The Handbook to Handling His Lordship (3 page)

“You’re always politic, Jenny. It’s a talent of yours.”

This time Miss Martine grinned. “One among many.” Walking over, she picked up a bucket, dipped it into the bathwater, and headed for the door. “You dispose of this in the back garden, do you not?”

“The roses seem to like the henna. Or the tea. Or the lemon juice. I don’t know which one it is.” She frowned as she pulled on the simple blue muslin she’d brought into the bathing room with her. If she was to oversee dinner, she would need to change into something more enticing. Being noticed intentionally seemed mad to her, but on the other hand this was a house of beautiful women. A plain one would stand out like a crow amid peacocks. “You don’t need to help me, Jenny. I’ll manage.”

“Nonsense. And if you’re worried about my discretion, consider that I’ve known for the past two years that you color your hair, my dear. And this is the first word I’ve spoken on the topic. If you wish, it will also be the last.”

Clearly Genevieve Martine didn’t believe that Emily altered her hair color because of vanity, just as both Jenny and Lady Haybury knew that she had a past of which she refused to speak. “I would prefer that the topic be closed,” she said slowly, reflecting that while it might have been nice to have someone with whom to discuss whatever she wished, the counter to that would be that someone else would have information she’d worked for the past three years to bury.

“Then it is closed.” Jenny waited until Emily had finished buttoning up her muslin, then pulled open the door. “And I will still help you carry water to the roses.”

Emily cracked a smile. “Perhaps one day we can chat about henna,” she said in a low voice, “but for the moment I prefer to keep my secrets.”

“I have several of my own, as well. I do understand.”

Considering what she did know of Jenny Martine, of her mastery of several languages and the occasional references Diane made to her dearest friend’s “adventures” in Europe during the Peninsular War, Emily didn’t doubt that for a moment. She did wonder, however, if any of Jenny’s secrets involved murder. But that was one conversation she meant never to have.

*   *   *

A week roving across Shropshire had made one thing very clear to Nathaniel Stokes: Rachel Newbury knew how not to be found.

None of the Marquis of Ebberling’s servants knew where she might have gone. None of them even knew who or where her parents might be. The letter of recommendation she’d produced upon applying for employment at Ebberling Manor proved to be false; at the least
Debrett’s Peerage
had no listing for a Lady Sebret. The fact that altering one letter of this mysterious previous employer’s name made it read as
Secret
didn’t escape him, either.

“Was your trip successful, my lord?” his valet asked, as Nate took a seat on the edge of his bed to pull off his boots. The button fell to the floor, spinning on its end, and he stepped on the damned thing to silence it.

“No, Franks, it was not,” he stated, flexing his tired feet. However necessary he’d come to think of his assumed frailties, another day or two without resting his foot and his limp would have become real. “You servants chat with each other, do you not?”

“We do all dine together, generally.”

“You know about each other’s families, relatives, places of birth, yes?”

The valet continued emptying out Nate’s travel valise. “For the most part, yes. Some are more reticent than others, and I can’t say I know—or remember—every detail, but we do talk.”

“And what would you say if one of your fellows never divulged anything of her past? Never said a word about anything that occurred before the moment she took the position?”

“I would say that perhaps she was fleeing from something unpleasant, or sad.” Franks scowled briefly. “Or illegal. In that instance it would be the butler’s duty to discover if a crime had been committed, because that would reflect badly on the entire household.”

“That’s what I thought.” Ebberling’s butler hadn’t known anything useful about Miss Newbury other than to second the marquis’s statements that the woman had been quite young, pretty, well educated, and rather haughty.
High in the instep,
as the butler had declared.

“Will you be staying in this evening, my lord?”

He shook himself, belatedly removing his spectacles and tossing them onto the bed. “Yes, I believe I will. Inform Mrs. Blanchard, will you?”

“Certainly, my l—”

“There you are.” A warm male voice came from the doorway.

Nate turned his head, pushing back against the instinct to reach for the pistol in his bedstand. “Laurie.”
Damnation
. He’d completely forgotten about his brother’s impending arrival. It wouldn’t do if he actually became as absentminded as he pretended.

“I expected a dressing-down when I arrived,” the nineteen-year-old drawled, strolling into the room. “Had a defiant speech memorized and everything. Didn’t expect you wouldn’t even be in London to hear it.”

Clenching his jaw, Nate sent a glance at the valet. “That will be all, Franks.”

“Very good, my lord.”

“You were on one of your hunts, weren’t you?” Laurence Stokes asked, shutting the door behind the servant. “What is it this time? A missing ring? Some lordling’s stray dog? You’re an earl now, you know. Your new peers will only look down their noses at you if you allow them to hire you to find their bits and baubles.”

“Are you certain now is the best time for you to be criticizing how I choose to occupy myself?” Nate countered. “Unless you’re hoping I’ll be so busy with defending my honor that I’ll forget why you’re here.”

Laurence waved a dismissive hand at him and flopped into one of the chairs placed before the empty fireplace. “I learned a long time ago that you never forget anything, Nate. You’ve a library for a brain, with every topic neatly indexed for later reference.”

“And you have a sieve for a brain, retaining nothing but absolute nonsense.” Nate stood, but with his tired foot he didn’t feel much like pacing. Instead he sank into the chair placed at right angles to his brother’s. “In your letter you said you had a disagreement with one of your professors. At least tell me it was something academic and not a moral clash over whether you should be allowed to have a whore in your rooms or not.”

Laurie wrinkled his nose. “Do you have any idea how tiresome it is to have you for a brother?” he finally said, a sigh in his voice. “However clever I may think I’m being, you simply cut a swath through all the cobwebs of deceit, put your hands on your hips, and bellow out the facts.”

Ignoring the fact that he hadn’t bellowed anything, and that evidently his brother
had
been caught with a chit in his rooms, Nate cocked his head. “‘Cobwebs of deceit’?” he repeated.

“I was going to say
clever cobwebs,
but I’d already used
clever,
and you would have said I was repeating myself.” Laurence thudded a fist into his thigh. “I know you don’t want me here, and honestly I’d rather be back at Oxford with my friends, but I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

“How long is this punishment?”

“Yours, or mine?” Laurence shrugged. “The term’s nearly over. I’ll miss a fortnight, and the final exams.”

For a long moment Nathaniel gazed at his brother. People said they looked a great deal alike, but other than having the same green eyes, he didn’t see it. Laurie’s hair was darker, more of a solid brown than his own. Nate was taller by two or three inches, but he remained uncertain how long that might be so. No one, however, had ever said they behaved alike. And for that, he was generally grateful. “Being excluded from final exams isn’t a first offense, Laurence,” he finally said. Ten years separated them, but most of the time it felt more like a hundred.

“I—”

“I hope you realize this isn’t a holiday. You’re not going to spend your days at Gentleman Jackson’s or Haymarket or Tattersall’s, and you damned well aren’t going to any clubs or soirees.”

“So you mean to keep me locked up here? In the cellar, I presume?”

“You’re heir to an earldom now, and you’re going to be more prepared for it than I was.”

“Prepared how?” his brother asked, green eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“To begin with, I’m going to show you all of the accounts and ledgers. And then you can balance them.”

“On my head?”

“Very amusing. And yet I’m not at all moved toward sympathy.”

“Nate, that isn’t—don’t you have people who do that? Cousin Gerard must have, because he couldn’t do a sum to save his life.”

“I do hope that wasn’t a jest aimed at our dear late cousin’s unfortunate and untimely demise, Laurence.”

His brother flushed. “No, of course not. He drowned, anyway. That had nothing to do with ledgers. Unless he threw himself into the lake to avoid balancing them.”

Nathaniel stood. “And now I’m even less sympathetic toward you. I’ve been the Earl of Westfall for two years. It’s time you learned something useful. Let’s begin with the accounts of three years ago, shall we?”

“Nate, I was only attempting to keep you from yelling at me for the chit in my rooms. Don’t be a bloody axeman.”

Hm. That actually seemed a rather apt description. But no one had ever asked him how he meant to deal with inheriting either an earldom or a younger brother, and he was expected to manage both. “It’ll be good for you. You shouldn’t have to rely on someone in your employ to tell you your own finances. Now come along. We might as well get started.”

With a curse, Laurie clomped to his feet. “You know, suddenly I’m not so grateful that Gerard’s inheritance got you this position, or that it paid for me to be at Oxford in the first place.” He sidestepped on the way to the door and snatched up Nate’s spectacles. “And I don’t think you are, either,” he said, putting them on. “Hah. Glass, just as I thought. Why are you pretending to be addlepated again? You resigned from the service, you said.”

“I’m not being addlepated; I’m being absentminded. And I did resign from the service. I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

And whatever duties had pushed him to leave Wellington, part of him had been relieved to finally set all the lies and deceits and disguises aside. In truth, he’d never expected to live long enough to retire from that particular service. At the same time, there were bits of it that he missed—the thrill of knowing more about everyone else in the room than they would ever know about him, the satisfaction he found in weeding through piles of nonsense and distractions to find one true thread of information.

But it had also meant other things: pretending friendships with people he despised, or worse, with people he might otherwise have liked. Lying about who and what he was in so many different ways that on occasion he’d been hard-pressed to remember the truth. Distancing himself from his emotions as well as from his brother, even after their mother’s unexpected passing, in order to protect both of them. “You do remember that you’re not to discuss my service,” he said belatedly.

“Oh, you made that very clear.”

“Laurie, there are lives I took, and others I destroyed. And those people still have families and friends. If they ever learned that I had anything to do with it, that I was anything other than a fool seeking to preserve antique tomes in the middle of a war, I—”

“I know, I know.” His brother’s shoulders sagged. “I’ve never said anything, and I never will.”

“Good.”

For a moment they walked down the hallway toward his office in silence. “Nate?”

“What is it?”

“Could I perhaps help you find whatever it is you’re hunting for?”

A shudder ran through Nate before he could suppress it. The idea of setting his brother toward that life … “No. Discretion is required, and it’s
my
hobby, as you call it.”

The expression he glimpsed on Laurence’s face wasn’t the annoyed, thwarted one he’d expected, however. For that bare moment his brother had looked hurt. Truly disappointed. Nate took a slow breath. “Why do you want to help? I’ve heard you several times say I shouldn’t be stooping to fetch and carry for my fellows.”

“I don’t know. I just thought…” Laurie trailed off. “Never mind. Where are the damned ledgers?”

Nate stopped. “You just thought what, Laurie?”

“I just thought nothing. That’s what I do, isn’t it?”

Whether he’d spent much time around his brother lately or not, Nathaniel did recognize a plea for sympathy when he heard one. “If you want me to trust you with anything,” he said, shoving open his office door and gesturing for his brother to precede him into the room, “it’s not going to be out of pity. You tied your own noose and stuck your own head into it. People always do.”

And that would be how he’d find Rachel Newbury, as well. Everyone made errors. He merely happened to be very good at spotting them.

“Well, you’re people,” Laurie countered, sitting behind the desk when Nate pulled out the chair for him. “At least I think you are. What noose have you stuck your head into?”

“If you think for a moment that I mean to lay out all my mistakes for you to use against me later, you’re even more daft than I thought previously. Top drawer, bottom ledger.”

“Then it would seem that the trick is to keep your mistakes private.”

“That would be a beginning, I suppose. Open it up, Laurie. For God’s sake.”

His brother, though, wasn’t looking at the ledger on the desk. His attention was on something else in the desk’s top drawer. Swiftly Nathaniel ran through what he’d left in there: pen nubs, paper, a ruler, pencils, a knife for sharpen—

“What the devil is this?” Laurence exclaimed, pulling out a card. “‘As a member in good standing of The Tantalus Club, you are cordially invited to our annual wine-tasting event on…” His brother looked up. “You belong to the bloody Tantalus Club?”

Damnation.
“Yes. It’s a—”

“I want to go.”

“No.”

“Marty Gayle’s uncle took him there last semester, and he still hasn’t stopped talking about it. I’m a year older than Gayle. Is it true none of the ladies wear anything?”

“What? No. It’s not a bawdy house, Laurie. It’s a gentlemen’s club.”