Page 58 of Indecently Employed
The girl shrugged it off with an irritated look. “Fine.” She scoffed, turning on her heel to leave, muttering to herself. “I hadn’t even asked that.”
Chapter Twenty
Miss Abbotts avoided hiseyes as she rushed out of the room after Charlotte. Ajax wanted to punch the wall, but he refrained, then congratulated himself on his excellent decorum. He conveniently ignored the fact that he’d entered the governess’s private room and nearly taken her right there, up against the wall.
He supposed he should be grateful, then, for his daughter’s interruption, though he found he was anything but. The cheeky chit knew exactly what she was about, of that he was certain. Nothing escaped Charlotte’s notice, and he’d been a fool to think this might.
But he didn’t care. He meant every word he’d spoken to Susanna; he truly was hers. If only she’d been able to finish what she’d meant to say. His heart thudded heavily as he finally unstuck himself from the spot and followed them downstairs to dinner. The wide corridors, as ever, felt cold and soulless, with their tacky rococo brass lamps mounted above side tables topped with Breche Violette marble. Everything here felt an accusation, a vulgar attack on the senses.
Keep your head down, the little voice hissed. Ajax halted before a massive Italian mirror, framed in giltwood with a griffin and lyre at the crest.
No. He would not. Not anymore. He rolled his shoulders back, adjusted his coat, and smoothed his tie. His hair may be graying, and he may have spent some twenty-odd years floundering, adrift in a sea of self-indulgence and self-loathing. But no longer. He was a father. He had a family, however hastily cobbled together. He had… he stared at himself in the mirror as the realization came to him.
He loved Susanna Abbotts.
When he’d first met Charlotte, months ago at a horrifically awkward gathering in his solicitor’s office, he’d good-naturedly told the girl that he had loved her mother dearly. He’d lied. He had never loved Nancy, though it was true he’d been rather fond of her.
But Susanna was different; she felt like home. Every day there was something more appealing, more beautiful about her, even as she donned those drab gray and brown dresses. He craved her respect, her adoration. She’d come to him of her own volition, her own desire. Ajax frowned a little at the memory, that hateful voice suggesting that perhaps she hadn’t; perhaps she’d felt an unfair pressure.
No, he would not think it. He would ask her. He’d ask her and then he’d ask her to be his wife.
Ajax suddenly felt as if the floor had fallen out from beneath him. He turned from the mirror and began walking again, fleeing from this sense of falling, this terror of the unknown he’d just committed himself to.
At dinner he was seated at the head of the table, away from Susanna. He watched her as she made polite conversation with Harmonia and Marcus, and longed for another moment together, when he might set things right and do this properly.
“Andthenhe informed me that he couldn’t complete the painting! After all the preliminary drawings as well—which, mind you, I must also pay for. It’s simply a farce!” His cousin Bess, seated at Ajax’s right, was apoplectic as she bounced her bug-eyed little dog in her arms.
He rubbed the spot between his brows. “Whose portrait again?”
“Walter’s! Oh, do pay attention.”
“And, er, who is Walter?” he asked, forcing a sheepish grin.
Bess pressed her lips together, shaking her head. “Marcus! Ajax is behaving miserably toward Walter.” She lifted the little dog, as if her son could not see it from a few yards away.
Ah, sothatwas Walter. Ajax lifted a hand to pat the beast in reconciliation, only to be met with a snarl.
“I’m sure Walter will take it all in stride.” Marcus lifted a wry eyebrow as he took a drink from his water goblet. “Eventually.”
To Ajax’s other side sat Charlotte, who ate silently, keeping an equanimous look on her face throughout the meal. He supposed that was as much as he could hope for, especially now that he was aware of the girl’s knowledge of his and Susanna’s… situation. A frightening thought came to him: What if she rejected their union? He swallowed and felt a knot in his stomach, suddenly uninterested in finishing anything on his plate.
Across from him, at the other end of the table, Rickard glowered. Ajax started to wonder what bee was in his bonnet now, but then he supposed it was entirely possible that the man was in fact in high spirits, given that a hard glare seemed to be the only expression he owned.
“Miss Abbotts,” Harmonia cut in, with a meaningful glance toward her husband, “your family is from Dorset, are they not?”
“Yes, that’s where I grew up,” Susanna said, glancing demurely away, as if she were hesitant to say any more.
“Close to Trenthide?” Rickard asked.
“Not especially so, but not very far either,” Susanna answered tentatively, her eyes darting from Harmonia’s husband to Ajax. “Deverill Green.” Clearly she did not wish to touch whatever subject it was that Rickard drew them toward.
Another look passed between Harmonia and Rickard, and Harmonia then looked expectantly at Marcus. Hell’s bells. They were plotting something.
“Ah, Deverill Green. That wouldn’t be a terribly long train ride from Elverton Bridge, would it?” Marcus said with an affected aloofness, as if he were laying out the planks of an argument in anticipation of a contested debate.
“No, I suppose not,” Susanna said, smiling sweetly, though her discomfort at being the center of attention was apparent.
“Do you go home often, Miss Abbotts?” Marcus added, and Ajax wanted nothing more than to cut in and dress his nephew down. But he held his tongue, curious as to just what this unholy cabal was about.
