The Lady’s Secret (5 page)

How young he looked, with that bright, silvery hair and smooth, unmarred forehead. Absurdly young to be so impassive, to be such a very efficient valet.

“Shall I have your horse brought round, my lord?”

“Yes, Fellowes. Thank you.” Nathan returned his attention to his reflection in the mirror and pretended abstraction. Fellowes withdrew.

Quiet, unassuming Fellowes. There was something about him, something that had just this moment tripped Nathan’s instincts. He didn’t know why. But there was something.

He never distrusted his instincts.

After a brisk ride, Nathan consulted with his man of business and then lunched at his club. He was always sure to meet someone he knew there and sure enough, not long after his arrival, in strolled Ross, otherwise known as Simon Rossiter, Viscount Maybury, another of the old Cambridge set and one of Nathan’s closest friends. After sharing a bottle of port, Nathan persuaded Ross to join him at the Camelot theatre that evening for a performance of
Twelfth Night
.

Ross, not the most cultured of men, was dubious but was persuaded when Nathan pointed out that they would be in Covent Garden and thus admirably close to Ross’s favourite haunts: Belle Orton’s gaming hell and Madame Yvette’s bawdy house. If the play was boring, they would leave, Nathan promised.

It was a promise he regretted only a few minutes into the performance.

“What’s this twaddle again?” Ross asked as he slumped in his red velvet chair, scowling at the stage, his floppy fair hair and blue eyes giving him an innocent appearance that was quite undeserved. It was only act one and Ross was already getting bored and impatient. It didn’t help that he was already three sheets to the wind.

“As you know perfectly well,” Nathan sighed, “it’s
Twelfth Night
, a very fine comedic play by the best playwright England has ever produced.”

Ross slipped his hand inside his coat and extracted a silver flask which he unscrewed and drank from deeply. “Rum cove, Shakespeare,” he muttered.

“Listen, why don’t you pop out for a bit? Go and see Dunwoody, there’s a good chap. He’s over there with Mrs. Herbert and he looks just as bored as you.” Nathan signalled at one of the boxes opposite.

Ross followed his gesture. “Oh is he? Then yes, I think I will. I want to ask him if it’s true he’s selling his greys. But don’t worry,” he added. “I’ll be back soon.”

“No need to hurry on my account, old man,” Nathan assured him dryly.

By the time Ross had left the box, the actress playing Viola was back on stage with Orsino. She was making the most of her “masquerading as a boy” costume, showing off a pair of shapely legs that were attracting a few shouted comments and whistles from the cheaper seats. Orsino didn’t notice her patently feminine legs, of course. He was far too busy looking broodingly into the distance.

“My father had a daughter loved a man, as it might be, perhaps were I a woman, I should your lordship,”
Viola told Orsino, over her shoulder. Her tone was casual but, unnoticed by him, she watched him hungrily.

“And what’s her history?”
Orsino asked.
 

“A blank, my lord. She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, feed on her damask cheek.”

Loving passionately in silence? It didn’t sound much like the women he’d come across, Nathan thought. In his experience, women were the more cool-headed about matters of the heart, whether they be courtesans looking for a generous protector or dukes’ daughters looking for a dynastic marriage. They put themselves on display and simply—waited. To be approached; to be chosen. And if more than one fish nibbled the bait, they selected the best of the catch. As for men, he’d lost count of the fools he’d seen, desperate to declare that they had fallen in love, when the truth was that all they felt was a lust that would wear off in a matter of months.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in love. He loved his family: his mother, his sister Verity and her children. His older brother, Charlie, who had died at the age of twelve. His late father, a good man, though stern. He loved his estate in Derbyshire, the land on which he had spent his boyhood. He had never felt anything comparable to that for any of his bedmates—that deep, intense affection; that love.

Oh, he had lost his youthful head over a few women in his time, and he had been fond of several of his mistresses. But those emotions always proved to be short-lived in the end. Perhaps love—the abiding sort he felt for his family and his land—wasn’t to be found with the sort of women he had been bedding since he came to manhood.

Then again, perhaps love wasn’t to be found with any woman, when you were an earl. Whenever his mother urged him to find a wife, she never mentioned love. And when he railed about all those cold social rules about matrimony, she pointed out they were just common sense, designed to find the sort of woman who could take on the daunting responsibilities of his countess. The sort of woman who would bear his children, direct his estate and its workers and help him preserve the title for all those future generations.

The estate and title that should have been Charlie’s.

It often occurred to him, as he perambulated the ballrooms and drawing rooms of London, that if Charlie hadn’t died, the woman Nathan would end up marrying probably wouldn’t have wanted him as a mere younger son. His life—the one he’d been born to live—had come to an end the day Charlie drowned. Like a cuckoo, Nathan had taken his place.

His mother was growing impatient with his failure to choose a bride. Two years ago, he’d almost proposed to a woman. Miss Annabel Wainthorpe was extremely pretty, perfectly eligible, cheerful without being inane, and seemed to have a streak of common sense about her. He’d begun to pay her court but he hadn’t been alone. By the time the season was halfway through, the gossips had begun to talk of it as a three-horse race between himself, the Viscount Eastwood and Sir Frederick Braxton. At first, Nathan’s competitive streak had come to the fore, but then he’d realised that Miss Wainthorpe was showing no real partiality for any of them. She danced with them all, allowed them all to take her driving and accepted their various floral tributes with identical degrees of delight. As an earl, Nathan was the most highly ranked of her suitors, then Eastwood, then Braxton. When Nathan dropped out of the race without proposing marriage, the other two both made offers. She accepted the portly, pompous Eastwood over the handsome, pleasant Braxton and later that season, he overheard her mother bragging to a friend about Bella’s success.

It had sent a chill through him, hearing Mrs. Wainthorpe gloat over her daughter’s triumph, but he knew that was the reality of the marriage mart. Bella Wainthorpe was accomplished and sensible and would have made an excellent countess. She was exactly the sort of woman he would end up with, eventually.

It was a depressing thought. He made himself return his attention to the stage. Orsino stood to stage left, looking out to the audience. Viola, meanwhile, stared at him, her face ravaged by an expression of such intense longing that it made Nathan’s gut clench.

That was what he wanted—what he saw in her face.

An impossible dream for a man like him.

When the first act came to an end, Nathan left his box and went in search of Ross—he was propping up the wall outside Dunwoody’s box, his silver flask in his hand.

“There you are!” Ross said, pocketing the flask. “Had enough? Can we go now?”

“Yes,” Nathan answered shortly. “Where to?”

“Let’s give Belle Orton’s a miss and go straight to Yvette’s.”

Why not? At least the women at Yvette’s only wanted his coins.

“You’re on. Let’s have some sport.”

It was well after noon before Harland rang for her.

When she reached his bedchamber she tapped the door, counted to ten and eased it ajar.

“Come.” His voice was croaky and listless. Georgy swung the door fully open and entered. The room reeked of stale alcohol. Harland lay on his back, one arm thrown over his face. He still wore his crumpled clothes from the previous evening, with the exception of his coat, which he had somehow managed to wrestle off and which now lay in a sorry heap on the floor. He must have been ridiculously foxed to have treated his coat like that.

“My lord?”

“I feel awful,” he groaned from under his arm.

“Would you like me to get you some breakfast, my lord?”

“Just coffee,” he said faintly. “I have to meet Bradwell at three to discuss House business. If I did not, I would pull these covers over my head and go back to sleep.”

“Very good, my lord,” Georgy murmured and withdrew.

She tripped downstairs to the kitchens, where Mrs. Simms ordered a maid to brew the coffee. She insisted on adding toasted muffins and the customary orange to the tray as well.

By the time Georgy returned to the bedchamber with the breakfast tray, Harland had removed the rest of his clothes and donned his favourite red silk robe. He was sitting up in bed, the covers pushed aside, his lean hair-roughened legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. His fingers were pressed to his temples, his eyes closed. When she approached the bed he dropped his hands from his head. She placed the tray over his thighs and he recoiled slightly at the sight of the muffins.

“Mrs. Simms,” Georgy explained quietly.

“I should probably eat something,” Harland said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. He shifted into a more upright position and winced. “Ah, Fellowes, my head is pounding like the very devil. Do you have a magic brew you can give me to make it go away? Aren’t valets supposed to know about these sorts of things?”

Georgy opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it and closed it again. There
was
something she could do for him but she was reluctant to offer. “Did Mr. Jarvis have a magic brew?” she temporised.

“God, no. Jarvis thought that if one brought misery upon one’s own head one should bear it like a man.” He winced again. “I’ll have this coffee and then you can shave me.”

“Very good, my lord.” Georgy bowed herself out of his presence again, leaving the room backwards. The first time she had done that, she had felt idiotic. But it had quickly become habit. It was the role she performed—part of that strange dance between master and servant.

She wandered back down to the kitchens and waited while Rosie boiled her a kettle, then ran back upstairs with the kettle to perform the usual door-knocking shenanigans. Tap, tap, tap. Opening the door a mere inch till she had his permission to enter. On his command, she went in and wandered through to the dressing room to prepare to shave him. Oil, towels, soap. Strop the blade. Beat the lather. Everything laid out just so. By the time she was ready, he was making his loose-limbed entrance, as self-possessed as a sultan.

He sat down carefully and laid his head back on the headrest, expression pinched. Georgy set a towel over his shoulders and lathered his face, which had a distinct ashen tinge. She shaved him deftly, her movements neat and efficient. As she bent close she could smell the brandy on him. Stupidly, she wanted to make him feel better.
Two hot flannels today
, she thought.

After she’d lifted the second flannel away and given his face a final wipe, she said, somewhat diffidently, “My lord, if your head is still pounding, perhaps there is something I can do to assist.”

He opened his eyes. “How? Have you recalled a magic brew after all?” She looked down at his upside-down face and felt her cheeks heat faintly. Lord, but he was beautiful; he quite undid her at times.

“I—actually, no. But I could rub your head. It is quite effective with the headache, I find.” She had been plagued with sinus infections when she was younger, and her mother used to rub her head for hours to relieve the pain. Later, Georgy had learned how to do it for herself.

“I would try anything, Fellowes. Do your worst.”

“Very good. Please—close your eyes, my lord.” He did so while Georgy cast around for some kind of unguent. There was only the scented oil. She opened the bottle and shook a small amount onto her palm, then quickly rubbed her hands together, spreading it evenly. The spicy scent drifted up to her nostrils and she saw Harland’s expression relax slightly as the same familiar aroma reached him.

Taking a deep breath, she laid one hand on either side of his face, her palms cupping his jaw on either side, her fingertips meeting in the middle of his chin. Gently, she exerted some upward pressure.

“Oh, that’s good.” Harland sighed.

She smiled to herself, remembering just how pleasurable the relief from pain could be. After half a minute of pressing upwards, she slowly ran her fingertips up either side of Harland’s jaw, pressing firmly, right up to the base of his earlobes, where she began to rub small circles, moving upwards. Harland groaned. She paused at his temples and slid her thumbs to the base of his skull, and rubbed there too, her thumbs and fingertips all moving together at the front and back of his head.

“This is wonderful,” Harland sighed after several minutes. “How did you learn to do it?”

“My mother.” Georgy let her fingertips drift to his cheekbones, pausing every half inch to press a firm circle until she reached the bridge of his nose. Again, her fingertips met.

“Close your eyes,” she murmured. Harland made a rough sound of assent, his jaw slack with pleasure.

Georgy gently traced the upper ridge of his eye sockets with her thumbs, following the curving bones. She paused again at the bridge of his nose, pressing firmly on either side and then working her way along the lower ridge of the eye sockets and cheekbones.

“Ah,” said Harland. It was little more than an exhalation really, an appreciative sound borne on a sigh.

Her hands ached but there was one last thing her mother used to do, the thing that felt the best of all. Georgy drew her fingers slowly back to Harland’s temples again then tunnelled them into his dark silky hair and began to knead his scalp. She used all of her fingers, her thumbs and the heels of her hands in the task. He groaned again and the sound of his pleasure grabbed her, down low.