“A likely story.” Giles lowered himself into the tub and sighed as he was enveloped in hot water before pinning the malingerer with his glare. “While the cat’s away, the mice will always play.”
“If that’s the case, then I’ve beenplayingon Fleet Street these past two months upon your orders.” Dalton paused his tidying long enough to glare back. “That woman of yours works some unsociable hours at that newspaper. This morning she started at seven and was still working when I left her not a half hour ago.”
He decided to tactfully ignore the “woman of yours” comment even though it did odd things to his heart. “You left her! Unsupervised and unprotected this late at night! When I expressly instructed you to guard the wench!”
“I left her about to get into her brother-in-law’s fancy carriage, which always takes her home. A carriage that had been waiting outside for her for a good hour beforehand, too, so she is neither unsupervised nor unprotected. Not that she needs much protecting, if you want my opinion, as she’s as wily as a fox.”
“I never want your bloody opinion and people hunt foxes!”
“They do, but that one gives as good as she gets—worseactually—and I wouldn’t fancy my chances against her in a fistfight.” Dalton chuckled with what looked a lot like affection. “Miss Diana would fight dirty.” In case Giles missed his drift, he covered his genital area with his ruined hand.
“How is she?”
“Diana’s a firecracker. Always busy. Takes no nonsense. I like her.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion ofMiss Merriwell, I asked how she is—in herself. Is she in fine fettle? Is she happy?”Is she as miserable as me?
“She is as fit as a butcher’s dog and seems as happy as a pig in—” Giles held up his palm to stay the inevitable expletive and Dalton grinned. “But that wasn’t what you were really asking, was it? You wanted to know if she is pining away for you.”
Giles did and was disappointed to hear it sounded like she wasn’t. “I meant nothing of the sort. Perish the thought!” He shuddered for effect. “I was merely checking the prickly minx hadn’t got herself into any trouble in my absence.”
“Of course she hasn’t—because she’s too smart to get caught and I’ve been glued to her side. Just as you asked.”
“Thank you for finally following an order to the letter, Dalton.” Giles made no attempt not to sound begrudging. “It makes a pleasant change.”
“That youorderedme to watch over her, however, is telling in itself as I’ve never known you to be so diligent about a lady’s welfare—and aniceyoung lady’s welfare to boot. You’re usually the love-them-and-leave-them sort. The sort who chases game girls who’ve been around the park many times before because they enjoy the ride.” He waggled his eyebrows. “But this one has gotunder your skin, hasn’t she? You are interested in her—in theromanticsense.”
Giles decided not to dignify that futile truth with a response. “Go fetch my favorite soap, you feckless wretch. This stuff the maid brought doesn’t lather as well.”
Dalton grinned as he pointed. “I knew it! You fancy her! Though I can’t say I blame you. Miss Diana is a fine bit of skirt. Wherever we go, she draws male eyes like flies to a dung heap.”
Jealousy burned swift and hot, both at the faceless men who dared admire her and at his insubordinate butler who had enjoyed two months with her while Giles yearned, but he covered it with boredom. “My soap, Dalton?” For good measure he clicked his fingers. “I would like it before my bath chills—if it’s not too much trouble.”
The rascal tugged his forelock before disappearing into the dressing room, then returned unwrapping a fresh bar from Giles’s favorite barbershop. “Your Floris, Your Grace, for heaven forbid Your Grace should have to suffer that fancy French milled soap the well-meaning maid brought when you turned up unexpected. What was the girl thinking to bring you something so fine and expensive?” Dalton slapped the soap into his hand. “And on the subject of the staff—downstairs are in uproar, by the way, and thank you for asking. They, like me, were under the impression you wouldn’t be gracing Tavistock Square with your presence for Christmas and now they are going to have to rush around on Christmas morning like headless chickens trying to ready the house for a celebration and fill the larder for the selfish master who couldn’t be bothered to tell them to expect him. They do have the post in Shropshire, don’t they?”
In his haste to get to her, Giles hadn’t given a second thought to anybody else. Knowing how devoted to him his diligent staff were, he now felt guilty for that oversight. Turning up out of the blue at Christmas wasn’t fair, and they deserved better. “That sounds an awful lot like a chastisement, Dalton.”
“A chastisement, Your Grace?Noooo… Heaven forbid someone as lowly as me should pull up someone as important as you on their behavior. I know my place,Your Grace. Why should you care if they have to sacrifice their hard-earned Christmas goose to your table instead? Or change all their own plans at a moment’s notice when they thought they could risk some time off during your prolonged absence? So long as you’re all right,Your Grace, that is all that matters, for we live to serve.” Dalton daintily lifted the corners of his coat as he curtsied, his smile as false as Giles’s claims to his dukedom.
“Well, haven’t you developed some revolutionary opinions in my absence? Clearly you have been spending far too much time with Miss Diana.” Giles made a great show of lathering up the Floris on a flannel unperturbed. “But for the record, and because I respectallmy other servants with the stark exception ofyou, you can inform them they need go to no trouble on my account for I shall barely be home over Christmas. I have been invited to spend it at Standish House with Lord Fareham and his family. All anyone here needs to worry about tomorrow is my breakfast and my biscuits. In fact, if Cook bakes a few decent-sized batches of shortbread and leaves them laid out on the sideboard, I shall help myself to biscuits for breakfast as a Christmas gift to myself. Then they can all still enjoy the day off with my blessing, free to spend the generous Christmas bonus I shall also give them with impunity on their ownChristmas gooses.” He frowned. “Or should that be geese?” His nitpicking grammarian would know.
“I shall tell them that good news just as soon as I have laid out your clean clothes, Your Grace.”
“As I am apparently filled with festive spirit this evening, I have decided to spare you that task, too. Consider thatyourChristmas bonus, Dalton.” Giles soaped his head then lay back to enjoy the spicy scent of Mr. Floris’s superior bubbles as they popped on his scalp. “Tonight I intend to sink into my crisp cotton sheets, curl up on my decadent duck-down mattress, and snuggle under my extravagant Welsh woolen blankets for at least the next ten hours, and not even a team of unbroken wild horses laden with saddlebags bulging with freshly baked shortbread could drag me from my bed sooner.”
“Really?” His butler rolled his insolent eye and disappeared into the dressing room again to rummage. “Do you want your crimson silk waistcoat or the green brocade? Both are suitably festive, but if you want my opinion, I think you cut more of a dash in the scarlet.”
“Are you going deaf in your dotage, Dalton?” Giles chuckled at his own brilliant but unintentional bit of alliteration. The grammarian would like that, too, even though she always did it better. “I said I am going straight to bed just as soon as I finish this bath, and absolutely nothing can dissuade me from that splendid plan of action.”
“But it is Christmas Eve, Your Grace. Christmas.Eve.” His servant reappeared clutching both waistcoats and with a full set of evening clothes draped over his arm. He wiggled the waistcoats, beaming. “And that means it is Lady Bulphan’s annual yuletide soiree tonight and I know how much you adore the out-of-tunecarol concert she always puts on. You were sent an invitation.” He pulled the embossed linen card from his pocket and flapped it like a fan, which he peered coquettishly over. “I fetched it specifically from your enormous pile of social correspondence the second I returned, as I suspected you would need it.”
“Why on earth would I need it after two hundred miles of muddy road?” Perhaps Dalton was going deaf. Or he was overcompensating in his eagerness to please after Mrs. Townsend had served Giles in his stead in Shropshire. “Toss it on the fire, Dalton, I insist.” He closed his eyes and flapped his hand in the general vicinity of the roaring fire that had only just been laid. “Christmas Eve, Lady Bulphan, and her out-of-tune carolers will have to get by without me this year as I have an unbreakable appointment with the arms of Morpheus.” And the inevitable nightly dreams involving the same dark-haired temptress who had haunted them for two whole months. A green-eyed, no-nonsense vixen who smelled of fat summer roses tinged with peach and whose unschooled lips set his body ablaze with desire and made his heart contemplate the impossible.
“That is a shame, Your Grace.” Dalton made a show of gathering up the clothes and trudging back toward the dressing room with them, his gruff voice muffling as he disappeared inside. “Because I have it on the highest authority that a certain prickly minx whom you have absolutely no romantic interest in whatsoever, and whom you did not just ride two hundred muddy miles expressly to see, is also heading to that same soiree…”
Chapter Fifteen
Lady Bulphan’s was a seething crush by the time Giles arrived, with cheery revelers spilling into the hallway from the ballroom, the drawing room, and the dining room, making it impossible to navigate with any speed. As it was the nearest, he headed for the drawing room first, then spent an eternity shaking hands and swapping inane pleasantries with every person who clamored to greet him.
