Etiquette With The Devil

by Rebecca Paula

  “Are you an honest criminal?” he teased before she could reply. “Is there something you must confess to?”

  Well, yes, everything.

  “No, sir.” He was mocking her, the devil. “I attended Marmont School for Girls in London for a number of years. I speak three languages, am skilled in comportment, play the piano—”

  “Yes, yes.” There was a gleam in his eye—whether from jest or interest—she could not discern. “You’re accomplished enough.”

  Enough? You have some nerve to pass judgment so easily, you conceited, impertinent— “The condition of this house is not fit for children,” she bristled. It wasn’t her best put down, but she rarely ever needed those. Clara was more skilled in keeping quiet and making excuses for the poor behavior of others. Her life had been best spent in shadows, tucked away in the corners of rooms. Another poor, sad wallflower of England.

  He cocked an eyebrow at her remark, another grin playing at his lips in between brutal drags at his cigar. The man looked like a handsome chimney. Mr. Ravensdale nodded, before jumping to his feet and moving to the fireplace. He paced back and forth, slowly at first, then quickly, and close to her chair. She wished the man knew how to remain still.

  “Take off your gloves, Dawson.”

  “Hmm?” He had caught her again, watching him stride around the room, restless.

  “Your hands must be freezing.”

  They were, absolutely. She carefully peeled off her left with her right hand, avoiding his eyes. She felt them on her nonetheless, picking her apart. It was almost as if he could see the blood on her palms, the fallen body of Mr. Shaw at her feet before she fled. Her heartbeat picked up and she tried to push aside the panic, trembling as she tore off her right glove, her fingertips numb and red.

  “My brother was a childish man,” Mr. Ravensdale said, continuing on as she counted the ways this could all be a grave mistake. “He avoided his responsibilities, just like my father. When Walter passed, the will requested I convey his children back to England and see them brought up at Burton Hall. The entire mess is nothing I need, trust me.” He ruffled his hair, giving her another appraising look.

  She straightened in her chair, her chest suddenly feeling full as if she had swallowed too much air.

  “I don’t intend to leave the new earl with a crumbling legacy. The estate will be repaired and I’ll hire a competent steward to oversee its success. So yes, the house is not presently an ideal situation, but there are hardly ever ideal situations in life, I find.”

  Clara tipped her chin upward and peered up at him, even as she trembled from cold.

  “An earl?”

  “My nephew is newly the Earl of Stamford.”

  That was a fact left out of the advertisement she had replied to. Curious.

  Clara sighed and knotted her hands together in her lap. If she could only change and get warm, she might have a fighting chance of making a logical decision. Was this truly all she had left?

  “Have you decided against the position?” He came to a stop in front of her and stared down at her with jaded eyes, daring her to run. Little did he know, Clara was a woman disinclined to fainting spells.

  “Mr. Ravensdale, you have a toddler dressed in a man’s shirt, no proper staff, and an exotic menagerie in tow. Excuse my practicality, but I cannot in good conscience leave knowing the urgency of the circumstances.” Clara attempted to straighten her skirts again, anything to give her the appearance of being in control of her circumstances. “So to answer your question, I will take the position.”

  *

  “Don’t scare her off, Barnes,” Bly warned. He kicked his dirty boots onto the mahogany desk with no regard to the old papers and abandoned ledgers scattered on top. He reached for the stack of worn playing cards and shuffled them, trying to make order out of something. Nothing else made much sense.

  “What makes you think I will, Ravensdale?”

  “You were a complete cad.” Bly caught a hint of desperation in his voice and hated himself for it. “I need your help so we can leave this hellhole.”

  Was it awful that Bly wished to have left the children with the Ayha in London? There wasn’t much he hadn’t encountered in his service to the crown, but this…playing the part of family man was too much. He was in over his head.

  “She holds herself like a well-bred lady. My guess is that woman has never worked a day in her life.”

  “She confessed to going to finishing school in London. Marmont School.” Bly waved off Barnes’s observation, but he had found something odd about her too. It was how she held herself. How she puffed herself up like a cobra, ready to strike, while fear possessed her dull eyes. “I never had a governess.”

  “They’re ghastly. I couldn’t stand the few I was punished with. Luckily, I was thrown into Eton and escaped.” Barnes propped himself up by the fireplace, opening and closing his gilded pocket watch in a steady, grating beat.

  Bly fanned the cards out once more, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular. “There is something unnatural about her…she’s strange looking.” He cut the deck again, then stacked the cards.

  “Are you talking about the woman who just walked from the train station, dragging a trunk some five miles by herself? Miss Dawson is beautiful, even if a bit waterlogged.”

  Spoken like the true Romeo he was. “Your heart is too easily won, Barnes. That’s half the trouble with you.” With a flick of his wrist, the cards cascaded to his other hand in an arch.

  She was petite and slender—lithe, was a better word. She was not fresh out of the schoolroom but old enough that one could assume she wasn’t interested in marriage. At least he could assume as much. She had the air of a spinster—hopelessness clung to her as tightly as her soaked dress.

  Miss Dawson was striking for her strong features. Her warm golden hair had been pulled back harshly, further accentuating the square angles of her face. She possessed haunting gray eyes that shined the palest of green in the right light. Her nose was short and a tad too wide with a small bump near its bridge. Her brows were slightly darker than her hair and her skin was a creamy white. Her heart-shaped mouth was full and pink. Perfectly pink.

  He hadn’t been able to look away from those lips of hers.

  Dawson, he admitted grudgingly, was at least somewhat pretty by candlelight. He could not speak for her appearance in the light of day. She arrived wet and shivering from the rain, but he guessed she was cold to the core from the way she spoke with a guarded superiority. He expected her to cry off after he explained the present conditions of her employment, but she remained. Both cold and stubborn, he concluded. Possibly pretty and certainly a spinster.

  “You could at least offer her warm water for a bath,” Barnes said, snapping his watch shut and tucking it into his unbuttoned waistcoat pocket. Why he insisted on dressing so formally was beyond Bly. Velvet had no place in a crumbling house.

  Bly fanned the cards from one hand to the other in an attempt to clear his mind of those discomfiting eyes of the new governess. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because it would be kind, Ravensdale. The woman spent the afternoon in the rain walking here. For you.”

  “If you’re so concerned, why don’t you take hot water to her?”

  “I am not her employer.”

  “Fine,” Bly grumbled, setting the cards down and jumping to his feet. “You know,” he said, striding to the door. “I think being stranded in the jungles of India with malaria would be preferable to being stuck here. Burton Hall is hell on Earth.”

  “You should be right at home then, since you’re destined to spend the afterlife there,” Barnes said, laughing by the fire.

  “God damn it all. You’re right.” Bly raked his hands through his hair and grinned. He was at the devil’s door, but that was not a strange place for him to be.

  *

  It had grown late since Clara first arrived. The small room assigned to her was lit with only a few candles. It must have served as the mornin
g parlor at one time. The furniture was draped in white cloth, looking more like ghosts skulking in the shadows. Little light fell through the two windows, rendering the walls a pea shade of green and revealing once-elaborate woodwork, now chipped and peeling. The musty smell in the air lent to the lugubrious tone of the room.

  She traced the length of the limestone mantelpiece and discovered a small, framed image of a little boy. There was no name and with the limited light, she could not make out the particulars. The room held no further clues to the mystery of the Ravensdale family.

  With another shivering breath, Clara struck a match and lit the fireplace. Her employer hadn’t even seen to that small, basic comfort. He had given her some bread and cheese for dinner when he escorted her to the room, but that was all. She doubted the candles would last longer than an hour.

  And how she hated the dark.

  Her skin stung from the gooseflesh that raised over her body as, piece by piece, she stripped out of the wet layers of clothing and draped them over the covered sofa to dry. Her hands paused over the stays of her corset as a pungent smell filled her nose. A cloud of black smoke billowed from the fireplace when she turned.

  She ran to the windows, half-naked, and tried with all her might to open them, but they would not budge. She flailed her arms, attempting to cut away the smoke. Her eyes stung and watered.

  A knock sounded at the door as panic set in.

  “Come back later. Please,” she called out, unable to stop another cough as the smoke filled her lungs.

  “Dawson?”

  “Come back later,” she cried again. She wouldn’t dare been seen in her current state of undress.

  Instead of a knock, the door rattled on its hinges. “I smell smoke.”

  “Everything is fine.” Or it would be if she only had some water. Why hadn’t he given her any water? She rushed to the fireplace, waving her hands. Maybe if she used the blanket it would smother the fire out.

  Blast! Blast! Double blast!

  Nearly blinded by the smoke, she frantically ran her hand over the sofa searching for her dress. She clutched the cloth in front of her as she dashed to the door and cracked it open. Smoke billowed out around her.

  Mr. Ravensdale stood in front of her, holding a large bucket of water. “Is there a problem, Dawson?”

  “No.” She coughed. His hazel eyes suddenly appeared black, and narrowed. “My fireplace is sooty.”

  He slammed his boot into the door, forcing his way inside. She blushed at the string of curses he uttered upon discovering the smoke-filled room. He dashed in and freed the windows from their swollen jambs. A whoosh of cool moorland air swept in.

  She stood by the doorway, shivering, wide-eyed, and still choking on the smoke.

  “What are you doing? Get out!”

  She flinched back, fleeing the room as ordered. Struggling for air, she braced herself against the wall in the hallway and clutched her wet dress to cover her sooty, damp undergarments.

  A loud splash was followed by the hiss of dying embers. Mr. Ravensdale continued cursing even as he broke into a coughing fit. He emerged covered in soot and glared at her. “Stay there,” he ordered.

  It was a miracle she had avoided hypothermia after the day she had endured. All Clara wished for was to get warm and sleep. She would face the world and rest of its problems in the morning.

  Mr. Ravensdale returned and stiffly held out a worn army blanket in her direction. “That was your bath,” he said, turning his back to her as she dropped her dress and wrapped herself up.

  “I was trying to get warm, sir.”

  “Dawson,” he drawled, turning suddenly without regard for her state of undress. His eyes quickly swept over the pieces of bared, bruised, and stitched skin peeking out from beneath her wet dress. “Ravensdale will suffice.”

  She nodded, knowing full well that she was looking up at him with wide, scared eyes. She hated to be weak just as much as she hated the dark.

  “You can’t sleep in there now,” he said, raking a blackened hand over the shadow of a beard on his cheeks. “Follow me.”

  He practically ran down the darkened hallway, seemingly impervious to the shadows and covered furniture. Ghosts meant nothing to a man like her employer.

  “I am sorry for the trouble I caused si—Mr. Ravensdale.”

  “My whole life is trouble. A sooty fireplace won’t be my demise.” He stopped and turned. “Is there another problem, Dawson?” He grinned as she waddled after him, attempting to match his long stride. It was next to impossible to match, even on her long legs.

  “No.” The final shred of whatever dignity she had left after this godforsaken day disappeared.

  “Good. Go ahead.” He pointed into another room stacked high with trunks and blankets, and supplied with more light than she had been given. The fine mahogany bookshelves lining the walls were too empty for it to be a library, but it certainly appeared that at one point, that was the room’s purpose. Ghosts for furniture, men’s shirts for baby’s clothing, a library without books? Burton Hall was full of eerie curiosities.

  The children were asleep on the floor, resting atop another faded oriental rug, as Mr. Barnes sat in a chair by the fire, feverishly scribbling in an earmarked journal.

  Mr. Barnes was still very much inebriated—at least that was what Clara gathered—as he waggled his eyebrows, gesturing to her bare feet beneath the blanket clutched around her body. “You are doing wonders for my broken heart,” he muttered, oozing wickedness. “What’s happened to your clothes, Miss Dawson?”

  “You are no gentleman,” she whispered back, the anger ringing clear in her put down. Mr. Ravensdale laughed again behind her. She turned to scold him as well, but found herself staring directly at the wall of his chest. He was much too close. For a moment, it was Mr. Shaw she saw looking looked down at her, not Mr. Ravensdale. A metallic taste of panic climbed her throat.

  Clara swallowed back her panic and met Mr. Ravensdale’s stare, determined not to give the man another inch. He had humiliated her enough. “And neither are you, if you find that humorous.”

  “I gave you a blanket, didn’t I?”

  “Ha! Ravensdale has never been a gentleman in his life.”

  Ignoring Mr. Barnes’s observation, she remained focused on her employer. “Yes, you did.” But not much else.

  Mr. Ravensdale kept his hazel eyes steady on her as if they were fixed on the horizon, waiting. “Keep your mouth shut, Barnes,” he ordered. “As for you,” his voice softened as he gazed down at Clara, “you can sleep in that corner.”

  “May I sit by the fire to warm up? Please? I spent far too long drenched and cold.”

  He paused, his shoulders stiff, not moving away from her. Heat rolled off his body and she found herself leaning closer, the room tilting. Or maybe she was too tired to continue standing. Mr. Ravensdale pulled up the corner of her blanket high to her ear, his finger brushing against a lock of her hair. What quiet fire possessed his eyes, what wickedness hid in the lines of his lips? Mr. Ravensdale shrugged, then left her standing alone.

  Perhaps spirits in Burton Hall did not frighten him because he himself was haunted.

  She settled onto the sofa. “I just want to get warm,” she whispered, feeling small and defeated. Her eyelids grew heavy. Just a little longer. She only wished to be warm. The weight of another blanket magically draped over her. She sighed when warmth finally encircled her chilled body. Heaven, at last.

  “Goodnight, Miss Dawson,” she heard through a distant fog. Hands lifted her head, and she tensed, struggling to waken and fight off their touch, but the exhaustion was too much. She sunk into the depths of a glorious pillow.

  “Sleep,” she heard, and then a gruff rebuke. “Wake her. Where am I to sleep?”

  But there was no more movement and no more sound as she fell deep into another dreamless night on her newest adventure in exile.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bly’s late brother, Walter, was laughing at him somewhere.
He doubted it was heaven.

  There was nothing at Burton Hall that did not need repair. It was no secret that Bly despised the place. It was overly elaborate, big enough to house half the village with its twenty-four rooms. And it held memories better left buried than polished and restored.

  When Bly set eyes on the crumbling heap just a week earlier, he heard his father’s snide comments burning in his ears. Then he had heard his mother’s mad murmurings and he knew—he had to settle things quickly and move on before he, too, lost his mind.

  He hated England, the damn village, and that execrable house.

  His only saving grace in this whole mess was Clara Dawson. Though considering the woman nearly burned down the house and had him sleeping on the floor after her arrival yesterday, he wasn’t sure savior was the right word. Irksome, maybe. At least with her in place as governess, he was one step closer to leaving this trouble, and England, well behind.

  The world beckoned him. That was why he was so restless. It must be. It had to be.

  His world had always been larger than the one lived in by most. He could not settle in one place because his body did not know how. There was always another challenge to conquer, another border to cross, another prize to claim. Then there were the smaller pleasures too—the bottles of whiskey to consume, fine cigars to smoke, the feel of a woman’s body beneath his. He liked having mountains to climb, not ledgers to go over or children to constantly mind after.

  Bly reached into his coat pocket, worn and ragged from years of expeditions, and removed a tarnished silver flask. It was past ten in the morning; drinking was acceptable.

  What did it matter? Barnes was still drunk from yesterday.

  He took a long sip of the burning liquid and walked on toward the village’s center. If the villagers were going to accuse him of being the devil, then he could do his part and give them just cause to call him such a name.