Chapter 4
Ruby was having trouble making sense of—
Well. Everything, really.
Pomeroy House—if this was Pomeroy House, which still seemed doubtful—was in shambles.
Some of the rooms were empty of furnishings and smelled powerfully of vinegar and washing soap.
Others seemed to have several rooms’ worth of chairs and tables piled into them, every stick of which was carved with snarling fantastic beasts.
The windows were almost impossible to see through, covered as they were with either thick fabric or a coating of sea spray, and Ruby could scarcely hear herself think over the enthusiastic welcome of a pack of bloodhounds.
The house looked nothing like the papers had described it, except for all the turrets and towers and its position on top of a cliff overlooking the sea.
And the man who had answered the door—
Ruby gritted her teeth and made herself look at him again.
He was of medium height, broad-shouldered and powerfully built. He wore no livery but rather a haphazard arrangement of braces, billowy trousers, and threadbare coat. He had dark hair, a full beard, and eyes of a most piercing shade of blue.
He was, without a doubt, the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
He also had puppies in his pockets. Three, at least.
“I’ll . . . take you ladies to your rooms,” he said. He’d sounded a trifle hysterical a few moments ago, but he seemed to be recovering himself. “You didn’t, ah, write ahead? To announce your arrival?”
“Erm,” Ruby said. “No.”
Alice shot Ruby a beleaguered look, which Ruby ignored.
Alice—for whom discommoding another person was the most grievous offense imaginable—had wanted to write ahead.
But Ruby had feared that her father would somehow get wind of their plans in the weeks it had taken to set everything into motion.
When logical, practical Tamsin had sided with Ruby, the matter had been settled: They would forge the letter of introduction, supply their own funds, and show up without mentioning the scheme to anyone at all.
After all, Ruby had told herself, the mansion belonged to a princess. Surely they could occupy a few rooms without putting anyone to too much trouble.
As they passed through another parlor—this one holding inexplicable trays of catgut and needles and camphor in pots—Ruby was forced to revise her assumptions.
This was going to be a hell of a lot of trouble.
Two more men barreled around the corner and nearly collided with the extravagantly attractive and peculiarly dressed man—butler?—who’d answered the door.
“Cap,” one of them said, “you have to—”
“Sir,” the butler interrupted, in quite a louder and more stern voice than Ruby had heard him use thus far. “Please try to behave more sedately.”
The two newcomers stumbled to a stop, and—
Good heavens. Alice stifled a gasp, and even Tamsin appeared slightly boggled.
These two were beautiful as well. One of the men—the one who had spoken—was delicate of build, with nearly white-blond curls framing an angular face.
The other was tall, his flowing chestnut hair in a queue.
His shirt was open nearly to the waist, which afforded Ruby a view of the human form that ought more properly to have been in an art book. Or a museum.
The butler turned to Ruby and bowed. “Allow me to present the staff of Pomeroy House to you, Lady Ballimore.”
“Lady Ruby,” she corrected absently. “I am unmarried. Did you say . . . the staff?”
“Indeed.”
She blinked. “All the staff?” According to the papers—which were proving less reliable by the moment—Pomeroy House boasted twenty bedrooms, two kitchens, and a fully equipped stable on the grounds. Surely it couldn’t be staffed by three men, no matter how blessed in appearance they might be.
The butler swallowed. And then a smile spread across his face—precisely as blinding and exquisite as the one he’d delivered outside.
He drew himself up in a way that seemed to set off his breadth of shoulder, and an air of serenity seemed to overtake him.
“No. Today is a feast day in this part of Cornwall. The rest of the staff has gone to church. To pray.”
“A feast day?” Ruby narrowed her eyes. “What feast would that—”
“I am Malcolm Archer, Pomeroy House steward,” the man continued, rather more rapidly. “And these are our footmen, Gerald and Lamentation.”
At this introduction, the taller footman—the one with the ponytail and the chest—appeared to choke.
The angelic blond at his side blinked once and then nodded. “Ah. Yes. I am Lamentation. The footman. How may I serve your . . . feet?”
Ruby opened her mouth and then shut it again, quite unable to summon a response.
“Take these,” Malcolm Archer said. He removed a puppy from beneath his coat and thrust it into Lamentation’s hands. He plucked a second puppy from his trouser pocket, delivered that one as well, and then began, evidently, to look for the one that had emerged beside his scuffed boot.
Alice had rescued that one. She was holding it to her chest and murmuring into its tiny, floppy ear.
“Put these back in the kitchen,” Mr. Archer went on. “I’ll take the ladies up to their chambers and meet you back down here expediently.”
“To their . . . chambers?” Lamentation said faintly.
Mr. Archer’s brilliant smile did not falter. “Indeed. I trust you ladies have luggage?”
Ruby nodded. “Outside. By the front door.”
“Of course. Gerry can bring up your trunks after you’re settled.”
“Their trunks?” Lamentation echoed. “After they’ve settled?”
“Yes.” Mr. Archer put out a hand toward Ruby and her friends. “These are Princess Serafina’s ladies-in-waiting. And they will be residing here. At Pomeroy House.”
Lamentation blinked several more times. “The princess’s ladies-in-waiting? I . . . did not realize she had those.”
She does now, Ruby thought, and tried not to look as guilty as she felt.
Mr. Archer, who no doubt had also been unaware of their existence—because they’d made up the job whole-cloth—didn’t respond to the footman. Instead he directed the considerable force of his smile at Alice. “I’m sorry,” he said, “about all the dogs. May I take that one from you?”
A look of alarm crossed Alice’s face, and she clutched the puppy to her chest. “No! That is”—she modulated her voice—“no.” A blush made its way up to her hairline. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Archer, I should very much like to keep her.”
The puppy seemed to have fastened her teeth around Alice’s wrist, which did not deter Alice in the slightest.
Mr. Archer looked at Alice. He looked at the puppy. Then he glanced at Ruby, Tamsin, and the puppy-holding footmen. “Of course,” he said. “Yes. Why not? Puppies for everyone. We have plenty to go around.”
Ruby followed the little expansive gesture of his hand.
Her eyes narrowed. There was something peculiarly familiar about this Mr. Archer. Not his face, precisely, nor his name. But something about the arc of his shoulders—the sweep of his arm—
“Do I know you?” she asked, still staring at him. “Have we met?”
Lamentation and Gerry hastened out the door, puppies in arms and shirt tails billowing in their wake.
In the light of the sun through the cracked window, a faint flush seemed to have settled around Malcolm Archer’s throat. “No.”
“Are you certain? Did you work in London before you came here? Perhaps my father—the Earl of Hangleton—”
His blush became more decided—carnation pink above and below his thick black beard. “Before I came here, I was a captain in His Majesty’s Navy. We have not met.”
“Were you on an engraving, then?” she pressed. “Some military recruitment poster? Or perhaps a parade? I am certain—”
“No,” he said flatly. “I was not.”
She blinked. Embarrassment hit her then, and she felt her face heat. She always did this: pushed too hard, spoke too much and out of turn.
This was meant to be her new life. She would not wreck it with her old ways.
“Let me take you to your rooms,” he said, more gently this time. “This way.”
Ruby clamped her mouth closed and let him lead them out of the parlor.
Perhaps she had been wrong. Perhaps she did not know him. She surely would have remembered that voice, rough and sweet as honeycomb.
They followed Captain Archer through a parade of blindingly clean and bizarrely furnished rooms. One held stacks of crates that reached to the ceiling; another boasted perhaps three dozen screens in rows that seemed to be hiding pots of winding green shrubbery and possibly more dogs. Everything smelled, still, of vinegar.
After one set of steep stairs, he pointed them down a dark, narrow corridor. “There are three bedchambers here,” he said. “I’ll be sure to send the . . . the housekeeper to air out your rooms. After she returns from church. She may need some time to recover from her penance.”
“Her penance,” Ruby repeated. “From the feast day. At church.”
“Cornish traditions, you know,” he said vaguely, and shot them another smile. And then, before any of them could protest, he turned and fled back the way he’d come.
They stood in front of the doors in silence for several moments. Ruby looked from Tamsin to Alice to Captain Archer’s retreating back. The corridor was dim, and unlike the rest of the house, it appeared not to have been used for some time. Possibly a century.
“Ruby,” Tamsin said, “what the hell is going on?”
“Shh,” Alice hissed. “He’ll hear you!”
Captain Archer had peeled off as if his boots were afire, so Ruby suspected he probably wouldn’t. Still, she plucked up her courage and pushed open the nearest door before she could talk herself out of facing whatever lurked therein. “Come on. Inside, both of you. And the dog.”