Page 46 of The Lady Plays with Fire

His mother? Graham wondered. Or his wife?

“No need,” he declared, unfolding himself from the chair as he reached into his breast pocket for a pair of banknotes. “That should be enough to trust me with the key.”

“Of course, sir.” Tetley stood. “I’ll just—I won’t be a moment.”

Graham met the curate again in the inn yard a few minutes later, where a lad—the barman’s son, to all appearances—stood holding the reins of his curricle and handed them over with a sigh of envy.

Breathless from having hurried off somewhere and back again, Tetley extended a heavy iron key. “You’re sure you wouldn’t—”

“Nay.” It hardly mattered what the man had been about to suggest. Graham was too eager to examine the cottage, to seize this strange urge to take on something new.

He arrived at Brereton Cottage certain he’d made a mistake. A house, empty for months—years, for all he knew. He imagined the dust, the damp air. No provisions. No kindling. Christ, but he was a fool. Tetley would be sniggering into his tea as he regaled the evening crowd at the Spindle and Plow with the tale of the daft Scotsman who’d paid twice what the place was worth.

Fitting the heavy key to the lock, he pushed the door inward on surprisingly silent hinges. Ghostly shapes greeted him: the furniture, hidden away beneath holland covers. He strode across the sitting room to open a window. A fresh autumn breeze soon cleared the stale air. He dragged the cover off a chair near the fireplace, then another from a low table. The furnishings were old-fashioned but of a respectable quality. Squire Brereton had obviously wanted good things for his second son.

Upstairs he found two bedchambers, almost identical. Both beds were unmade. Impossible to determine which had been intended for the poor couple’s marital bower.

He found sheets in a chest, perfectly clean and dry and scented with sprigs of lavender. With some effort, he managed to cover one of the plump, wool-stuffed mattresses. Then he hung his coat on a peg, rolled up his sleeves, and went downstairs to tend to the horses and draw water from the well.

The labor felt like more honest work than any he had done for some time. Not that he was entirely a stranger to working with his hands. Though improved now, for many years, conditions at Dunstane had been such that he could not afford simply to sit behind a desk. Such physical demands had also provided a much-needed outlet for his frustrations.

But even as he fetched and carried, his head buzzed with ideas, characters who demanded their story be told. Once the horses were settled, he went inside, lit a fire, and cursed himself for not having brought anything to write on.

Even that, however, the little house provided. In the drawer of a table, he found pencils and a few sheets of letter paper. Perhaps the would-be Mrs. Brereton had left a note when she’d flown.

But why should he assume that she had been in the wrong? Perhaps she was to be married to the farmer’s son against her wishes. Perhaps young Brereton would have treated her ill.

A rap at the back door startled him into renewed awareness of his surroundings. He was already several pages deep in notes for . . . something. A new play? He wasn’t quite sure. Not a satire, in any case. A story that still held out some hope.

Sunlight was rapidly fading from the sky, and the air coming through the still-open window had turned cold. He stopped to close it before going to the door.

Outside stood the girl from the pub—he didn’t remember her name—with a shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders and a basket hanging from one arm. “Mrs. Tetley thought you’d be wantin’ dinner,” she explained, gesturing with the basket. “And I offered to bring it. Save her the trip.”

“Most kind of you.” He took the laden basket from the girl with one hand and fished in his waistcoat pocket for a coin with the other.

She shook her head. “No need for that, sir. I, er . . .” She swept a toe across the ground in front of her. “If you’d like me to come in, I’d be lief to light a fire for you and straighten up the place,” she suggested, as if certain that a gentleman would be incapable of either task.

It was not all she intended to offer, he could guess, though she was hardly half his age and no one with whom he wished to dally. He turned to one side just enough that she could see past him into the room, lit by the glowing hearth. “I’ve managed on my own, thank you,” he said, pressing the coins into her work-roughened palm. Sensing defeat, her protests faded, and he closed the door between them.

I’ve always managed on my own.

Well, not always. He’d had help from time to time. Simon Keynes, for one, had done much to help him save Dunstane—both the title and the estate—from ruin. But for the most part, solitude had been his lot since he’d started at school. He’d never minded it. Fewer demands, fewer expectations. His own thoughts were usually good company.

Though there were times, of course, when a man wanted something else. Something more.

He placed the basket on the kitchen table and began to unpack its contents: a piping-hot earthenware crock filled with some sort of stew, a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, more of the same cheese he’d had earlier in the day, and a few fresh apples. What would Mrs. Tetley say if he knew she’d sent such simple fare to a peer of the realm? Though, truth be told, he preferred it, even when it ran counter to his London chef’s notions of consequence.

After ladling some of the stew into a bowl and pouring a glass of wine, he broke off a hunk of the bread and carried everything into the sitting room, where he had spent the afternoon scribbling down every wild idea that had popped into his head. At the risk of spoiling his appetite, he should review what he’d written, to see if there was anything of substance there.

Instead, he sat back in his chair, sipped at the wine, and let his thoughts wander to Julia.

He knew better than to be surprised by her absence from Monday’s rehearsal. It was, in one sense, what he’d wanted—to push her away, to keep himself from getting closer. An entanglement was the very last thing he desired.

All the same, if that strange moment in the empty theater had been the end of things, he regretted not giving in to his urge to kiss her.

Perhaps, if he’d kissed her, she would have come back.

Now, in the twilight of the day, with a glass of wine in his belly and his mind drained of the ideas that had harried him all afternoon, he could relax enough to admit she had been the force behind today’s drive into the country, to this empty, isolated house.