Hidden Paradise

by Janet Mullany

  Di laid her sewing aside and stood to help Lou remove her gown.

  “Is that mine?” Lou gazed at the deep red gown on the dress form. “I love the color, but it doesn’t seem to have a bodice.”

  “I thought you were woman enough for a bit of titty reveal,” Viv said. “You’ll have an over gown but you’ll have to pull your shift down like this—” She was tugging as she spoke. “Di can help on the night of. And the gown comes with its own petticoat.”

  Lou looked down at herself, at her breasts pushed up onto a shelf, nipples visible.

  “Regency girls really didn’t care if a bit of nipple showed,” Viv said. “Your areolas are quite light because you’re fair skinned, but if you want to be really naughty you can rouge them. So your dance partners will have to look quite hard. So to speak,” she added with a dirty cackle.

  The petticoat was followed by more tugging of shift and petticoat and stays, and then a slither of satin as the gown was dropped over her head. Di tied the two laces at the back.

  As she adjusted the drawstring at the bodice, Mac simultaneously knocked at the door at the bottom of the stairs and entered the room.

  “Sorry, I forgot my— Shit, Lou, what are you wearing?”

  Lou hastily crossed her arms over her chest. Don’t think you’ll sneak a peek, mister.

  “Bugger off,” Viv said, throwing a length of fabric around Lou’s shoulders.

  The door banged behind Mac as he retreated.

  “I’m going to have to leave you topless for a bit,” Viv said. “Let me just check the hem. Turn, please. Looks okay. Wait, let me adjust here. And here. Good. Now the overdress, which creates the train. You’ll have to practice walking in it so you don’t tread on it.”

  The overdress, of dark red gauze embroidered with black and gold, wrapped around her like a shawl, held in place with a paste clasp under her breasts, creating a plunge that emphasized her cleavage and breasts.

  “Oh, wow!” Lou stared at her reflection. “That’s amazing. Absolutely gorgeous.”

  “I thought you’d like it,” Viv said. “And if you did want to chicken out—which I know you won’t—we’ll provide an inset you can pin inside the gown. We’ll make you up a headdress, quite simple.” She nodded at a tangle of overdress fabric and gold cord on the worktable. “They’ll be bursting out of their pants, Lou.”

  “Oh. Good. I guess.”

  “Yes, we have some nice military men coming from the local reenactment society if Mac lets them get near you.”

  “I don’t think he’ll care one way or the other,” Lou said.

  “Really?” Viv tilted her head to one side like a gossipy bird. “He’s such a sensitive soul, isn’t he?”

  “He is?” Lou said in disbelief. Mac, a sensitive soul?

  “Oh, yes, he was on Skype with his daughter earlier. So sweet. Which reminds me, would you like to check your email now you’re two centuries ahead? We’ll get you changed and you can make yourself at home, have a cup of tea and a gossip if you like.” She moved to plug in her electric kettle. “Of course, the problem with Mac is that he needs a really big story to get his career going, but he has to do all these journalistic fluff pieces to pay the bills. Di, let’s get the gown off and make Lou decent and then we can have a cuppa.”

  Back in her everyday cotton gown again, Lou scrolled through her emails. Nothing important—she typed up quick, affectionate responses to her sisters and a noncommittal but friendly progress report to her dissertation advisor. And then a subject line caught her eye and made her gasp in shock: We have an offer, asking price.

  * * *

  SHE FOUND HERSELF WANDERING IN the woods, her gown darkened a foot deep with moisture that had seeped into it, bewildered, with only the barest of memories of what she’d done after reading the email. She’d turned down the tea, which was a shame because now she was thirsty, and she’d probably stained her gown and Viv would be furious—she stopped to untangle her skirts from a spray of bramble. She should figure out how to get back to the house, which shouldn’t be that complicated, but she had no idea where she was.

  She sniffed the air. Someone was burning wood nearby, so she wandered between the trees toward the scent, expecting to come upon one of the grounds staff. Sure enough, a small cottage with an overgrown garden and a decayed gate hanging from a moss-covered stone post lay ahead, a thread of smoke emerging from the chimney.

  “Hello?” she called. A flagstone path, overgrown with moss and grass, led to the front door, which stood ajar. She pushed it open. The smell of smoke was much stronger here, billowing out into the room. A footman knelt in front of the fireplace, poking a stick up the flue. “Rob?”

  “What?” He turned and scrambled to his feet, removing earplugs. An iPod was lodged in his coat pocket. “Christ, you gave me a scare, ma’am.”

  “Sorry.” She looked around at the one room of the cottage, windows shrouded in cobwebs and a huge black range surrounded by tiles. “What is this place?”

  “It’s the groundsman’s cottage. I came to have a look at it, see if the chimney was okay.” He squatted and poked at the flue again and gave a grunt of satisfaction as a mess of twigs and debris fell into the grate. “I’m hoping my dad will get a job at Paradise and he can live here with my brother.”

  “Oh. I see.” To her, it didn’t look at all suitable for a small child to live in. “Won’t he need a bathroom?”

  “There’s one through the door there. The water isn’t on yet.”

  She took a quick look through the doorway and saw an ancient rusty toilet with a ceiling-mounted tank and chain, and a claw-footed bathtub.

  “It could be really nice once it’s cleaned and fixed up,” he said.

  “So when does he start?”

  He looked away and mumbled, “He only just applied. And I’m not sure he’ll get it.” He straightened up and poked at the fire in the hearth. “The upstairs is cool. Come and look at it. If you want to, that is.”

  “Okay.” She followed him upstairs, where there were two tiny bedrooms right under the roof, and the collapsed remains of an iron bedstead and a few rags lay sadly abandoned on the dusty wooden floor.

  “See?” he said. “Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Well…yes, I think it has a lot of potential.” Her approval seemed so important to him that she found herself agreeing.

  “There’s no electricity upstairs but Graham can do his homework downstairs, and I’ll come over from the house…”

  “But you’re going to Cambridge. You’d only be here during vacations.”

  “Yeah.” He ran down the stairs ahead of her, saying over his shoulder, “Well, it’s not one hundred percent certain.”

  “What do you mean?” She followed him down the stairs. “I thought you had a really big-shot scholarship. It’s a chance in a lifetime. What happened?”

  He walked over to the fireplace and kicked the dying embers of the fire. “It’s complicated.”

  She waited, but he didn’t seem anxious to elaborate. He unscrewed the top of a bottle of soda that stood on the windowsill, and offered it to her.

  She took a gulp, feeling like a junkie. She’d had coffee and tea over the past few days but hadn’t realized until now how much she’d missed a cold, sweet and carbonated drink. “Thanks. I’d better get back to the house.”

  “I’ll come with you.” He took the bottle back from her and placed it in his coat pocket. “Don’t want to get a reputation for skiving
off.”

  “You always seem to work very hard,” Lou said.

  He shrugged, and ushered her out of the cottage, locking the door behind them. “It’s the sort of job where you have to balance what’s expected and what you can get away with not doing. Haven’t you read Swift? His advice to servants?”

  “Tell me about it,” she said. She always loved it when one of her students wanted to share a new discovery.

  “Well, it’s a sort of joke how-to book for servants. I found it online when I was applying for this job. If you’re sent out on an errand, you should stay out for hours and have a really good excuse when you come back, like you were saying goodbye to a cousin who was to be hanged, or you’d been to look for your master and had to visit a hundred pubs.” He grinned. “It’s pretty funny.”

  “It sounds as though he’d met some very aggravating servants. You might like his poetry. Some of it is very ribald and savage, but others are quite tender and lovely. He was an interesting man. I’m sure there are some of his books in the library at the house.” She looked around at the thick growth of trees and bushes. “Which way do we go?”

  “This way.” He led the way to a break between some bushes that turned out to be a path, taking them to the far side of the lake. The summerhouse stood graceful and shining on the opposite bank.

  He went ahead, bending branches back out of the way, while she tried not to get her gown more muddy than it was. As they approached the summerhouse, the light changed from bright to dark and rain came splattering down.

  “Run!” He caught her hand and they ran to the comparative shelter, where they watched rain slant and gust over the lake.

  Lou laughed, pushing her disordered, wet hair back, and realized she was still hand in hand with Rob. How shocking, holding hands with a servant, and neither of them wearing gloves.

  “Rob,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on with you and university. Can I help?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Rob

  He’d told Di some of it, but not everything. Now words tumbled out of him. He found himself pacing, waving his arms, his fists clenched. At one point, he had to walk away from her and lean his heated face against a pillar, afraid he would cry. He swore a lot, which embarrassed him—after all, Mrs. Connolly was older than him and a teacher and it didn’t seem right, and why was he so angry here and now?

  Finally, he stumbled to a stop, leaning against a pillar and looking out over the lake. There was a rainbow—Christ, what a cliché—in a steel-gray sky, and the swans floated out onto the water, snaking their necks around. He stopped talking.

  “That sucks,” she said, and it was so unexpected he wanted to laugh. But he was still afraid of crying and it seemed that a laugh might very well go the wrong way and end up with him bawling his eyes out like Graham.

  “So you haven’t heard from your mom at all?”

  “No. We don’t know where she is.”

  “Shit,” she said. Another surprise. “No other family? How about grandparents?”

  “She was the one who kept in touch with everyone, because most of them don’t like my dad. So we didn’t see much of them. And she took the address book with her.”

  She snorted. “I don’t much like the sound of your dad.”

  “He’s not that bad. I mean, he’s a stupid wanker, but he’s my dad.”

  She came over to him and laid her hand on his sleeve. “If I may step out of line here, Rob, you do realize that just because they’re your parents doesn’t mean they’ll never fuck up. It sounds to me like she left her husband, not her children.”

  “But she did leave us,” he said, sounding like Graham at his whiniest.

  “Yeah. It sucks. But what makes me really mad, Rob, is your dad manipulating you and trying to get you to drop your place at Cambridge. Don’t do it. You obviously love your brother a lot and that’s admirable, but don’t sacrifice yourself for him. It won’t help anyone in the long run. Think he’ll care in ten years’ time? He won’t. But you will.”

  “But—” Wow, she looked great when she was worked up and wet, with her dress sticking to her and her hair going all wild around her face. He promptly forgot what he was going to say.

  “I see kids going to college for all the wrong reasons,” she said. “I get to grade their shitty papers. I’d hate to see a smart, nice kid like you screw up.”

  “You think I’m nice,” he said. He was coming to the boil again, but in a different way this time. “I’m not nice, Lou. Not if you knew what I was thinking.” He was about to do something that was not at all smart and was definitely not the action of a kid.

  Her eyes seemed to go wide and she swallowed hard. “And what’s that?”

  He pushed her against one of the columns and bent his head to hers; her breasts and the hard ridges of her corset pushed into his chest, and she gave a small gasp of surprise. He swooped his mouth onto her open lips—they were soft and sweet—and her body seemed to change, becoming more pliant, yielding to him, inviting him. He cupped her face with his hand, her skin smooth and delicate against his palm, her pulse beating against his fingertips.

  She made a sound he couldn’t really interpret but one of her hands latched on to his arse, pulling him against her. If she’d had any doubt how randy he was before, she knew now, with his hard-on pressed between them, driving against her.

  Her tongue slithered against his, explored his lips, and then her head tipped back to allow him to suck and nibble at the pale skin of her throat and shoulders.

  She pushed him away as his hands curled around her breasts, laughing. “You’re absolutely right. You’re not nice. Nice young men don’t kiss like that.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lou

  “What?” He stared at her, dazed, and then laughed. He backed off and sat down on one of the stone benches at the base of a pillar, and she could tell he was embarrassed by his erection.

  “Look,” she said, “we’re both in a state of turmoil at the moment and, if you like, we can just forget this and move on. I’m too old for you, and—”

  “Wait.” He held up a hand, grinning. She’d never seen him smile so broadly. “There’s only one direction I want to move in, and that’s into bed with you. How old are you, anyway? And, shit, this is all coming out wrongly, but what’s your state of turmoil? You’ve been listening to me rant and I didn’t even notice you were upset.”

  “Oh.” She flapped her hands at him. “My ranch—well, that’s a bit grandiose, it’s more of a small farm but it’s in Montana—I put it on the market, not even expecting it would sell and not even knowing whether I wanted to sell. It’s complicated. I found out today there’s been an offer, the asking price, and now I don’t know what to do. And I’m twenty-seven.”

  “I’m nineteen. Eight years. Is it that big a deal?”

  “Actually, yes. I teach kids—sorry, young adults—your age. You’re taboo.”

  “You perv, Mrs. Connolly. Doesn’t that give you a tingle?”

  “You give me a tingle. And you’re nice—no, really, you are. You’re kind. You’re a decent sort of guy. You helped me upstairs when I was drunk as a skunk, and didn’t even grope me. I don’t want to be a corrupter of youth but you’re obviously not that innocent. And I certainly don’t want to play the cougar.”

  “Yeah. Well. I wouldn’t worry about that too much. I don’t think an eight-year difference qualifies you as a cougar. You’re not my idea of a coug
ar.” He studied his feet, crossed at the ankle, as though finding something fascinating there. “So what’s the deal with the ranch? Do you think you’ll sell it?”

  She was surprised at his thoughtfulness. “Do you really want to know?”

  He nodded, so she continued, “I’ve lived there for just over a year. I have about ten acres, a few head of cattle, a horse and a couple of dogs. It’s very small, but it’s in a beautiful setting. I was married there. My husband’s ashes are scattered there. I don’t know if I can bear to leave, but I don’t think I can bear to stay, either.”

  “Do you have to tell them yes or no right away?”

  “I emailed that I was thinking about it. With the way the market is right now, I thought I could wait months for an offer, let alone one where they agreed to my asking price. My sister wants me to move back to Boston—most of my family is on the East Coast—but it’s hard to get a teaching job anywhere. My job is pretty crappy but it grounds me.”

  He nodded. “But you’re out in the middle of nowhere, right? Don’t you get lonely?”

  “Yes. It’s a two-hour drive to the campus. My nearest neighbor is five miles away, and that’s considered virtually in each other’s backyards.” She hesitated, thinking again of his situation. “Would you like me to talk to Peter and Chris about your dad? It’s okay, I know about Peter’s indiscretion.”

  He snorted and stood up, swinging his arms. “Indiscretion. Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

  “He said you were very mature about it,” Lou said.

  “It happens. You fancy the wrong people. You get over it. There’s no need for you to talk to them on my behalf, but thanks for offering.”

  “Okay,” she said, thinking a quick word with Chris might not be a bad idea, and Rob hadn’t actually told her not to. She suspected he was smart enough to know she’d do it anyway. “I’d better get back to the house.”