What an Earl Wants (11 page)

Had he touched
her
? A horrible thought froze his hand with the teacup halfway to his mouth. Had he gone too far?

Thinking back, he realized he always seized every opportunity to touch her—in an avuncular, man-to-man, employer-to-employee way, of course—but he’d never crossed the line to inappropriate. His entire relationship with Quincy was inappropriate, a little voice whispered. He ignored it.

Then he remembered her derrière. At his suggestion, she’d turned around to pull his boot off, and he’d planted his foot on her backside. Just to help. Nothing unusual in that. His bare foot, on her firm, round, oh-so-feminine derrière. And he’d enjoyed it. Immensely.

Had he done anything else improper?

“Damn!”

“Benjamin!”

“Beg pardon, Mama, ladies.” After an awkward pause, the chattering in Lady Bigglesworth’s front parlor resumed. Lady Fitzwater and Sir Leland arrived moments later, and Sinclair had to set aside his speculations and participate in the conversation.

It seemed hours before they set home again. Once there, he headed directly for the library and took up a position on the sofa. Quincy greeted him politely, then went back to work, alternating between moving balls on the abacus and scratching in the account books. Sinclair pretended to read while he covertly observed her. She paid little attention to him, with no indication she felt uncomfortable in his presence.

Sinclair heaved a sigh of relief. He hadn’t disgraced himself as a gentleman last night, fortunately. Unfortunately, he’d also been too drunk to fully appreciate the opportunity. He vaguely remembered the feel, but it had been too dark to see…

Sinclair strolled over to the desk and reached for a pencil, startling Quincy. He leaned a little closer to his secretary than absolutely necessary, and watched the blush stain her cheeks and disappear below her collar. She turned a delightful shade of pink as she smiled uncertainly at him.

Dazzled by her smile, he accidentally dropped the pencil, and it rolled several feet away. “Would you please get that?”

“Of course, my lord.” Quincy scooted sideways from him before standing up, then walked over to the pencil and bent over to pick it up. Giving in to an imp of mischief, Sinclair unabashedly paid close attention as Quincy’s coattails separated, revealing her subtly rounded, distinctly feminine, backside.

He quickly raised his gaze when she turned around. Her blush deepened even further, but she gamely held out the pencil to him. He almost forgot to take it. Sinclair opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, and returned to the sofa.

He watched her frown as she deciphered a poorly written bill of sale, her concentration focused on her work once more. He could have sat and watched her all day if Mama had not summoned him upstairs to consult on household matters.

Later that afternoon, Harper tapped on his bedchamber door. “Come in,” Sinclair said, eyeing the butler’s reflection in the mirror as he tied a fresh cravat.

Harper cleared his throat. “I don’t know quite how to say this, my lord. I have the highest respect for him, I assure you, but, ah…”

“Spit it out, man,” Sinclair said, ripping off his wrinkled cravat and reaching for another.

“Well. It being quarter day and all, Mr. Quincy paid the staff this morning, but, ah…”

“Yes?” The ends of his cravat dangling, Sinclair faced the butler.

“I’m afraid he overpaid everyone,” Harper finished in a rush.

Sinclair cocked one eyebrow. “Overpaid?”

“Yes. Mrs. Hammond and Matilda seemed surprised when they came from the library, as well.”

“Thank you, Harper. I’ll look into the matter.” Sinclair returned to tying his cravat, and frowned at his reflection.

An hour later he strode into the library. “I understand that yours is a generous nature, but I wish you would have asked my permission first.”

“Permission for what?” Quincy replied, looking up from the stack of mail.

“Harper told me you overpaid the staff this morning. I hadn’t planned to give them another raise until Michaelmas.”

“Raise?” Quincy shook her head. “I paid no one any additional salary, only what was recorded in the…” Their gaze locked.

“Johnson!” they said in unison.

“Blast that embezzling snake!” Sinclair slammed his fist on the desk. “Last year I instructed him to raise everyone’s pay, and he recorded it in the account books.”

“And pocketed the difference.” Quincy chewed on the tip of her pencil. Sinclair dropped onto the sofa. Several minutes passed as he fumed.

“Such a deception had not occurred to me,” Quincy interrupted the silence. “But now that it has, I can think of several other ways he might have dipped into your pockets. I’ve started examining the books for your other properties, and—”

“Beg pardon,” Harper said, opening the door. “There’s a young woman insisting she speak to Mr. Quincy. She says it’s urgent, so I—”

Quincy darted out the door before he finished the sentence.

A few seconds later, she dashed back in and grabbed her coat and hat. She paused at the door to look back at Sinclair. “My grand…um…that is—I have to go.” She dashed out again before Sinclair could say a word, leaving the earl and the butler staring, dumbstruck.

Q
uincy and Melinda ran through the streets toward their flat.

“I’m sorry, Jo, but I didn’t know what else to do,” Melinda said, wiping away a tear.

“It’s all right, Mel, you did the right thing.” Quincy bounded up the stairs two at a time. “Mrs. Linley?” she called, entering the flat.

Their landlady looked up from her needlework by the window. “She’ll be fine, lad. The apothecary is with her now.” She pointed at the closed bedchamber door with her needle.

Quincy paced. Melinda arrived, breathless and coughing, and fell into step with her. Finally the door opened.

“Your grandmum’s lucky she didn’t break her bloomin’ neck instead of just her ankle,” the apothecary said, stepping out. He gave a series of instructions, handed Quincy a bottle of laudanum, and collected his fee. “I’ll stop back in a se’nnight. She should be able to walk about with a cane in a few weeks. See that she stays off her feet ’til then.” He tipped his hat and left.

Quincy had barely absorbed the instructions when Mrs. Linley stood up. “You two will be all right, won’t you?” she said, gathering up her work. “I left some bread baking.”

“Fine, fine,” Quincy said absently as she headed to her grandmother’s bedside.

Quincy was struck by how frail her grandmother appeared. The old woman who barely raised the blankets had been her anchor through the years as Quincy had lost first her mother and newborn brother, then her father. Grandmère was all the family she and Melinda had left. After glancing at the heavily bandaged right foot, she knelt beside the bed and clasped a wrinkled hand.

“Jo? About time you came home. Where have you been?”

Quincy gave a watery smile. “I’ll forego asking how you feel.” She stared at the rapidly coloring bruise on Grandmère’s temple, and touched the fading bruise on her own forehead.

“Oh, no, you cannot do that. You must give me a valid excuse to catalog my aches and pains. Which at the moment are fading quickly, I might add. That whippersnapper may have cold hands, but he was generous with the laudanum.” She wiped a tear from Quincy’s cheek. “Now, while I’m still sensible, I want to know where you were all night, miss.”

Quincy cleared her throat, seeing an image of Sinclair’s face in his bedchamber last night, first when he’d tilted it up to her, then as he fell asleep. “At Sinclair’s town house. All day, and all night. I slept on the sofa in the library.”

“I did not think the earl was a harsh taskmaster.”

She shook her head. “That’s not it at all. There were several commotions that prevented me from getting my work done, so I stayed late to catch up. I fell asleep at my desk.”

“And does the earl know of your dedication?” Grandmère hid a yawn behind her hand.

“I doubt he remembers.” She was spared having to explain the cryptic remark, as Grandmère exhaled on a gentle snore.

With the crisis past, Quincy’s hands began to tremble, and she indulged in a brief moment of abject fear. How could she and Mel survive without Grandmère? They needed her affection, her guidance, her connection to their past. So much had already been taken from them. Another loss would shatter them.

But this was no time to indulge in hysterics. She took deep, calming breaths, in time with Grandmère’s snores, and soon regained her composure. She had to be strong.

“How is she?” Melinda crept into the room behind her.

“Sleeping.” Quincy rose and lead her sister to the hearth. She filled the kettle for tea. “How did this happen?”

“I’m not sure.” Melinda toyed with the fringe on her shawl. “We were going to take some finished work to Madame Chantel’s, then go to market. I reached the bottom of the stairs first and stopped to say good day to Hubert—Mrs. Linley’s son—when I heard thumps and groans and suddenly there was Grandmère, at the bottom of the stairs.” Her face went white at the memory. “At first I thought she was…but then she—she…”

“What?”

“She cursed.”

Quincy chuckled.

“Hubert and Mrs. Linley helped me carry her upstairs, then I ran to fetch the apothecary, and then you.” Her hands trembled.

Quincy reached out to cover her sister’s hands with her own. “You did just fine, Mel.”

“I was so frightened!” Mel flung herself into Quincy’s arms. “We’ve lost so much already, I don’t think I could bear it if anything happened to you or Grandmère.”

Quincy held her sister as she sobbed, and stroked her back and shoulders. “Yes, you could. You’re stronger than you know. God willing, though, you won’t have to prove it anytime soon.”

They stood that way for several moments, waiting for Mel’s breathing to return to normal. While Quincy gladly provided the shoulder for Mel to cry on, she wondered if she’d ever have someone to offer that comfort to her.

She banished the foolish notion. Quincy cried on no one’s shoulder. Not since the day her mother died after giving birth to a still-born boy. Papa had been too bereft to offer comfort, and Quincy had not wanted to add to Grandmère’s burden.

She brewed a pot of chamomile tea, and they sat down to discuss practical matters. Sir Ambrose stirred from his bed by the fire and jumped onto her lap. His warm, soft purring body was even more soothing than the tea, and helped her gather her scrambled thoughts. She scratched behind his ears, feeling more in control again as she and Mel considered their options.

First they needed to reorganize the division of household chores. Melinda usually washed clothes and fetched water, but Grandmère had done the food shopping. Until her broken ankle healed, getting her up and down two flights of stairs would be a major undertaking.

“Maybe we should find a ground-floor flat?”

Quincy glanced around at the heavy oak table, mahogany bureau and wardrobe, all leftovers from better times, and shook her head. “We can’t afford to hire a carter again, and there’s no way we can move these pieces by ourselves. If they didn’t mean so much to Grandmère, I’d have sold them, too.”

Mel reluctantly agreed. “Keeping them is more important to her than a few months of inconvenience.” She took a deep breath. “There’s still the problem of getting her to church.”

Quincy groaned.

“Maybe we could get the vicar to come here for services?”

Quincy swallowed the last of her tea. “She’s going to feel like a prisoner up here.”

“Can we spare enough money to buy a Bath chair? Then she could at least move about the flat on her own.”

“Possibly.” Her stomach grumbled. “I take it since the two of you were on your way to market, there’s nothing here for dinner?” Melinda nodded. Quincy sighed. “Fetch me the basket, and I’ll drop off your work at Madame Chantel’s, and go to market. And look for a chair.”

After dinner, they took turns sitting up with Grandmère through the night. Once she woke up from a nightmare about her fall, feeling guilty and worried about almost leaving Mel and Jo alone in the world. Her ankle pained her so she took another dose of laudanum—not enough to put her to sleep but enough to make her maudlin.

Reluctantly, Quincy reminisced with Grandmère in the early morning hours, delving into painful memories, reopening old wounds. How many more times would they discuss her mother and newborn brother, wondering if anything could have been done to prevent their deaths? Might Papa still be alive if his weak heart had not been dealt such a harsh blow? Would have, could have, should have.

Quincy must have dozed off, for she suddenly found Grandmère staring at her, her eyes bright.

“Life is precious,
ma chère
. Have I taught you that?”

“
Oui,
Grandmère.” She patted her grandmother’s hand, as much to reassure the old woman as to make certain she wasn’t dreaming.

“Precious, and sometimes much too short. You must wring as much joy from it as you can.”

Quincy blinked.

“Fate conspired against my son, against my family, but gave me one as strong as you. I know what you sacrificed for us,
ma chère.
” She reached up to stroke Quincy’s hair. “These men, these English fops, they would condemn you for what you’ve done, but I understand. Josephine became Joseph. With your sacrifice, you saved us.”

Her gnarled hand gripped Quincy’s, surprisingly firm, her gaze unwavering, adding a dose of reality to the strange conversation.

“But you don’t have to give up everything,
ma chère.
Just remember what I’ve taught you. You take whatever bit of happiness you can find.
Carpe diem
. Do you understand?” She reached one shaking hand to cup Quincy’s cheek. “I won’t condemn you for getting what you need.”

Quincy could only stare in stupefaction. Grandmère had just given her carte blanche…for something. Before she could ask for clarification, Grandmère snored.

“That’s it on the left, my lord,” Elliott said as the coach stopped, pointing to a three-story structure that tilted like the Tower of Pisa. “I seen him go up the stairs, but I ain’t sure which one Mr. Quincy lives in.”

Sinclair exited the coach and stared around him in dismay. The neighborhood was a step above squalor, but barely. His worry about Quincy’s abrupt departure yesterday had increased tenfold when she hadn’t shown up for work this morning. And this is what she came home to every night? He straightened his shoulders and swung his walking stick. “Walk the horses, Elliott.” Ignoring the stares of the children playing in the street and the men sitting in the doorways, he strode to the indicated building.

A blowzy woman on the ground floor, hanging laundry from the underside of the steps, gave him directions. Breathing through his mouth, Sinclair climbed the stairs, skipping a step here and there where slop buckets had spilled.

The third-floor landing was swept clean. He knocked on the door of number seven, then bent down to scratch behind the ears of an enormous gray tabby stretched out in the doorway. It purred its appreciation.

“Yes?” The young woman with brown pigtails who answered the door looked down at him in surprise and suddenly went pale.

“I’m here to see Mr. Quincy.” Sinclair straightened and took off his hat.

She gulped and bobbed a curtsy, then stepped aside to let him in. “Please be seated, my lord,” she said, pointing to the table and chairs. She started across the room, looked back at him over her shoulder, grinned, and ran to the bedchamber door. “Jo!” she called softly. “You’re never going to believe who’s here…” The rest was lost as she closed the door behind her.

Sinclair sat on a chair at the table, noticing the faint aroma of lemon. He glanced around the tidy, tiny room. One wall was dominated by a heavy wardrobe and bureau, similar to his mother’s at home. A gilt-framed portrait of a young couple in wedding attire hung above the fireplace. Crude shelves and wooden crates stacked near the hearth held cooking utensils and food stuffs, and an overflowing work basket leaned against a leather wingback chair by the window. Just how far had Quincy and her family fallen? His thoughts were rudely interrupted as a large ball of fur hurled itself onto his lap.

“Sir Ambrose! Get down!” Quincy said, emerging from the bedchamber. The cat on Sinclair’s lap flipped his tail in reply and settled more comfortably across the earl’s knees. Sinclair bit back a grin as his secretary stared at him and the cat in horror, a blush staining her cheeks. Quincy cleared her throat. “Good morning, my lord.” She stole a glance at the clock on the mantel and gasped. “Terribly sorry. Had no idea it was so late.”

“Rough night?” Sinclair said pleasantly, stroking the cat. Its purr vibrated through his thighs, a delightful sensation in a limb more accustomed to feeling pain. He watched Quincy roll down her sleeves. Except for her missing coat and cravat, she wore the same clothes as when she bolted from the library the previous afternoon. But yesterday there hadn’t been dark shadows under her eyes. Today they were puffy and red.

Quincy nodded and sat across from him at the table, buttoning her cuffs with trembling fingers. “My grandmother fell down the stairs. That’s why Mel came to fetch me.”

Sinclair quickly covered Quincy’s hands with one of his own. “She survived?”

“Yes, thank heaven. I don’t know how we’d go on without her.” Quincy stared at their enjoined hands. Sinclair gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze before reluctantly pulling free. “She sustained a few bruises and broke her right ankle. She’s sleeping now, after being awake most of the night. If you give me a few moments to wash and change clothes, I can be ready to—”

“You must have a low opinion of me indeed if you think I expect you to work today.” Sinclair winced as Sir Ambrose dug in his claws for purchase and rearranged himself into a more comfortable position. “I’m here because of a mistake you made with the payroll.” He bit back another grin as Quincy went pale.

“Mistake?”

Sinclair pulled a large, heavy purse out of his pocket and set it on the table with a satisfying
clink.
“You didn’t pay yourself your fifty-pound raise.”

Quincy’s jaw dropped. A muffled gasp behind the bedchamber door reminded him they had an audience.

“I was not serious about the raise, and I certainly did not believe you were. Indeed, I imagined you wouldn’t even—”

“Remember agreeing to it? I’m shocked. You underestimate my capacity for conducting business under, shall we say, less than ideal conditions.”

“You were disguised.” Quincy folded her arms.

“A trifle castaway.”

She rolled her eyes. “Foxed.”

Sinclair shrugged. “I’ve developed quite a tolerance for drink in the past year or so. You’d be surprised.”

“Regardless, I cannot accept this. It’s—”

“Well deserved,” Sinclair interrupted. “You’ve saved me many times this amount in the few weeks you’ve worked for me. If not for yourself, accept it for your family. Buy your sister a new frock and have a surgeon examine your grandmother’s ankle. Who did you have in already, an apothecary?”

Quincy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, but I’m sure—”

“We would be happy to accept it,” Melinda said, closing the bedchamber door. She snatched the purse from the table and dropped it into her apron pocket. “Thank you, my lord. You cannot know how much this means to us, especially now that we need to buy a Bath chair.”