Page 19 of Seductive Reprise
“I could cast him out, if you wish. His business here is with me,” he said in a low, regretful tone.
Rose straightened up and glanced nervously at the cloudy-eyed butler, who stared straight ahead, unbothered.
As much as she wanted to agree, and thus never see Joseph again, she found the words would not come. In the moment she decided it was merely because she did not wish to give further credence to whatever suppositions Mr. Hartley and his mother harbored about her and Joseph’s association.
“What for?” she said with a glibness she did not feel. “It is no bother to me, Mr. Hartley.”
He watched her for a period, then nodded. “Very well.”
Rose had never been so glad to emerge onto the streets of London, foul smells and all.
He knew where she lived, some pathetic tumbledown tenement in Lambeth. Although he’d sent Bartle and Collins out to survey it, he’d refrained from posting them there, fearing her rage if she found out. Although he could not help himself completely; he drove by one night when the traffic was a mere inconvenience,rather than an impenetrable quagmire. It was futile, though, for he could not see her, could not speak to her. His intense longing finally broke him within two days of their last meeting, and he allowed himself something he rarely even considered: a holiday.
Which was how he now found himself riding at his home in Hertfordshire, Sarnesfield Hall. His stallion, Rufus, was especially eager, and Yusef allowed him his head. The morning air was cooler than it had been of late, and even colder still as he sliced through it atop his mount. Yusef did not care. Out of habit he pushed down his hat, settling it more firmly on his head. For he meant to do one thing and one thing only: gallop across the green landscape and escape the relentless itch to be with her, to hear from her.
To hear her say his name the way she used to.Christ, if only…
He frowned. The tree line approached, and Rufus slowed. With a gentle touch, Yusef turned the horse back around, the handsome manse a mere dot on the horizon before them. It was the first one he had purchased with his own money, without a penny from the Duke of Marbury, after he’d returned fromMasr. It held a special place in his heart.
What did she want? For him to give all this up, and live like her?
He sneered at the thought.
But would he, if he could be guaranteed her forgiveness? Would he sleep in some shabby bed whose ropes he had to tighten with his own hands every night like some yeoman farmer, if only she’d be next to him, pressing her body against his back and sighing happily into his shoulder? The ache in his chest returned, and he cursed it the entire ride back to the house.
As he came up the drive, he noticed a figure waiting in front of the manor, standing stock-still with arms crossed. The ache in Yusef’s chest immediately transformed into a rush of anger.
With his knee he urged Rufus into a canter, quickly closing the distance to see who had the gall to invade his sanctuary uninvited. The moment he recognized who it was, though, he chuckled to himself with relief.Rickard. The only man who would dare glare at him like that, with murder in his eyes. Yusef gently tugged the horse to a halt and dismounted, casually walking the remaining interval with reins loosely in hand. Forcing the other man to wait.
“You came all this way to pay a call?” he asked, affecting his usual air of aristocratic displeasure, but he wasn’t displeased. In fact, he realized that he welcomed the distraction the appearance of his friend brought.
“Fuck off, Yusef. Why the hell is Collins watching my house?” Rickard growled in a manner usually reserved for thieves and cheats. In all their years of partnership in Smyrna it had been thus; Yusef made the decisions, and Rickard carried them out in whatever way he saw fit, which was usually less than genial. Dirty business, the opium trade. Yusef would be well rid of it.
And then what?The little voice of worry piped up in his head.
It called to mind a certain untested schoolboy, clad in his first full set of tails, heartsick with loneliness for his mother and uncle. For the way the wind would elegantly glide through the open courtyard of his grandfather’s home with a gentle, comforting caress during the afternoonqailulah. Homesick for the soothing voice of his nursemaid, Umm, singing him to sleep at night. Frowning, he pushed past Rickard, not wanting him to see his face.
He forced the memory away, burying it deep alongside those of fistfights and jeers of “street Arab.” Trusting that Rickard would be at his heels, he spoke without turning around, in his usual aloof manner once again.
“Perhaps if you actually paid a social call once in a while, I wouldn’t need an associate to bring me news of you and yours.”Hearing the other man’s footfalls alongside him, he glanced sideways, allowing Rickard a smile. “I believe congratulations are in order?”
“Yes,” Rickard rasped, “that.” A look of surprise and uncertainty froze on his face. It was incredibly satisfying, seeing the stoic Rickard so flustered.
“Well done, then. And all,” Yusef couldn’t help grinning again, “that.”
Rickard rubbed the back of his neck and coughed. They walked silently back to the house together.
They’d known each other for nearly a decade now. Yusef had picked up Thomas Rickard from a street brawl in Smyrna, much like a stray dog. Initially he’d been impressed with how dirty the Englishman was willing to fight, in this case against a rather large oaf employed by Yusef. He’d been a redcoat, left over from the Crimean War, wandering aimlessly about Anatolia getting himself into trouble. Yusef had extended an offer of employment, needing to replace the man Rickard had incapacitated. He certainly hadn’t expected much, but Rickard’s hard-nosed determination and stomach for Machiavellian business practices quickly won him over, and before long Yusef had raised him up to partner.
The fact that the man held an outright contempt for his own country had made him Yusef’s friend. Funny how they were here now, in the England they both so reviled. Though Rickard had certainly settled himself in over the last couple years. He had initially returned to the country to settle a score with some middling, fading aristocrat, and somewhere along the way he had found himself with an heiress for a wife and had taken over at the helm of her family’s business, though Yusef could not be bothered to recall all the details.
Upstairs, as he stared at his reflection in a large mirror while Mann brought him a jacket to shrug into, Yusef wondered athis own malice. Rose’s ire had lit some dormant, vicious instinct within him, and now all he wanted was to have Bartle and Collins track down any person who had so much as glanced at her at any point in the last decade and wring whatever information could be had from them. But that would only upset her. It would prove to her that he was everything she loathed—a spoiled, vindictive rich boy.
When Mann handed him one of his serpentine cufflinks, Yusef paused and stared at it, hesitating for a moment before finally yielding to habit and fastening it to his perfectly crisp cuff.
Chapter Seven
Twenty minutes later, Yusef—nowtidied and changed—returned to his guest. Rickard was waiting in the lushly appointed east parlor, a room with a distinctly feminine feel, done in shades of pink with accents of gold. Although Yusef had initially disliked it when he purchased the property several years ago, it had grown on him to the point of fondness. His mother would adore it—that is, if she’d ever deign to visit England.
