmore demanded, his dark brows beetling. “What are you doing here?”
“I—I beg your pardon, my lord,” Georgy stammered. “I’m Lord Harland’s man. I must have taken a wrong turn. I was looking for the servants’ way down to the kitchens.”
She darted a glance behind him. The room behind him was almost dark, but a dying fire cast enough light for her to see it was a study, dominated by a large desk. When she glanced back at Dunsmore, he was regarding her suspiciously.
The Lady’s Secret Page 9
