Regency 09 - Redemption (29 page)

Verena laughed, the bitter sound
sweeping out to echo in the furtherest reaches of the spacious
room. She backed away from him. “Low opinion? How can I not? You
spend hours with me, pretending an interest in my duties that you
can’t possibly feel.”

Grimmer than she’d ever seen this
perpetually cheerful young man, he observed, “Your voice changes
when you’re distracted.”

“You drive me to
distraction!”

His observation penetrated her
anger a second after the words left her mouth. More angry with
herself at that point, she stormed from the room, leaving him alone
with his grim thoughts.

The time Connor spent with the maid
caused much amusement for his host. Feldspar always was an odd
eccentric, even going so far as to care about his servants’
welfare, a distinct difference between him and many of his
contemporaries. The one conversation he’d had with Connor on the
matter left an indelible mark on the young lord.

Connor and Adam had been enjoying a
rare hour in the billiards room without the ladies or the
gentlemen, a moment when they could speak of inconsequential
matters and pretend the wall that had started between them did not
exist. Connor had just been observing to himself that the ease that
had once existed was probably gone forever. Saddened but resigned,
he’d leaned in to take a shot when Lord Feldspar entered, his
normally jovial features creased with grim
determination.

“A word, Northwicke, if you
please.”

Surprised to be singled out by his
host, Connor relinquished his billiards cue to Adam, and followed
the older gentleman from the room.

Feldspar’s study was just one door
away from the billiards room. They entered, the door closed, and
Connor’s host began without preamble.

“It has come to my notice that you
are favoring one of the new maids with attentions. The one called
Doll Rendel.”

When Connor said nothing, the
portly gentleman blustered, “Well? What say you?”

“I am convinced my attentions are
not unwelcome.”

Feldspar’s face contorted, his
chubby cheeks growing red. “What are your intentions?”

“My intentions? What intentions
could I have towards a maid?”

“I don’t allow trifling with my
servants, Lord Connor. Cease whatever you’re doing and leave the
girl in peace.”

“I am not trifling with her,”
Connor said defensively. But if he wasn’t, what was he doing? Even
he was a bit confused by how much he enjoyed her company, how much
he longed to be with her when others demanded his time. It made
little sense to a young man who’d taken the pleasures life offered
as a matter of course. He’d never had to work for anything before
and Doll’s constant aloofness intrigued him.

It was ironic that Feldspar chose
now to speak to him, when he’d spent days away from her after she
herself had taken him to task for his unaccountable
behavior.

“If you do not trifle with her
affections, why does she mope around here, spreading her misery to
all and sundry?”

“I shall apologize,” Connor
decided, feeling ungentlemanly joyful at the news of her misery.
She missed him, surely!

Leaving Feldspar back to his jolly,
undemanding self, Connor went in search of Doll that very moment to
tender his deepest contrition for upsetting her.

He returned to Adam only long
enough to inform that gentleman that he had business to attend to.
Adam stopped him as he turned to go.

“Have you not grown bored with the
company here?” he said, his tone clearly indicating just how bored
he himself had grown with the company. “This party has gone on far
too long and the company is deadly dull.”

“Soon, Adam, soon,” Connor assured
him, edging his way through the doorway and into the corridor
beyond. “Very soon,” he called again, letting the heavy oak door
close on his words.

Escaping from the gentlemen of the
house party was never too difficult. Connor didn’t care for hunting
grouse and while riding was a pastime he enjoyed, he preferred to
do so alone. Visiting the neighboring estates did not appeal nearly
so much as seeking out the ebony-haired temptress he called
friend.

The ladies posed a far greater
obstacle. When a man was wealthy, titled, handsome, and unmarried,
he was a sort of magnet for unmarried females and their matchmaking
mamas. Eluding them was an art one developed with practice and Lord
Connor Northwicke had been practicing almost since
birth.

Adam was the real challenge. As
soon as he’d noticed his friend taking up with a servant, he’d gone
out of his way to protect Connor from what he called the maid’s
evil clutches. Which only went to show how much the theater was
rubbing off on the surly gentleman.

Unable to locate the only person
whose company he craved, Connor threw caution to the winds and
descended the servants’ stairs, caring little that a man in his
position should do no such thing. He entered the kitchens, a wave
of heat blasting over him.

Clattering pots, stern orders, and
scurrying servants filled the space. Connor blinked rapidly, trying
to make sense of the confusion and wondering if his mother’s
kitchens boasted the same industrious chaos.

A pert maid with dark red hair and
wary green eyes brushed by him, stopped, turned, and stared. Connor
recognized her as one who was often with Doll, going about their
duties. Mouth agape, she gestured at the other servants, her action
catching the attention of one or two, whose own fevered gestures
caught the attention of still more, until the room lay cloaked in
silence.

Then, through the fog of steaming
pots, he saw her.

Magnificent black tresses gleamed
in the dim light, the absence of her usual white mobcap allowing
the meager kitchen lighting to shine on her head. A few rebellious
curls had escaped, no doubt due to the many duties she’d already
performed that day and one of those ebony tresses lay against her
cheek as she bandaged the hand of the little scullery maid. Her
whole concentration centered on the child, not even the
preternatural silence permeating her thoughts.

The silence finally penetrated the
scullery maid’s dull mind. She nudged Doll with her free
hand.

Doll’s head lifted, a sort of dazed
look on her face. Then, her violet eyes widened, meeting his, every
muscle in her slim body tensing in shock. “Milord! Have you lost
your way?”

Just a trifle embarrassed, Connor
smiled. “Indeed I have. Perhaps you can help me.”

Bobbing a curtsy, Doll followed him
out, barely giving the other servants a glance. Her head bowed in
the proper subservient manner, she failed to see Connor stop just
as the kitchen door closed them off from the others’ views. Connor
took great delight in the sudden press of her slim young body
against his but even he was taken unaware at the force with which
that delectable body connected with his own.

They fell on the stair in an
inelegant heap, Doll sprawling full length atop him.

Normally, finding himself in such
an undignified position would have made Lord Connor Northwicke
laugh. However, finding himself in such a position with a woman he
viewed as easily the most desirable woman he’d ever seen, laughter
was the furthest thing from his mind. No, indeed, his thoughts
turned to a far coarser line of thinking, a line of thinking that
grew baser with every breath she took.

Doll did not struggle up. Her face
registered a shock as great as his own, greater than what she’d
experienced upon seeing him enter the servants’ domain mere moments
before. Then, her eyes dropping from his to focus somewhere near
his mouth, Connor succumbed to a temptation too great for him to
resist.

Closing the small distance between
their lips, he kissed her, a very brief, butterfly caress that was
over almost before it started. He had no sense of time or place, or
how very inappropriate it was for him to be kissing a maid while
sprawled on the stair.

And he wouldn’t have cared had the
thought crossed his mind in that moment. He kissed her again, his
lips lingering a moment longer than before. She didn’t pull away;
she pressed closer, the fingers on his chest curling into the
fabric of his coat. Her lips burned against his for a brief moment
and then she did pull away, her face flushing bright crimson. The
wariness he often saw in her eyes returned, greater than before. He
cursed himself for the fool he undoubtedly was.

She pushed against him and he
shoved himself back, rising to his feet and offering her a hand up.
Flinching from his touch, she rose on her own, her eyes straying to
the doorway through which they’d so recently passed.

Not surprisingly, several curious
faces crowded together, mouths hanging open on the younger
servants, stern disapproval twisting the features of the elders.
Connor couldn’t really blame them but he did object to a few of the
disapproving glances being trained on the maid.

“Go about your business,” he
commanded in his best
Lord of the
Manor
voice. The younger servants jumped,
with the exception of the pert, red-haired one, disappearing into
the darker recesses of the kitchen.

The butler, his disapproval almost
palpable, addressed the frowning housekeeper. “Mrs. Watts, please
take Doll into the scullery and set her to scrubbing
pots.”

Mrs. Watts stepped forward as Doll
did the same. Connor stepped between them. “I have need of this
maid’s services.”

Why did some words sound less
heinous in one’s head than when one spoke them? He resisted the
urge to cringe and waited in expectation of the horror he knew his
statement would incite. He should walk away now, before he made
Doll’s life more difficult by branding her a harlot amongst her
peers.

The redheaded maid stepped forward,
her features contorted with a hatred that Connor found unwarranted.
Mrs. Watts grasped the girl’s arm, whispered something in her ear,
and the girl reluctantly returned to the kitchens, casting one last
venomous glance in Connor’s direction. It was then he remembered
she spent much time with Doll, their duties often placing them in
the same chambers. The other maid was as disapproving of Doll’s
association with him as Adam was about Connor’s association with
Doll. Peas in a pod, Connor thought with an inward
chuckle.

“My lord, perhaps you have taken a
wrong turn. This is the servants’ stair, here to aid in the serving
of the household. You can go that direction to return to the
guests’ section of the house,” the butler informed him, pointing up
the staircase.

And how could one argue with such a
formidable personage, one who was inarguably correct? Except,
Connor hadn’t lost his way at all, merely his mind and his
wits.

Dropping his hand from Doll’s arm,
he grimaced. “Indeed, I must have lost my way. My apologies for
having disturbed the proper running of the household.”

He walked away then, realizing only
in that moment that he’d failed to apologize for his earlier
treatment. Had he just finished destroying the friendship he’d come
to enjoy?

Friendship? He was afraid that, for
him, it was much more than that now.

Scrubbing pots was the perfect
penance for what she’d done. She hadn’t initiated the kiss, true,
but she hadn’t stopped it either. At least, not right away. It had
been too nice, too pleasurable, and such a welcome change from her
past experiences with men.

Heavens! What was she thinking?
Experiences? One could hardly use such a tame word for what she’d
endured, always at the hands of some man.

Hours later, as the day grew later
and the sun’s slow descent turned the sky shades of pink and red,
Verena was released from her punishment with the warning to steer
clear of gentlemen who would amuse themselves “befriending”
fetching young maids.

“No good can come of it,” Mrs Watts
said kindly but with a thread of steel underlying her words.
“Gentlemen do not marry servants and can only have one goal in
mind. You know what that is.”

Verena nodded, taking the
housekeeper’s warning to heart. Indeed, what other objective could
Lord Connor have? He had no idea that her father was an earl and
even if he did, her foray into the ranks of the servant class made
her unacceptable as a nobleman’s bride. Should it get out that
she’d served her own kind, she’d be irrevocably ruined.

But what did that matter? She would
gain that which she most desired: Freedom from marriage. Marriage
was the worst thing that could happen to a woman. A woman lost all
rights over herself, her body, and her life when a man took her as
wife. She would much rather stay a drudge, slowly withering away
into a ripe old age, a spinster to her dying day.

She’d much rather endure the
degradation of spinsterhood than what a man would do to
her.

A slight shiver crawled over her
shoulders. Marriage was not for her.

Connor entered the drawing
room that evening with Adam Prestwich at his side. The
loose-tongued Lady Aldrich captured them, her gleeful expression
positively radiant at whatever choice morsel she had managed to
glean. It was mere moments before she informed them of a new
arrival in the form of the Earl of Carstairs. Apparently his
daughter, the Lady Verena, went missing nearly three months ago and
he had tracked her to the area, stopping in at Lord Feldspar’s to
inform him, privately, of the matter, as Feldspar was the local
dignitary. The old woman tittered in delight at her dramatic
on dit
. Listening at doors
for delicious gossip was Lady Aldrich’s bread and
butter.