By the limited illumination of a few candles, the relentlessly businesslike Mrs. Hatfield looked weary. “I’ll be going out again, just across the street, and I don’t light the hearth until I’m in for the night. Thank you for your escort, Your Grace.”
Eleanora Hatfield, like much of London, had no cooking facilities in her domicile. Of course, she’d go out to fetch a hot meal, and of course she’d shoo him away before she did.
Rex wasn’t feeling shoo-able, for once. “I’m still dressed for the weather,” he said. “I’ll get us some food, while you consider a strategy for organizing our efforts over the next two weeks.”
He bowed and left before she could argue. By the time he returned, she’d curled up in a chair, her shawl about her shoulders, her hearth crackling. She’d also fallen asleep.
Rex dealt with the cat first, unwrapping a morsel of fish and leaving it on its paper in a corner. For himself and his hostess, salty fried potatoes came next and slices of hot roasted beef followed. The scents were humble and tantalizing, and apparently enough to tempt Mrs. Hatfield from her slumbers.
“You bought beef and potatoes.”
She looked at him as if he’d served her one of those fancy dinners Mama made such a fuss over. Six removes, three feuding chefs, footmen run ragged, the sommelier pinching the maids, and all the guests more interested in flirtation than food.
“Voltaire has started on the fish course,” Rex said. The cat was, in fact, growling as she ate, and sounding quite ferocious about her meal.
“Her manners were formed in a hard school,” Mrs. Hatfield said, sitting up. “Where are my—?”
Rex passed her the spectacles, though he preferred her without them.
“Have you cutlery,” he asked, “or do we shun etiquette for the sake of survival?”
“In the sideboard.” She took a plate from him. “I can put the kettle on if that—you brought wine.”
“A humble claret, but humility is a virtue, I’m told.”
The shared meal reminded Rex of something that ought to also be part of a peer’s curriculum: Some people had the luxury of chatting and laughing as abundant food was put before them. Other people had such infrequent acquaintance with adequate nutrition, that the notion of focusing on anything other than appreciation for food was a sort of blasphemy.
Eleanora Hatfield ate with that degree of concentration. She did not hurry, she did not compromise her manners, but she focused on her meal with the same single-mindedness she turned on Rex’s ledgers.
“You have known poverty,” he said, buttering the last slice of bread and passing it to her. “Not merely hard times or lean years. You have known the bleakest of realities.”
She took the bread, tore it in two, and passed half back to him. “There’s no shame in poverty.”
“I doubt there’s much joy in it, either.”
“We managed, and I am impoverished no longer.” She launched into a lecture about concentric rings of responsibility, redundant documentation, and heaven knew what else. Rex poured her more wine, put an attentive expression on his face—he excelled at appearing attentive—and let his curiosity roam over the mystery of Eleanora Hatfield.
She’d known hardship, and she’d probably known embezzlers. She’d decided to wrap herself in the fiction of widowhood or wifehood, but not the reality, and she was truly passionate about setting Rex’s books to rights.
The longer she talked about the many ways his estates could have been pillaged—while he’d waltzed, played piquet, and debated the Corn Laws—the more he appreciated her fierceness and the more he wondered how she’d come by it.
“When should I call upon you tomorrow?” he asked, rising and gathering up the orts and leavings of their meal.
“At the end of the day,” she said, standing to take the greasy paper from him. “I’ll use this for kindling, and I leave any empty bottles in the alley for the street children to sell. In cold weather, their lives grow more perilous than usual.”
She drew her shawl up and looked away, as if those last words should have been kept behind her teeth.
Rex shrugged into his great coat, wrapped a cashmere scarf about his neck, and pulled on gloves lined with rabbit fur. Autumn had not only turned up nasty, winter was in the offing.
“I want you to consider something,” he said. “Something in addition to the various ways my trusty staff is bilking me of a fortune.”
“Not all of your staff, we haven’t established that.”
Not yet, though anybody seeking to steal from the Elsmore fortune was doomed to eventual discovery, now that Eleanora Hatfield was on the scent.
“Please consider a theoretical question: If instead of allowing my coffers to be pillaged by the enterprising thieves in my employ, I had donated that money to charity, where would you have had me put those funds?”
He had her attention now, and having Eleanora Hatfield’s attention was not a casual state of affairs.
“You are asking about thousands of pounds, Your Grace.”
“No, actually, I am asking for your trust. You will soon know all of my secrets, Eleanora. You will know where I have been lax, where I have been less than conscientious about my duties. You will know who has betrayed me. Not even my priest knows me that well, not even my siblings. I am asking much of you, and in return, all I can offer is an assurance that your secrets would be safe with me.”
Her gaze was momentarily dumbstruck, then puzzled, then troubled. “Thank you, Your Grace, but in my line of work, I can afford to trust no one.”
Interesting choice of verb—afford. “You like it that way.”
“I need it that way.”
How honest, and how lonely. Elsmore brushed her hair back over her ear, and when she did not protest that presumption he bent nearer. She stood still, eyes downcast, though he well knew she was capable of pinning his ears back.
“Eleanora?”
She closed her eyes, and he realized that was as much permission as he would get from her. He kissed her cheek and let himself out into the chilly corridor, pausing only long enough to make sure she locked the door after him.
As if her mind had imparted its restlessness to his own, Rex walked the distance to his home, turning over questions and ignoring the persistent freezing drizzle. Two streets from his doorway, he took off his gloves and scarf and left them in an alley.
Why had he kissed Eleanora Hatfield? Even a chaste gesture such as he’d bestowed on the lady was an intimacy, and with the least intimacy-prone female he knew. Why cross that line? Why blur those boundaries? His musings yielded no satisfactory answers, but then, a man who failed to notice his trusted staff dipping into his coffers, a man who overlooked drinking from the wrong tea cup, was probably overdue for an audit of his own sentiments and motivations.
* * *
Order your copy of Forever and a Duke!
Haddonfield Reading Order
And about those Haddonfields…. Here’s a reading order for Max’s siblings, except for Lady Della, whose happily ever after yet awaits some inspiration (ahem, Ash Dorning):
* * *
Nicholas: Lord of Secrets
Ethan: Lord of Scandals
Beckman: Lord of Sins
Tremaine’s True Love (Lady Nita Haddonfield gets main character honors, George Haddonfield’s HEA is the sub-plot)
Daniel’s True Desire (Lady Kirsten Haddonfield)
Will’s True Wish (Lady Susannah Haddonfield)
* * *
Happy reading!
Grace
s-inline-share-buttons">share
Love and Other Perils Page 21
