He was standing a few paces down the way, idly examining a stone bust of some ugly, big-nosed man in a wig. “Looks just like you,” she said as she caught up to him.
“You’re very kind,” he said dryly, walking onward.
After a brief hesitation, she followed. He moved smoothly as a tomcat, a sort of easy prowl, his hands in his pockets, the most glossy, expensive gentleman she’d ever seen in the flesh. Somebody should take his photograph. He’d certainly sell well to the ladies.
He glanced over his shoulder and caught her staring. She scowled and looked away—then peered harder around her.
For all her bluster, she’d been too panicked last night to absorb her surroundings in detail. The corridor was just … infamously nice. The wood paneling had a carved trim. The carpet was a fine weave of gold flowers on a background of auburn and navy. Brass sconces gleamed. The air held a mix of waxes and lemony balms, and it smelled more than clean; it smelled like something you’d want to buy, a scent to lull you to sleep on nights when worries had you tossing.
No wonder he walked so lazily. Probably he’d never known a moment’s worry.
To her irritation, she saw nothing small enough to be pocketed. “What’s this thing you want to show me?”
“A letter or two.”
“A letter?” She slanted him a glance. “I’d hoped for something a touch more exciting.” Or valuable.
He shrugged. “You’ll find them interesting.”
“I doubt it.”
He came to a stop, evidently struck by a thought. “I do beg your pardon. If you can’t read—”
“I can read,” she cut in. “And I’ll tell you why I learned—so nobody would read me something that wasn’t on the page. So don’t think to be pulling that trick.”
He gave her the sort of smile she saw on tired mums with crabby infants: there was no real feeling behind it. “I’m chastened,” he said, and resumed his stroll.
Rolling her eyes, she followed.
They turned a corner and the hall opened into a broad balcony appended on either side by flights of stairs that curved down toward each other. That door down there was probably the exit. “There’s my stop,” she said, making for the stairs.
His hand on her arm halted her. Had he squeezed or tugged, she would have shaken him off and maybe given him a sock in the gut for good measure: she was ready for it. But he didn’t even take proper hold of her. His fingers laid themselves on the spot right above her elbow, a steady, warm touch that somehow stopped her dead.
Queer thought: he had a magic touch to him. She’d bet she wasn’t the first lady he’d caught with two fingers.
“Please,” he said.
She turned back, eyeing him. It had been a long time since somebody had spoken that word to her. She liked the irony that he should be the one to speak it. He looked exactly as the master of this house should—richly dressed, too handsome by half, and radiant with that indefinable air that all rich people seemed to have: a sense of being comfortable, completely at ease, not afraid of anybody or anything.
And why would he be afraid? The world would see in one glance that he mattered.
She had to swallow hard to get the lump out of her throat. Stupid, but he made her feel bittersweet. He probably had chances and possibilities that she didn’t even know existed. He took them for granted, while a girl like her would need to sell her soul to get even a glimpse of them.
“What’s your angle?” she said on a deep breath. “Why are you so interested in the old earl’s bastard? And don’t give me any nonsense.”
He lifted a brow. “Evidently I didn’t make myself clear,” he said. “Nell, you aren’t a bastard.”
Looking at the girl gave Simon a headache. Or perhaps vertigo was the more accurate term. Each time he glanced into her thin, sullen face, he felt his brain waver under the strain of processing the message delivered by his eyes. She was remarkably similar to Lady Katherine—minus a few stone, a few hundred pounds in fashionable clothing and jewelry, and twenty-two years of tender rearing.
To say nothing of the black eye she was sporting. He’d find out who had done that.
He wondered how Kitty would like the knowledge that her twin was a guttersnipe from Bethnal Green. Nell was living proof that cosmetics and high fashion were not required for an Aubyn to be striking. But she also illustrated how very much Kitty’s looks owed to pampering. Both sisters’ eyes were a pleasing dark blue, but they required a complementary color to tip into violet, and Nell’s current outfit—a ridiculously oversized jacket and sagging breeches—suggested that dirty gray was not among these colors. Her spareness emphasized the cheekbones for which Kitty was so admired, but also brought into prominence the cleft chin and square jaw which Kitty so often hid behind her fan.
He could not wait to introduce them to each other. Kitty had been very persuasive when contesting Simon’s bid to have Lady Cornelia declared dead. It had been part of a strategy to strengthen his contestation of the will, and Kitty had been ardent in her opposition. I feel in my heart that she is alive, she’d wept to the judge.
How surprised she would be to learn that she’d been right.
Of course, it remained possible that this girl was an imposter, some by-blow of Rushden’s with the luck to resemble Katherine and the wits to adopt the missing heiress’s name. God knew Cornelia’s disappearance had been very public news sixteen years ago.
On the other hand, did it matter? She looked close enough to Katherine to be her twin, and she certainly could be coached to recite the right memories. Once she was plumped up and put into a Worth or Doucet, nobody with eyes would deny that she was an Aubyn.
At least, not until she opened her mouth.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked him, although it came out rather shrilly, and more along the lines of Ware-yuh takin’ mee.
Well, no one would expect the elocution skills of a six-year-old to have endured hard treatment. And this girl had been treated hard. That was clear enough in the way her eyes darted left and right, as though the hall might disgorge a bandit intent on mischief. He gathered that he might fall into that category, since she also took care to keep a remarkably constant distance from him—a length, he finally realized, just longer than an arm’s reach. She took care to be impossible to grab.
“The library,” he answered. He pondered the wisdom of informing her that she could be calm; he had no intentions of grabbing her at present. Indeed, he was still amazed by the effect she’d had on him last night. Granted, he’d been in a state of undress, which did tend to cast a man’s mind into erotic directions. And she’d squirmed most enthusiastically. But apart from the fact that she smelled like a sewer and was more bones than curves, she was his predecessor’s spawn and looked almost exactly like Kitty. These twin facts should have proved more effective than an ice bucket in chilling his interest.
Yet the attraction thrived. It flourished like a plant in some hot, tropical jungle. He could not quite believe he’d put his mouth to anything so filthy; in the strong morning light, a patch of dirt appeared ingrained on her neck. But there you had it: his interest was not only strategic, but prurient. He felt obscenely curious about her—and about himself, in her presence. Like a man drawn to the edge of a cliff by a suicidal curiosity, he tested himself now: did he want her because she was the heaven-sent answer to a dilemma? Or simply because he could have her—right now, if he liked, in any fashion he chose?
Yesterday he’d thought he’d learned what it meant to be powerless: to be robbed and defeated, comprehensively, by a dead man. The frustration, the humiliation of helplessness, had kept him up long enough to hear the smallest click of an opening door, and the soft fall of a footstep aiming for silence.
Had he wanted comfort; had he desired reassurance; had he required evidence that he was not powerless, after all—he could not have asked for better proof than her. She was a lesson in true vulnerability. She had broken into his home with a revolver so antiquated that o
nly luck had prevented it from discharging accidentally. If, in retaliation, he decided to keep her locked in a room until his servants worked up the courage to object—which would take days, possibly weeks—he still would have nothing to fear.
Let the police be summoned. He would only need to inform them of the circumstances of her entry into his home, and she’d be off to prison in an instant. She was nobody—not yet—and he was the Earl of Rushden.
His predecessor had not managed to deny him all the perquisites of the title, after all. Even near to penniless, he’d still enjoy the privileges of his name, while she—well, she would be truly helpless.
Yet she seemed wholly unaware of her sad state. Not one plea for forgiveness had issued from her mouth. Not even, now that he thought on it, a please.
Come to think of it, he was the only one who’d spoken that word to date.
He laughed under his breath. Of course he was attracted to her—he’d always admired brazen gall.
He stepped ahead of her to open the library door. This gentlemanly reflex earned him a sharp look. She sidled past him into the room, then came to an abrupt stop. “Coo,” he heard her whisper.
So, at least the library impressed her. Long and narrow, it lacked windows thanks to some cheap ancestor who’d feared the window tax. Halfway down its length, twin staircases spiraled up either wall to a narrow walk that ran the length of the room and supported additional bookcases. He supposed it was impressive.
“Here’s a lot of books,” she murmured.
Not as many as there should be. At odd moments, old Rushden’s petty cruelty in selling his wife’s books still astonished Simon. The old bastard had all but given them away simply to make a point—simply to spite the one person who had loved them as much as the countess had.
“I’ve become something of a collector recently,” Simon said. Each and every of the countess’s volumes would one day reside on these shelves again, even if it took a lifetime to regather them.
“You must spend all your time reading,” said the girl.
He laughed. She cut him a peculiar look. “That’s not quite the point,” he said.
“They’re books,” she said flatly. “What other point is there?”
He paused. Actually, it wasn’t a bad question. He might have asked the same, as a boy. He’d lost countless hours to reading, enamored in discovering that the forgotten things—odd, curious facts for which the world no longer had any use—could be wondrous, worthy of attention and care. He’d felt very clever for appreciating them, for pointing out things that even the countess had missed. She’d been generous in her praise. I never thought of it that way. What a brilliant idea, Simon.
Memories of his boyish gratification made him smile now. “I favor the unique,” he said. “Literally. Many of these manuscripts are too rare and delicate to be read.” He deliberately paused. “Although rough handling does have its pleasures.”
She stared blankly. “So you’re keeping them safe for somebody to ruin later?”
Had she missed his innuendo, or was she having him on? The latter possibility intrigued him. One didn’t often think of the poor as having a rich inner world, much less a sense of humor. Their sullen eyes and sallow faces seemed to mask only a well-founded resentment and perhaps—if one believed the nervous talk at dinner parties—visions of the slit throats of their betters.
Come to think of it, humor wasn’t an asset commonly ascribed to anybody outside the beau monde. Even the middling classes appeared from a distance to be dull and despicably moral.
He eyed her as she crossed her arms and looked around. A grubby little thing with keen wits and a sharp tongue. Not at all what he’d expect of a slum rat. She was slighter than Kitty, a touch shorter, narrower through the shoulders—the best a body could do when raised on gruel and water, no doubt. But her throat was long, beautifully slim. The square angle of her jaw looked sharp enough to hurt a finger that pressed too recklessly upon it. Perhaps he should test that theory. She was ignoring him with irritating ease, looking up now at the skylights old Rushden had installed, and her expression—
Her expression stopped his breath. She wore a look of wonder so vivid and alive that he glanced up himself, wanting to see the miracle.
But there were only the skylights, which remained unremarkable.
Absurd to feel disappointed.
He glanced back to her face. Perhaps to her the skylights were miraculous. She hailed, no doubt, from one of those dark and crowded devil’s acres where glass was broken and the sky was hemmed by overhanging hovels. This world must seem entirely foreign. Everything clean, shining, immaculate: all of it strange and new, remaining to be discovered by her.
A curious feeling twisted in his gut. He didn’t quite like it. How absurd that he should be envious, even if only for a moment. Awed by glass and astounded by architecture, she was the simplest explanation of how cathedrals had conned generations into religious sentiments that justified their suffering. She was a naif whose requirements for awe were pitifully low.
He cleared his throat. “Just glass,” he said. But he could not remove his eyes from her. Strangest thought: he wanted her to look at him with that brightness on her face. If he could not feel it himself, then he wanted to stare into it for a while, until it ceased to hurt him.
Her chin came down. She gave a pull of her mouth as though to mock herself, but he caught the lingering effect of her amazement in the smile that she could not bite back. “I’ve never seen such a thing,” she said.
For the space of those six words, she sounded almost well spoken.
This was the second time she’d given him that impression. He considered her narrowly, wondering if she didn’t remember more of the Queen’s English than she let on.
“This whole place is so …” She turned full circle, her bony hands clenching in her shirt. Her fingers were a sallow, sickly shade, her knuckles white, as if she didn’t have enough blood to fill her body. “It’s beautiful,” she said—roughly, quickly, as if the idea embarrassed her.
Which seemed peculiar in itself. To call the room beautiful was only to observe a fact. A great deal of money had been spent in making it so The fine oak paneling on the walls, the carved bookcases, the carpets of French tapestry, the porcelain and objets d’art scattered on the low tables, had been acquired (and, alas, entailed) at great expense by his various predecessors. He knew this for a certainty, since he’d spent the last few days negotiating with an underground antique dealer about how much these items might fetch were they suddenly “lost” into that man’s possession.
He supposed there was no need to lose them now. The thought was bracing. Best get on with it. “As to the letters—”
“Where is that?”
“Pardon?” He followed her look toward a painting hanging over the door. That was the most irritatingly expensive estate with which he’d been saddled. Crumbling old pile, prison of his miserable youth. Somebody should have had the bollocks to knock it down a century ago, long before this whole entail nonsense began—
“Is it real?” she asked.
Puzzled, he turned back to her. “Yes. Paton Park.”
“Where is it?”
“Some godforsaken pocket of Hertfordshire. Why do you ask?”
She visibly hesitated. “It’s …”
He waited a moment longer, but she shrugged and seemed to lose interest. Looking down to her feet, she gave the floor a little kick. “Here’s some fancy.”
The exposed patch of floor was covered in painted tile—Spanish, from the looks of it. Was she going to remark on every feature of the room? “Yes, very nice.”
She smiled faintly. “Nice enough to serve, I reckon.”
Did a note of dryness infect the lady’s voice? He gave her a smile in return, a fine, rueful blend of self-deprecation and deliberate charm. It would go easier for them both if she took a liking to him. “I confess, I normally reserve my attention for the books, not the room in which they’re housed.”<
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She ran an eye down the bookcases. “You must have a lot of attention, then.”
The reply that leapt to mind gave him pause: it was wholly sexual and thoroughly inappropriate. Nearly he laughed. She was a ragamuffin with holes in her sleeves. Putting his body to hers would be as hygienic as bathing in a wallow.
Perhaps that was part of her charm, though. A taste of primitive perversions.
The other part, naturally, would be the sweet, dark justice of defiling his predecessor’s daughter.
The notion filled him with a warm glow that did not bode well for his chances in the afterlife.
She backed up and dropped into an upholstered reading chair. He felt his brow climb. The violence of her movement and the violent effect it wreaked on her anatomy left no doubt that she was not wearing a corset.
Oh, good God. She wore lad’s breeches; she smelled like tobacco and fish and onions. Of course she wasn’t wearing a corset.
He realized he’d laughed to himself when she gave him another of those looks—wide-eyed, slightly pitying. She really did think him a lunatic. He couldn’t blame her for it. It seemed his brain was going soft.
“So what’s this letter, then?” she squawked.
“Right.” He crossed the room, extracting a copy of Homer’s Odyssey from the shelf. The first of the letters tucked inside was worn soft with time and the repetitive stroke of fingers. The old man had grown increasingly short of attention over the years, but he’d never lost grasp of his twin obsessions: thwarting Simon and finding Cornelia.
Simon had a quick internal debate as he returned to her. If she couldn’t read well, she probably wouldn’t admit it; she’d already made clear that she valued her pride. Yet if she didn’t understand the letters, he’d no doubt that he’d lose her. Her concern for money was matched if not outstripped by her suspicions of him; she’d walk out today without a backward glance and tell herself later that leaving him had been the best way to keep out of prison.