Page 22 of How to Ruin a Duke
His lids fluttered, but he otherwise betrayed no emotion.“I do not refer to Lady Edith.I mean a young man named Simon Thorn.Lord Farleigh doesn’t like it.”
Lord Farleigh.The man whose wife had stuffed an amorous page into Simon’s horn…how long ago?Not long, yet she could hardly remember not knowing Simon.But then, she’d been awake and working almost ever since.
Or awake and with him.
The duke paused, long enough for Rowena to wonder at the size of the figurative sword dangling over her head.Was this a threat?“Your Grace?”she prodded delicately.
“I do not like that Lord Farleigh has an opinion on the matter and have informed him so.He will not interfere with Mr.Thorn.Or with your shop.”
Mystified, Rowena thanked him.
“Think nothing of it.I do not care for bluster and menace.”And this time, he did depart, leaving her to work with her tuning hammer and her mutes of cotton felt.
Years of experience had her working with pianoforte strings as much by feel as by ear, leaving her free to ponder.
So.The Duke of Emory had exercised some of his privilege on her behalf.Or would it be more correct to say he’d protected Simon?Either way, Rowena was certain the credit lay with Edith.Rowena was known by the duke’s household to be a friend of Edith.There was simply no other reason why they would care about the fate of Fairweather’s.
Why had Edith left this household?She’d been making a good wage, and the duke seemed all right.He demonstrated none of the crawling sort of flirtation that came from a man taking pleasure in a woman’s vulnerability.The Duke of Emory had seemed hardly to notice that Rowena was a woman at all.
I’m not going to talk about it, Edith had said to Rowena of her departure.There’s nothing to say.
Which meant Edith was either afraid or ashamed.
Had she fallen in love with His Grace?WasHow to Ruin a Dukeembarrassing for her now that Emory’s true character was revealed?
An hour and a half later, the pianoforte was back in tune, but Rowena’s thoughts were no closer to harmony.
“‘I neither could thank my benefactor,’”read Nanny to Rowena, “‘nor inquire how I was to repay him.I could not help feeling some inward sensations of horror.’”
“That’s not what I’d feel if a mysterious man tossed bank drafts at me.”By lamplight in the parlor, Rowena was sanding a new fingerboard for the broken-necked violoncello.The whole day had gone in travels about London, in tuning one pianoforte after another, and her repair work still remained.“‘Inward sensations of horror’?Please!I’d kiss him on the lips.”
“Hush,” Nanny chastised.“There’s going to be a necromancer soon.The title says so.”Pulling the great magnifying lens to a handier spot, she continued, “‘Having recovered from my amazement, I went to the table, took up the papers, and saw, with astonishment, that each of them was a draft for a hundred dollars.’”
“Only dollars?Not pounds?It might not be enough.”Rowena squinted down the length of the fingerboard, holding the instrument’s bridge beneath it.The curve of the latter would have to fit perfectly beneath the former, or the strings wouldn’t lie properly.
“I can read this to myself if you’re not interested,” Nanny huffed.
“I’m too interested.More than I should be.I’ve been doing too much to forget the lease on the shop.”
At the end of the month, the money would come due, or Fairweather’s would cease to exist.The work of a century and more, gone under her guardianship.
She couldn’t allow that to happen.She sanded harder.
Through the open doorway, she heard a knock at the shop door.Her ears were attuned to it, the promise of Simon Thorn’s unexpected arrival.For several days, they’d been crossing paths at random times.She, to and fro from tuning pianofortes.He, popping in to change the shop window’s display and share new bookings gathered from his meanderings through the orchestra pits of London’s theaters.
“A caller for you.Time for me to go to bed, that’s what that knock means.”Nanny winked.
Rowena blushed, then pretended she hadn’t.“It could be the fishmonger’s boy.Alice will check.”
“Twelve hours late, he’d be.”Nanny heaved herself from her seat, grimacing as her knees and ankles popped.“I can tell you’re not in the mood forThe Necromancer.Maybe we’ll read more tomorrow.”
Rowena had to agree with this.She couldn’t keep her mind on fiction.After kissing Nanny on the cheek and bidding the old woman an early good-night, she gathered up the pieces of her work and descended the stairs, laying out the fingerboard and bridge on her worktable before she passed into the foyer.
It wasn’t Simon that Alice had admitted to the shop, wide-eyed and nervous-handed.It was their landlord, Mr.Lifford.
The maid’s nervousness was entirely due to the man’s role, not his demeanor, for Mr.Lifford had a gentle appearance.A man of perhaps forty years, he had been a clerk for years until he had the great good fortune of inheriting several properties along New Bond Street.He was prematurely stooped and gray and shortsighted, seeming still to carry the scents of paper and ink.But he was not meek, despite his mildness, and was never late in collecting the rents arranged by his ancestors with the ancestors of his tenants.
“Thank you, Alice.”Rowena asked the maid to make tea, and Alice scurried off.
