A Return of Devotion Page 25

  They made him think of Daphne. And of his own past and his own shortcomings and all of the times he’d failed to consider the lives of other people when making his choices.

  He pulled out a ledger book. Numbers always made sense, with their definitive answers and unfailing logic. He would lose his head in the clear-cut world of numbers and forget about Daphne for a while.

  Three entries later, Daphne came striding into the room with force and purpose, stumbling to a halt when she saw William seated at the desk.

  William looked up at her, unable to pull his eyes away. There was a strength evident in her face that he’d never noticed before. It was in the set of her mouth and the tilt of her eyebrows, low over a narrowed gaze. She was a woman on a mission, and it looked glorious on her.

  Until she spotted him, of course, and everything melted away into a murky puddle of expressions that could have meant anything from regret to worry to embarrassment or, really, any other personal, insecure emotion. William had little experience mucking about with such emotions in other people, so he couldn’t begin to identify them.

  Her eyes darted from him to the basket in her hand to the ornate globe, then the books and the ceiling and the door she’d just entered before making the circle all over again and leaving William just a bit dizzy.

  “Daphne,” William said, attempting to sound bored and failing miserably. Fortunately, she looked miserable enough herself to completely miss his failure. “If you need to clean in here, you may proceed. You, er, it won’t bother me.”

  He’d been hoping that she’d delegate all of the cleaning to the new maids he’d hired, but he had to allow that perhaps she was having trouble shifting her duties completely. Having her underfoot cleaning for another week or two wouldn’t matter.

  And now he was lying to himself. Daphne’s presence was going to do nothing other than be a bother.

  She eased farther into the room, a basket handle nestled in the crook of her elbow.

  He’d seen her clean quite a bit over the past few weeks and knew more about her routine than he’d have ever thought possible, and she didn’t normally carry about a basket of cleaning supplies. “What do you have there?”

  A blush slashed across her cheeks as she looked down in the basket as if she’d never seen it before. “A basket?”

  “I’ve no wish to return to cryptic evasions and secrets, Daphne.” He’d also had no wish to return to the conversation they’d begun before he went to Birmingham, despite the fact that he still had questions. He didn’t voice them, though, torn between wanting to know the answers and afraid that further erasure of the divide between them would make his previous calm and stable world completely irretrievable.

  “No, it really is a basket.” She held it up. “See? It, well, it has a book in it. Borrowed from the library. I was, um, returning it and I—”

  “Daphne.” He cut her off with his simple statement.

  They couldn’t continue pretending they both didn’t know who and what she was. He couldn’t pretend she was a mere housekeeper, and she was terrible at being a quiet country mouse, at least around him. Now that he knew who she was, the evidence of her genteel upbringing was obvious. It was in the way she walked and talked, the way that her quietness never seemed subservient.

  Did she miss that life? Perhaps not parts of it, but being raised as a fine gentleman’s daughter she would have been accustomed to books as well as the piano and every other comfort a woman of her station normally had. Then she’d lost them. He’d always considered himself a man of simple pleasures, but how would he feel if he lost access to the trappings his station provided? His shoulders rolled at the uncomfortable thought.

  “You are welcome to borrow a book from the library to read on your own time,” he said suddenly. “Goodness knows the library’s large enough that I’ll never miss it.”

  “Oh.” Her dark gaze settled on him and once again he couldn’t quite read the feelings that slid so easily across her features. It was as if she were trying to keep her heart from walking across her face but could do no more than throw a light veil over it. “Thank you. I’ll, um, er, get one when I clean in here next.”

  “Didn’t I hire more maids to do that?” William grumbled. He truly had no idea what constituted an adequately sized staff, but three women should be able to take the bulk of the menial labor workload previously accomplished by one, should they not?

  “Well, yes.” She cleared her throat. “They’re doing a wonderful job. Excellent selection of women. I’m afraid I’m not quite accustomed to having them about yet, so I thought I would clean the library myself. I’ll return later to do so.”

  He should let her go. He couldn’t continue avoiding her if she didn’t leave the room.

  But she was still hiding something. He could try to convince himself that his curiosity about her was less important than putting them each back in their proper roles, but as she stood there in front of him, his urge to know the rest of her secrets ate away at everything else, refusing to be ignored.

  He stood from the desk and grabbed a book. “There’s no need to do it later. I was planning on reading a book. Your moving about the room will hardly be noticed once I’ve settled into the story. I insist that you go on about your business here.”

  “Right, then.” She crossed deeper into the room and put the basket down by the double doors. “I’ll . . . go on about my business.”

  William fought the need to grin as he positioned himself on one of the sofas. Her prevarication skills were atrocious. How had she survived in London?

  The thought stole his grin and sobered him immediately. She hadn’t survived in London. His cousin, determined to follow the family tradition of selfish debauchery, had ruined her. Which made less and less sense the longer he knew her. He’d had very little to do with Maxwell in their adult years, but she hardly seemed the sort to catch his attention.

  It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. Even if William’s curiosity was a consuming beast that made him want to keep her near, that didn’t mean he had to give in to the desire to actually ask his questions aloud. He could continue to observe and gather the bits and pieces she doled out unintentionally until he put together the story. To ask one question would lead to another and another until he was too wrapped up in her life to ever pretend to be uninvolved again.

  No, he was going to read his book and forget that she was standing at the bookcase three feet to his right.

  The swish of her skirt as she left the bookcase and moved to the windows was nothing more than the sound an insect would make as it flew through the room. That would hardly be something that would pull him from his reading.

  She moved to a bookcase across the room. So far away he shouldn’t even be able to see the dull grey of her gown.

  He shifted in his chair to ease his shoulder out of an uncomfortably binding position. The fact that it meant the other sofa was no longer blocking his view of her as she knelt near the bottom row of books was entirely coincidental.

  She moved back toward the window and out of the periphery view his new position allowed. Perfect. He could focus on his book, then. Only now his shoulder was uncomfortable again.

  Daphne moved about the room in an inefficient and seemingly pointless manner, straightening bookcases, adjusting knickknacks, even aligning the large globe in its carved three-legged stand so that England was facing up. Not once did she pull out a duster or a cleaning cloth. Whatever Daphne’s original purpose had been in coming in here, it hadn’t been to clean.

  A sour taste filled his mouth, and his book suddenly felt heavy in his hands. She hadn’t been seeking him out, had she? Was she hoping for another moment like they’d had at the piano? Their near-kiss should never have happened, and he wasn’t about to indulge in another romantic interlude, no matter how enjoyable he’d found it or how many times he’d relived it in his mind.

  Why would she want to repeat that? She was the one who’d run in the first place.

 
; She moved across the room once more, her shoulders back, her feet gliding across the floor in a way that barely ruffled her skirts. Any aristocratic governess would be proud to have her charge perform a movement with such grace.

  It was a rather unappreciated skill in a country housekeeper.

  Perhaps that was what he could give her. Surely a few moments where he treated her as a lady of good standing instead of a servant wouldn’t cause any harm. For just a few minutes a day she could reclaim the status she’d been born to and he could give his curiosity clearly defined barriers in which to roam free. Outside of that stolen moment, taken in the middle of the day when they wouldn’t be truly alone, they would return to housekeeper and master and everything would be as it should be.

  It was the perfect solution.

  “Daphne,” he said as he made a deliberate point to look down at his book and turn the page he had yet to read, “bring up a tea tray. And include two cups. I’d like you to join me for tea.”

  “Tea?” she squeaked.

  “Yes, tea.” He looked up at where she’d been standing but had to search her out. She was over by the double doors. Again. How had she possibly managed to keep an entire house clean? “It’s a beverage, normally partaken of while having conversation. I thought we might discuss plans for the house and meals.”

  “Of course!” Her enthusiastic agreement almost made him drop his book. “Tea.”

  She glanced down at the floor and then scurried from the room.

  He was not going to think about it. He was not going to wonder what kept drawing her over to the window. It didn’t matter what his housekeeper did as long as she kept his household running smoothly and all of the silver stayed where it should. His curiosity was merely about her past. Not her present and certainly not her future.

  A little fresh air never hurt anyone, though.

  Before he could stop himself, his book had been set aside and he was standing at the doors. Everything outside appeared normal. Sunshine, with a bit of a grey pall over the tops of the trees, indicating it might rain later. A slight breeze.

  Was she simply drawn to the sun, then? Why not just take a walk?

  He shifted and his foot bumped the basket she’d carried earlier. She’d claimed it held a book when she brought it in. Now it held five. The one she’d started with plus one for every trip she’d made around the room.

  Why did she need five books?

  With a quick glance at the door to make sure she hadn’t yet returned, he knelt down to see what she found so enthralling.

  A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, In Five Volumes, Volume the First. William frowned. She certainly seemed to care for music, but he’d thought her more drawn to the emotion of it than whatever this book talked about. And five volumes? He glanced around the library. Did he own all of them? Because he was vastly curious to know what about music was scientific enough to fill five books.

  He shifted the book to the side and looked beneath it to find The Modern Part of Universal History, An Introduction to the Making of Latin, and Euclid’s Elements Volume II all sitting atop a thick book on algebra.

  A noise elsewhere in the house had him scrambling back to the sofa and snatching up the novel he’d been reading earlier, The Freaks of Fortune. He’d picked it from a section of the bookcase containing multiple rows of similarly entertaining-looking books, so why had Daphne pulled such a scholastic and frankly boring selection?

  A few moments later, Daphne entered the library again, this time with a laden tea tray in her hands. She looked everywhere except at him as she brought it over to the seating area. It was understandable, he supposed, to be a bit nervous. What he’d suggested wasn’t normally done. Perhaps the lady of the house might have tea while discussing plans with her housekeeper, but a bachelor?

  No matter. She deserved to have a bit of her dignity returned, and since he could hardly set her up in a London ballroom, taking tea with him would have to do. It was his task to restore as much of what his family had taken from her as possible.

  And if he got to calm the beast of curiosity inside him while doing it, all the better.

  Her hands trembled a bit as she asked his preferences and poured the tea, but her mannerisms assured him that she had, indeed, been taught this proper ritual. Once he had his tea and plate with a bit of cheese and biscuits on it, he sat back and waited for her to settle in with her own.

  He drank.

  She sipped.

  And for the first time in his life William wished he hadn’t been raised with any sense of responsibility, because he wasn’t certain he’d provided her one whit of returned dignity unless it now came packaged in a thick wrapping of awkward silence.

  Chapter twenty-seven

  Daphne gave serious consideration to gulping down the entire cup of tea so that this encounter could be over as soon as possible. Years of training she thought she’d forgotten, along with a throat that felt almost too tight to breathe, kept her taking sips that were almost too small to be termed ladylike.

  “I didn’t invite you to tea as a form of torture, Daphne.”

  She winced at Lord Chemsford’s dry statement. Why had the man invited her to sit with him at all? What could they possibly have to discuss that would take that amount of time? The house was clean, and he’d never complained about Jess’s choice in meals, so unless there was a party . . . oh, Lord, please don’t let there be a party.

  She cleared her throat and gently set her cup and saucer on the table before she dropped it. The presence of new staff members whom she had to converse with had already left her shaking in her boots. The only reason she hadn’t retreated to a far corner and ignored them was because she had a task to focus on: dispersing and instructing them like she’d always done the children. Party guests, however, were something else entirely. She wanted to know right away if that was something she was facing. “Is there something in particular you wished to discuss? You expect more guests, perhaps?”

  He waved a hand through the air and picked up a slice of cheese. “No, though we will be having a guest for an extended stay in a few weeks. Mr. Thornbury will be residing on the premises while he catalogues and evaluates the art and other items of interest. He’s been doing some work at Oxford of late.”

  Daphne relaxed enough to swallow more than a small trickle of tea, though she put her cup back on the table immediately in case the trembling returned. She could handle a scholar. They tended to be as quiet as she was most of the time.

  Nor did scholars socialize often, so there was very little chance of him knowing her. Even though she’d have preferred spending her social evenings in quiet salons and such, her London Season had consisted mostly of following Kit around wherever she wanted to go, and Kit’s father had wanted her to reach as high as she possibly could up the social ladder. There’d been no professors in the mix.

  If Mr. Thornbury was here to work, he might not even spend his evenings with the marquis. Daphne glanced at the door where her basket of books lay. Could she find the gumption to ask the man to tutor the children a bit? If he was working at Oxford he must know something worth teaching.

  “I’ll see that we have a room ready,” Daphne said, running her hands over her knees. She didn’t know if her palms were sweating or not, but her heart was certainly pounding and the two frequently went together.

  Lord Chemsford held the cheese up and examined both sides. “Where did this cheese come from? It’s delicious.”

  “Jess made it. Using the milk from our goats.”

  “Jess?”

  “Your cook?” She’d forgotten that he’d been calling Jess Cook and the other woman hadn’t corrected him.

  His brows drew together, but apparently it wasn’t the name change that was concerning him since he asked, “Why do we have goats? And chickens?”

  She could hardly tell him it was because goats were far cheaper and easier to handle than cows and a dozen children required some source of milk. “Cheese is very imp
ortant in Marlborough.”

  He swallowed the last of his cheese and looked at her skeptically.

  Daphne wanted to crawl beneath the sofa. Cheese is very important in Marlborough? What sort of asinine answer was that? He was going to think her a simpleton.

  “Well.” He drew the word out as if he, too, wasn’t sure what to say to her ridiculous remark. “I wouldn’t want to offend the sensibilities of my new town.”

  “Of course not,” she mumbled and snatched her teacup again, just to have something to do.

  “Where should I have Mr. Thornbury start?”

  Daphne’s brain stumbled over the change in topic. She’d been imagining three or four different directions the conversation could take, and that question didn’t lead to any of them. “Start, Lord Chemsford?”

  “You may call me Chemsford during these teas.” His lip curled in distaste for a moment. “On second thought, don’t. That still sounds too much like my father. You may call me William over tea.”

  “Are we, er, going to be doing this often, my lord?”

  “William,” he insisted. “And yes, I think we are. You are a gentleman’s daughter. And while life hasn’t been kind to you, I can be. Each day you’ll be able to leave all that behind, at least for a while.”

  Did he truly think a spot of tea was going to make it all better? A swirl of anger—an emotion she hadn’t felt in so long that it was rather difficult to identify—gave her the nerve to say, “That sounds rather pompous.” She took a deep breath. “William.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? I didn’t mean it as such.” He frowned. “I suppose I want to give you back what my family took from you. And since I can’t fully restore your position in this world, a bit of tea and conversation seem the least I can do. Oh, and”—he gestured around the library—“use of the library and music room.”