I was a widower with two children, and I had married a widow with two children of her own. When Miss Celeste arrived, our schoolroom was in a shambles, my children were aligned against her children, my wife and I were taking sides, and we had no happy home. Then, like an English fairy, she waved her wand over our family and healed every breach. I have offered her much money if she would return with us to Russia, but she says, no, no. She wants to go back to England, and so we wave her a sad farewell and offer her to you, oh most privileged of recipients.
Throckmorton looked up at his mother.
She looked back helplessly. “She sounds perfect. To have peace reign on the third floor once again. She was a good choice, and I know how you hate it when your plans are botched. If only Celeste weren’t so damnable pretty!” Her features drooped. “But she is, and we haven’t mentioned the issue that is most important, for me at least. Ellery.”
“What about him?”
She fixed him with the level, steady gaze. His mother’s gaze, which had such power to convey reproof, anxiety, love. “We haven’t talked about it, but you know what I mean. I always thought he would get himself straightened out when he got a little older, but he’s worse. He’s gambling as if he hasn’t a care in the world. He’s drinking too much. People are starting to talk. He met Lady Hyacinth. I thought he liked her more than he admitted. I thought he might straighten himself out. Now we have the glamorous, forbidden Miss Milford.” Walking to him, Lady Philberta stared him right in the eyes. “Do you think you can deceive Miss Milford?”
“I’ve made a good start tonight.”
“Ellery’s rash will last only two days at most.”
Taking her hand, he patted it reassuringly. “Then in two days, I will think of something else.”
Ellery wove slowly through the darkened corridors, bottle clutched tightly in his fist. It was four in the morning. He couldn’t sleep. He itched all over. The sounds of revelry had finally died. The last of the guests had disappeared from beneath his window and, deprived of entertainment, he went in search of someone to talk to him, to hold him, to tell him it was all right to be covered in red, scaly splotches that itched like the devil and burned when he scratched. He was sick to death of oatmeal baths; he wanted a gentle hand and a soft voice whispering in his ear.
So he sought Celeste. Sweet little Celeste, the gardener’s daughter. Garrick had been sarcastic about that, about her being the gardener’s daughter, but when he’d realized that Ellery really loved her, Garrick had done the right thing. Garrick could always be depended upon to do the right thing.
Made a person want to puke.
Not that Ellery didn’t like Garrick. Stopping, he lifted a finger and waggled it at some invisible detractor. Good ol’ Garrick was his brother, and maybe he was a dead bore and the kind of guy to whom dancing on the table was anathema, but Ellery considered Garrick one of the greatest men in the world. Why, when Ellery had broken out, Garrick had stepped right up and offered to take care of Celeste! Keeping her away from other men who would have paid court to her.
Yes, good ol’ Garrick was the best brother in the world.
Celeste had grown up living beside the greenhouse in an apartment she shared with her father. Ellery knew better than to seek her there. Garrick had been anxiously waiting the arrival of this governess, and he’d prepared a suite on the third floor not far from the nursery.
But Ellery hadn’t been up to the third floor since . . . since before his daughter arrived. Grimacing, he hung on the banister and stared up the shadowed staircase.
His daughter. Kiki. He took a long drink of wine. Fiery, voluble, demanding. Just like her mother. Garrick would say—just like Ellery. Maybe so. Maybe she resembled him. He just didn’t want to believe that that actress had taken seriously what he poked at her in fun. Having a child almost made him seem like . . . an adult.
Clinging to the banister, he made his cautious way up the stairs, missing only one—the top stair. He went down on his knee, right onto the hardwood. That would hurt tomorrow, but tonight he was fine. Just fine. Rising, he headed down the corridor toward the nursery and the governess’s quarters.
Garrick had arranged for the governess to take care of the children, and that was as it should be. Garrick had a child. Garrick had been married. Garrick was an adult. A really, really old, wise, mature adult. But not Ellery. Ellery wasn’t responsible. He couldn’t get married. Asinine to think he could. And to Hyacinth, of all the women. She wasn’t old enough to even know how to kiss. Once he’d pulled her behind an armoire and pressed his lips to hers, and she’d been so nervous her teeth were chattering.
He couldn’t marry someone like her! She was a virgin. He might not do it right, and give her a disgust, and he’d be a worse screw-up than he was now.
No, he’d picked a bad time to think he could become responsible. Why should he ever be responsible? He didn’t have anything to be responsible for. Maybe if he . . . he braced himself against the wall, tilted his head back and cackled. But no. Stupid.
A frown swiftly followed. Would he see his daughter up here? Blearily, he looked around. The night candle barely lit the corridor. The doors were closed. Kiki would be asleep. So would Celeste, but he’d sneak into her bedchamber and make his way to the bed . . . he’d done it plenty of times before with other women.
Not that Celeste was like those other women. He truly loved her. He respected her. He wouldn’t use her like some trollymog. She’d be glad to see him. She’d hold him close and tell him he looked handsome.
But he wouldn’t light a light. No, indeed. Because he looked as if he’d been whipped with seaweed. Lifting his arm to his nose, he sniffed the satin brocade dressing gown. But he didn’t smell like it. No. He smelled like breakfast. He thought about that for a moment, then a smile lit his face. Everyone liked breakfast.
Celeste’s bedchamber was right ahead. The odor of the fresh paint and wallpaper glue was strong. Good, they must have made it beautiful for his beautiful girl.
He adjusted the lapels on his dressing gown, straightened his shoulders and swigged the last of the wine. With exaggerated care, he placed the bottle on the floor and grasped the doorknob. Opening the door, he confidently stepped inside.
8
“We can never do that again.” Celeste spoke the words aloud. She spoke them firmly, calmly, resolutely—to the empty, echoing bedchamber. She pretended she was speaking to Mr. Throckmorton so that when she actually went to his study, she wouldn’t falter. And she had to go speak to him. He had commanded it. He wanted to converse about the children . . . oh, but that wasn’t why she would go to him. She would go because he had kissed her. His wickedness had her awake all night long, tossing and turning, even though the large bedchamber contained a fire and a warming pan beneath the sheets.
And how had the servants known when she would go to bed, she’d like to know? How had they known when to kindle the fire and warm the sheets?
Mr. Throckmorton must be guilty of every dreadful offense. Of giving Ellery a rash. Of carrying her off. Of kissing her until . . . until she forgot all about how he’d caused Ellery to get that rash. For he surely had. In the bright light of morning, she was sure that rash could not have been so convenient.
Peering into the small mirror, she checked her appearance. She looked tidy, clothed in a gown of serviceable serge. But the gown was the same color as leaves in spring. She knotted a generous length of pale gold ribbon around her waist, tied at the front with its ends trailing down into the folds of her skirt, and threaded a narrow band of the same ribbon through her long braided upswept hair. She wore a gold tiered collar with a scalloped edge to dress up the neckline, and her long sleeves accentuated her slender arms. During her sojourn in Paris, she had learned a great many feminine tricks, not the least of which was to accentuate her features attractively and economically.
Yet the reflection that peered back at her was one of a sensible woman. She had taught four children, lived abroad, visited Italy
and Spain, spent summers in Russia at the ambassador’s country home. In the process, she had transformed herself from a drab, shy, silly girl to a woman. Nothing should be able to shake her composure . . . and yet dull Mr. Throckmorton had unsettled her on the very first night.
Well, she’d tell him it couldn’t happen again. Nothing would ever happen between them again, because she loved Ellery.
She marched out into the dim corridor. She muttered the words while she walked through the library—We can never do that again—and reassured herself she sounded both resolute and mature.
Yet her feet dragged as she approached his office through the sunny antechamber. This chamber had been designed for ease, with bookshelves and tall windows and comfortable chairs that welcomed anyone who waited to speak to Mr. Throckmorton. Tiptoeing to the open inner door, she listened but heard no sound. Oh, why did she remember so clearly what had happened last night in the silence of that corridor? When she thought of seeing Mr. Throckmorton, she remembered the taste of him. Other women, women not nearly as sophisticated as she, kissed the occasional gentlemen without succumbing to chagrin. Other women didn’t seem to find the act as intimate as she did, but perhaps that was her lack of practice, or perhaps—arrested, she stood with one foot in the air—perhaps Ellery would prove to be a better kisser than his brother. Ellery’s kiss would erase the sensation of Mr. Throckmorton’s lips on hers.
So she needed to just stride right in there and say, We can never do that again.
Instead she knocked on the door frame. “Mr. Throckmorton?” she called. No answer.
Stepping inside, she stood in the middle of the empty office and looked about her. It had been redecorated. Each piece of furniture had been bought with forethought and exquisite good taste, and showed not a bit of Mr. Throckmorton’s personality—whatever that might be.
She frowned. Not that she understood Mr. Throckmorton’s character. She knew the Garrick of her childhood; the man she met last night didn’t seem to be the same man. Mr. Throckmorton had always intimidated her, but after last night she was not intimidated, she was . . . she didn’t know what she was. Determined not to be kissed, that was for sure.
Seating herself in the upright wooden chair in front of the big, shiny desk, she decided that her curiosity about Mr. Throckmorton was only natural. In Paris, she had discovered herself to be a friendly woman with a great deal of vivacity. An absorbing character such as Mr. Throckmorton would certainly incite her interest.
She found the chair was hard, and placed so that her back was to the door. She moved to another chair, one against the side wall, and wondered if she should sojourn to the kitchen for breakfast. Yet she so wanted to get that conversation out of the way, the one where she told Mr. Throckmorton . . .
Out in the antechamber, a brief, hushed flurry of speech caught her attention. Someone, a female, was upset, almost gasping with dismay and haste. Someone else, a man, answered. With a start, Celeste realized they both spoke in Russian, which she understood.
“The Englishman was betrayed. The police picked him up at the meeting place. They took him away, and he hasn’t been heard from since.” The woman spoke in lower class Russian, just as the ambassador’s servants had.
Shocked, Celeste drew back against the wall. What had happened? What was the Russian woman talking about? What was she doing in England?
“Are you sure? You saw this with your own eyes?” The man used the more aristocratic intonation, but his Russian was rough and irregular.
“All of it. I, too, might have been caught, but my cab lost a wheel and I was late.”
“A lucky circumstance.” The man didn’t sound as if he thought it a lucky circumstance.
“Someone revealed the location,” the woman said urgently, gutturally. “That’s the only explanation. Stanhope, you must tell the master.”
Stanhope! Celeste remembered Stanhope. He had been Mr. Throckmorton’s secretary, his companion from his years in India, and as she recalled, they had been very close. Tall, urbane, Mr. Stanhope had combined the reckless air of the adventurer with a British nobleman’s self-satisfaction. His brown hair was perfectly cut. His freckles danced across his pale snub nose. His smile charmed men and women alike. He wore clothes well, blending in with the lords of high society and the soberly clad London businessmen who visited so frequently.
“I understand, Ludmilla,” Stanhope answered. “I will tell the master. Now you must go rest. You’ve come a long way, and you must leave as soon as possible.”
“I’ll see the master before I go?” the woman asked. “So you can tell him exactly what I say?”
Stanhope had not blended with the servants. The kitchen servants all mocked him for his airs and his orders, and more important, her father hadn’t liked him. He’d called Stanhope an interfering, high-in-the-instep fool. Celeste had learned to respect her father’s judgments.
Right now she didn’t like the tone Stanhope used to speak to the poor, shaken woman.
“I don’t know if the master has time to see you,” he snapped. “He’s busy, and no one must know.”
“I realize, but—”
“You didn’t withhold information, did you?” Stanhope sounded stern.
“No, but I wish—”
“Then you have nothing to fear. I’ll speak to him. I’ll tell him everything you said, and all will be well.”
The voices were fading, but Celeste clearly heard the woman’s anguish. “But so much has been bad, I fear for my life.”
“I will handle everything . . .”
They were gone. Celeste sat pressing the back of her head against the wall, trying to comprehend the meaning of the overheard conversation. The master? Mr. Throckmorton? Why should he receive information about an Englishman and his arrest? Why was the woman worried about her life? Why . . . ?
She heard two men walk into the antechamber. The door shut behind them, and Celeste uncomfortably wondered if she should make her presence known.
Stanhope said, “She didn’t want to see you. She wanted to go back at once. You know how shy she is.”
“I still would see her.” Mr. Throckmorton. Of course. “This is serious.” It sounded serious. He sounded serious.
They must be speaking of the Russian woman.
“She is already gone. She assured me it was a coincidence that our man was taken. That he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Celeste wondered how much of the conversation between Stanhope and the woman she had missed. Or perhaps . . . Stanhope’s Russian was cultured, but not fluent. Perhaps he hadn’t understood the nuances. The antechamber door opened.
“Send someone after her,” Mr. Throckmorton instructed, his tone imperative. “See if you can stop her. I want to speak to her.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a slight tap, as if Stanhope had clicked his heels.
The door shut. Celeste hated this, knowing she had to face Mr. Throckmorton and knowing how it looked that she had hidden inside his office and overheard so much. But this reminded her of the intrigues which lurked around every corner in the Russian ambassador’s mansion, and there she had learned to face any situation immediately and without embarrassment.
So she stepped out from around the door and, with all the dignity of a woman who knows herself in a difficult position, said, “Mr. Throckmorton? Sir?”
He was walking toward the office, and he didn’t pause, didn’t start. It was almost as if he had known she was there. He looked straight at her. “Garrick.”
She should have known he wouldn’t forget. “To speak so informally isn’t proper when—”
He stopped right in front of her, his toes touching her hem. “When we’re working? When it’s daytime?” He leaned closer, his mouth unsmiling but very memorable. “When we haven’t kissed?”
When had he learned to be so disconcerting? “Working. Daytime. No kissing. We can never do that again.”
He straightened away from her. “Call me Throckmorton.”
r /> “Throckmorton.”
“Only my mother feels comfortable enough with me to call me Garrick. I was a fool to think you might be”—he sighed—“different.”
She didn’t think he’d originally planned to say different, but she scarcely dared consider other options, such as brave or even compassionate . . . Mr. Throckmorton was a wealthy, busy man. He couldn’t be lonely.
Deliberately she turned away from the idea, and the stirring of tenderness it evoked. “Mr. Stanhope didn’t understand the woman correctly.” Then she realized how very blunt she sounded, and tried to rephrase. “What I mean is, I was sitting in here waiting for you and I heard Mr. Stanhope talking to Ludmilla—”
Mr. Throckmorton strode past her, took his seat behind the desk, and folded his hands. The sun shone through the window behind him, the contrast of light and shadow making him nothing but a dark, still shape. In a tone as chill as the Russian steppes, he said, “Stanhope spoke to Ludmilla last night.”
“Oh.” Celeste floundered. “I guess . . . I assumed you were speaking of the Russian woman who was just here.”
A long pause followed. “Just now, you heard Stanhope speaking to a Russian woman?”
“Just a few moments ago. Out there.” She gestured.
Mr. Throckmorton paused again. He stared at her, his gaze so intense it seemed to strip the skin from her flesh. “What did the Russian woman say?”
“That the Englishman had been betrayed and arrested. She had almost been involved, too, but an accident put her there too late. She wanted to speak to you—that is, she wanted to see the master, and I assumed that was you, but Stanhope said no, you were too busy. He sent her somewhere to rest.”
“Do you realize what you’re accusing Stanhope of?” He shot the question at her.
“Of being unable to comprehend Russian?”
He rose from behind his desk, blotting out the sunshine with the breadth of his shoulders. “Yet if you are right . . .”