Chapter 2
Chapter Two
R owan Trent sneezed. Then sneezed again. Why was the admiral’s study always full of sunlight? Hateful stuff. It got into every nook and cranny, and even though Rowan Trent had mastered the art of hiding in shadows, sunlight banished those. He’d rather be back at his hotel in his study, where the curtains were always pulled tight. But he’d been summoned. And Rowan possessed just enough remaining sailor in his bones to jump when the admiral called.
“Sit, boy, sit.” Admiral Garrison defied conventional fashion to sport a large and fluffy mustache of a startling steel gray. Facial hair, he always said, was the way of the future. He rubbed his hands together as he rounded his large desk to join Rowan at a group of chairs near a wall lined with books. The wall next to it sported large maps of England, of the world, and in the corner was a sturdy globe. The admiral opened it, revealing that the center of all life was indeed good whisky. The glasses clinked together as he poured a few fingers for them each before handing one to Rowan and settling across from him. “Stop squinting.”
“Too much sun.”
“Never too much sun.” When the admiral grinned, his eyes almost entirely disappeared, and he resembled, if Rowan squinted, a fox.
If only Rowan didn’t find it so endearing. “You called?”
“Lavinia wants you married.”
He’d been right. He’d been summoned because he refused to be leg-shackled. “I do not want to be married.”
“You will be thirty next month. It’s about damn time you choose a wife.”
“I have a hotel.”
“You can’t provide grandchildren with a hotel, Rowan.” The admiral slammed back the whisky. “Lavinia wants grandchildren. All her friends have them.”
“Tell her to go to a shop and buy one.”
The admiral’s eyes narrowed.
And Rowan discovered he could still feel fear. He tugged at this cravat. “A joke. I’d never tell Aunt Lavinia anything of the sort.”
“That’s right you wouldn’t.” The admiral snorted, eyed the amber decanter at the center of the gutted globe. Instead of pouring more into his empty cup, he snapped the crystal down on the table next to him. “At least meet the girls she’s befriending for you. She says you’ve failed to show up every single time she’s arranged a meeting. Every damn time, Rowan. It’s beginning to feel like insubordination. Disrespect. For your aunt .”
Not his aunt. Not by blood. Though Rowan loved her well enough for one. The admiral had taken him in after his father’s death when he’d had nowhere to go but into the deep, unforgiving sea. He’d been motherless from the age of ten and found himself four years later in the arms of an admiral’s wife who treated him like a son. She had no other, after all.
“I would never disrespect her.” But he had been stubborn these last months. “Courtship is a distraction.”
“Then get it over with, get a wife, and get back to work.”
“I’m in the middle of acquiring several different locations, inns along the Great North Road and along all major roads leading out of London in all directions. I’m too busy to woo anyone but an innkeeper by the name of Barlow who’s proving particularly stubborn about selling.”
The admiral rose to his feet, chin somehow leading the way as he snapped his jacket edges straight when they’d already been perfect examples of the geometrical precision of a military man. “Find time. Please your aunt. When she’s happy—”
“We’re all happy.” Rowan stood, too, and didn’t even stiffen when the admiral’s bayonet-straight posture softened, and he wrapped Rowan in a hug.
Sometimes, the sun didn’t blind him. And sometimes, hugs weren’t preferable only to torture. He slapped the admiral’s back and stepped out of the embrace.
“I’ll consider it.”
“You do that. Think of it as one of your tasks to be ticked off a list. Go about it like business, boy, and secure a union. Your aunt will not steer you toward an unpalatable lady. Trust her. She wants love for you, naturally, but… I don’t think it necessary. Yet.” He hunched his shoulders as he fell back into the chair behind his desk. “I know well how easy it is to love Rowan Trent once he lets you.” He pretended to tidy the already pristine desktop.
And Rowan sped for the door. “I’ll consider it.”
“Say hello to your aunt before you leave. She’s in her sitting room.”
Rowan shrugged off the emotion as thick as the sunlight in the admiral’s study and made for Aunt Lavinia’s sitting room. Before he reached the door, he heard the voices. His aunt’s and another woman’s, muffled but rich and sweet like honey.
Honey was too much like sunshine. He’d visit Aunt Lavinia later. Right now, he needed to return to Hestia. He expected a letter from the owner of the Blue Sheep Inn today. Hopefully, Rowan’s last epistle would prove more convincing than the two before it.
The letter was waiting for him on his desk when he returned. His study was part of a suite of rooms that spanned the entire top floor of Hestia. Every curtain remained tightly closed, blocking out even the hope of a bright outline around the green velvet. Candles lined the walls, just enough to give off light, not enough to banish the shadows.
His study boasted the low light of a constant fire in the grate and a single candle on his desk for reading. And the letter he’d been waiting for, stark in the small pool of candlelight, wasn’t alone. Another winked at him from the uncluttered top of his desk. One on the creamiest, thickest parchment, its dark ink elegant and even. The other on thin, rough paper with sharp, scratchy figures and blots in the margins.
He sat with a small grin, recognizing the seal smudged into the thick parchment first. Aunt Lavinia. He should have stopped to chat with her. Whatever she’d written here would likely pinch at the smallest speck of guilt lodged between his ribs. But he opened, and he read, and he rubbed at his ribs when the guilt pinched before tossing the letter aside and opening the other. Just as he’d thought. From Mr. Barlow, the owner of the Blue Sheep.
Curiously, and despite their differences, both letters asked the same thing of him.
Marry.
The same thing the admiral wanted him to do. Three calls to the same task in a single hour.
And now he knew accepting that call might well serve a purpose after all. He reread the second letter. Mr. Barlow saw himself in a complicated position. He wished to retire. He wished to sell his inn. He had a buyer willing to pay what he asked and more. In gold. Not in marriage. But marriage was what the man wanted. His inn to go to a family man who would run it as he’d run it the past several decades. There was another potential buyer. Married with children.
“Why can’t the man take gold? Why must he demand freedom, solitude as payment?” Rowan tossed the letter to the desk and collapsed into his chair, draping his forearm over his eyes. The exposed bit of his wrist between jacket cuff and gloves scratched against the raised skin, a scar curving around his left eye, a thick welt, a reminder.
No, he’d not marry. What need had he of a wife when he had a hotel, when he had Mrs. Smith and the footmen, and Bartlet his valet, Poppins his secretary, the maids, and…
Perhaps the admiral was right. He must simply consider this a business venture. He didn’t have to marry the man who provided new linens for the beds. Nor did he have to eternally tie himself to the cook who ran his kitchen. No. He hired them because they were good at what they did and would make his life easier. In exchange, his money would make their lives easier.
Why not? He had, after all, twenty maids in his employ. Any one of them might need a little extra coin in their pockets in exchange for providing an extra task. Any one of them…
But the face of only one floated to the surface—wispy golden curls surrounding an impish face, pink lips—the bottom plumper than the top—a tiny turned-up nose, bright, clever blue eyes, too much mischief there. But for a task such as he would need her for… mischief might be just the thing.
He would not make a rash decision, though. Best to consider all his options.
He reached for the bell pull behind his desk and gave it a tight, efficient yank. Then he folded his arms on the top of his desk and waited. Mrs. Smith appeared quickly, as she always did, her black hair swallowed by the shadows, her stout figure inspiring confidence in whomever she met, including Rowan.
After a quick curtsy, she said, “Yes, Mr. Trent?”
“Assemble all the maids. Here. Now.”
“Is something amiss? Have any of them performed poorly or—”
“No. I’ve had no complaints from others or for myself. I merely wish to… assess them. A quick evaluation to… make sure they are tidy.”
Mrs. Smith sniffed. “They are always tidy. Even after the most strenuous tasks.”
“I’m sure. Humor me.” He sat back behind his desk, and when she’d gone, he pulled a large ledger from one of the drawers, flipped it to the pages listing all twenty house maids who worked at Hestia. He checked his pocket watch. Noon. They all worked this hour. He’d have his pick.
Why marry, after all, if he could pay one of his employees to pretend to be a wife? Thank you, Admiral, for the excellent idea. True, it wouldn’t satisfy Aunt Lavinia. But Mr. Barlow…
The door opened once more, and in streamed a long line of women—all shapes, sizes, and colors, all appearing a bit timid, the green of their gowns black in the dark study, the white of their aprons and caps glowing. Mrs. Smith organized them up shoulder to shoulder in two lines of ten, and Rowan considered them as he rounded the desk to stand before them. Hair color, build—neither mattered. The woman he chose merely needed to be believable, needed to stand next to him without losing courage.
None of the assembled women would look him in the eye. He twisted to spin the ledger around with the tips of two fingers and a thumb, then read the first name. “Miss Esther Hinks?”
A small brunette with freckles bobbed a curtsy. “Yes, sir?” She trembled.
He offered a slight smile, then called out the next and the next, putting each face with a name until all twenty had been identified. Not a one had managed to return his stare.
“Mrs. Smith?” he asked.
“Yes?” She scowled. Likely, he was wasting her time, putting the fine-tuned mechanics of the hotel’s day-to-day operations in complete disarray.
“You’re missing a maid.”
“I’m not.”
“Yellow hair.” More golden, actually, but saying it out loud might make him sound… odd. “Curl to it. Stands to about here.” He lifted the blade of a flat hand to his shoulder. None of the women here fit the description of the little maid who crept about, face hidden in her shoulder or chin raised high. Whenever he caught her eye, he always thought… sidhe . One of the fairies his mother used to tell him of, a creature of myth and magic.
“We don’t have a lady like that.”
“You’ve not recently lost one? Or fired one?”
“No. We don’t hire young women likely to be let go. Only the best for the Hestia. You know that.”
He did. But then… who was she?
The maids were shifting now, sharing glances, biting lips. Miss Hinks stepped forward, bobbed a curtsy. “I think I’ve seen her, Mr. Trent. She rarely talks to anyone. Unless it’s to take one of our tasks.”
“She… does your work for you?”
Miss Hinks curtsied again. “Yes, sir.”
“Do you know her name?”
Another curtsy. “No, sir.”
He looked out at the crowd. “Do any of you know her name? ”
Heads shook and wisps of hair wafted across confused faces. Twenty maids to match the twenty names in his book in his study. But no yellow-haired sidhe in sight. She didn’t work here. But she did, too. He’d seen her in Hestia’s green and white, carrying trays, mopping up floors. The others had seen her as well, had handed off their tasks to her. Likely, they loved the little ghost. Thought her an angel of mercy. If they did know her name, they wouldn’t give it up easily.
Why did he want it? Any of these maids would do for his purposes. He flicked a wrist at them. “You’re dismissed.”
Mrs. Smith held open the door as the women filed out. “Did you find what you were seeking?”
No, he hadn’t. Inexplicable. “Yes, thank you.”
The housekeeper nodded and pulled the door as she stepped into the hallway.
“Mrs. Smith.” She paused, waiting, and Rowan rounded his desk. “If you see her, send her to me.”
Mrs. Smith curtsied. “Of course, Mr. Trent.”
No need to say which her he meant. The door clicked shut, and he eyed the letter sitting in the shadows of his desk. He needed a wife to get his inn. Aunt Lavinia wanted him wed. Rowan only wanted his freedom. His solitude. And that damn inn. But he certainly wouldn’t marry to get it. Hiring a pretend wife solved fifty percent of his problems. Aunt Lavinia would survive her disappointment.
And surely the little fairy maid who completed everyone else’s tasks would help him complete his own.
If he could find her.