Chapter 3
Chapter Three
The village of Bletsoe was a tiny hamlet seven miles north of Bedford.
But far from being a sleepy little village, it was bustling with excitement.
“Ah,” said the innkeeper as he showed them their rooms. “You’ve come about Lady Willoughby. You’ll have to forgive me for the lack of appropriate chambers, my lord. They’re a little cozy. There’s a half dozen journalists here, as well as several medical professionals and a priest.”
“That’s quite all right.” Sterling examined the small chambers he’d been allocated.
Cozy was one word for it. There was a private antechamber between his room and Edwina’s, and she’d immediately claimed the one with the window seat.
She loved to sit in the sun and soak up the heat.
“Tell me, how are the Willoughby’s handling their newfound notoriety? ”
The innkeeper snorted. “Lord Willoughby’s very protective of his young bride. They were married but a month ago, and he’s besotted with her. He’s got the manor house locked up tighter than a nun’s drawers. Nobody’s getting in. Or out.”
“Such a strange case,” he mused. “This happened to Lord Willoughby’s grandmother too, did it not? I cannot quite fathom the connection between the two ladies.”
The innkeeper shook his head. “There’s talk the family’s cursed.”
“Cursed?” Now that was interesting.
The innkeeper leaned closer. “Two Lady Willoughby’s stricken unto death?
And the original Lord Willoughby suffering a heart seizure barely six months after his bride returned from the dead?
And now the current one’s done lost his own father but a year past, in a freak accident down by Mill Pond. Sounds like a curse to me.”
“Freak accident?”
“Drowned, my lord. Drowned in a foot of water.”
A heart seizure. A drowning. Two near-deaths.
The pieces didn’t fit.
But they would.
Sterling thanked him for his time, then rapped on Edwina’s door.
She opened it briskly, a small towel in her hand. The cap he hated so much was gone, and her thick flaxen hair was threatening to escape its tight confines.
She had no idea how much he wanted to pluck every pin from her hair and let it spill down her spine.
“Well?” she asked.
“The Willoughby’s aren’t receiving anyone.” He leaned against the doorjamb as she returned to the washbasin. She’d removed her spectacles in order to wash the travel dust from her face, and the effect never failed to make his breath catch.
She wasn’t classically beautiful, but she was Edwina.
He could remember the first day she’d turned up at his manor with the newspaper held clenched in her fist, wearing the same bloody dress. He’d been expecting an Edwin Sheffield for the job interview and the shock of her tiny—most definitely female—figure had made his jaw drop open.
And then his gaze had locked on the affront of her matronly cap, before travelling to her spectacles, and then alighting with faint horror upon… the Serge as he called it.
“What the devil are you wearing?” Somehow his tongue had run away with him—he, who could charm the very birds from the trees.
“Did you rob a nunnery? Is there an elderly spinster out there who is missing half her wardrobe?” He hadn’t been able to stop his gaze from lifting again in horror to the scrap of lace guarding her hair.
“I swear my Aunt Minnie was buried in something like that. I didn’t know they made them for anyone under the age of sixty. ”
Edwina had settled that penetrating gaze upon him. “I am starting to understand why the advert called for someone with ‘an iron-strong constitution and an unflappable nature.’”
Dismay had been his most pressing emotion. He’d advertised for a secretary who could handle the rigors of his profession, and this mousy little spinster was most certainly not it.
He was going to get her killed.
She’d faint at the first sight of blood.
How the devil was he going to manage her, when he had demons to hunt and imps to kill?
It wasn’t until she set her hands on her hips and coolly told him that she wasn’t scared of anything that he could throw at her, that he’d finally seen beyond the plain armor she wore.
Those gray eyes flashed with mutiny. Her lips pressed together tightly in challenge.
Maybe she’d work.
She certainly knew her stuff.
More so than the other candidates.
And so, he’d succumbed to gut instinct and hired her.
And she was perfect—more perfect than he could have imagined. Brilliant, and argumentative, and determined, and brave…. She’d never met a challenge she couldn’t overcome, through sheer perseverance, if nothing else.
And she was utterly disregarding of his title or his familial connections to the duke.
It was like being seen for the first time in his life. And regardless of their social positions, she treated him like an equal.
Or she certainly argued with him like one.
Taking tea at four in the library became his favorite pastime. They could talk for hours over a case, or one of the latest scandals within the order. Sometimes he found himself prolonging the encounter so that he could watch the way the fire in the grate gilded her pale moonbeam hair.
Hair that he wanted to pluck all the pins from before he combed his fingers through it. Hair that he wanted to spread over his pillow so that he could see if it turned silvery in the moonlight, the way it did in his imagination.
Her laughter sounded like the tinkling of bells.
Her sense of humor actually had a naughty side to it.
Her smile…. His breath began to catch when she smiled.
And Sterling had come to the horrifying realization that he was smitten.
With his secretary.
He wasn’t the only one looking.
Edwina had skin the color of cream, and whenever an errant thought lit through her head, her cheeks pinkened like the prettiest sunrise.
He’d caught her watching the way he retied his cravat and began to remove it during their afternoon teas, just to see if her gaze strayed to his throat.
It did.
He’d captured her eyes on his backside as he climbed the library ladder.
She lingered on his lips every bloody day as he lifted his cup to his mouth. Sterling had drunk more tea in the past three years than he ever had in his life.
As a man with a certain reputation, he knew how to read the room.
And Edwina Sheffield mentally undressed him at least three times a day.
There was just one little problem: One did not pursue those in one’s employ.
And while he’d had his share of roguish encounters over the years, he was—first and always—a gentleman.
“So.” Edwina patted her neck dry. “What’s the plan of attack then?”
He pulled his mind out of its reverie.
“Your plan. Your attack.” This was her first official case. He wanted her to have a chance to bloom into her new role—even if it was one that threatened to take her from his side.
She’s not going to leave you. His stomach fell in a sensation that reminded him very much of panic. You belong together. She knows that. This is merely… a new way of working together.
Partners. He had to hold onto that thought.
Edwina bit her lip. “You’re not going to like my plan.”
A different sort of knot formed in his stomach. “I presume I’m going to be sending my calling card and dusting off the Clarenvale signet ring?”
Her expression softened as she crossed the room.
“You are a duke’s son, Sterling.” Gentle fingers hooked into his.
“And I know you don’t like it. I know you haven’t seen your father in over a year.
But this is our best chance to get inside the manor.
Lord Willoughby is a mere earl. He wouldn’t dare not accept the Duke of Clarenvale’s son. ”
Sterling’s gaze locked on their linked fingers. He couldn’t quite bring himself to tell her that he’d do anything if only she kept touching him. She’d no doubt use it against him in the future.
Might not be a bad thing….
“Fine.” He pushed away from the doorjamb and scowled. “Let me go get changed. I haven’t dusted off Lord Sterling Reed for a year or two. Sometimes it takes a few moments to bring him back out.”
Her smile was as radiant as the sun. “Thank you.”
Once this was done, she was going to owe him more than a bloody kiss.
Edwina couldn’t help being aware that Sterling slipped into his role as if wearing a new skin.
He’d slicked his golden hair back with pomade and there was no sign of the tweed.
No. Instead he wore strict black, with a crisp white shirt and a cane in his gloved hand.
The expression on his face was cool, bored even.
He looked every inch the aristocrat, and she wasn’t sure what he did to make even the planes of his face look sharper, but the result sent a skitter of butterflies through her.
It was like slipping her arm through the elbow of a stranger.
A powerful, slightly feral stranger.
One that could turn on her at any moment, but it wasn’t his physicality that unnerved her, but his sudden, abrupt sensuality.
This was a man who wouldn’t ask for a kiss.
This was a man who wouldn’t brush his lips against hers, and then capture her waist with a desperate touch.
This was a man who would put her on her knees, wrap a hand around a fistful of her hair, and tell her to beg for mercy.
Edwina desperately wished she hadn’t read the particular book she’d found on his desk that had put that thought in her head.
Twenty-seven and still a virgin, and yet, she’d been witness to several of the solstice rites the order used to celebrate the equinoxes.
Sex was often a means for a sorcerer to gather energy and realign their auras, and whilst she’d grown up in her somewhat puritanical aunt’s house, she’d seen enough since then to know exactly what men and women got up to in private.
“You’re being awfully quiet,” Sterling told her as he handed his calling card to Lord Willoughby’s butler.
“Just taking in the manor,” she murmured as the servant left to see if the Willoughby’s were receiving.
“Mmm.” She could feel his gaze upon her, and looked up from where she’d been examining his tie, or more particularly, the muscles of his throat.
Silence fell.