Fool Me Twice (9 page)

She made a sympathetic noise. “I’m a great reader, myself.”

Jones handed the paper to her. “Of course, I must admit that the news does not always make for
pleasant
reading.” A click of the tongue conveyed his disgust. “You will see that Salisbury has filled His Grace’s post. It was only a matter of time, of course, but it does pain one, to see it.”

She scanned the first paragraph. Why, Bertram had been appointed to the prime minister’s cabinet. And had shown a
‘laudable degree of Christian humility’
in his acceptance of the post. That hypocritical snake. No wonder he wanted her dead: her very existence put the lie to his entire façade.

She stuck the newspaper beneath her arm. “At the very least, Mr. Jones, the news makes
wonderful
kindling.”

*  *  *

Under Olivia’s supervision, Bradley and Fenton carried the bookcases one by one to the top of the stairs. But as soon as they realized their next destination was the duke’s chambers, they stopped dead and began to bray like quarrelsome mules.

Olivia was tempted to swat them on their hindquarters with the newspaper. “Have you no pride? Bawling like children in the dark. What do you imagine he’ll do to you?”

She regretted the question as soon as it left her mouth. “Don’t answer that,” she said hastily, and left them squawking in the hall while she proceeded onward.

A very small part of her was nervous about this plan. The rest of her was furiously, even
self-righteously
resolved. There was nobody but her to look out for the sacred treasures lying abandoned, defenseless, on Marwick’s floor. Forget his punches and bottle throwing; of all unforgivable debaucheries, she could think of none more depraved than tossing
Newton
onto the carpet.

The door to the duke’s bedroom stood shut. She tried the handle and found he had locked it. Coward.

She put her face to the crack. “Listen,” she said. “I do not like to use threats, but for the sake of those books, I shall.”

Silence.

She took a deep breath. He left her no choice. “If you refuse to let me place your books on proper shelves, I
shall slip laudanum into your food so you have no
choice
but to let me do it.” She paused, expectant. It was a very foul proposal; surely it merited another sacking at least.

But he did not reply.

“Very well,” she said. “A man can go without food. But can you go without water? I will drug that as well. You are hoarding a good portion of mankind’s priceless heritage, and I shall not let you destroy it.”

The dead bolt scraped. She skipped backward, positioning herself by the exit to the hallway, poised to flee.

He stepped into the doorway, staring at her. His hair stood up every which way, but at least he had buttoned his shirt. “You are insane,” he said flatly.

“Coming from you, Your Grace, the diagnosis is very persuasive.”

His eyes narrowed. He seemed curiously unfazed by her roundabout accusation that
he
was the household authority on lunacy. “Didn’t I sack you? Why are you still here?”

She had been wondering that, too. “Likely because you haven’t told your butler of it yet.”

“I will remedy that.” The door started to close. “Go pack your bags.”

She crept forward. “And who will answer you when you ring? Everyone else is too terrified to come to your door.”

The door paused. But he stood somewhere behind it, so she continued. “Indeed, you’re lucky there’s a dumbwaiter, or you would have starved by now. Say, you could send your notes down with your dinner tray.”

The door opened again. He looked bored. “Eager to be sacked, aren’t you?”

“No. But for those books, I will gladly take the risk.”

“Ridiculous,” he said mildly. “Are you sure you weren’t an actress in your past, Miss Johnson? A very poor one, I might add—no doubt you were sacked from there as well. But you were well suited for farces, I don’t doubt.”

“
Principia
is not a joke! That book—”

“Is mine,” he said. “To do with as I please.”

She resented his reasoning, chiefly because she could not think of a convincing way to refute it.

Instead, she put her hands on her hips and took another step toward him. “Perhaps Jones has not
sacked
me because, thanks to me, your house no longer resembles a zoo. It’s cleaner now than it has been in months, not that you would know it. But I assure you, your rooms could be cleaner, too—and far less
pungent
.”

The door slammed shut.

“But I will settle for the books!” she called at the door. “Only let me bring in shelves for them!”

In the ensuing silence, she listened intently, not daring to breathe. The dead bolt did not turn. That was surely as good as an agreement.

She rushed into the hallway. The footmen were halfway down the stairs. “Come back at once,” she yelled down at them, “or I will say
you
were the ones who stole the truffles!”

Bradley looked up and sighed. “We’ll take it as far as the sitting room,” he said. “But no farther, ma’am. I’m sorry to say we like our heads in one piece.”

*  *  *

“But he has never actually thrown a bottle
at
anyone,” Olivia said. She had gathered the upper staff into her small sitting room after supper. Jones was nursing a
cup of tea that Cook had brewed to “settle his nerves,” which, so he said, were suffering greatly, now that he knew what Olivia had done with the bookcases.

“You just wait,” Vickers said gloomily. Whenever Jones and Cook looked away, he was sneaking slugs from a leather flask. “You only got them into the sitting room. They won’t ever go farther.”

“They might have, if only I could move them myself. You didn’t see him—he didn’t mind them so very much . . .” Olivia hesitated. “Well, all right, I’m not certain he knows they’re there; he didn’t come out into the sitting room to see them. But he didn’t argue with me, either.”

Vickers sputtered on his mouthful. “He’s a bloody
duke
. P’raps you’ve never seen him with all his sails flying, but trust me, it ain’t his way to argue with the likes of
us
. You say the wrong word, and he’ll simply . . .” He drew a finger across his throat.

“That’s true,” Jones said—making his first contribution since he’d lapsed into a choking fit a quarter hour ago, in the wake of Olivia’s confession about the new location of the bookcases.

Nevertheless, his remark was enough to win him a pat on the arm from Cook. “Quite right,” she agreed. “You must watch yourself, Mrs. Johnson. Being turned out without a reference . . .” She shook her head. “You won’t like it, dearie. Happened to me once, and it took years to recover from it.”

“Did it now?” Vickers sat up, looking interested. “Scandalous past, eh?”

“Oh, my. Well, if you must know, I exploded the range.”

Vickers’s eyes bugged. “What? Did anyone die?”

Cook gave him a comfortable smile. “Not so very many. But I must say, it did give me a turn, when I saw the range here is the very same kind.”

Vickers sagged back, looking regretful that he’d asked.

Olivia decided to confess something else. “He’s already sacked me. Twice, in fact.”

Jones began to choke again. Vickers loosed a whistling breath. “Well, that’s bollocks,” he said, then turned red at Cook’s hiss. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. But you must admit, it’s very bold of our Mrs. Johnson to stay on, after.”

“It—isn’t—bold,” Jones wheezed. Cook pounded his back, lending his next words a very forceful rhythm: “It—is—
criminal
! Mrs. Johnson, you must”—he coughed again, violently—“pack your things at
once
!”

“How now!” Cook recoiled from him. “I wouldn’t go so far as
that,
Mr. Jones. Seems to me that she’s been doing a world of good, don’t you say? A bookcase in his sitting room, no less. That’s a very fine thing.”

“It will be,” Olivia said, brightening. “Once there are books on it.”

Jones pulled himself into a straight-spined huff. “Mrs. Bailey, I am shocked by you! If His Grace has spoken, then it is our
duty
—”

“Bunkum,” Cook said. “Lately I’ll tell you what our duties have been: to duck a bottle or a shoe, or cringe away and hide downstairs, and ignore the awful noises he makes. Don’t pretend at bravery you haven’t got, for I’ve not seen
you
venturing upstairs to check on him. It was Mrs. Johnson who did that today, so I heard.”

Jones looked at her. Olivia shrugged. “He was making a dreadful ruckus, and I feared . . .”

All at once, Jones crumpled in his seat. “I have failed him.”

“Oh, no! Here now,” Cook chided, and began to pound his back again. “Nobody meant to say
that.
My point was only that Mrs. Johnson might be the fresh blood we need. Now, now, you dear man, don’t
cry
now, there’s a good ’un . . .”

Jones batted away Cook’s proffered handkerchief, then fumbled for his own and scrubbed his eyes. This done, he took tight hold of the bridge of his nose, drawing rough, loud, unsteady breaths that caused the rest of them to exchange looks of concern.

After a very uncomfortable minute, he finally dropped his hand. “Very well,” he said. “For the sake of His Grace, my dear master, I will do a very difficult thing: I will ignore his wishes on the subject of Mrs. Johnson. Ma’am, you may remain here for the time being.”

“Thank you.” Naturally, Olivia would not have confessed the news of her firing had Jones not seemed to be one of those lovely sorts who could be talked into, or out of, anything. But it was good to know that the next time Marwick sacked her, she’d not need to conceal it.

She retired to bed feeling very satisfied. It was only as the fire began to die down, and she cast a look about for the newspaper she’d vowed to use for kindling, that she realized she had lost it somewhere.

In the last moment of wakefulness, she had a vision of it, abandoned on a bookcase outside Marwick’s bedroom.

*  *  *

“How curious.” Baffled, Olivia halted in the doorway to the duke’s sitting room. Overnight, one of the bookcases
had disappeared. The other lay toppled on its side. She tilted her head for a different view, but it brought no clarity. “Could he have moved the other one himself?”

“No chance,” said Bradley, who was hanging back by several feet—which made him at least five feet braver than Fenton, who stood all the way out in the hall. “It’s a heavy beast. Took both of us to budge it.”

“Well, we must ask him—”

“Ma’am.” Bradley fixed her with a plaintive, hangdog look. “Don’t make us go in there.”

“Do you take note of the
state
of the bookcase?” Fenton called from the corridor. “The shelves are
broken,
ma’am.”

She looked back at it, startled. Fenton was right. But those shelves were solid oak, two inches thick. “You can’t mean . . .” How on earth would Marwick have split them? Was he hiding an axe in his room?

She pondered the scene. Something was nagging at her—a feeling that she was missing something important. “Well, I suppose—” She looked over her shoulder and found that the footmen had fled once again. Sighing, she stepped into the hall. They had taken some cunning escape route, for the staircase, too, was empty.

It grew very tiring, rounding up cowards. She would deal with them later. Squaring her shoulders, she marched back into the duke’s apartments and rapped smartly on his bedroom door—which yielded beneath her knuckles, creaking open.

He hadn’t locked it.

He hadn’t even
latched
it.

A chill crawled down her spine. He hadn’t drawn the curtains, either. Through the inch-wide crack, she could see daylight pooling on a patch of carpet.

But surely this was
good
news. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the doorway. “Your Grace . . .”

The scene imprinted itself in an instant, complete and terrifying:

He sat against the wall beneath the window, his forehead laid atop his bent knees. The sunlight gilded his hair as gold as a coin; it illuminated the dust motes floating about him. And beside his bare foot lay a newspaper—the same one she had forgotten on the bookcase last night. She could see the headline from here, the fat black print: BERTRAM’S BI—

The rest of the headline was obscured beneath a pistol.

She stared at the gun for a long, stupid moment. It was real. She was not imagining it. And it lay all too near to his hand.

She took a step backward. The duke sat as still as a statue. He did not even appear to be breathing.

He’s dead. He shot himself.
But she saw no blood. And surely a corpse would have toppled over already.

But if he wasn’t dead . . . then he was alive, and
armed
.

She retreated another step, dreading the moment when the groan of the floorboards would betray her. She dared not remove her eyes from him. With one hand cast behind her she made a desperate, groping fumble for the doorknob.

How was it that he did not move? Perhaps he
was
dead?

The doorknob came into her hand.

His head lifted.

She froze.

He stared at her without comprehension. The angle of the light played some trick on his eyes, so they looked
lit from behind, impossibly blue. The light glinted off the stubble on his cheeks; it made him blaze. He looked like a creature made of light and fire and the blue, blue electricity that crackled in his eyes.

She turned to flee—and glimpsed what she had not, before: the missing bookcase. It held tidy rows of books, neatly shelved.

A choked sound slipped from her—panicked denial, anger at herself, and at
him
for having put the books away, for having done the one thing that would now prevent her from doing the wisest thing, the
only
wise thing, given the circumstances: flying through the doorway, turning the key, and locking him inside with that pistol.

The bookcase forbade it. The bookcase sent a message, unintended yet clear: a man who shelved his books on his housekeeper’s insistence was not a man who meant to kill his staff.