Page 36 of Reforming Lord Ragsdale
“Tomorrow, my lord, if you please,” she responded, a little breathless.
“You’ll have that letter to Sir Augustus ready?” he temporized. “And another which I shall dictate tonight to my bailiff in Norfolk? I mean to leave in two days.”
“Anything, my lord,” she said.
“Tomorrow it is,” he said, adding, “although I cannot imagine what it is that you would have to do in London.”
It was only the tiniest opening, but she did not take it.Of course she did not, he told himself, feeling the fool, and a bully in the bargain.John, you maggot, did you ever quiz David Breedlow about his day off? God knows you should have, in his case, but here is Emma Costello, and she is powerless, harmless, and poor. London is safe from whatever she could possibly be planning.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said, and her gratitude made him wince.
“You’re welcome,” he grumbled, “although I wonder what evil plans you have afoot.” Ah, there. He was rewarded with a smile.
“If you’re worried, Lord Ragsdale, you’d better lock up the silverware before I leave your house,” she replied, with just the hint of a twinkle in her eye.
“Oh, I do not think it will come to that, Emma,” he said as the carriage pulled up in front of the house. He sighed, considering the evening ahead. “Now I must gird my loins for an evening of fine dining and dancing.” He helped her from the carriage, careful not to hold her elbow a moment longer than she needed. “I would almost rather stay in the book room with you and consider ledgers and double entries.”
“And we all know what a fiction that is,” Emma murmured as they walked up the front steps.
He smiled. “It’s less of a stretch than you would suppose,” he said as he nodded to Lasker, who must have been watching for them out of the peephole in the door. “Emma, it is somewhat daunting to converse with lovely young things on the right and on the left, and across the table, and try not to be too obvious staring at whatever charms they possess. Thank you, Lasker,” he said as he relinquished his overcoat. “And then, in turn, I must suffer their sidelong glances as they try to discover if there is any substance beneath my shallow façade.”
Emma laughed, and it was the glorious, heartfelt sound he realized he had been craving all day. “Are you saying, my lord, that there is rather less to you than meets the eye?”
He wanted to laugh out loud at the strangling sounds coming from his unflappable butler, who had turned away and with a shaking hand was rearranging a bouquet of flowers. “Well, as to that, I wonder, Emma. I think you are improving me already,” he said as they continued down the hall toward the book room. “I have not been near my club, the wine cellar is locked, and Mama is looking on me with less chagrin than normal.” He chuckled. “Now if only the young ladies will follow her lead. . .”
“They will, my lord,” Emma assured him as she removed her cloak and sat down at the desk. “You need merely to decide what it is you are looking for in a wife, and follow through.”
Follow through, is it?he thought as he watched her rummage for pencil and paper.You are asking that of the man who could not save his own father from a rabble crowd? I wonder if I know how to see anything through to its completion. I was well on the way to my own ruin, but it seems I cannot accomplish even that.
“My lord?” Emma was asking. “You wanted to dictate a letter to your bailiff in Norfolk?”
“Oh! Yes, yes, I did,” he said as he clasped his hands behind his back and strolled to the window. “And you’ll have the other one for Sir Augustus ready by the time I return this evening?”
“Of course, my lord.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to call him John, but reason prevailed, and he did not. The letter was too soon dictated, then he had no more excuse to linger in the book room, and must face, instead, the prospect of shaving again, and dressing, and staring in the mirror and wondering what on earth he was doing.It is not that I dislike women, he considered as he suffered Hanley to arrange his neckcloth.Quitethe contrary. It’s just that I begrudge the exertion I must expend to find a wife. Too bad they do not grow on trees, there for the plucking. Or something like that, he concluded, grinning to himself.
Sally Claridge looked especially fetching in a pale blue muslin, her blonde hair swept up on her head in a style that earned a second look. He watched her descend the stairs, admired, from his viewpoint, her trim ankles, and idly considered the prospect of an alliance with his Virginia cousin. The quick glance of terror she turned his way before her more well-bred demeanor masked it convinced him that she would not be much fun to sport with. And even if she were, he thought as he helped his mother with her evening cape, sooner or later she would open her mouth and bore him into drunkenness or opium use, whichever came first.
His mother also watched with approval as Sally completed her descent of the stairs. “My dear, how lovely you look tonight!” she exclaimed, kissing her niece on the cheek. “John, only consider how well your guineas look upon Sally’s back.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Only think how wellweare spending my money.” That ill-advised remark earned him another look of terror from Sally and a cluck of his mother’s tongue. “Glad to do it for relatives, glad to do it,” he amended, hoping that his evening was not ruined before it started.
Mama was eager to be pleased (perhaps considering her own incursions into his fortune). “Quite right, John. Sally, do you have on your dancing shoes? I hear Lord Renwick has engaged a particularly fine orchestra for tonight.”
Shoes. Shoes. That was it. “Excuse me, Mama, Sally. I forgot something in the book room,” he said as he hurried down the hall.
Emma Costello looked up in surprise when he opened the book-room door without knocking. “Now, my lord, you are not getting cold feet. . .,” she began, putting down the quill pen.
“No, but you are, Emma,” he said. “I need two pieces of paper and a pencil.” He snapped his fingers and held out his hand for the items, which Emma brought to him. He put the papers on the floor in front of her. “Take off your shoes, Emma.”
She hesitated. “Hurry up, now,” he admonished, taking the pencil from her. “I don’t want to miss a minute of what promises to be an evening of astonishing boredom.”
“You are too negative, my lord,” she grumbled as she removed her shoes—poor, cast-off things that should have been in an ash can years ago.
“Raise your skirt,” he ordered as he knelt on the floor beside her and grasped her ankle.
She gave a noticeable start when he touched her stockinged ankle, then rested her hand lightly on his shoulder to steady herself while he outlined her foot with the pencil.
