The Lady’s Secret (6 page)

She looked down at him, at that dark head relaxing on the headrest, at his lean length sprawled in the chair below her, at his expression, relaxed at last. His robe had worked loose and she could see his upper thighs, hard and muscular and rough with dark hair. Her eyes moved upwards and stopped again at his throat, strong and vulnerable all at once. His hair felt silken in her fingers, the planes of his head firm and warm in her hands. The oil scent infused the air. She gazed at his dark lashes, his lips, which moved minutely as she worked. She imagined what it would be like to press hers down on them, to stroke a hand over his smooth throat, to feel his pulse there. Her own body heated with that wanting.

It was then she saw that he was hard.

Fellowes’ fingers stopped moving quite suddenly. Nathan opened his eyes but Fellowes was not looking at Nathan’s face. Eyes wide, he was staring lower, at the semi-erection Nathan was sporting.

Nathan scrambled upright and Fellowes’ hands fell entirely away.

“Thank you, Fellowes,” Nathan muttered. His neck felt hot. “Would you brush down my blue coat, please?”

“Of course, my lord. Any particular waistcoat?” Fellowes’ voice was as quiet and calm as usual. He was already moving away, as though the last few minutes had not happened.

“No. Whatever you think.”

Nathan stood and walked to his linen closet, pulling out a pair of drawers and hurriedly yanking them on. By the time Fellowes came back with the coat and waistcoat, Nathan was tying the drawstring around his waist. Fellowes stared at this unusual sight in momentary surprise before masking his expression and turning away.

Bloody hell.
He had been aroused by Fellowes!
No
, he amended the thought quickly. He had not been aroused by
Fellowes
. Just by Fellowes’ hands on him. An anonymous pair of hands had brought him pleasure—that was all. Any pair of hands would have done the same.

These rationalisations did nothing to relieve his horror though. He felt embarrassed and awkward. And exploitative. Especially when he remembered what had brought Fellowes to his door—a master who had tried to take advantage of Fellowes’ youth and inexperience.

From the lad’s expression as he’d stared at his tented robe, Nathan was sure that he was fairly innocent. His eyes had been wide with palpable shock at Nathan’s arousal. But it was not merely shock. There had been something else there too after the immediate reaction.

Interest. Just for a moment. And that was the most disconcerting thing of all.

Nathan dressed quickly, for the most part declining Fellowes’ assistance. He even elected to tie his own cravat, which was stupid, since he had to discard several attempts before finally getting it right. His behaviour was odd, he knew, but he felt faintly panicked that he might get another erection if Fellowes touched him. Absurd!

He took off as soon as he was dressed, ordering his carriage and making for his club where he was meeting Bradwell.

As his carriage bounced miserably over the cobbles, he closed his aching eyes and reviewed what had just happened. Had he over-reacted?

Systematically, he set about reassuring himself. He had been drunk last night and hungover this morning. He was not in working order. He had quite simply not been in his own head when Fellowes had administered that soothing head-rub. His body had reacted to the pleasure itself, not the giver of the pleasure.

He pointed these facts out to his own tired brain several times and still didn’t feel entirely reassured.

10 December 1810

The days passed quickly for Georgy. The life of a servant was one of routine and constant occupation. Besides dressing Harland two or three times each day, there was an unending list of tasks—repairs to be made, cleaning to be done, boots to be shined, baths to be drawn, equipment to be kept up to scratch, orders to be placed and fetched.

All in all, she was fully occupied from dawn until late in the evening. She was lucky that Harland was not a master who insisted she stay up every night to help him undress. Sometimes she was on call—usually if he’d attended a ball and was wearing very formal evening clothes that he simply couldn’t extricate himself from. But at least half of the week he sent her to bed and said he’d manage himself. Even so, every day was long and busy and, immersed in her role as she was, it was sometimes easy to forget why she was here. Dunsmore’s Christmas house party was still ten days away.

She looked forward to her Sunday afternoons all week, a small slice of time when she could put her life as a servant to one side, meet her friends and get news of how Harry was faring. She knew how lucky she was. Mr. Taylor had been at pains to point out to her that only the upper servants got regular time off and that was a half day every
month
. A half day every week was an unbelievable luxury and one which Mr. Taylor was clearly alarmed Harland had agreed to. After the interview Taylor had made a point of deducting a portion of the salary her predecessor had been paid as “compensation” for this favour.

She was rarely free until two o’clock on Sunday afternoons, by which time she had been up and working a full day already, and she had to be back for servants’ dinner at six. But she wasn’t about to complain.

Today she was meeting Lily in Hyde Park, which was very close to Harland’s townhouse. But first, she had to deal with dressing Harland.

He’d been at a ball the previous evening and had risen late. At one o’clock, he had announced he was taking his phaeton out and was now being irritatingly choosy about his clothing. Having granted his valet the boon of a half day off every week, Harland had an annoying habit of forgetting about it.

“I don’t like this waistcoat,” he declared, at five minutes to two.

“The green then, my lord?”

Harland stayed silent in the face of this question, merely staring into the looking glass. Georgy wanted to tell him, very frankly, what he could do with his waistcoats. Why did it matter so much anyway? He dressed as though for battle sometimes, with all the gravity of a warrior choosing his weapons.

“The cream,” he decided at last.

She helped him off with his tight fitting coat and the offending russet waistcoat. She fetched the cream waistcoat, helped him on with that and then it was on with the coat again. She tidied his cravat and swept a brush over it to remove every speck of lint. When she finished, Harland didn’t look much happier but thankfully he decided that this would do…although he wanted his boots burnished again.

By the time he finished dressing—at twenty minutes after two—Georgy wanted to scream aloud. Finally dismissed, she hurried to her small attic room, tidied her own appearance, flew down the backstairs and half ran, half walked to the Park.

She rushed through the gates, overtaking strolling couples and children out with their nursemaids. It was an unseasonably warm day. The sky was a bright, happy blue and it was impossible not to feel cheerful.

Lily was dawdling at their designated meeting place by the Serpentine, looking ridiculously pretty, a pastoral ideal of an apple-cheeked country lass in her simple muslin gown and yellow shawl.

“George, darling! At last!” she called, eyes alight with mischief. Lily found it highly amusing to pretend Georgy was her beau when they met in public. She’d invented a lurid history for them, worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe. Georgy was a promising young architect and Lily was the daughter of a drunken impoverished lord who wished to marry her off to a wicked duke.

Georgy, not to be outdone, took Lily’s hand and pressed a kiss to her gloved knuckles. “My darling,” she said, her expression anguished. “The hours have felt like days, the days like weeks, the weeks like months, the months…”

Lily broke first, snorting out a laugh.

Georgy gave a small smile of triumph and offered her arm. She was becoming used to living as a man now and these gestures didn’t feel strange anymore.

They strolled along, putting their heads together as they chatted. Lily was only an inch shorter than Georgy, so they were well suited in height and build.

“So,” Lily said, “how is life with Lord Perfection?”

At the beginning of her tenure as his valet, Georgy had told Lily of some of Harland’s ways—his pickiness about his linen, his insistence on silence in the mornings, the eight precise slices of orange at breakfast. Lily had found these details fascinating and hilarious. Georgy had come to wish she had never opened her mouth.

“Fine,” she said now, adopting an uninterested tone.

Lily was undeterred. “It must be tiresome, having to put up with his demands. Does he change his clothes three times
every
day?”

“Of course not,” Georgy said irritably. Why did she have this absurd compulsion to defend him? To say,
he’s not some brainless dandy. It’s just that clothes
matter
to him, they’re …

“Georgy?”

….
armour.

She blinked at Lily, realising she’d lost herself for a moment.

“Sorry. I was miles away. What were we talking about?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Lily said with a rueful smile. “The last thing you must want to do is talk about Lord Harland after spending every day with him. When is Dunsmore’s house party?”

“We depart in ten days’ time.”

“So you don’t have too much longer to bear working as his valet then.”

“No.”

Shouldn’t that make her ecstatically happy?

“Have you heard from Harry?” Georgy asked, changing the subject.

“Max had a letter yesterday,” Lily said. “But it didn’t say much. Just that he was still going from village to village.” She paused and gave Georgy a sympathetic look. “He’s sure to find something sooner or later.”

Georgy smiled at her friend, appreciating her pretended confidence. The truth was Lily would be as astonished as Georgy if Harry found anything in Yorkshire.

“Unless you find something at Dunsmore’s house first,” Lily added.

“Fingers crossed,” Georgy said.

They shared a look, and then Lily patted her arm. “Well, if it’s there to be found, you’ll find it, George, I’m quite cert—”

She broke off, staring straight ahead. Georgy followed her arrested gaze to see none other than Sir Nigel Agnew walking towards them, a young lady at his side. A respectable young lady. Two older ladies walked behind. Chaperoning. Georgy glanced at Lily, just in time to see her mask her dismayed reaction.

Sir Nigel looked their way, a horror-stricken expression crossing his face.

Lily turned her head to look at Georgy squarely and gave her a dazzling smile. “Don’t say anything. Just pretend to be besotted with me.”

And so they walked past Sir Nigel and his companion, smiling and laughing and talking with utter absorption, and completely ignoring Lily’s lover. Georgy kissed Lily’s hand and looked at her rather as she imagined a dog might look at a bone. They kept the charade up long after they’d passed Sir Nigel. Georgy paid Lily outrageous compliments, prompting her to laugh in a merry way that suggested she hadn’t a care in the world. When Lily dropped her handkerchief and it fell behind a fence, Georgy vaulted the fence to retrieve it, a feat of derring-do that made Lily’s eyes sparkle. She handed the errant handkerchief over with a bow and flashed a wicked smile.

“My word, George,” Lily laughed. “You would turn any girl’s head, I declare. You are quite wasted as a girl.”

Georgy chuckled. “I should be a chap, shouldn’t I? But I lack one very important thing. Were you to marry me, I think you would be very disappointed on our wedding night.”

“Now, it must have been a man who told you that,” Lily said archly. They both laughed again and Lily glanced down the path. “He’s looking,” she whispered. And then she leaned forward and kissed Georgy.

Her lips were cool and sweet and closed. Her hands were on Georgy’s shoulders and Georgy’s on her waist. They stood, their lips clinging for a full minute. They must look, Georgy imagined, as though they were truly in love. A woman tutted at their boldness as she walked past, causing a muffled giggle to erupt from Lily’s lips and gust against her own.

It was only when Georgy lifted her head up that she saw there was another spectator to their kiss: a dark-haired man in a high perch phaeton with a fashionable beauty sitting at his side. A dark-haired man in a cream waistcoat.

Lord Harland.

Their eyes met for only a moment as his phaeton passed, but Nathan knew that Fellowes had seen him.

Cousin George?

Cousin George, my arse!

Were they lovers? Fellowes and Lily Hawkins?

He’d first spotted them minutes before the kiss and had slowed his horses to a walk. The lovely Mrs. Gordon—his forgotten passenger—had asked what he was doing and he’d muttered something about enjoying the scenery.

He’d seen Lily Hawkins first. She was wearing a little frippery bit of hat that did nothing to hide those glorious raven tresses, and she was smiling and laughing in a dazzling way, lit up, as though she was on-stage. It was several moments before he noticed who she was with. A slender man, of about her own height, quite anonymous from the back. The man had leapt over the fence with impressive athleticism to recover her handkerchief. It was only when he vaulted back over to return his prize, dislodging his hat, that Nathan had noticed that betraying bright bit of hair.

And then he saw the man’s face.

He had jerked his horses to a complete halt, doing his best not to gape, only to be treated to the sight of Lily Hawkins publicly, shockingly, kissing Fellowes on the mouth.

“What a bold minx!” his passenger had observed, evidently not recognising the plainly-dressed girl as the toast of Covent Garden. Not to mention overlooking the fact that she herself had been cheerfully committing adultery for the last decade with countless men—including, a few years ago, Nathan himself.

Had he mumbled some reply? He wasn’t entirely sure. He had been fixated on the kissing couple, who finally broke apart, smiling into one another’s eyes before Fellowes glanced away—and straight at Nathan.

Strictly speaking, it was none of his business what Fellowes got up to on his afternoon off. But
Lily Hawkins?
Since their meeting, he had discovered Lily had a protector—a wealthy baronet just up from the country from what he’d heard. Of course, Nathan knew only too well that it was not uncommon for women like Lily to have a lover of choice whilst simultaneously pursuing more profitable liaisons. But Lily and
Fellowes?
He could see that Fellowes’ youthful beauty might appeal to a woman like Lily, but in truth, he was surprised that
she
appealed to
him
. He had begun to wonder whether Fellowes’ tastes ran in a rather different direction…

Their gazes met only for a moment, Nathan giving the barest nod to his valet before he turned his attention back to his horses and set them off at a smart trot. But as he drove away, he could still see the shocked expression on the other man’s face.

It was much later that he realised he had not noticed Lily’s expression at all.