Drake's Lair (8 page)

Drake glanced over it carefully. “Yes, Mr. Mills. It will do quite admirably,” he said. “When you get back to Truro, look up the deed at the registry office. When I post you the signed contract, you may make the necessary arrangements to have it registered in my name, and the original filed with my other accounts. Under the circumstances, I prefer that it not be kept at Drake’s Lair. You may send on any documents that require my signature, however.”

“Of course, my lord,” Mills replied. “I will send you confirmation immediately after the transfer.”

“Will you gentlemen be staying to dinner?” Drake inquired. “The storm seems to be getting worse instead of better. Perhaps you ought to stay the night. You’re more than welcome, and rooms are prepared. I took the liberty.”

“Is Mr. Ellery returning, my lord?” Bradshaw asked him.

“I expected him before this, actually. Why?”

“In that case, I believe it’s best that we take out leave, my lord,” said Bradshaw. “I cannot speak for Elias here, but, while I admire your ability to cloak your emotions, I do not possess such a talent. I could not sit at table with your steward, I’m afraid, without betraying my true feelings. It is best, I think, that we press on.”

“Best, indeed,” Mills put in. “I’m hardly skilled at play acting. We shall leave at once.”

“As you wish, gentlemen,” Drake responded. “I trust I can count upon your confidentiality? Much depends upon it.”

*

Melly sat curled up on the window seat of her sitting room, gazing absently toward the storm through the mullioned panes. Her apartments overlooked the sculptured gardens and rolling green at the rear of the estate, and the dovecote, which had blown over in the gale.

It was nearly dark, and difficult to see below her. The rain, sheeting on the windowpanes, distorted the view when the lightning streaked across the rolling green and let her glimpse it. She was preoccupied. While her eyes were fixed on the row of young rowan trees bent to the ground by the wind, and flower heads and petals strewn like confetti over the neatly scythed lawn, her mind was on the bargain she had just struck with the Earl of Shelldrake.

She hadn’t gone down to nuncheon, but she would have to appear at the dinner hour. It wasn’t fair to inconvenience the servants in the understaffed household by making them carry food up three flights, when she was perfectly capable of descending to the dining hall. And she was wrestling with that decision when Mrs. Laity knocked and entered laden down with hemmed frocks.

“‘Tis only half, but it’ll do you ‘till we can take up the rest,” she said, waddling through to the dressing room, where she hung them neatly in the armoire.

“I wish you wouldn’t bother with the rest,” Melly said, as the housekeeper joined her. “I don’t wish to wear the countess’s things. I know his lordship offered them, but it must be painful for him… seeing them again on someone else, and I know it’s awkward for me.”

“Pshaw! Men never notice women’s frocks, Miss Melly… I mean, m’lady.”

“Oh, please, you needn’t be so formal with me, Mrs. Laity. I’m still the same ‘Miss Melly’ I have always been, and always will be to you. It’s been so long since anyone has called me ‘my lady’ I can’t even remember.”

“Well… only in private then, miss,” the housekeeper conceded. “It wouldn’t be proper otherwise. And don’t you worry about the frocks. His lordship wouldn’t have offered unless he wanted you to have them. He’d have done you up in one of the maid’s rigs otherwise. Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“It’s been decided for me,” Melly said emptily. “I’ve consented to sell the land to his lordship. I had no choice. Everything I had is gone, and I’ve nowhere to turn but to the Tinkers. They would take me in a trice, but they haven’t really room. I know keeping me for so long a time would be an inconvenience to them, and I couldn’t impose. Lord Shelldrake took advantage of that I’m sure, but he’s offered me an extravagantly generous sum, and he plans to rebuild the cottage. He’s also offered to lease it back to me once it’s ready. I’m to stay on here in the meantime.”

“The devil you say?” the housekeeper cried. Her jaw fell slack, and her posture clenched.

“The legalities of the sale will take time to complete, of course,” Melly went on. “But once I have the money, I will be able to go where I please.”

“Oh, miss, don’t go. Stay ‘till the cottage is raised. It wouldn’t be right, you going off all on your own.”

“I’ve been ‘all on my own’ since Cousin Calliope passed, Mrs. Laity, and I’ve managed quite nicely.”

“But you don’t have you’re herbs—your wares—anymore. Here, you’ll have everything you need—fine food, an elegant roof over your head, folks to do for you… all the comforts you deserve.”

Everything but peace of mind, and right now, she’d trade all of the above for just a smidgen of that. But this was the opening she’d been waiting for, and she pounced on it.

“Can you sit with me a moment, Mrs. Laity,” she said. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

“If it won’t take too long, miss,” she replied. “The auditors are just getting ready to leave, if you can imagine that in all o’ this, and I’m likely to be needed below.”

“I shan’t keep you long,” she replied, resuming her place on the window seat, while the housekeeper squeezed her bulk into the wing chair across the way, and sat on the edge of it, spine-rigid, waiting.

“I wish to know why his lordship is so adamant that I not pick his herbs?” Melly said flatly.

“Have you asked him?” the housekeeper hedged, clouding suddenly.

“I have. He avoided the issue. But it evidently is an issue, Mrs. Laity, and I wish to know what that is. I cannot for the life of me countenance his bizarre behavior over the matter. He positively flies into alt!”

“Oh, miss, I think it’s best that you speak to his lordship direct about that. It won’t bode well for me if I’m caught carrying tales in that department.”

“Mrs. Laity, it shan’t go any further than this room, I assure you. I would never jeopardize your position over anything.”

“That’s just what it would be, if I go flapping my jaws about herbs in this house, miss. You’re going to have to ask his lordship. I’m sorry.”

“I know I was trespassing, but it’s more than that. He means to destroy all the herbs on the estate just as soon as the storm is over. I’ve never been a difficult person to deal with. I’m not prone to be confrontational, but if someone tells me not to do something—especially something so insignificant as this is—they need to tell me why.”

The housekeeper’s plump cheeks bloomed scarlet, emphasizing the spider veins that crazed them. She began to fidget, her stubby fingers troubling the corner of her starched white apron. She was clearly wrestling with something, and Melly waited somewhat less than patiently for her to speak.

“T-the countess, Lady Eva, her name was, she took an interest in… herbal remedies like yourself before she died, miss. It could be something to do with that. Don’t ask me no more.”

“You think, then, that my herb gathering recalled unpleasant memories?”

“I already told you how upset his lordship was when she passed. That’s all I know, miss.”

“He must have loved her very much,” Melly said absently. Why did her heart feel so heavy with that burden weighing upon it?

“Yes, miss.”

“And you can think of nothing else?”

“No, Miss Melly, and…
please
—”

“Don’t worry, I shan’t tell him you told me,” she interrupted, anticipation the housekeeper’s plea. “You have my word.”

“Thank you, miss,” the housekeeper gushed. She seemed to deflate, as though someone had opened a valve and siphoned all the breath from her body.

The earl most definitely did have a secret, one that she would have to discover, but not because Rosen had warned her about it, because an intuitive spark deep inside her warned that something abject threatened her directly, especially now that she had come to stay at the manor.

He’d said that someone had deliberately set fire to the cottage. She vaguely remembered hearing something outside before she awoke to flames and billowing smoke. But what if
he
was the one who set the fire? Why was he out there at that hour in the first place, so far from the village? How was it that he just happened to be there to rescue her so conveniently—to bring her to Drake’s Lair, where he could see to her needs, and offer her his proposition? He’d said that he had been considering making an offer for that tract of land for some time. Could he have deliberately contrived the situation she now found herself in to that end?

Her heart ached at the thought that what she’d taken for benevolence was rather something dark and sinister. Making matters worse, she couldn’t forget the lean, well-muscled pressure of his turgid body against her, or the alarming, icy-hot flutters that body set loose upon the heretofore virgin territory of her most secret self. Neither could she forget the warmth of him, or the musky male scent drifting from his damp, tanned skin.

Rosen’s voice kept banging around in her brain:
You have an enemy… one is not what he seems… he has a secret… there is nothing to be done
…

Well, there was something she could do. She wouldn’t involve Mrs. Laity; she’d given her word. But she would get to the bottom of the herb mystery. She would start with that. Perhaps James Ellery might know more than the housekeeper was willing to share. She hardly wanted to encourage him, after taking such pains to keep him at his distance, but there was nothing else for it. She would at least have to let him close enough to extrude whatever knowledge of the topic she could from him, since the others were all so unapproachable. Having decided upon that course of action, she turned again to the housekeeper.

“Thank you, Mrs. Laity,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you from your duties. I shall need to dress for dinner. His lordship suggested that I might have Zoe as my abigail. I should like to you arrange for a cot to be placed in my dressing room, so that she may take up her duties at once. If I am to stay, proprieties must be observed.”

“Oh, Miss Melly, she’ll be that pleased! She’s always carping about bettering herself. She’ll be a fine abigail for you to be sure.”

“Very well, then. Send her up if you will, and let us see what, between us, we can do to make me… presentable.”

Seven

Drake was in the drawing room having a sherry before dinner, when James Ellery joined him. The steward had changed his wet clothes, though he still looked bedraggled. His sandy-blonde hair was plastered wet to his head. It had lost its rakish appeal for the drenching, and the fingers that reached for the sherry glass Drake offered were waterlogged and cold. He drank from it around ticking jaw muscles, and the scowl that spoiled his handsome face was as dark as the storm rattling the French doors as though it begged admittance.

“You look like a drowned rat,” Drake observed.

“I feel like one. It’s hell out there—a real howler. Most of the roads are washed out—trees uprooted everywhere. It’s worse than the last, and it doesn’t show signs of stopping anytime soon. We passed coaches up to their axels in mud on the main highway. I shudder to think what the case is on the secondary thoroughfares.”

“Did you get my trunks?”

“Yes. The horses haven’t arrived, but the stationmaster will send a message ‘round when they do, and board them until you’re ready. I hired a manservant. His name is Jacob Voss; the vicar recommended him. He’ll be arriving in the morning if the roads are still passable. May I at least have Griggs attend me until then—when you aren’t hoarding him, of course,
sire
?”

“Until the morning,” Drake replied, his brow arched in annoyance. It was not going to be as easy as he thought, attempting to get through dinner in close proximity of a man he’d like to reach out and strangle, but get through it he would, and afterward, the pretense should get easier. He hoped.

“Did the auditors come?” Ellery queried, setting his glass aside.

“Ummhmm,” Drake grunted through a sip of sherry.

“How went the audit?”

“You missed a very boring afternoon,” Drake responded. “How are things at the Terrills?” he added, smoothly changing the subject.

“The roof is holding, but it’s too soon to say if it’s sound. I knew that when you sent me out there. After the storm we’ll have a better view. It could have waited.”

“I couldn’t take the chance, not after… what occurred last time. That roof is too green.”

“And just what would you have done if it hadn’t held?” Ellery said almost angrily.

“I’d have brought the Terrills here. I should think you’d have had sense enough to act on that on your own. What would you have done if I weren’t here, Jim?”

Ellery was about to reply, when Demelza entered the room, and Drake watched his demeanor change at sight of her. The thin, hard line that puckered his angry mouth beneath the twitching mustache stretched into a winsome smile, and he wasted no time rushing to her side and capturing her hand.

“Miss Ahern,” he greeted, lifting it to his lips. “I’m so terribly sorry for your trouble, but glad to see that you are unharmed.”

“
Lady
Ahern,” Drake corrected him.

“Of course,” Ellery said, casting daggers toward him. “It’s just that we are on more… familiar terms, having been acquainted for nearly a year now.”

“Your Lordship… Mr. Ellery,” she said icily.

Drake smiled as well then, but it was a lopsided, satisfied smile. The gel was quick, bigod. Whose side was she on? Hers, he had no doubt. This might turn out to be an interesting evening after all.

“Would you like a sherry, my lady?” he offered, taking note of the green silk gown that flattered her petite figure. The toffee-colored ringlets bouncing on her shoulders that had caught his eye when first they met were swept up in a high cascade now, tamed by a green satin ribbon that matched the dress. The coif exposed a graceful, slender neck, devoid of ornamentation. How perfectly the Shelldrake diamond would fit in the hollow of that exquisite throat.

“No thank you,” she said curtly, calling him back to reality.