Carla Kelly (27 page)

He had several.
They were lined up like soldiers next to his boots and shoes. She
found one to her liking, and discovered that it would serve the
purpose.

The cane was an
improvement, Omega decided as she took herself from the dressing
room. She looked about Matthew’s bedroom with some interest. She
could imagine no other room for him. It was simple, with plain
furniture, a narrow bed and an overstuffed chair that looked
well-sat-in. She glanced at the book on the table by the chair:
Plato’s
Apology
in Greek, with his favorite passages
underlined. She picked up the other book and smiled. “So you are
also reading
Tom Jones
,” she said. “How relieved I am that
you enjoy a novel now and then.”

She replaced the
book on the table and her eye was caught by an oval miniature lying
facedown. Omega turned it over and tears started in her eyes. It
was her miniature, the one she had given Matthew after the
announcement of their engagement. She was wearing the pink dress he
had so admired, and her hair, wild as ever, was loose around her
face.

Omega had almost
forgotten the miniature; Matthew had not. She realized with a
guilty start that Matthew had given her a miniature in his turn,
which she had pitched in the ashcan after her return from the
church. And here was her portrait, eyes twinkling up at the artist,
still gracing his table after all these years, all this pain. She
set the miniature upright and left the room quickly.

Omega descended
the stairs and gingerly made her way down to the servants’
quarters, where Angela was engaged in helping Tildy arrange some of
the clothes from upstairs into the former housekeeper’s
room.

Tildy flashed her
a smile. “Miss Chartley, I took the liberty of taking some of the
plainer dresses from the dressing room upstairs for your use down
here. And I have loaned you my best apron.”

“
Thank
you, my dear.” Omega looked around her at the other servants, who
had gathered in the servants’ hall. “And thanks to all of you. I
realize what a dither we have dumped you all into. I am sure that
things will be back to normal soon, and I will be on my way to
Durham before too many more days.”

If anyone was
delighted with her disclosure, no one showed it. The butler sighed,
the footman frowned, and Tildy swallowed and looked
away.

“
I
have a position to fill at St. Elizabeth’s in Durham,” she said. No
response, beyond a sniff from the chef when Angela translated for
him. “Someone must educate Britain’s young females, wouldn’t you
agree?”

No one agreed.
With an inscrutable expression Twinings turned back to decanting
the wine, and Tildy dabbed at her eyes before hurrying into the
housekeeper’s room again.

There was nothing
for Omega to do belowstairs, particularly with everyone so
Friday-faced. She resolved to write a letter to Alpha, and then one
to St. Elizabeth’s, in case anyone was wondering yet where she was.
She would keep her letter to Alpha light, describing the national
treasures she had seen, and also those she had not. No need for
dear Alpha to know that she had strayed somewhat from her
itinerary. She hobbled down the hall to Matthew’s bookroom,
searching for paper.

The room was
spotless, nothing out of place. The ledgers and account books were
lined neatly according to height in the bookcase behind the big
desk. From curiosity, she removed one and opened it, marveling at
the careful script and precision of the numbers. Matthew had
accounted for everything on the property, and on his other
properties as well. She opened another book, and another, not so
much to put her nose in his business as to get a better grip on the
life he had lived for the past eight years.

Every sum was
correctly totaled, no column left unfinished. She ran her fingers
down the neat file of numbers. “So this has been your life, dear
Matthew?” she asked. “Instead of wife and children, you have
lavished your care on records.” She sat down and rested her chin on
her hands. “And I have devoted myself to literature and grammar
that little girls forget the minute they are liberated from the
ogre’s classroom. How sad we are.”

Omega remained a
moment longer in contemplation of the sterility of their lives and
then closed the ledgers and replaced them, giving herself a mental
shake. This would never do. She opened a deep drawer in search of
paper, and pulled out a large stationery box.

She opened it and
quickly closed it. Matthew had begun a letter to someone, and she
had no right to pry. Without looking at its contents, she would
reach underneath for a fresh piece of paper. She pulled out another
sheet, sucked in her breath, and extracted another and
another.

“
My
dear Omega,” headed each piece of paper, preceded by the date, and
nothing more. With trembling fingers she pulled out all the sheets
and flipped through them. “Dear Omega,” “Dearest Omega,” “My
beloved Omega,” headed each sheet. The dates went back to 1808, the
first one April 11, the day after she was to have been
married.

Hundreds of pages
rested in her lap. She was too stupefied to cry, and scarcely
remembered to breathe. For eight years, daily at first, and then
fortnightly, Matthew had begun a letter to her, to get no farther
than the salutation. While she had been agonizing in Plymouth,
trying to forget, and very nearly succeeding, he was tearing open
the wound every day of his life.

“
Matthew, how could you do this to yourself?” she asked as the
tears started down her cheeks. She made no move to brush them away,
but let them fall on the pages gripped so tightly in her hands. She
cried for the waste and the sorrow, and when she was done, she
wiped her eyes, gathered up the papers, and threw them all in the
fireplace. With fingers that were steady, she struck a match to the
whole lot and watched it go up in a blaze.

When all the
years were but a pile of ashes, she found one sheet of paper
unwritten upon and pulled herself up to the desk. She dipped
Matthew’s pen in the inkwell and carefully wrote, “Dearest Matthew,
I love you.” She signed it, dated it, wondered at her audacity, and
put it away in the box. He would likely not find it until she was
on her way to Durham, but perhaps it would convince him to stop
tearing at his insides day after day. It was the least she could do
for him.

Omega sat in
silence through the long afternoon in the bookroom, shaking her
head when Tildy tried to bring her luncheon on a tray. She gazed
out the window at nothing in particular, comfortable in Matthew’s
chair. It had molded itself to his shape, and she felt almost that
she was sitting on his lap. It was nothing but pure foolishness,
but she felt better when she finally picked up the cane and left
the room.

Dinner was
another silent affair. Angela had begged permission to share
Tildy’s half-day at her mother’s house, and Omega had consented,
wishing to be alone and not have to be clever or wise or
accommodating. She pushed the food around on her plate, and then
scraped it out the window into the flowerbed, knowing that if she
sent a full plate belowstairs, Antoine would be up in a minute, to
wring his hands and rail at her in French.

She would gladly
have shared the evening with Matthew, and they would not have had
to exchange a word. She remembered many such quiet evenings in her
father’s London house, after their engagement, Matthew with a book,
she with her needlework, content, both of them, to leave the plays,
operas, and routs to others. A case-hardened bachelor and his
little schoolroom lady—how curious everyone had deemed it, and yet
how well they had suited.

Omega talked
sternly to herself and went belowstairs to bed. There was no point
in doing this to herself. Dredging up those tranquil moments was no
better than writing “Dear Omega” over and over. “And if this is
really and truly over, and it must be, then I must forget him all
over again,” she finally told herself as she crawled into bed,
carefully arranged the blanket around her throbbing ankle, and
surrendered herself to sleep.

She slept long
beyond a housekeeper’s hours, oblivious of the sounds in the
servants’ quarters. She woke, stared guiltily at her bedside clock,
and wondered at the air of tension that seemed to fill the room.
She dressed quickly, brushing her hair and then stuffing it
underneath her housekeeper’s cap. Something was terribly wrong, and
she could not identify what it was.

She left the
housekeeper’s room. The servants all sat at the table, no one
speaking. Omega looked around her in surprise. Twinings rose to his
feet when she entered the room, all dignity gone. The look in his
eyes frightened her.

“
Twinings, whatever can be the matter? Has something happened
to Jamie or Matthew?”

He shook his
head. “Miss Chartley, it is Lord Rotherford. He is waiting in the
parlor.”

The other
servants looked at her. Omega managed a feeble laugh. “Surely he is
not a seven-headed Hydra!” she exclaimed. “I trust you made him
comfortable.”

“
A man
like that is never comfortable,” said Tildy with a shudder. “I
won’t go back in the room with him alone! I’ll leave my job first.”
She leapt to her feet, clutching at Omega’s sleeve. “Miss Chartley,
we daren’t turn Jamie over to him!”

Stifling the fear
that was rising in her, Omega touched Tildy’s hand. “My dear, that
was why Matthew went to London. He is trying to resolve this thing.
I had better go upstairs and face the wrath.” She smiled,
attempting to put them at ease. “What name have you given me? Am I
Mrs. Wells?”

“
Yes,
Miss Chartley, we thought that best.”

“
Very
well, then. Angela, whatever are you doing sitting over there in
the corner? Tell Antoine to prepare a luncheon worthy of a
lord.”

She grasped the
cane firmly and hauled herself up the stairs. No one, she told
herself, is such a dragon that he cannot be reasoned with. She
would simply have to make it perfectly clear to Lord Rotherford
that there would be no discussion of Jamie’s removal while Matthew
was away.

The hall was
empty, the front door open. She closed it and entered the parlor,
tucking her unruly hair under her cap.

Lord Rotherford
stood with his back to the door in front of the fireplace,
contemplating the little blaze that took the morning’s chill off
the room. He appeared to be of Matthew’s age, perhaps a little
older. He was dressed as a gentleman, in riding pants and boots,
with a coat as elegant as any she had seen. His hair was dark like
Jamie’s and he was tall and lean.
Nothing to disgust one
,
she thought, and then cleared her throat.

“
Pardon me, Lord Rotherford.”

He turned around,
and she understood.

Her quick glance
took in a handsome face with regular features, even if his nose was
a bit sharp. But all attraction ended at his eyes, and she could
look no further.

They were eyes
totally without expression, eyes without any sense of depth to
them. Nothing sparkled from them, no warmth, no censure even, no
inkling that anyone lived behind them. Omega Chartley had never
seen eyes like that before. As she stood in the doorway, and then
closed the door behind her, she hoped never to see such eyes
again.

She curtsied,
leaning on her cane. “Sir, I am Mrs. Wells, the housekeeper. How
may I help you?”

He took her in
with a long stare, even raising his quizzing glass. Omega felt her
blood grow cold, as if chunks of ice were clogging her veins. The
hairs on her arms rose and remained upright.

“
You
cannot possibly be a housekeeper,” he said at last. His voice was
warm, silky, totally at odds with his unfathomable eyes, which, in
their unblinking way, took in every detail of her face, hair,
dress, deportment, and character. She felt utterly stripped of all
clothing. Even her thoughts seemed to have been scooped from her
head.

This will
never do
, she told herself, and moved deeper into the room,
forcing herself to come toward Jamie’s guardian. “Lord Rotherford,
I am Mrs. Wells and I am the housekeeper.”

His eyes flicked
to her cane and he smiled. “Matthew has taken to hiring the infirm?
I never would have thought him a philanthropist.”

Hot words rose to
her lips, but she swallowed them and managed a slight smile. “I met
with an unfortunate accident on the stairs and sprained my ankle. I
do not, as a rule, require a cane, my lord.”

He made no move
to sit down or suggest that she take a chair, and she remained
standing, shifting the weight off her foot, wondering at his
ability to put her completely at a disadvantage. She gripped the
cane tighter and regarded him with what she hoped was a hospitable
air.

Rotherford came
closer, and she fought down the urge to step back. “My dear Mrs.
Wells—if that is what you choose to call yourself—I am here for my
nephew, James Clevenden. Please tell him to come to me at
once.”

“
Alas,
I cannot do that, my lord.”

He came closer.
“But, Mrs. Wells, I insist.” His voice was so warm that he
practically purred.

Omega raised her
chin a little higher. “I cannot produce him, my lord. He has gone
to a horse-judging show with Major Hugh Owen, a guest of Lord
Byford’s. He is not expected back until tomorrow.”