The Handbook to Handling His Lordship Page 8

  Evidently someone had been watching over him, though, because when he’d used what blunt he could scrape together to purchase a commission in the army, he’d been asked whether he would be willing to put his grasp of languages and puzzles and cartography to good use. And so he’d become a spy for king and country. He’d spent the ensuing eight years in fourteen different countries, three continents, and a multitude of guises, before, during, and after the Peninsular War. When his mother had died he’d been in Spain posing as a former freedom fighter willing to spill secrets to Bonaparte for the right coin, and he hadn’t even received word of her death for three months.

  And then, two years ago, he’d received word that his cousin Gerard Teryl, the Earl of Westfall, had drowned on a fishing expedition. That had changed everything. Gerard had had no offspring—hell, he hadn’t even been married—and so the title, lands, responsibilities, and income had gone to his closest surviving male relation. Nate Stokes, Wellington’s favorite spy.

  Absently he picked up the ebony wood elephant again. He’d seen the things in person, both the African and the Indian varieties. Had his cousin? At the Tower menagerie, perhaps, or when envoys from India arrived to impress the House of Lords. Was he being a fool, to bring Laurie into his world instead of leaving that life behind, himself?

  “Yes,” he muttered aloud, and stood. But it had been too long. He’d been too many people, learned too many things, seen too many things, to be able to simply be Nathaniel Stokes, Earl of Westfall. Sometimes it seemed as though being that bumbling, absentminded, finder of lost baubles was the only thing keeping him sane. And at the same time it was slowly driving him mad.

  And he’d certainly done nothing to earn Laurie’s loyalty. Nothing but be his older brother, which was evidently enough. Or so he would have to discover. Because if he didn’t find a way to allow Laurence into his life, neither of them would have anyone but himself.

  Blowing out his breath, he set the elephant down again and stood to pace. Contemplating things over which he had no control was a waste of time. And he had a chit to find. So, what did he know?

  Slowly he ticked the points off on his fingers. Rachel Newbury. Female. Aged between twenty-two and twenty-five. Brown eyes, blond hair, intelligent and clever, with either an unfortunate or a criminal past, given her false papers when she’d taken employment with Ebberling.

  Of all those things, the only two she wouldn’t be able to alter were her eye color and her wits. She could pretend to be a man, cut or color her hair, change her name, act as a fool or anything else she could conjure, but she would still be intelligent. And she would still have brown eyes. And she could be anywhere, including Europe or the Americas.

  He didn’t think she was anywhere, though. He thought she was still in England. When he’d talked to her fellow servants at Ebberling, one thing had been made clear: She was a fine governess. The boy had adored her, and he’d been happy to display his knowledge of French and arithmetic. Governess to a future marquis was a privileged position, and if she couldn’t be a governess again anywhere (which he assumed she wouldn’t dare to be, either here or abroad), she would want to be somewhere she could utilize her skills.

  That pointed him once again to The Tantalus Club. After being open for three years now, the Tantalus was becoming the place for pretty young girls of good education and poor reputation to go for employment. There Rachel Newbury could call herself anything she chose, make up a past that hid her from searching eyes, and earn an income that—from what he’d heard—would see her comfortable in her later life. Because even selling a stolen diamond necklace, if she’d risked parting with it, wouldn’t see her with an income to last more than a year or two.

  He stopped before the window that looked down at his large, well-kept garden. Rachel Newbury might be intelligent and resourceful, but she wasn’t a former spy. She hadn’t been trained to seek out the nearly invisible signs that someone gave when they had something to hide. He had been.

  And everything in him, all his training, told him that Emily Portsman knew more than she cared to say. He wasn’t ready yet to say he’d already found his prey, because that would be far more fortuitous than life had ever been to him, but she knew something about someone or something.

  He needed to see her again, which luckily enough was something to which she’d already agreed. That had actually surprised him, considering he was fairly certain Portsman had invited him into the club’s back rooms to interrogate him. He’d struck first, so to speak, and not only because he’d wanted her off balance. Because more than that, he’d simply wanted her.

  A vision of her naked beneath him, her fingers digging hard into his shoulders, the aroused delight in her eyes, touched his thoughts, but after a moment of heated consideration he brushed them away again. Yes, sex with her had been pleasurable, and he had no regrets about it or about repeating the experience. Several times, if he could manage it. He was male, after all, and intimacy so frequently was a means to betrayal that he’d been avoiding it for the past two years.

  It might well be a means to betrayal yet again. But to himself he could admit that he still wanted Emily Portsman, and that he wanted to be wrong both about her involvement in his search and his suspicion that she was hiding … something. Nathaniel looked down into the garden one floor below him, at the late-blooming profusion of roses in their splendid reds and whites and yellows.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d wished to be wrong about someone. If he was indeed wrong about her, however, it would be the first time his wishes had been answered.

  Chapter Six

  Emily carried the last bucket of cold, tea-colored bathwater through the kitchen and out to the muddy carriage drive. Once she’d checked to be certain no one but stable boys were about, she squatted down and tipped the bucket onto the gravel.

  The henna would stay in her hair for weeks, gradually losing its reddish tint in favor of a more solid brown. That would mean, however, that each time she re-dyed her hair it would change color. No, it was safer to dye it every three or four days, so that the auburn tint never altered. She could only be thankful that she’d realized strong tea darkened it as much as it did, or she would be a flaming redhead—far too noticeable even in a crowd of attractive young ladies.

  Her friend Sophia was a striking redhead, anyway, with the fair skin to go with it. Her own skin was a shade or two darker, which made the brownish red she’d decided on look more natural. She might have opted to wash her hair in lemons, but that would only have made her already blond hair lighter—and still blond. No, henna was much, much better, if more difficult to procure. Thank goodness she’d read about its use in one of Ebberling Manor’s many library books. And thank goodness she’d noted that Lord Ebberling wasn’t enough of a reader to go looking for clues to her appearance or whereabouts in books she’d perhaps touched.

  Lord Westfall did seem to be a reader, but even if she happened to be the bauble he was seeking, she didn’t think she’d given him much—any—reason to look in her direction. Not on Ebberling’s behalf, anyway. If he was working for Ebberling. Oh, this was maddening. If the marquis hadn’t been in Town, she would have been thoroughly enjoying the prospect of another interlude with the unexpectedly delicious Lord Westfall.

  Frowning, she straightened again and set the bucket back in its place behind the stable, then returned indoors. The stable yard and the garden were as far as she ever roamed from the building, and even doing that made her uneasy. Especially over the past two days. Ebberling had been visiting her dreams again, when she thought she’d finally managed to banish him. Because he was in London now, when he hadn’t been anywhere near it for three years. Not since … not since before he’d become a widower.

  Her fingers had begun trembling, and she clenched them into fists as she walked back through the kitchen. No outward sign of anything but what she wished to show was ever allowed, and she’d become a damned fine actress if she said so herself. No one but those three she’d told w
ould ever know about her connection with Ebberling, and Lord and Lady Haybury and Genevieve Martine only knew that she wished to avoid the man at all costs. Nothing more than that. And she desperately hoped that there would never be a need to tell them anything more.

  “Emily,” Charity Green, the head cook, said as she passed behind the round woman, “now that I have all the peaches I need, there’s a shortage of hands in here.”

  Emily stopped her retreat to look over the half-dozen women busily stirring and chopping and rolling and slicing. Two younger girls ran hither and thither fetching plates and flour and whatever else the cooks required. “How many more hands will fit in here at one time?” she asked.

  “Not enough. You tell Lady H she needs a larger kitchen if she’s going to fill both dining rooms at every hour of the day and night.” Charity pointed a very sharp-looking knife in the direction of the Demeter room, the main dining room at the front of the Tantalus.

  With a nod and a stifled smile, Emily stepped around one of the fetching girls back toward the narrow servants’ hallway. “I will tell her. Again.”

  “And you keep telling her until you see the workmen here to push out walls into the carriage drive.”

  “I will. I give you my solemn oath.”

  “You just remember you said that.”

  Saving her grin until she was safely away from the kitchen, Emily chuckled to herself. Oh, she loved this place with its ruined dukes’ daughters and former high-flyers and failed opera singers and blacksmiths’ sisters all of whom wanted to make a life for themselves without having to turn to other women’s desperate last resort of prostitution. Yes, they could have gentlemen callers, as she did, but that was for company and pleasure, not for money. Not to survive.

  It was the beginning of the dinner rush, so other serving girls and hostesses hurried from the kitchens to the dining room bringing plates of venison and pheasant and more bottles of whisky and wine and vodka and rum and whatever other spririts were in demand, while the Helpful Men manned the doors to be certain no gentlemen ventured where they were not allowed.

  She nodded at Mr. Jacobs, the chief Man, as he walked through the privacy hallway toward his post by the front entry. They had a female butler, but at least one Helpful Man was always close by to see that her words were enforced. Only members and the guests of members were allowed through the front doors. And even so the dukes and sons of viscounts had to behave themselves, or they were escorted back out the doors again.

  In all of England it was the safest place for her, and still she had worried. For two years after her arrival at the Tantalus she’d awoken every day convinced that Lord Ebberling would be at her door, Helpful Men or not. But over the past year or so she’d slowly begun to think that perhaps she could finally relax her vigilance a little. A few weeks ago she’d nearly been tempted into going dress shopping with Lucille and Patricia Cooper. And thank goodness she’d hadn’t done so.

  Stifling a shiver, Emily continued past the privacy hallway to the stairs that led to the top floor and the rooms where she and the other Tantalus girls lived and kept themselves entertained when they weren’t on duty.

  If she’d been out on the streets and Ebberling had seen her there—Stop it, she ordered herself. He hadn’t, and she hadn’t, so it didn’t signify. Aside from that, she hardly looked like the stupid girl she’d been three years ago. Her hair had changed length and color, her dress was certainly not the high-necked, plain and proper attire of a governess, and most significantly, she didn’t feel like the same person she’d once been.

  Even so, a part of her wished Diane had put peepholes into the walls of the privacy hall so she could peer into the various gaming rooms on the other side, just to be certain Ebberling hadn’t come visiting with one of his titled cronies. If he did happen to make an appearance, though, the best thing she could do was precisely what she was doing at this moment: staying away from the areas of the club where men—outsiders—were allowed.

  Resisting the urge even to peer out one of the front-facing windows of the attic floor, Emily instead took a seat in the common room and opened up the ledger book where she tallied all of the club’s nonoperating expenses. Since all of the employees lived on the premises, the club kept towels in the bathing room, mattresses and basic furniture in all of the bedchambers, blankets, utensils, plates, and all of the necessities that didn’t go directly into the public rooms.

  She generally balanced the ledger twice each month, but with her avoiding working in the rooms, she didn’t feel she was pulling her weight any longer. And now, more than ever, she wanted to be … necessary. Because once the tipping point came where it was costing the club more to have her there than she helped to earn, she would be relying solely on the kindness of Lady Haybury. And she’d never relied on anyone’s kindness.

  “Juliet sent me to tell you that you have a caller, Emily,” Grace Winters said, walking into the room.

  Her heart stopped beating, and all she could hear was her own sharp intake of breath. “Who?” she asked the daytime butleress, when she could make her mouth work again.

  “Lord Westfall. He’s in the foyer.”

  Oh, thank goodness. Even with her abrupt relief, though, in the next moment she remembered that he wasn’t simply another of her thick-skulled, occasional male companions. He had already demonstrated that he could surprise her. And that made him both desirable and dangerous. She needed to find out for certain if he was on a trail, on her trail, or if she’d somehow misinterpreted what both she and Lucille had overheard and what she’d sensed.

  Perhaps she should never have suggested anything intimate with him at all, but whatever her actual intentions, she wanted to know if she was in any danger of being discovered. Any additional danger. Aside from that, someone different with whom she could chat, from whom she could hear about the world, was on occasion the only thing that kept her sane. And if he did have a degree of intelligence, as he clearly seemed to, that made him both more enticing—and more dangerous.

  “If you aren’t going out to meet him, I will,” Mary Stanford said, cutting into her thoughts. “That is one fine-looking gentleman.”

  Emily pushed to her feet. “I’m going. Would you see him upstairs?”

  “So now you won’t even go into the foyer?” Grace sighed. “Very well.”

  “Thank you, Grace.”

  The butleress’s comment worried her. Over the past three years most of the Tantalus girls, or at least the ones who’d been there from the beginning, had learned how diligently she avoided leaving the club’s grounds. Some of them purchased and retrieved gowns and hair ribbons for her. Others knew that Emily Portsman wasn’t her true name—though thankfully she was fairly certain that only Sophia White and Camille Pryce had suspected that, and they were both married and gone from the club.

  Jenny knew, as well, but then Genevieve Martine knew everything. About everyone. Hm. Emily hesitated on the stairs, then returned to the common room where Jenny generally took her dinner when she wasn’t on duty.

  Her blond hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head and her deep blue gown conservative by Tantalus standards, Jenny sat at one of the long communal tables chatting with Sylvie Hartford and Pansy Bridger. Taking a breath, Emily walked up to face her. “Might I have a quick word with you, Jenny?” she asked, as easily as she could, considering that over the past two days she’d felt wound tighter than a clock.

  “Certainly.” Miss Martine excused herself and stood, leading the way to the empty corner of the room. “This man you wish to avoid is not here, is he?” she asked in her light French accent—an accent that Emily had heard vanish and alter depending on the circumstances and company.

  “No. I don’t think so, at least. I haven’t checked with Diane this evening. And thank you for not saying the name.”

  Jenny nodded. “Whoever said that words cannot wound like weapons was a fool. What is it you need, my dear?”

  “I had a wonder. If I asked you about ano
ther man, might you be able to tell me something about him?”

  “That would depend on who he is and what it is you wish to know.”

  Now she had to ask herself whether she was simply looking for trouble where it didn’t exist, attempting to explain to herself why she’d been so utterly unable to resist a seduction when she’d intended something else entirely, or whether she had finally learned the lessons of her life well enough to pay attention when something felt amiss. “Nathaniel Stokes,” she finally said aloud. “The Earl of Westfall.”

  Tilting her head, for a moment Jenny looked younger than the six-and-twenty years she was reputed to be. She mothered them all, looked out for them all, and yet they were of an age. It was odd, really; Genevieve Martine seemed so much older than the rest of them. Even Diane. Perhaps her life had been even more troubled than Emily’s own, though that was difficult to imagine.

  “Should you not have asked this question before you invited him upstairs?”

  “Yes, but I had a suspicion he was looking for something, and I thought I might be able to wheedle it out of him. But he either doesn’t know anything, or he’s more clever than I realized.” And far more skilled in the bedchamber. “And he’s on his way upstairs again, so—”

  “It will take more than a moment, Emily. I know things, but I do not carry newspapers and heritage books about in my reticule.”

  Emily forced a smile. “I know that. When you have a moment, then. You’ve done me so many favors, Jenny, and I keep asking for more.”