The Lady’s Secret (9 page)

“Of course.” She paused, then added, “Do you like secrets, Harland?”

“Don’t all gentlemen? We are certainly good at keeping them.”

“Are you? Do you think gentlemen better at keeping secrets than ladies?”

Until last night, he’d have cheerfully replied that ladies had many admirable qualities but that the keeping of secrets was not one of them.

“I would not make such a sweeping assumption,” he said instead. “But it is true that gentlemen are excessively fond of secrets. Or at least I am. Of discovering them most especially.”

“Well, in that case, let me show you one. A harmless one.” She drew the rosewood box towards them again.

“Your tea caddy? I was admiring it earlier.”

“Thank you. It was a gift from my late brother-in-law to his mother.” She took hold of the right hand side of the caddy with one hand and reached underneath it with the other. “There is a little catch here,” she explained. “But it is difficult to find.”

A moment later, she was lifting the side of the box away from the base, revealing a secret space. The side lifted two full inches. She turned the caddy so that he could see what was revealed: a little drawer, set into the base.

Nathan grinned. “Ah, now
that
is charming. Very subtle.”

“Cunning, isn’t it?” Lady Dunsmore agreed. “Of course, I’ve given this particular secret away now, but happily, I do not keep anything terribly important in here.” She opened the drawer and lifted out the contents—a single sheet of paper. She handed it to him and he opened it and read it. It was a tea recipe.

“It is the blend we are drinking. My mother-in-law’s recipe.”

“So it is not a secret recipe after all?”

“Not anymore, I fear.” She put the recipe away and set the caddy aside again.

She asked after his mother and his sister, questioning him for several minutes about his nieces and nephews, an interrogation he just about stood up to until another party arrived and Lady Dunsmore had to excuse herself.

Perhaps he could slip upstairs now? But no, there was no getting away yet. Dunsmore bore him off to introduce Colonel and Mrs. Hadley, and then there were yet more arrivals. And so it went on, a tea party without end.

And all the while, he thought of his valet upstairs, moving about his bedchamber and unpacking his things. He longed to be with her.

Georgy was hot and sweaty.

It had been a troublesome business, getting everything up to the rooms allocated to Harland. The coachmen had gone to the stables to deal with the horses and the two footmen assigned to help her had grown steadily more irritable as they unpacked the luggage coach, scowling over the heavy boxes and awkward crates and arguing over the need to get the big crate down from the roof.

“Why can’t it go in the stables?” one demanded.

“His lordship paid a king’s ransom for what’s in there,” Georgy replied, clambering up to the roof to loosen the straps herself in the face of their intransigence. She struggled with the stiff buckles, trying to find a fraction of give in them.

“It’ll be fine in the stables,” the other footman complained, doing nothing to help.

“
You two
will help Lord Harland’s valet get that crate down,” a sharp voice said, “and have it in his rooms within the next five minutes or I’ll dock both your wages.”

Georgy looked down. A tall woman with iron grey hair in a tight knot on her head and a disconcertingly youthful face was standing next to the two footmen.

“Dick,” the woman added, “you go up on the roof and unstrap that thing.”

“Yes ma’am,” he muttered, and a minute later he was up beside Georgy, brushing her fingers aside to pull the straps away. “I’ll lower it down to you, Stan,” he told the other footman while Georgy climbed down.

The woman gave Georgy a measuring look. “Mrs. Watt,” she said. “Housekeeper here.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am. George Fellowes.”

Mrs. Watt nodded. “Don’t let these two shirk, Mr. Fellowes. They’re born lazy.” And with that she took herself back to the house, her posture ramrod straight.

By the time Georgy turned back, Dick and Stan were lowering the crate to the ground. She moved forward to help and Stan sent her a withering look.

“Best leave it to us, lad,” he said.

He was being deliberately insolent, treating her like a kitchen boy instead of a high-ranking upper servant. Georgy hid her anger and assumed a supercilious expression. “Gladly,” she said. “After all, these are
your
duties. I have more important things to do.”

Stan scowled at her but said nothing further. She lifted a single valise and followed the two of them into the servants’ entrance and up the back stairs.

Two flights up, they emerged onto a wide corridor, the polished parquet flooring in stark contrast to the rough stone stairs they’d just come up. The footmen led her to one in a row of closed doors that stretched down the length of the corridor. She opened the door and strolled inside.

The chamber was large and elegantly furnished. A fire burned merrily in the grate. She walked to the window to look outside, barely aware of the footmen behind her putting down the crate then leaving the room for the next load. Outside, the rolling park stretched for miles, and a church spire and the rooftops of a tidy village could just be seen in the distance. It was exactly the view her father had described as the one he’d enjoyed from his bedchamber.

Could this room have been his? When she drew away from the window, she moved around the room, touching the furniture and examining the pictures on the wall, imagining it as her father’s. It made her feel oddly happy—unlike the image of Dunsmore and his mother standing like crows at the front door, identical sour expressions on their faces.

When the footmen brought the last load—the truckle bed—into the chamber, it became apparent that it wasn’t going to fit in the dressing room along with that huge crate of Harland’s. The furniture was going to have to be moved. Georgy asked the footmen to help her.

“Can’t,” Stan said smugly. “Another party’s arrived. You’ll have to do it yourself or wait for a few hours till all the guests have come and we’ve unloaded all the carriages.”

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Georgy replied, trying to keep the pleading note out of her voice.

“We’ve been told to stay downstairs, where we can be called quickly,” Dick said with obvious relish. They swaggered away.

There was no question of waiting for a few hours to sort Harland’s rooms out. He would expect everything to be in order by the time he came up to dress for dinner. It was so frustrating, when all she wanted to do was explore the house.

She gritted teeth and began the task herself.

By the time Harland walked in, a couple of hours after their arrival, she was still only halfway through unpacking his luggage. His clothing sat in piles, waiting to be hung in the wardrobe or folded and placed in the armoire.

Harland stopped in the middle of the bedchamber and gazed at the chaos all around with an exasperated frown.

“Not finished yet, Fellowes?”

“I’m afraid not, my lord,” Georgy murmured, hastily buttoning up her waistcoat. Her coat was off and she knew that her face was rosy from her exertions, a sheen of sweat on her brow.

“I had planned to rest for an hour or so before taking a bath,” he said.

“Do you wish me to clear everything out of the way, my lord? I could take these things into the dressing room and deal with hanging them later. And while you rest I could take your clothes for this evening down to the laundry for pressing.”

“I wouldn’t dream of hindering you in your work, Fellowes. I will read my book while you finish what you’re doing.”

“Very good, my lord.” She did not enjoy working around him. Her awareness of him was too acute. And there was always the worry that if he watched her, he’d notice something wrong.

Harland sat down on the bed. “Help me off with these boots, there’s a good chap.” He stretched a leg out and leaned back, gazing at Georgy from beneath lowered lids.

Their eyes met for just an instant and Georgy felt a jolt in her chest. She looked quickly away, down at his booted leg. It was unlike him to look directly at her. She reached forward to grasp the heel of his boot in one hand and the toe in the other and pulled it off in one smooth controlled movement, placing the boot neatly on the floor beside her. He stretched the other leg out and she dealt with that boot too. Then she glanced back at his face again, expecting his attention to have wandered.

He was still looking at her.

Her heart skittered and she turned away from him, the boots in her hand. She placed them neatly on the floor next to the armoire. She had grown used to having the freedom to look her fill at Harland, certain of his attention always being elsewhere. His sudden attentiveness flustered her badly. Crossing the room, she stumbled over a hatbox.

“Are you all right, Fellowes?” Harland asked, his voice as languid as his carelessly sprawled body.

“Yes indeed, my lord. I should have tidied this hatbox away with the others. I shall do so now.” She busied herself with the task for needless seconds as she regained her composure, forcing herself to breathe deeply and evenly to ease the constriction in her chest, ridiculously aware of her bound breasts and their linen covering. When she turned around again, Harland was standing, shucking off his coat. She stepped forward to help him and bore it away to be hung in the wardrobe in the dressing room. When she returned, he had discarded his waistcoat and was removing his cravat.

She swallowed against the familiar thrum of pleasure she felt at the sight of him undressing. “Do you wish me to fetch your dressing gown, my lord?” she asked in a voice gone suddenly small and tight.

He smiled. “No. The fire has made it rather warm in here. I’m fine like this.”

Georgy had been cursing the fire as she sweated over shifting the heavy armoire. Now she cursed it again for another reason.

“Very good, my lord,” she murmured.

He removed his shirt too, holding it out to Georgy to take away. He settled himself on the bed, arranging the pillows until he had them as he wanted them. For a moment she stared at his naked chest, unable to look away. He assumed a half reclining position, opened his book and glanced up at her. Immediately she felt her cheeks heat and looked quickly away.

She got back to work. She identified everything that belonged in the wardrobe and carted it through to the dressing room, hanging each item carefully and sorting the items that needed pressing immediately. Then she wandered back to the bedchamber to put the mounds of linen away in the armoire.

After a few minutes of folding, she shot another glance at Harland. He was still looking at her. Mortified, she turned quickly away, certain he must be equally uncomfortable. But when she glanced over again a minute later, he had actually put the book down and was staring at her openly. Her cheeks flushed.

“Almost finished now?” he asked in an uncharacteristically friendly tone.

“Almost, my lord. I can take myself off if you’d rather be alone—”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” he smiled. “I’m quite happy sitting here watching you work. It’s quite soothing. Once you’re finished unpacking, perhaps you could arrange for some hot water to shave me?”

“Yes of course, my lord. I shall do so, directly.” She turned her attention back to the linen, but Harland wasn’t finished.

“It’s going to be rather cosy in here, don’t you think, Fellowes? Will you be all right in the dressing room? It looks awfully crowded already.”

“I’m sure I will be fine, my lord.”

“Well, if you’re sure. If you’d rather have proper servant’s quarters, I could speak with Lady Dunsmore—”

“No!” She interrupted him in her haste, then continued more quietly. “I beg your pardon, my lord, but that really will not be necessary. It is only for a few days. It is no trouble at all.”

When he stayed silent, she risked a glance at him. He half sat, half lay on the bed, regarding her with those pitch eyes of his, a lock of hair tumbling over his brow. He looked like a lazy pagan god, watching her. And Lord, but the desire she felt for him nearly floored her. It wasn’t
fair
.

“Well, if you’re content, Fellowes,” he said at last, reaching for his book once more. And then the unbearable heat of his gaze was off her again and she turned back to the linen.

Nathan observed Fellowes over the top of his book. It was plain to him she was a woman, now that he knew. Which was inconvenient. If she were less attractive, he might have found it easier to tear his fascinated gaze away. Still, he wasn’t the only one she’d fooled with her audacious hoax.

She was like that secret drawer in Lady Dunsmore’s tea chest. Now that he knew the secret, he wanted to know how it worked too. He wanted to see her with other people and watch how she did it.

Before his discovery, he had thought of his valet as a slight, slender, unbearded youth. The fact that she was so fair had helped. It hadn’t seemed odd that she had no obvious whiskers. And of course, he hadn’t been looking at her closely, at first because she was a servant, and later because he’d been much too scared of that pull he’d felt. Scared of what he’d discover in himself.

Clothes maketh the man.
That was what Nathan’s father had always said. And it was true. People believed what was presented to them. He’d discovered, very quickly after his arrival in London, that if a young man wore expensive clothes, wandered around with an expression of boredom on his face and generally acted as though he was entitled to ride roughshod over everyone else, he would be assumed to be a fellow of considerable consequence.

It was the same with Fellowes. Nathan had believed her to be a servant because she was discreet and silent and blended into the background. He’d believed her to be a man because she dressed and spoke and behaved like one, and was accepted as such by all around her. But now that he knew she was a woman, the truth was plain to him. This woman’s figure was slender with narrow hips but there was a roundness to her bottom that now struck him as unmistakably feminine. And her features were far too fine to be male.

Her face did not call attention to itself. It was a quiet face. But now that he looked at her,
really
looked at her, he saw that she was not merely feminine, she was rather lovely, with a delicate jawline and a small pointed chin, a mouth that was sweetly shaped and vulnerable looking, eyes like a still lake. Wary eyes. And he saw that she was canny about hiding herself from him, ducking behind her fringe, casting her gaze downwards, turning her back to him. Becoming invisible.

He watched her bend over, her bottom straining against the snug fit of her breeches, emphasising that tell-tale roundness as though to underline the thought that had been running endlessly through his head all this long damned day:
Fellowes is a woman.

In his own breeches, his cock was thick and hard. What if she caught sight of him growing hard in front of her? He didn’t think he’d manage to keep his cock under control once she was leaning over him, wielding her razor. The thought excited him. He liked the idea of her looking at him. It had been interesting to see how often she glanced at him just now, her eyes flicking over him. Did she like what she saw? Or was she just being watchful? He wanted her to find him appealing. As he did her.

She straightened up again and turned to face him. “If you will excuse me, my lord,” she said, “I will fetch the hot water.”

She stood with her hands behind her back, tidy and alert, the perfect valet.

He wished he could say,
No, stand there a moment longer.
Or even better,
Come here, Fellowes. Kiss me.
Instead, he merely nodded. “Yes, do that,” he said. And then he lowered his gaze back to his book in dismissal, pretending to read the same page that he’d been looking at for the last half hour.