Chapter Eight
There was an untuned orchestra’s worth of racket coming from the parlor. Cursing. Incoherent grumbling. Scratching. The crumpling of paper. More cursing. Eden had never heard a person make so much noise writing a letter in his life.
He could not concentrate on his work. He rose to close the study door and found Tha?s sitting at the parlor table with ink smeared on her hands and splattered on her face, a pile of torn pages littered all around her. She was bent over a fresh page, writing with such concentration that the tip of her tongue was clenched between her teeth.
He heard the distinct sound of the nub breaking, and she slammed the quill down on the table in frustration, nearly knocking over the vial of ink.
“Fucking hell,” she hissed.
“Tha?s,” he said, “is something the matter?”
She looked up quickly, and some emotion flashed across her face. Fear?
No.
Shame.
A feeling he’d never imagined her capable of. He didn’t like to see it.
“Can I borrow your knife?” she asked, wiping the expression off her face and replacing it with a wry look that did not seem genuine. “I smashed the nib. Clumsy me.”
“Of course.”
He went back to his desk to fetch it. She reached for it with ink-stained fingers, and he thought better of handing her the pristine ivory handle. “May I do it for you?”
“If you like.” She held out the quill. He reached in his pocket for his handkerchief and took the quill gingerly between two fingers, cleaning it off before he touched it.
“Sorry,” she grumbled. “I made a mess.”
“Quite all right.” He whittled delicately at the nib until it was sharp and crisp, then handed it back to her.
“Thank you,” she said darkly.
“You’re welcome.”
“Well, off with you,” she said, making a shooing motion.
He walked back into his study, closed the door, and resumed working. But before two minutes had passed, the ruckus resumed, loud enough to bother him even through the walls.
He went back into the parlor and found Tha?s glaring at the page.
“You little bastards,” she said, scratching out a word.
“Is the paper too rough?”
He bent over to look at what she was writing. She snatched the page away and held it to her chest. “No spying.”
He backed away, but he’d seen enough to realize what the problem was: not the paper, but what was written on it. Her penmanship was childlike, many of her letters backward.
A surge of sympathy went through him. Of course. She’d told him she’d been raised in a brothel. She wouldn’t have had an education. He was impressed she knew how to write at all.
“My apologies,” he said. “I don’t mean to intrude upon your privacy.”
She waved him away. “Off with you. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”
He hesitated. “Perhaps you’d like some assistance?”
She glared at him. “With what?”
“You could dictate, and I could write for you.”
“Cook. Gardener. Secretary. Will His Earldom never settle on a job?”
She clearly did not want his help, and he wouldn’t force it on her.
“I’ll leave you,” he said.
He retreated to the study, shut the door, and braced himself for the cacophony to continue. But this time, there was silence.
And then the door swung open.
“Fine,” she said.
“Fine?”
“I’m not good at my letters, if you must know.”
She looked at him pugnaciously, like she expected him to chastise her for this.
“I’m good enough at mine,” he said. “Let’s collaborate, shall we?”
“Enough of that,” she snapped.
“Of what?” he asked, bemused.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby. You only make it worse.”
“Make what worse?”
She slumped down into a chair and folded her arms over her chest. “How I barely know my letters. It’s embarrassing.”
Thiswas why he supported female education. Why he had bid so generously to support the Institute Tha?s and her friends were building. Every child deserved the basic ability to read and write.
“Tha?s, there’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “I’m happy to help. And I’m sure your missive will be more interesting than the one I’m writing to my land steward.”
She did not quite grin, but at least the humiliation left her face.
“What’s the going rate to hire an earl to write my letters?” she asked.
He smiled. “For you, I’ll do it for free.”
“Very well. Are you ready?”
He took out a fresh page, dipped the quill in ink, and nodded.
“Dear Elinor,” she said, “you won’t believe who I’m here with. Not Camberwell. It’s Lord Eden. It turns out he’s a right lecher.”
He did not, of course, write this down.
“How droll,” he said.
She cackled.
“I’d ask you to keep my involvement out of this,” he said.
“Just a little comedy. But look at you, red as a cock in the morning sun.”
He hoped she was referring to the poultry and not the genitalia.
He had his doubts.
“Do you actually wish to dictate a letter, or shall I go back to my correspondence?”
“What have you got? Any more news of your young ladies?”
Actually, he had. A fresh batch had arrived in the morning post.
“That kind of information is only available to those with no interest in mocking me.”
“But mocking you makes you so cross and scrunches up your brows, and I like the looks of it. Much funnier than when you’re calm and handsome.”
Handsome?He had no problem with his looks, but the compliment (such as it was) surprised and pleased him. He hoped she didn’t notice.
No luck.
“Oh, but he likes that, he does,” she cackled. “Blushing clear up to his hair.”
He leaned back in his chair and glared at her.
“I rescind the offer to help you.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t. I’m learning you’re softhearted. Should have gathered it from the way you dote on Anna. You’ll take pity on the poor ignorant moll and do as I tell you.”
He very much would. But he continued to glare at her, since she seemed to find it amusing.
“Well then, tell me what to write,” he said sternly. “I don’t have all afternoon.”
“Aye. Soon you’ll be needing to make my supper.”
“Focus.”
“Fine, fine! Just having a laugh. Someone around here has to.” She cleared her throat. “Are you ready?”
He nodded.
“Dear Elinor,” she began.
“Dear Elinor,” he repeated, writing down the words.
“I’ve just arrived in the Cotswolds, and I have the most amazing news. Maria is here. She’s staying with that old rat—”
“Slow down!” he said, trying to keep up. “A man can only write so quickly.”
“I don’t pay my secretary such a fortune to yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling. I have the most amazing news. Pick up from there.”
“Ma-ri-a. Is. Here,” she intoned syllable by syllable.
He rolled his eyes. “Why are you making this so difficult?”
She shrugged. “Can’t help it.”
“You can.”
“Very well, my liege. Write this. She’s staying with that old rat—”
“Need you curse?”
“Rat’s not a curse. If you want to hear a curse—”
He held up his hand. “That old rat. Carry on.”
“That old rat, the widow Bell. Your mother-in-law.”
He finished the sentence and looked up at her expectantly. “What next?”
“What’s the name of the house? Sophie said it, but I forgot.”
“Dunsmoor, I believe.”
“Ah! That’s it. Tell her the bloody old crone is holed away at Dunsmoor House.”
“Lady Bell resides at Dunsmoor House,” he said, writing down his version of the words.
“And you must come here right now,” she went on. “We’ll find a way for you to see her.”
He did not write this down.
“Tha?s, Lady Elinor cannot come here. Obviously.”
“Wot? ’Course she can.”
“No. She must not. No one is to know we are together.”
Her mouth fell open. “Don’t joke on me.”
“I’m not. It’s absolutely impossible. We must be completely discreet.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t be a prig, Eden.”
“I’m not being a prig. I’m being careful. Which is the entire reason I paid you such a handsome sum of money for your time.”
She shot up from her chair. “Don’t talk to me of money. You have plenty of coin, I’m sure, throwing it around for me the way you did. Elinor’s in agony missing her children, no idea where they are. Hasn’t seen them in two years.”
“Which is appalling, of course, but—”
“Imagine if your Anna disappeared for two years,” she said. “How would you feel?”
He inhaled sharply at the idea of his sister—as dear to him as his own child—being taken and kept away from him.
“It would be very painful,” he admitted quietly.
She nodded. “I’d think it would.”
She was right. To withhold this information would be cruel.
“If Elinor comes here, can she be trusted not to divulge that you and I are here together?” he asked.
“She’d be so grateful you could swive me right in front of her and she wouldn’t say a word.”
“Christ,” he groaned. She was being deliberately insufferable for her own amusement. “Please, Tha?s.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said gaily. “I’ll be sure to tell her you’re the type of man who pays a whore not to fuck him.”
That cut. He knew she was being playful, but his situation pained him. He said nothing.
“Oh, don’t be sour,” she said, but her tone was uncharacteristically uncertain.
“I don’t appreciate mockery any more than you enjoy it,” he said.
She looked chastened. “I’m sorry. Truly. You’re right. That wasn’t kind.”
Her eyes were heavy with regret, which made him sorry.
“Let’s forget it. If you wish for Elinor to come, I’ll see to it that she is welcome here.”
“Thank you, Eden. And trust she will go to the grave with anything I ask her to.”
“I suppose not much can shock her if she spends so much time with you. Certainly not a man wanting a little bedsport in the country before he weds.”
He winked at her, and she winked back at him, and he liked being on the inside of a joke with her.
“Now,” he said, “tell me what to write.”