Page 21 of Undercover with the Heiress
Hugh stepped into the room. He held a single plate in his hand. He bowed with that same exaggerated subservience, and when he straightened, a slice of carrot slipped and dropped onto the rug.
Rosanna took her seat. Hugh placed the meal before her. She looked from the roast potatoes to the empty place where Phineas had sat for breakfast, and then to Hugh. ‘Is Mr Babbage not returned?’
‘Felix informed me that he never dines at home. He returned when you were changing. He is already in his room.’
‘He returned home without coming to see me?’ Rosanna picked up her knife and fork. She hadn’t dressed to impresshim, but she had dressed in anticipation of company. He couldn’t even take a few minutes to greet her? She cut into the poached chicken, sawing until the blade squeaked against the plate.
‘Hugh, why are you not using my new crockery?’ Rosanna lowered her cutlery until it clinked against the porcelain.
‘Err…’ Hugh scuffed his toe and stared at the forlorn chunk of carrot lying on the rug.
‘Has my bed been made up with my new linens?’ she asked.
‘The master said they were…’ Hugh bit his lip in thought. ‘Superfluous to the needs of the house.’
‘Superfluous to the needs of the house?’ Her voice started low but amplified as her ire grew. ‘Superfluous? We shall see about that.’ Rosanna stood so forcefully that her chair fell against the floor. Then she barged down the hallway, letting the momentum of her anger fuel her ascent up the stairs. How dare he leave her to languish, and how dare he dictate her expenses to her. ‘I am mistress of this house. I have a reputation to uphold. And I would like to lie on proper cotton, not on some threadbare old bachelor sheets in a stingy bachelor bed.’ She thumped on his door. ‘Phineas!’ she called.
No answer.
She thumped again. Rosanna twisted the knob and threw the door open. It clapped against the wall, then shuddered.
‘Phineas!’ she shouted as she strode inside. His room was fitted out with the same simple bed, the same stark black and grey blankets, and the same sparse walls.
A light clink came from behind her.
Rosanna spun to face the small wash closet. Its door stood open, and in the mirror propped over the basin, Phineas’s icy steel gaze met her own. Thick white strips of scarred flesh stretched across his exposed back, forming a tangle of remembered agony which she’d only read about in adventure novels but had never seen herself—the scars left by a whipping. He held a shaving blade in one hand while the other pressed against his cheek to hold the skin taut. Thin droplets of water clung to his extended neck. One slipped, then traversed the valley of his collarbone. Another avoided the depression and snaked its way over his pectorals, then ran fast along his side to be absorbed by his trousers.
Rosanna blinked and followed the thin sheen upwards, to just a few inches below his armpit.
D.
Not a smooth tattooed line or an odd scar, no. The letter D had been stamped into Phineas’s skin as a mosaic of dots, each small cyan pinprick staining his skin, the unmistakable brand of—
‘A deserter? You deserted the army?’
Phineas closed his razor and placed it on the dresser beside the basin. He took a towel from a rail and patted it against his cheek.
‘But deserters are court-martialled and sent to prison. Usually, they’re transported, and—’ Her breath caught in her throat. ‘You’re a convict?’
He raised one eyebrow. No, he wasn’t that old. He couldn’t have served a sentence and lived here for seven years…
‘You’re an escaped convict? Where from? How are you—’ Rosanna pressed her palm to her mouth as she inhaled. ‘You’re on the run. I was going to be a lady, and now I’m married to an escaped convict and a deserter. I would have been better off ruined. I would have been—’
Phineas slapped the towel onto the bench and turned. In two small steps, he crossed from the basin to the door. He stretched his arm to rest his elbow against the doorframe, and as she stammered her fears, the D elongated and deformed with the changing contour of his muscles. Heavens, he was lean. The firm lines of his pectorals tensed a little, and the slightest defined line of strength stretched from just below his ribcage through his centre, ending at his belly button. A thin line of dark hair trailed from there to beneath his waistband, his skin supple and smooth.
Rosanna took a rattling breath, then dragged her gaze back to his.
‘Is that all, Hempel?’ he asked, and before she could squeak out a reply, he slammed the door closed.
Chapter Nine
‘How’s the happy groom?’
Phineas kept his eyes focused on his ledger. ‘Happy,’ he replied in his usual monotone.
‘You sound happy.’ Taylor chuckled. ‘I thought married life might treat you a little better.’
Was happy the word to describe life with Rosanna Hempel in his house? A week into it, and he doubted his logic in trying to keep her alive. The staff hummed or sang incessantly, his wife used the same knife for raspberry jam and marmalade, inevitably mixing the flavours, his courtyard smelt of horse, and Felix had started wearing cologne. His life had become a circus.
