Chapter 7 #2
He strode farther into the room. “Lady Ruby. Your companions are out today?”
She stuck her fingers into her hair, which served to spread the mortar around a bit. “Lady Alice and Miss Drake are on an errand, yes.”
“I wasn’t aware that they’d gone.” Perhaps they were arranging passage back to London. Archer could only hope. “What sort of errand?”
She gave him a distrustful glance from beneath the cover of her curly lashes. “One expressly requested by Princess Serafina.”
That was a decidedly vague and suspicious answer, but he did not want her on her guard. He wanted to beguile her. Addle her, if possible. He wanted to remind her of the pampered ease she had enjoyed in London and convince her of how very much she wished to return home.
So instead of inquiring into the precise nature of the princess’s request, he lowered himself onto the settee and tried to make himself look at ease and unthreatening. He caught a hint of that luxurious scent—amber and velvet and brandied fruit.
He gave her his best smile, a full helping of dimples. “This must be quite a change for you, Lady Ruby. Cornwall and Pomeroy House, I mean. Nothing at all like your life in London.”
She shot him a dubious glance. “I suppose.”
“Fewer parties.” He cast about for some notion of how an earl’s daughter filled her time. “Very little piquet. Or dancing.”
For some reason, this made her frown harder. “To be sure. Not a quadrille to be had here. However shall I survive the loss?”
“You are not fond of dancing, then?”
Despite his leading example, she had not seated herself in one of the neighboring armchairs. Instead she glared down at him and said flatly: “No.”
Good Christ, was there any other woman on Earth so unimpressed? He wanted to spin her into a waltz just to see what she would say. “You prefer classical art, is that right? There must be a great deal to see in London—galleries, collections—”
“Captain Archer,” she said coolly, “what is it that you are about?”
He smiled harder at her and held back the desire to pinch the bridge of his nose. He’d never in his life been plagued by headaches until these exceptionally unlikely ladies-in-waiting had come to Pomeroy House. “Merely making conversation. About your life before you came here.”
“Well.” She crossed her arms across her chest. “Allow me to satisfy your curiosity. I recently finished my fourth Season, which places me very nearly on the shelf. I did not dance at parties because I was not invited to do so.”
“Surely not,” he protested.
But she had not finished. She seemed torn between lifting her chin defiantly and staring him down.
“I have studied antiquities in Monastiraki and art in the Levant, and in the last three years, I have published four academic papers.” Her chin won out.
She jerked it up. “All of them anonymously, because my father would not have me shame him with my unladylike pursuits.”
She had flushed hotter as she spoke, embarrassed and yet unrepentant. Archer suspected that if he glanced down, all the overflowing décolletage above her bodice would be pink as well.
He did not look. He’d never in his life so utterly flubbed a conversation with a woman, and he wasn’t about to compound his errors by looking at her breasts.
He ran one hand through his hair and tried to regain some measure of composure, which had not seemed this difficult since he’d been taking heavy fire in the Adriatic.
“It’s obvious to me, Lady Ruby, that you and your companions are accomplished in every possible pursuit.
The improvements you’ve made to the house in the past fortnight are remarkable. ”
She scowled. “Do not pour the butter boat on me. It will not work.”
Yes, that had become increasingly apparent.
Somehow she had him on his back foot again, except he was sitting, and she was standing above him, refusing to be charmed and smelling of heaven.
She had the advantage of him in every possible way, and he had to rack his brain to recall what he’d come into the room to do.
To make her go, of course. That was what he ought to be about. If he wanted her to smile, it was only because it was part of his plan.
He took a stab in the dark, aiming for some memory she might be proud to relate. “How was it that the three of you came to be Princess Serafina’s ladies-in-waiting?”
But that too, it seemed, was wrong. At his words, she bristled up, all plumpness and prickles, like a small angry hedgehog.
“I beg your pardon,” she snapped. “Do you mean to suggest that we are not qualified?”
“No. Of course not. What have I said that could possibly be taken as a criticism—”
She spun away from him, and then back, advancing, and he had to scramble to his feet or else be trampled.
“There is no one in England more suited to the position than Lady Alice and Miss Drake, I will have you know. Tamsin could plan a dinner party for the princess and all her retinue in half a day. Alice would fill this house with music if the pianoforte were not home to a pack of hounds.”
The pianoforte was home to hounds? This was news to Archer.
“I assure you,” he said, “I did not mean to question their skills. Or your own.”
She took a step toward him, and his well-honed military instincts informed him that he was in deep water.
She was not charmed. And she was not poised to go. She was not stepping closer in order to share his space—she meant to invade it.
“It strikes me, Captain Archer,” she said, low and firm, “that our association with House di Sangro is not half so unlikely as your own. Tell me, how did a naval captain come to be steward of the princess’s holiday house?”
His presentiment of danger strengthened. “My former admiral put me up for the job,” he said easily. It was true. Penney had. “I interviewed with House di Sangro’s majordomo and was selected from a suite of qualified candidates.”
“Were you?” she said softly. And then: “What’s his name?”
“I—” He blinked. “What?”
“The royal family’s majordomo.” She no longer reminded him of a hedgehog—now she seemed as sharp-edged as her silver mortar knife. “What’s his name? I seem to have forgotten.”
Archer remembered the majordomo clearly. Signor Urbano Neri was a small bewigged fellow, with a bone-deep loyalty to House di Sangro that Archer had admired.
But he did not think Ruby needed to be reminded of the majordomo’s name. She wanted to know if Archer knew it.
She did not trust that Archer was who he said he was.
And—hell. He ought not be surprised. When had he yet managed to deceive her?
“Signor Neri,” he said finally, and then he caught her elbow in his hand to slip past her. He knew when he was out of his depth. He needed to retreat and regroup.
He had to get away before this devil of a woman uncovered something she wasn’t meant to know.
He’d done the same perhaps a dozen times before—grasped her arm to lead her away from hidden silk gloves in a stack of crates or illicit French plums stashed in the larder.
But this time, when he touched her skin, her lips parted on an indrawn breath.
She had a tiny stripe of white mortar drying into dust on her cheek, and he had to stifle the desire to brush it away.
It occurred to Archer that, for the first time since he’d first seen her at Gravesmuir’s townhouse, she was not wearing her fussy little gloves.
It occurred to him that he was imagining her bare hands on his skin.
When she spoke, her voice was the faintest bit unsteady. “And the rest? At dice with Tamsin, Lamentation said he served under you in the Royal Navy. How did he come to be a footman?”
Slowly, the import of her words registered in his mind. In his belly, which went sick and cold.
He dropped her elbow as though it had gone straight to molten iron in his hand. It was one thing for her to question his role in the house. He could manage her questions—at least, he thought he could manage them, though it was seeming less and less likely by the day.
But he did not dare let her turn those ruthless eyes upon his crew. He couldn’t allow his people to come under suspicion. He would not let them get hurt.
“Lamentation was in service before he came aboard the ship,” he lied smoothly, “to a countess.”
“Was he? Which countess was that?”
Instead of answering, Archer stepped around her and moved toward the door.
As he did, he thought about Gerry and Lamentation in his office. He thought of sea wrack and lettuce. Of bugs and schemes. Of little clear-eyed blonds with penetrating eyes and a tendency to ask far too many questions.
He thought of Professor Quenby.
And then he thought: The hell with it.
The hell with trying to cozen and cajole her. It was not working.
He felt as he had when facing a French warship with twice as many cannons as his own—reckless with fear and stubbornness.
He looked at her mortar-daubed face and abandoned all caution and sense.
“The truth is, Lady Ruby, I did not come to the library today to discuss House di Sangro at all. I came to warn you.”
She paused. Blinked. “To warn me?”
“You mustn’t leave the manor alone,” he said. “Not without protection.”
“I’m—sorry?”
He dropped his voice. In a tone of lethal earnestness, he said: “The Scourge of St. Petroc’s has been sighted again. Along with the remains of its victims.”
Her lashes flew up. She was still holding the mortar knife, now brandished at the level of her chest. “Its victims?”
“Oh yes. The bits left, of course. After it has devoured their hearts.” He smiled at her: a wolf’s smile, all teeth. “From what I hear in the village, it has a particular fondness for young ladies.”