Page 10 of Miss Desirable
Catherine. He used her name, he touched her. “Yes,” she said when her considerable stores of common sense shoutedno. “Yes, I will send for you, if I must send for anybody.”
He bowed. “I adore a stubborn woman.” He took her missive from the desk blotter and tucked it into a pocket. “I will see myself out and convey your message to the solicitors. You will be amazed at how much one act of authority on your part will change your household. Hire a young Frenchman to be your butler, and you will never regret it.”
Not a bad idea. “Away with you,” Catherine said, waving toward the door. “And, Fournier?”
“Mademoiselle?”
“Thank you for calling.”
Her concession, for that’s what it was, earned her another of those warm, sweet smiles. “The pleasure is mine.”
He closed the door quietly in his wake, and Catherine returned to her cooling tea at the escritoire. A moment later, she heard the front door close, then caught sight of Fournier striding along the walkway.
He’d alluded to a childhood in revolutionary France and being hard to shock. He was also nearly impossible to deceive, and yet… He had touched her, he had listened to her, and—this should have alarmed her—he hadunderstoodher.
Xavier Fournier was a threat to her wellbeing, and also a surprising comfort. He cut an impressive figure, a touch more flamboyant than the average English gentleman, even in his manner of tossing a coin to the crossing sweeper.
His visit had done her good, though she would not be sending for him. Still… She was curious. How had that provincial boy made the journey from a country racked by violence to the genteel surrounds of London’s best neighborhoods?
And along the way, who had comforted Xavier Fournier?
CHAPTERTHREE
“Mind you don’t get obstreperous, Fournier.” Sycamore Dorning peered up at the staid façade of Belcher and Sons. A discreet brass plaque near the door was the only hint that the premises housed a solicitors’ office. “Lawyers gossip, despite their much-vaunted discretion.”
“I am counting on them gossiping, which is why you have accompanied me. The point of the errand is not only to see Miss Fairchild’s execrable butler sacked, but also to send a message to the lawyers. She has allies.”
“She certainly has a champion in you,” Dorning muttered. “One hears that you take an interest in the occasional impecunious émigré, but why her, Fournier?”
Because Dorning himself had asked it of him? “I am nobody’s champion. I am merely seeing a note delivered.” And yet, Dorning, with his usual ability to sniff currents in the wind, had sensed a truth. Catherine Fairchild’s situation had piqued Xavier’s protective instincts, and that was a very bad thing indeed.
“A note that will result in a respected retainer being turned out on his ear. Why did you take old Deems into such dislike?”
To appearances, they were two gentlemen stopping to pass the time on an overcast spring day. The sky had that undecided look, as if making up its mind whether to rain in the next fifteen minutes or this afternoon, or both—this was London—but rain, it would.
Xavier, however, was using the moment to assess the surrounds. No potted heartsease on the stoop, no daffodils blooming in the small patch beneath the lamppost. The brass plate was shiny, the door freshly painted an uninspired dark green. The bricks of the façade could use a new coat of whitewash. The shutters were overdue for blacking. The railing along the steps was spindly and also in want of paint.
Not shabby, exactly, but… stingy. Penny-pinching. Was that a good quality or a bad quality in a wealthy young lady’s attorneys?
“Old Deems, as you call him, is disrespectful toward his employer. He brought weak tea up from the kitchen and tried to keep me from seeing Miss Fairchild. She was loath to close the parlor door on a chilly day, a simple act of pragmatism that should not earn the censure of a lady’s staff. She cannot trust her butler, and he all but manages the household.”
Dorning made a face. “How do you know she does not trust him?”
An older woman, companion in tow, exited the premises. She was well dressed—brown velvet carriage dress, fashionable bonnet, embroidered lace parasol despite the gloomy day. Her companion was also well attired, if modestly so, and the companion’s boots were either new or had new heels.
Belcher had some wellborn clients, then, though attorneys would discreetly call on clients who were true aristocrats. Across the street, Lord Fortescue Armbruster was chatting up some dandified sprig, and the passing traffic included more than a few crested carriages.
“What is a butler’s first duty, Dorning?”
Dorning tipped his hat to the ladies as they passed. “In the old-fashioned sense, a butler handles the bottles. He decides when to decant wine purchased in casks, if his employer doesn’t express an opinion. He oversees the cellars and the drinks pantry and chooses which bottles to send up based on the menus devised by the lady of the house. In these modern times, he also manages the male staff and can serve as house steward in smaller establishments.”
“And yet,” Xavier said, advancing to the door, “Miss Fairchild came to buy her own wine, without her butler, without a footman who answers to that butler, and without troubling the coachman or grooms who might receive their wages from that butler. She did not consult that butler regarding the selection of a hearty red meant to accompany a beef dinner.”
Dorning paused outside the door. The knocker was small, a brass lion with a ring in its mouth, though one did not knock at a commercial establishment.
“If an English butler knows one class of wines in particular,” Dorning said, “it’s the clarets that go well with good British beef. I concede you might have a point.”
“Such flattery from one I so highly esteem will give mepalpitations du coeur.”
