Her Beguiling Butler (2 page)

She clamped a hand to her mouth and let out a whimper.

“Don’t worry, my dea— my lady,” he said. His hands cupped her calves, stroked her skin and soothed her worried mind. He winced at the sight of her injuries, then looked sideways at the maid. “Mabel! That ice bucket!
Now
!”

“Aye, Mr. Finnley.” She turned tail and sailed off.

My dear.
Had he attempted to call her his
dear
? Alicia allowed her delight to curl her lips and to counter that, because it was not appropriate to grin at any endearments from one’s butler, she set her teeth.

“Let me unlace your boots.”

She didn’t answer. There was no need. In her heart, she agreed that he could and so why not enjoy the stroke of his hands on her calves and her ankles? The power of him as he tugged off, one by one, her dainty wet boots was soothing. The delicious release was tantalizing as he took her stocking feet in his hands and massaged her chilled and weary little toes.

“That’s wonderful,” she crooned, going with the pulse of his touch.

He made some gravelly noise in the base of his throat.

Yes.
That was the way she felt, too.
Primal.

“Ahem,” she said and sat taller in the chair…but only because she should.

“I’m afraid you are going to have a terrible time walking.” His eyes were on her bare knees. “We’ll take it slowly. Where is that girl with the ice?”

“She’ll come, Finnley. Don’t be impatient.”

“The longer we wait, my lady, the greater your disability.”

“Surely, you are mistaken. I can bend my kn—“ She tried it and gasped. Then dropped her leg, her foot to the tile. “I stand…or rather,
sit
corrected.”

“You’ll be fine. Now let’s see.” He bent over her knees, his face so close his breath fanned her fevered, swollen skin. “I wonder if you’ve broken any bones. Shall I touch you?”

“Dear man,” she said much too quickly for propriety, “you already have!”

His cool eyes turned to blue flames. “I’ll be gentle.”

“I’m certain.”

“I’ll be brief.”

“Oh, don’t be.”

He tilted his head as if to ask precisely of what they spoke.

She cocked a brow at him, aware and unashamed of what they did speak. But she had to camouflage that, didn’t she? Propriety was such a dictator. “Do as you must, Finnley.”

He put his hands to one of her shins and pressed along her bone. She was tender but nothing stuck out as if it were broken. “I doubt you have suffered more than a bad bruise.”

“Thank you. I hope so.”

“Here is the maid,” he said to Alicia as tenderly as he touched her. But to Mabel, he barked, “Where have you been?”

“Had to go to the cellar, sir, to get ice. Had to break it up, too, I did.”

“Fine, fine.” He put his fingers to Alicia’s shin and she wanted to cry joyful tears at his exquisite finesse. Then he stood and stared down at her. “You’re going to bed.”

“A good idea.” She put her hands to the bench to stand and yelled out when she put pressure on her palms.

“Enough of that,” he said and scooped her up into his arms, heading for the grand staircase.

She surrendered to him. He was officious like any butler but his air of authority belied servitude. His very stance exuded power. His words demanded compliance…except when he looked and spoke to her.

He surveyed her now with that smoldering interest that melted her to the core. “Follow me up, Mabel. Bring all that with you.”

Alicia relaxed in Finnley’s embrace, reveling in his solicitous behavior. The heat, the comfort, the rapture of being held by such a powerful creature flowed through her like good red wine. And to think, it was her butler, her servant, who did this to her when her husband had never elicited any naughty thoughts. Nor had any of her suitors during her Season. Sad, that. And many had called her a beauty.

“You must let me walk,” she told him for the sake of the maid and her own decorum. Her arm around his shoulder, she clung to him.

“Nonsense.”

He kept on up the stairs.

Grinning, she rejoiced in his stubbornness. “I appreciate your dedication, Finnley.”

He glanced at her, his gaze hard blue sky. Then he smiled. And his expression spoke of more than duty or kindness. It spoke of fondness and laughter.

Her insight was but a flash.

His long black lashes flickered as he turned away. “You are welcome, my lady. Let us not speak of it again.”

He got the hell away from her as quickly as he could. Closing the door to her bedroom suite, he muttered bright curses and took the stairs down at a jog.

What was wrong with him?

Craving the gorgeous blonde Lady Ranford was not part of his mission. Saving her was. And this fixation, this enchantment she held for him had to end.

He grumbled at his own lunacy, because he was enthralled with her, too.

So how could he end his fascination with her when he was in her company so often? Tempted by her hourly? And now this accident on top of the other one? If indeed, they were accidents. Which he doubted.

And just when he had to determine quickly if she was whole and safe, what had he done?

Damn.
He’d fawned over her like a suitor.
A lover.

When he was her servant. Her
butler
, for Christ’s sakes!

Yes
, he had laid her to her bed.
Yes
, he had tucked pillows under her poor, injured knees.
Yes
, he’d exposed her shapely legs well above those bruised bones and ogled her like some oaf. He’d even wrapped the shards of ice in the toweling and applied the cool compresses to her limbs. Her pale, freckled limbs that would fit nicely around his hips as he—

Alicia’s lady’s maid rounded the corner from the main salon.

“Preston, where
have
you been? I sent Mabel for you long ago.” He didn’t care for the persnickety maid who tended Alicia. She was on the far side of thirty, comely but with large almond-shaped brown eyes. Pinch-nosed and snide to others on the staff, Preston was not one to admire or befriend. However, Alicia liked her for her efficiency. Whereas he found her a trifle too territorial for his good nature or his need to learn about the doings in the house.

“I was polishing my lady’s shoes in the boot room, Mr. Finnley. I shall go to her straight away.”

“Do that.” He turned on the stairs as Preston passed him. “I’ll have Cook send up soup and tea. Encourage my lady to have every drop. She ate little this morning.”

The maid’s nostrils flared in affront. She didn’t like him, his authoritative manner or the fact that he cared for her mistress. Perceptive,
yes
, Preston was that. He’d tried to hide how attracted he was to Alicia. Tried to conceal his enjoyment of her. Her spontaneity. Her own appreciation of his looks and his demeanor.

But he was making a terrible hash of that.

Subterfuge was not his best calling in this matter. Even if his friends in Whitehall thought his efforts to ferret out spies during the wars had been productive. Even if his supervisor at the Home Office thought him the right candidate to solve their current problem posed by the deceased Lord Ranford’s previous butler.

He headed downstairs, sailing into the kitchen.

“Mrs. Sweeting,” he addressed the cook who stood rolling out pie dough at her butcher block, “I’d like you to send up a tray to our lady. Soup, tea.”

“She’s ‘ad a fall, I ‘ear,” Sweeting said, wiping her hands and turning to haul down from the shelf a tray and teapot. “Poor thing. She has too many accidents, don’t she?”

Indeed. Two too many. That’s one reason why I’m on guard. Why I’m necessary to her. Too much in this house is suspicious.

“She needs no more problems,” the cook went on as she summoned her scullery maid Dora with a crooked finger. “Is she in a bad way?”

“Could have been worse.” He picked up a slice of spiced apple from her bowl. Munching on it, he surveyed the servants’ hall beyond. It was empty.

“Mabel tells me you caught ‘er ladyship on the front stoop.”

“I did. Speaking of which, where is Grimes?”

“Out with the coachman.”

“I’ll go see him.” He started for the door but turned back. And he couldn’t help himself from saying, “I’ll return in a few minutes and take the tray up to her.”

“Oh, you needn’t, Mr. Finnley. I’ll get Mabel.”

“No, Mrs. Sweeting. I will do this.”

The plump little lady smiled slowly, then winked. “Aye, right you are.”

Finnley spun for the door.
Hell.
Even the cook suspected he had a
tendre
for the lady of the house. She was right.

This would not do.

Outside in the small square of the mews stood Connor, the Ranford coachman, with James Grimes. The two had their heads together, laughing over some fool thing and whatever the joke, Finnley didn’t like it.

“Grimes!”

“Yes, sir?”

“I’d like a word.” Jamming his hands in his coat pockets, he inclined his head toward the end of the alley, the far end of the crescent and away from earshot of Connor.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Finnley?”

Cold as Hell out here, it was. He’d have to get this over with before he became an icicle. “Tell me why you did not clear the front steps of ice?”

The young man blinked. “But, sir, I did.”

“When?”

“Right after you told me, sir.”

“This morning at ten?”

“Yes, sir. Before milady went out and after, too.”

“I told you to do it again an hour later.” Alicia had told him she would be no longer than thirty or forty minutes. “Did you?”

“I did.”

This stumped him. Why would Alicia slip on ice that was not there? “Were you thorough?”

“I was, sir.” The young man’s brows knit. Grimes was worried.

He was not the only one. “Thank you, Grimes.”

Once back inside, he stood, his hip against Sweeting’s work table. She puttered around the huge kitchen preparing Alicia’s tray.

“You’re worried,” she said, soft and low to him.

And since Sweeting’s scullery maid had disappeared and they were alone in her domain, he allowed his eyes to meet hers. She was aptly named, this roly-poly lady who made the most delicious dishes with tireless energy and an ear-to-ear cheerfulness.

“Milady has many troubles since her ‘usband passed.” Sweeting confided this with a sniff. “He was not kind to ‘er, you know.”

He did. He’d read it as part of the preliminary report given him by his supervisor.

“Lord Ranford was an old bully,” she went on, devoted to assembling the tray for her mistress. “He liked his port and his mistress, though heaven knows why because I heard she was bigger than a country cow and bellowed louder.”

He gave a laugh.

She chuckled. “Sorry, sir, but it’s true.”

He knew that too.

“He was not wise with money though we always got our pay on time. Or I should say, ‘er ladyship made that a point. Before he married her five years ago, he paid us whenever he cared to. His first wife was no better, either. So we like our young lady, we do. And for more reasons than she got us our money on the dot.”

“A good reason to like her, I’d say, Mrs. Sweeting.”

“She’d been a loyal wife to her lordship, too. Better than he was husband to her.”

Finnley had read that, too. But wondered what he’d learn here in her employ. Servants always knew the whole truth about their lords and ladies. And he had counted on befriending some one of them to discover Alicia and Robert Blindon’s nature. Here and now he could cultivate the cook for more information.

“Were there ever any arguments between them?”

“Aye. When she came here as a bride, his lordship deprived her of her dowry money. A few months went by and she wanted new clothes. She was what do you call it? The polite word?” The cook made a gesture of a swelling belly.

“
Enceinte?
Expecting a baby?”

“That’s it. Anyway, she told him and he was pleased because after all, his first wife couldn’t carry a baby to birth. Our new ladyship, she was proud and happy she was with child. He was, too, I daresay. In any case, she fought him for her money. ‘Spend what you like of your own, but that money is mine and I will have it,’ she told him.”

“And he gave it over?”

“Easy as pie, ‘e did. I suspect he’d never had a woman demand things of him.”

“Good for her.”

“That’s what I say.” Sweeting poured hot water into the china pot, then emptied that in the dishpan. Filling up the pot again, she dunked the tea strainer inside and topped the lid. “I’ll add a few biscuits for her, poor thing. She’ll like my pie tonight, she will.”

“She does like sugary things,” he said as he stole another bit of cinnamon fruit from her bowl.

Sweeting gave him a scold. “She won’t have any if you keep snitching apples from my filling!”

“Apologies!” He grinned at her.

“If you’re hungry, Finnley, I’ll bring out another pasty.”

“No, thank you, I’m full.”

“A big man like you?” She wrinkled her brows, hands on her hips. “Get on with you. You like to eat. At any hour. Here. Take this up to our lady and when you return, I’ll have heated up that pasty for you. Tea, too. Now go.”

Upstairs Alicia sat propped up in her massive bed, now in a dressing robe, her glorious platinum hair spilling down her shoulders.

To look at her hurt his eyes. Her room was painted in a rosy hue that touched her skin with luminous pink. The bedclothes were a mix of lace and linen, a spectrum of whites and pinks that framed her generously endowed body in complement.

He gazed upon her, struck as he always was, by her pristine features. Such a beauty, he had not expected from his report. Lord Winston had left out any description of Lady Ranford—and Finnley alternately cursed and praised his friend for his lack. If Finnley had known how gorgeous she was, he might have suspected she had killed her husband. Good-looking women often had ulterior motives like lovers or fortune to spur them on to murder. He knew. He’d caught two of them with damning evidence and helped Bow Street put them behind bars. But with one glance at the innocent countenance of this captivating widow, Finnley had immediately concluded Alicia could not kill a fly. Not even her derelict husband who had had the stupidity to dishonor her and gamble his fortunes at the tables and in the City.