“And well she did, since English dishes are beneath the talents ofMonsieurFrançois,” Mrs. Chislett said with a voice dripping disdain. “But I’m sorry to tell you, Miss, the family is all next door to your dinner. You haven’t missed them, then?”
“Oh, Lord Warin meant to bring me something from his study, but he quite forgot in the rush for plum pudding,” Lina said, pulling off her cape. “You don’t mind if I dash in and collect it?”
“Go on, then.” The housekeeper waved toward the stairs, almost identical to the ones next door. “Ah, she’s put figs all through this one, she has. That Mrs. Bird is a treasure and no mistake.” She glared at the French cook in clear rebuke.
Lina swept up the narrow stairs, grateful that the Lockrams, like the Moisenays, had brought their own servants down to London for Yuletide, rather than take the gamble that the agencies could supply adequate help over the holidays. This staff knew her and was familiar with her popping into their house, as she had with particular frequency during Barty’s illness. They might find it curious, but no one would rebuke Lina, an established friend of the family, for poking through the new Lord Warin’s study, prying into locked drawers and reading his correspondence.
She walked past the main stairs with their wrought iron balustrade and pulled open the double-paneled door that led to the master’s study. All the first-floor rooms were tall, designedas reception rooms, but the previous Lord Warin, enjoying his bachelor life, had converted a formal parlor for his personal use. As Barty had never committed to the task of becoming learned, or appearing so, and neither had he committed to the task of personally overseeing his estate, the study was lightly furnished.
Short bookcases held an assortment of objects that ranged from decorative to rubble, very few of them bound books. The paintings on the wall were yet the formal portraits and blurry landscapes the first Lady Warin had placed there. And the pedestal desk, made of solid mahogany, was the very place Lina had first learned to force a lock, thanks to Garrick’s desire to recover the reading material that his Uncle Ambrose, the 2d Lord Warin, regularly confiscated from him—to keep Barty from being degraded by association, or so he claimed.
The William Vile desk was wide, deep, and heavy, and the descending drawers on either side of the kneehole sat unlocked. Madelina acknowledged a pang of remorse at peering into the head of a deceased man who could neither defend himself nor offer explanation for the jumble of rubbish, here and there cut with a thought worth keeping. One drawer held a copy of the Dissenting minister Richard Price’s sermon,A Discourse on the Love of Our Country,while atop it lay Edmund Burker’sReflections on the Revolution in France. She knew Barty had followed the Revolution controversy; they all did, the Moisenays having a stake in the outcome.
“I find it curious that, if you wished a moment of solitude in the festivities, you didn’t select a refuge in your own house,” Garrick said.
Madelina snapped up her chin, and her blood drained to her feet at the sight of him leaning against the door jamb, arms arrogantly crossed.
Breath left her body, stealing her voice. Shame, of course. That was what flooded her, like a wave at the seashore pulling her off balance.
“The seal will be in the top middle drawer, which is locked,” he said, nodding in that direction. “But I’ve already removed the coin.”
Out of reflex she slammed shut the drawer she was peering into, catching the tip of her finger. She bit back a yelp of pain.
“I am not stealing your money.”
He raised one of those too-thick, expressive brows. Heavy for his face, those brows, and like his eyes, they suggested there were matters in his head too large to fit properly. Which was misleading, considering he was a roué devoted to nothing but his own sensual pleasures.
“Then whatareyou stealing?”
“Nothing. I am only looking for correspondence.”
Both his brows shot up in tandem. “Love letters. You had an intrigue, and now you need yourbillets-douxback before they are discovered and you are ruined.”
“I did not have an intrigue with Barty. Do be sensible.”
“Then who?” He moved into the room, and that wave lapped at her feet, an unexpected tide. A cloud of heat moved with him.
She flushed to her fingertips, the nail of her bruised finger throbbing. “Who what?” She sounded like a bird mimicking human speech, like the mynah birds said to live in India.
“With whom did you have an intrigue? For it must have been someone.”
The flush came and went, like she was flotsam on a tide. It was impossible to find her feet. “No one. I am not intriguing.”
“Come now. You were getting into intrigues all the time when we were younger. They were your forte.”
She stepped back from the desk, as if he were a magnet pushing her away with his relentless approach. “I am all grown up now.”
His gaze swept from her hair to her décolletage, dwelling on her breasts. “I can see that.”
Oh,drathim. Now she flushed there too, and her skin would show the pink. Rogue! Rake! Her breasts tingled, nipples puckering under his gaze, and she wondered what was happening to her. Was she taking ill? Had she caught the mumps from Barty and was only feeling the fever now?
He smelled of spirits, some fruity cordial. Perhaps he had pinched the pudding after all. “Why aren’t you next door?” she demanded.
His mouth curved in a delighted smile. She must not stare at his lips. “Why aren’t you?”
His voice dropped to a register that felt—intimate. As if he wanted to be part of her secret. “I had a suspicion, when you disappeared, you were up to something. And here I am, right as usual.”
“I am notupto anything.” That was true. She had found nothing, learned nothing. This was a mistake.
