Page 52 of Lessons for Marquesses
Rupert, the surly coffin dodger allowed to pose as a butler, had been a gardener at Chedworth and when his knees gave out, a man about the house. When it came to cutting the staff at Farendon, well…
Rupert reported with a challenge in his rheumy eyes, “Miss St. Clair thought I’d make a right proper butler.”
“I can see why,” Nicholas remarked dryly.
The old man harrumphed and shuffled off. “Pirate, takin’ airs.”
The next two mornings, the same silent alarm pealed at five while Nicholas read Homer, and the days drew out in repeat. Georgiana rode her horses until two, sequestered herself in her room until dinner, and as if Nicholas were not her guest but a stranger with the plague, begged off dining for a headache.
When did she eat? Moreover, what had happened to the girl who had marveled at his generosity? Where was the ready smile of the George who had wanted to be like him?
Nicholas kicked a heel to the settle arm.
Maybe she was being like him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mr. Wolf was hope,and to Georgiana’s mind, for whom hope was a religion, it was as if she had discovered there was no God and Mr. Wolf was a charlatan posing as a savior. Yet she understood the fault was hers. She had made him more than he was. She still wanted to be like him. But it would not save her.
Mr. Wolf had promised to teach her, not rescue her from a thirty-thousand-pound grave. Unfair as well, her thoughts, that if he had arrived when he had promised, even just an hour before the marquess had hurled the last shovelful of dirt on her hopes, she would have persevered.
Now she recognized her stupidity.
She did not want the aggravation of knowing whatcouldbring success. It would never come to bear without the means to be successful, like an artist taught to paint masterpieces then stripped of canvas, brushes, and paint.
Mr. Wolf had taken possession of her salon. She listened to his footfalls at night, the jut of his glass and bottle landing on a table, the crisp turn of a book’s pages. Each night, he disappeared into his room before returning again, to the bottleand the book, but when he slipped into his room, she wondered what he did.
Did he brush his hair? Pray? Undress?
She had never seen a man naked, never cared to ponder it. What was under Mr. Wolf’s clothes?
Her curiosity made her slightly sick in the stomach.
She would never know what was beneath Mr. Wolf’s somber wool and broadcloth. She emphatically never wanted to know. She avoided him and fell asleep to his stirrings and hoped every morning he had departed in the hours before dawn.
But on the third night, the moon waning behind clouds shedding light rain, she sprang up to her elbows as his steps murmured in the hallway and hurried to her bedroom door in time to see him prowling toward the main staircase. At the landing she watched his lone figure gain the main hall, attacking the dark instead of being attacked.
As he disappeared out the west portico, she gained a vantage at the drawing room window. His back to her, Mr. Wolf gazed out into the night while his hand drew up absently to knead his shoulder. Then he considered his left hand. He struggled to curl his fingers to his palm, slapped them to his thigh, and tried again, staring as if the hand did not belong to him.
What had made it weak?
She pressed her finger to the window, where through the glass, his arms met his broad back. The black coat stretched and strained as he raked his hair. He twisted around, beholding the house through a mask of pain.
“Oh.” Georgiana withdrew her hand from the window, wanting to touch his face. A thousand times over.
He renewed his attack on the night, and she watched as his powerful figure slipped away, swallowed up by darkness.
Embarrassed at her curiosity, when she had done so well at packing him away in her mind, she returned to her room. At herdoor, her curiosity became unbearable. She walked to Mr. Wolf’s room and nudged open his chamber door.
Unlike his hair and stubbled jaw, the room was neat as a pin except for a banyan tossed upon the bed. The color was claret, the weave fine, and the finish silky. She measured it against her chest. Dipping her nose, she sniffed an appealing warmth, the brace of soap, hard like him.
Careful to leave the garment as she found it, she went to the writing desk and opened the drawer. A miniature frame rested face up, the subject obscured by a medallion. The glint of a knife caught her attention. It rested aligned with the spine upon the book she had gifted him.
Ignoring the warning voice to leave it be, she picked up the weapon and turned it in the taper’s light.
It wasn’t a shiny ornament for a gentleman’s hip nor fashioned like any knife she had ever seen. The wooden handle was stained black and short compared to the slim, straight blade. The initialsR.D.had been etched there and, by the initials’ lighter color, carved in the wood later. The whirls of a sharpening stone on the steel revealed the blade had been used. Often.
The front door shut in the distance.
