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Guinevere did not help. Not in the slightest. She was clouding his judgment, making him second-guess every conclusion, every decision, because she was a married woman, his client’s wife, the person he was supposed to be protecting – and he wanted her.
It was only dishonourable if he acted on that desire, he told himself as he strode along the empty streets, all his senses, and all of him that was not thinking, attuned to the smells and sounds around him, the feel of the place. He was not being followed and, although there were shadowy figures lurking in every darkened corner, they were
on the look-out for easy prey, not for him. A pity, he would have almost welcomed a fight tonight.
There was the glimmer of light behind the shutters of the upstairs windows when he reached Great Ryder Street. Dover, it seemed had taken up residence early. Even so, Jared eased the key in the lock gently, then secured it behind him with barely a click. The new bolts slid silently into place and he padded through the rest of the ground floor checking widows and the back door. From above his head he heard the sound of footsteps on the bare boards, the clang of what sounded like a saucepan.
He climbed the stairs, a thin blade in his hand, missed out the fourth from the top with its deliberate loud creak and swung open the door, entering fast, poised on the balls of his feet. Behind the door.
Dover stepped out, lowering the carving knife he held as he did so. ‘Good evening, sir. They said I could leave at once, so I came as soon as I could.’ With his bland expression and his calm voice he was almost a parody of the ideal servant. Although he was having to work to control his breathing, Jared noticed. He had given his new manservant a scare, however well he hid it.
‘Good morning, I believe.’ Distantly he heard the clock on St James’s Palace strike two. ‘Very good.’ Worryingly good, in fact, scare or not. ‘An excellent reception. How did you hear me?’
‘I didn’t, sir.’ Dover went through to the little kitchen. ‘I had left the door at the top of the stairs ajar and it swung a little when you opened the street door and I felt the draft. So I closed it, just in case it was not you. Would you like some cold beef and bread, sir? There’s the ale, or I can make tea or coffee. There doesn’t seem to be any chocolate. I will go shopping in the morning.’
‘We will make a list. We’ll have whatever’s left in the larder now, together. How long have you been here?’ He looked around at swept floors, surfaces that had been dusted. Through the open kitchen door the old range looked as though someone had attacked it with a scouring brush.
‘Since just before the builders left, sir. I’ve done the best I can, but there are a lot of things missing, like flat irons and a mattress for your bed.’
‘Go round to the Duke of Calderbrook’s house when you’ve shopped for food and see Flynn. Tell him what else you think we need and ask him where to get it from.
‘You found the box bed in the cupboard in the little chamber? That’s your room and you will need a mattress for that, I’ll need one for my bed, as you said – Gillows, I imagine will be best for those. Here.’ He took several of his cards from his pocket and tossed them on the table along with some money. ‘That’s a start on housekeeping. Buy a ledger and keep track of what you are spending and open shop accounts for the big things. If you need any advice, ask Flynn. All right? I’m rather tied up at the moment, but we will get some more furniture soon. Oh, and you do not have to keep calling me sir when we’re alone.’
‘Yes, sir. I mean, yes, it is all clear. I could go round to the auction room as well, see if there are things there that we need for the kitchen and my room.’ He went through to the kitchen and Jared heard him making up the fire.
‘As you like,’ he said. ‘I have an account at Christie’s already, so just show them my card. I want comfortable and practical up here, Dover, not fashionable or smart.’ He was saving his money for the public areas downstairs where only the best would do to attract the class of client he wanted – and then to make them feel at home when he had them.
They ate, Dover answering questions about his childhood in rural Kent with his widowed mother and three sisters and his training, which seemed to have been thorough until the new butler arrived and favoured his own kin over him. One of the grooms had been an ex-soldier with a liking for swordplay who had taught him the rudiments and left him wanting to learn more.
Finally they snuffed the candles and went to their rooms. Jared rolled himself up in a blanket on top of the stretched ropes of the big bedstead, leaving Dover to make himself a nest in the box bed.
Six o’clock in the morning would be plenty early enough to wake. Lord and Lady Northam would not be stirring much before eleven after such a late night. Jared punched the pillow and told himself to go to sleep. He could chase that elusive drift of smoke in his dreams.
Chapter Eight
The frantic hammering on the door brought Jared wide awake into a faint dawn light. He flung back the blankets and met Dover half way across the living room. The young man was jamming the tails of his nightshirt into his breeches. ‘I’ll get it, sir.’
‘Key.’ Jared tossed it to him and followed him down, bare chested, bare footed, hair loose around his shoulders, picking up a rapier as he went.
Dover slammed back the bolts and unlocked the door. He opened it a crack but was knocked back by the liveried footman who virtually fell through the gap.
‘Hoskins?’ Jared recognised him as the Northam’s footman, the one with the burly brothers. ‘What is wrong?’
‘Oh, Mr Hunt, sir. You’re to come at once, Mr Twite says. It’s dreadful, sir, the worst thing!’
‘What has happened now?’ Jared resisted the urge to slap the man. He pulled him right into the room and closed the door.
‘Oh, dead, sir, dead in the night and stone cold this morning!’
‘Who?’ His guts seemed suddenly hollow, his lungs empty of air. ‘Your mistress? Pull yourself together, man.’
‘The master, sir. Lord Northam.’
Thank God. He almost said it out loud. ‘How? Heart attack?’
‘No, sir. Mr Twite says it looks like poisoning, sir.’
‘Is your mistress safe? Has the doctor been sent for? And the Coroner?’
