He dropped his voice, made it smooth and mannered. “Good morning. Are you ladies in need of some assistance?”
The ladies stared blankly at him for a long moment.
Or—no. Perhaps they were staring at the puppy under his arm.
He smiled brilliantly at them and attempted to look as though small dogs were typical accoutrements for Cornish stewards. The projection of confidence, Archer had found, seemed to go a long way toward convincing people that he wasn’t lying through his teeth.
Which he was. Usually.
Finally, the tallest of the ladies—reddish-brown cropped hair, her face scattered with freckles—cleared her throat. “Ah—perhaps. Is this... thisisPomeroy House?”
Archer tried not to let his surprise show on his face. He’d supposed these three—with their gowns and hats that probably cost more than his annual salary—were victims of some carriage accident. He’d not imagined they were at the estate on purpose.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
As if in punctuation, the puppy in his right pocket finally won her victory over the worn-out fabric. His pocket came free with a sound of tearing, and then he felt the slow drag of the puppy’s nails as she slid down his leg and emerged at the level of his boot.
“Oh,” said one of the ladies faintly. This one looked exquisitely fragile, with black hair and enormous blue-green eyes that Archer imagined had inspired flights of fancy from a whole legion of Byronic suitors. She glanced from the puppy to the inside of the house. “It’s not quite how I pictured it.”
Archer didn’t have to turn around to know what she meant. The front parlor was home to a vast array of veterinary supplies and also five more dogs.
His gaze fell to the final woman. She was considerably shorter than the other two, with buttery-yellow curls beneath a jauntily angled straw hat. Her cheeks were pink, and so was her frock, and her pointed chin lifted as she met his gaze straight on. She was...
Archer felt cold wash over him, freezing his legs, rooting him where he stood.
She was The Woman From The Party. The sparkling little confection who had revealed Archer’s Quenby scheme, wrecked six months of his planning, and caused the chain of events that had led to sixteen casks of smuggled wine in his kitchen.
Oh, he thought.Fuck me.
It was due entirely to a lifetime of practice in lying that Archer managed to retain command of his face. He smiled wider even as his brain suggested,Time to run away, you thrice-damned fool.
Instead he said: “How may I assist you?”
The girl’s chin went somehow higher. “I am Lady Ruby Ballimore,” she said, “and these are my companions, Lady Alice Eppington and Miss Tamsin Drake. We are the Princess Serafina’s ladies-in-waiting.”
Archer seemed to take in the words very slowly, as if they were poured through syrup.
The Princess Serafina’s.
Ladies-in-waiting.
“I see,” he choked out. “Welcome. Have you... come to view the estate?”
“After a fashion. The Monfalcone ambassador has asked us to reside here. Indefinitely.”
Archer wondered if he was hallucinating.
This was, beyond all shadow of a doubt, the same woman. She had the same fussy white gloves on, with what must be far too many pearl buttons for one woman to manage. She looked precisely as he recalled her: sweet and vaguely edible, until one came to her eyes.
They were gray-blue. Confident. Penetrating. Her gaze seemed to fix him where he stood, and he had the strange sense that this woman could see right through all his layers of falsehoods and charm. All the way down to his guts and his bones and the blackened corners of his too-soft heart.
He had, he realized, lost control of his expression. When the puppy underneath his arm bit him straight through his shirt, he realized he had not moved or spoken in a very long time.
“Lovely,” he croaked, and stepped back to let them in. “Welcome to Pomeroy House.”
Chapter 4
Ruby was having trouble making sense of—
