Page 7 of A Duke in Disguise
“My priorities are eating and not getting arrested.”
“So are mine. But your brother is...” He shook his head. “Is it ludicrous to call him a genius when we both know he sometimes goes out in mismatched boots?”
That got a smile from her and he was glad of it. But it quickly dropped from her face. “He gets to be a genius, while I balance the books and haggle with tradespeople.” Then she abruptly shook her head as if dislodging the thought. “I’m being silly. Now, sit down and tell me more about what to put in this advice column.”
There wasn’t a world where Ash could resist anything Verity asked of him, so he sat.
Chapter Three
Clutching the manuscript under her arm, Verity ran up the stairs to the top floor. Bit by bit during the two weeks since Ash returned to London, he and Nate dragged all his equipment out of the box room and set it up in the attic Ash declared to be the only place in the house with enough light to work by and enough air for him not to choke on the rosin powder he used when preparing a plate to engrave.
She paused in the open doorway, trying to make sense of the sight before her. She expected to find Ash at work, drawing with pen and ink or using the fine tools he used to produce plates for engraving. Instead, he sat on the sill of the open window, one booted foot braced on the floor, his upper body leaning out.
“Left!” he called below. “No,yourleft. The other left! Good Christ, Nate,left! There you go. All right, now hold it slack.” He ducked back into the room. “Oh, good,” he said upon seeing Verity. “Hold this, will you?” He held out one end of a cord that continued out the window.
Still unclear about what she was witnessing, she crossed the room and mutely took hold of the cord while Ash climbed onto the windowsill and hammered a nail into the top of the casement. This brought her within inches of the pair of buckskin breeches he wore. Usually he dressed in town clothes—the respectable coats and trousers of a reasonably prosperous artisan. The buckskins were entirely different. They fit close to his skin, skimming over muscled thighs and up... Verity jerked her head away before she could let her gaze follow the direction of her thoughts. Suddenly very conscious of the parcel she still carried under one arm, Verity felt her cheeks heat. Well-worn buckskin breeches, she decided, made it very difficult to maintain a businesslike sense of decorum.
“All right,” Ash said, holding out his hand.
“What?” she asked, dazed.
“The cord, Plum.”
“Right. The cord.” She passed it up to him and watched as he looped it through what appeared to be an eyelet at the end of the nail.
“All clear on this end,” Ash called out the window. A moment later she heard her brother’s voice shout something indistinct, and Ash gave the cord a few quick tugs. She could hear a bell ringing down below.
“It’s in case I have a seizure,” Ash said, shutting the window. She saw that there was a hole in the casement for the cord to pass through. “The cord rings a bell in the kitchen and another in the shop.”
“Oh, how clever. How long has it been since you had an episode?”
“Last year, when we all had influenza.” Ash had spent a fortnight with the Plums to spare Roger the risk of infection. Verity, who had recovered first, had been the one to help Ash during his seizure, which had entailed shoving a pillow under his head and reassuring him afterward that all was well.
“That was nearly a year ago. That’s very good, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.” He brushed some dust off his breeches. “It makes me fear that I’m due for one soon, although Nate tells me this isn’t how odds work.”
“I’m not sure our bodies are governed by the same principles as a pair of dice.”
“I’m not sure mine works according to any logic whatsoever. But it’ll happen sooner or later, and I need to figure out how to deal with it without Roger.”
This was perhaps only the second time Ash had so much as said Roger’s name in the past two weeks. She didn’t ask whether Ash missed Roger, because of course he did. They had seldom been more than a few yards apart from one another in years. Roger had effectively been Ash’s only parent, and now he was hundreds of miles away and exceedingly unlikely to return. “How long before you can expect a letter from him?”
“Two months, at the earliest.” He pushed a hand through his hair and sat on the edge of his worktable. “I’ve already written three letters addressed to the poste restante in Italy. If—when—he arrives, he’ll think I’ve gone clear off my head.”
“He’ll think nothing of the sort.”
Ash smiled ruefully. “I know.” He turned towards a bookcase and busied himself in arranging the mysterious jars and oddments that were the tools of his trade.
“We’re happy to have you here, Nate and I,” Verity said. There was something about how Ash’s hand lingered over each object, which he had once shared with his mentor but was now solely his, that made her want to tell him that he wasn’t truly alone. “I know you’d rather have gone with Roger, but when you wrote asking whether you could lodge with us, Nate bought a round of pints for everyone at the pub.”
“And you?” He looked over his shoulder and met her eye.
“Well, I paid for the round because Nate hadn’t any ready money.” But he was still looking at her, as if he needed to hear more. “I would have killed the fatted calf, if I had one. You know this, Ash. I already told you.”
“You don’t mind that I’ve taken over the entire top floor of your house and drilled holes in your window casements?”
“Drill a thousand more and see if I care.” She narrowed her eyes as she saw a movement along the top of the bookcase. “Ash, I don’t mean to alarm you, but what on earth is that?” It appeared to be a shadow with eyes.
