why not call me Nick?’
‘Because I’m the under-housemaid.’
‘My friends call me by my given name.’
‘Thank you, Nick, but when we meet again, please forget you ever set eyes on me?’
‘Aye, but a letter to the Dowager Lady Prestbury in Sydney Place will find me.’
‘I will remember,’ she said softly and with a gesture of farewell, went to find the solitude she needed. If only she had a brother like Nick Prestbury, how different her life would be.
At the end of April the Darraine family left for the capital to enjoy the Season and to join the peace celebrations. Although most of the senior staff went too, the rest stayed at Rosecombe. Which could hardly be described as a holiday, Thea thought one sunny day at the end of June, considering the housekeeper would pounce on any neglect of their duties. Yet, if she made up her work in double time, a few minutes could be stolen from the day.
‘You’ll get caught one day you will,’ Carrie, the head housemaid, informed her cheerfully when she came upon her second lieutenant illicitly reading one of Sir Edward’s beloved books.
‘Caught dusting the library? That’s what we maids do.’
‘The rest of us don’t read the books while we’re dusting them, but you’d best be more careful, now.’
‘Why?’ Thea got on very well with the cheerful country girl and doubted her warning was a threat to reveal her secret.
‘Family’s coming home, and bringing guests with them.’
‘I thought they were off to Brighton.’
‘So did I, but we was both wrong. His lordship and the Captain will join them later, or so Mrs Meldon says, and she wants their rooms got ready before we start on all the others, just in case one of them takes it into his head to arrive before we’re ready.’
Thea’s heart thumped at the mere mention of the new Viscount Strensham, but she told herself not to be a fool. He had made his feelings, or lack of them, clear last time they met. He was just another stranger who would fill her days with work as Lady Lydia had promised.
‘I’d best hurry up in here, then,’ she said calmly and put her book back.
‘I’ll help, then we’ll find Jane and make a start. Let’s hope the missus don’t expect us to do it all ourselves, or we’ll be dead on our feet.’
Plenty of help was forthcoming, but Thea was soon wondering if they might not all drop from exhaustion, just running about satisfying the guests’ constant demands. Lady Lydia and Sir Edward Darraine cultivated a very odd set of friends. A bullying and humourless heiress whose father made his money in the cloth trade in the north; a lively widow with a merry eye; and a very young lady so shy she hardly spoke. They didn’t seem to have much in common and would surely have been better entertained by the protracted victory celebrations the newspapers were full of.
Miss Rashton’s demands and constant complaints about country servants and their uncouth ways was wearing everyone’s nerves to tatters. Thea kept out of her way, and tried to consider the wretched female her punishment for once also being a demanding and inconsiderate miss. Then the maids were ordered to help in the hall one day and the reason for the lady’s presence became clear as glass.
She saw a tall and immaculately dressed gentleman climbing down from a hired carriage, just as an artlessly disordered Miss Rashton came drifting down the stairs as if by pure chance. For a moment Thea’s ears buzzed as if she might actually be in danger of fainting, but she refused to give him the satisfaction. Not by one look or gesture would she reveal she even remembered him, she told herself, and folded her hands behind her back where nobody could see them shaking.
‘Oh, the dear viscount is here,’ the chief heiress breathed in the softest tones anyone at the Park had heard since she arrived. ‘Now we shall be merry again,’ she added, with an eager sparkle in her hard eyes, and the unscrupulous rogue greeted her with a wicked smile and a bow that would have done credit to a Bond Street Beau.
‘Miss Rashton, and Mrs Fall,’ Lord Strensham said, bowing just as gracefully and smiling just as wolfishly at the widow, who emerged from the music room where she had probably been hiding from the tone-deaf Miss Rashton. ‘London was a veritable desert without you, ladies, so I escaped Prinny’s celebrations as soon as I could.’
‘Indeed, it must be nigh unbearable by now, what with all the noise and heat and that vulgar crowd turning out to see the Sovereigns off,’ Miss Rashton said rather wistfully.
‘Yes, you would not have liked it at all,’ he returned, and Thea wondered if she was the only one who detected mockery in his grey eyes.
He was here to marry one of these creatures. At the moment she fervently hoped that he saddled himself with Miss Rashton for the rest of their days. Such a cynical alliance would suit him perfectly.
She stood, head bowed and waiting for orders, trying to pretend the man standing so close and so remote meant nothing to her. Her battle-worn major had become the sort of fastidious aristocrat who might turn a menial into a rabid Jacobin. This cynical rake really didn’t appeal to her at all. Or at least not very much.
His broad shoulders were encased in a coat of dark blue superfine that fitted him without a wrinkle, his cravat was perfection and his linen as spotless as if he had just stepped out of his dressing room. She was in an excellent position to know that his mirror-polished Hessians were unblemished by so much as a speck of dust, and his pantaloons were designed to emphasise rather than disguise the muscular strength of his powerful legs. If he had become as idle as he looked, very soon he would run to fat, she concluded vengefully, and just remembered in time that she was not superior enough a servant to give vent to a sniff of disapproval.
‘Before I join the delights of the drawing room, you really must let me get rid of my dirt, ladies,’ he drawled and Thea longed for the pail of dirty water she had recently washed down the drain, after scrubbing the pristine marble under his fastidious feet.
No, he could bring all the heiresses in Britain into his cousin’s house and shamelessly flirt with them in front of her, then cynically make his choice for all she cared. She set her face in an indifferent mask as the butler ordered her to help with his lordship’s luggage. Her gaze fixed on the middle distance as was only proper and she spared the tall figure at the centre of all this fuss not another glance; he wasn’t worth it, after all.
Chapter Five
Wishing he could be as serenely indifferent to the little wretch as she appeared to be to him, Marcus ran upstairs and tried to reorder his world again. It had cost him weeks of turmoil to forget the hurt in a pair of unique turquoise eyes, and harden himself to this task. He would not let the mere sight of her throw him off course now. Three months spent turning this way and that like an animal in a trap, and he was held as fast as he had been when he began. Still, now he knew he had no alternative but to marry the money he needed to drag his estates out of River Tick.
Despite the immaculate attire that made Thea itch to muss and muddy his splendour, he stripped off and shaved himself once more, before donning pristine breeches and a spotless linen shirt. He was absently tying his neckcloth when he reminded himself of Nick’s cynical advice.
‘Look like a ragtag without sixpence, Marco, and you will be taken for the desperate man that you are. Dress like a top o’the trees and you will be fighting off the rich little darlings in droves.’
A smile fleetingly softened his austere mouth. Few believed Nick had a kindly bone in his body, but gain his loyalty and he was steadfast as granite.
Nick had come to town to consult the doctors about his arm, and ordered his own tailor to outfit his cousin. ‘And if he don’t pay you out of his ill-gotten gains, send the bill to me and I’ll dun him instead.’
He