Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress Read online

  No one caught his eye. Good.

  Joss had never before had the experience of telling a woman he wanted so much from her, only to have his words armor-plated and booted back at him. But he couldn’t fault her. They didn’t belong at the same dinner table; she was an heiress, and he nothing but a glorified servant.

  A footman answered Joss’s knock, wig askew and livery streaked with dust. “Mr. Everett!” The footman bowed. “Thank God you’re here, sir. He’s gone up in the attics, sir, and he won’t come down.”

  Perhaps glorified servant had stated his role in too grandiose a form. There was nothing particularly glorified about hunting for Sutcliffe like a child playing Sardines.

  Joss summoned the proper expression of indulgent patience. “In the attics, you say. All right. And where is the butler?” It was not typical, even in the bizarre netherworld of Sutcliffe’s presence, for a disheveled footman to answer the door in the butler’s place.

  “Stuck under a wardrobe in the attics, but the other footmen will soon have him free. His lordship had us crawling under ever so much cast-off furniture.”

  Joss accepted this without further comment. “Has his lordship eaten anything today?”

  The footman struggled with his wig, trying to set its crushed mass straight. “I can’t say, sir. I know he threw a teapot out into the street, but he didn’t mean to. He was trying to toss it up into a chimney pot.”

  How the devil did he think he was going to do that? would, of course, have been a logical question. Why? would be another.

  There was no sense in attempting sense, though. “It sounds as though he is in good spirits, then. I hope it did not strike anyone as it fell,” was all Joss said.

  “No, sir.”

  “Very good. Have the housekeeper keep an accounting of anything else his lordship damages.”

  “Yes, sir.” The footman bowed. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Take a few minutes to recover yourself,” Joss said. “Then come find me if you need more hands to free the butler. Until then, I shall endeavor to find the baron.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The footman looked almost pathetically grateful. “We shall soon have him free, I think. Thank you. I—I wish you luck with the baron, sir.”

  As the footman fled, Joss began the long climb up to the attics. Sutcliffe would probably lose his butler for this. He paid his servants good wages, but there was really no wage good enough to compensate for being wedged beneath a piece of furniture.

  “Sutcliffe?” he called as he climbed.

  “Everett? In here! Do come see; it is so amusing!”

  As Joss stood on an upper landing, he tipped his head to locate the source of the voice. It came not from upstairs in the attics, but from below. The second floor. Pounding down the stairs again, he marched through the corridor, flinging open the doors to several bedchambers before he found the correct one.

  Pale, rich fabrics and a soft carpet stretched before him. Several candles had been lit, along with a good fire. The baron, resplendent in a coat of—good God, of periwinkle satin and blond lace—had wadded up the room’s velvet draperies and crouched in a window seat, peering through a brass spyglass about the length of his arm.

  “Everett, look. I can see all the way to the windows across the square. If they would open the drapes, I could see in!”

  “You,” Joss said calmly, “have caused a great deal of worry. What’s all this business about trapping servants in the attics?”

  “What?” Sutcliffe lowered the spyglass, blinking dimly at Joss. “Nonsense. I haven’t been in the attics for fifteen minutes at least. Why are the servants still up there?”

  Joss ignored the question and posed one of his own. “Was there a particular reason you were throwing a teapot? I am merely curious.”

  The baron brightened, dragging a hand through his fair hair. “As a matter of fact, there was! With a bit of practice, I’m sure I could heave something from an attic window into a chimney pot. Just the sort of unlikely thing I could wager on, you see? I’m sure I could get someone to bet twenty pounds I couldn’t do it. No, fifty! Even amid such a bunch of dull sticks as these Bath-ites.”

  “Bathonians,” Joss murmured. “And you would lose the wager, as your thrown items were falling into the street.”

  “I’ll try again later. I ran out of things to throw.” Unconcerned, Sutcliffe returned his gaze to the window. “I saw you through my spyglass. You were walking with that woman, Miss Meredith. She was wearing a very ugly cloak, but I recognized her red hair. Bits of it were sticking out from under the hood of her cloak.”

  “Miss…who?” Joss’s heart gave a startled thud. He had been sure Sutcliffe wouldn’t recall meeting Augusta, but the baron’s hummingbird of a mind sometimes veered aright.

  “Oh, wait—you said she got married. No. You said she was a widow. Right?” The baron shook his rumpled head. “She doesn’t look like a widow.”

  “What ought a widow to look like?” Joss tiptoed carefully over the words.

  “Oh, all swathed in black and crying.” He hoisted the spyglass again, leaning so far forward that its lens clicked against the window glass. “She did rather look like she wanted to cry. Did she cry?”

  She had, just a little, at the White Hart. “No,” Joss said in a decisive voice. “You must have been mistaken.”

  With a sigh of disgust, Sutcliffe set down the spyglass on the window seat. “I can’t see anything with this. I need a real telescope.” He pulled forth his pouch, shaking out the familiar dry blades and popping them into his mouth. As he chewed, inspiration seemed to seize him, for he hopped to his feet and strode across the room. “Everett, help me push this wardrobe to the window so I can climb atop it.”

  “What will that achieve?”

  Sutcliffe gave Joss a pitying look. “Because I will be up higher. Now, boost my foot.”

  “As the wardrobe is not yet by the window, no purpose would be served in your climbing atop it.” As Sutcliffe’s shiny boots scrabbled for purchase on the side of the tall wooden wardrobe, Joss poked cautiously at the subject of Augusta. “I didn’t think you had recognized Mrs. Flowers.”

  “Yes, I did. I mean, I thought I—oof—did.” The baron stumbled back, having failed to find a way atop the wardrobe on his own. “She was pretty. I mean, she is pretty. But she was pretty when I first met her. I needed a while to remember where that was. I must have danced with her last season. She dressed like a strumpet.”

  “I didn’t think that sort of thing usually bothered you.”

  Sutcliffe considered. “You know, it really doesn’t. Do you think she’d like a shilling?”

  “If by shilling you mean ‘twelve pence,’ then she probably would. If by shilling you mean ‘attention from some nude part of your body,’ then no.”

  Sutcliffe laughed as he returned to the window seat, plumping onto it. “Damnation, Everett. I wouldn’t call that anything less than a guinea.”

  “I apologize for underestimating you,” Joss said drily. “As a matter of fact, though, I am not here to help you spy on the neighbors or discuss your acquaintance with the lady next door.”

  “There must be a window that looks into their house!” The baron picked up the spyglass with such eagerness that it spun in his fingers.

  “There is not. The houses are in a row.”

  “I could drill a hole through the wall.”

  “Why do you want to see in the other houses so badly? Are you trying to observe normal human behavior?”

  “What? No. Don’t be ridiculous.” Toss. The spyglass traced a neat circle in the air, then was caught again. “I just want to see someone undressing. A woman, I mean.”

  Joss pressed at his temples, wondering why he had not drunk more ale when he had the chance. “For God’s sake, then, summon your wife to Bath.”

  “Why?”

&nb
sp; Joss could not say So you can pull off her clothes and cease your spying on the neighbors in reference to a gently bred woman, especially one as put-upon as Lady Sutcliffe. “I thought you might be missing her,” he said instead.

  The spyglass pointed at Joss. “I need a drink. What do you say?”

  “God, yes,” Joss said, even though he knew what would arrive on a tray: nothing but a pot of boiling water in which Sutcliffe would steep his somalata. “By the bye, the reason I called is to share good news. I met with a man who believes he can locate your blackmailer.”

  “Oh. Good. Thank you much, Everett. Knew you’d take care of it.” He collapsed and reopened the spyglass, lace cuffs bright in the candlelit room, then rang for a servant.

  The following minutes proved Joss perfectly correct: Sutcliffe ordered water and a tea service for one. What do you say had, as Joss suspected, meant I require confirmation of my idea rather than Please join me in enjoying a beverage.

  As soon as the footman had vanished on this errand, Joss spoke up again. “Is anyone using this bedchamber?”

  Sutcliffe frowned. “Of course. I am. It’s my spying room.”

  The so-called “spying room” was larger than Joss’s Trim Street lodging. Besides the soft carpet underfoot and the velvet drapes that Sutcliffe had wadded up, there was a large bed with a mahogany frame, the great wardrobe that had proved impossible to climb, and a vanity with a glass. Uncracked, of course. The room smelled slightly musty, as though the linens hadn’t been aired for a while, but it certainly did not smell of damp. And it did not appear to leak at the ceiling.

  “Your spying room,” Joss repeated. “And what of the other bedchambers on this floor?”

  “What about them?”

  “Are they occupied? Is there a reason I cannot lodge in one of them?”

  Sutcliffe stared at him. “Why would you want to do that?”

  Teeth gritted, Joss replied, “Because it would be convenient for us both. Because it would save me money. And damnation, Sutcliffe, because I am your cousin.”

  “Second cousin, I think. Ah, here’s the tray!” Attention entirely diverted by the arrival of the teapot, the baron sat at the vanity and dumped bits of his beloved grass into every dish. Joss took his cousin’s place at the window seat. Thus seated, the weight on his mind seemed just as heavy, but at least his feet were no longer tired.

  In the past, he would have dropped the question, attributing Sutcliffe’s selfishness to the same cause that made it impossible to fault him for long: ruled by whims like a child, he simply didn’t mean anything by the problems he caused. But if not, that raised a new question. “Do you actually need me in your employment?”

  The baron sipped at his favorite beverage, an expression of great relief passing over his thin features. “Of course I do. You answer my letters. Who would answer my letters if you didn’t?”

  From his seat at the window, Joss turned his head to look through the glass. The view was so different here from his attic window in Trim Street—wide pavement, Bath chairs pulled to and fro, and the neatly ordered garden beyond a still neater wall. “Many men would be capable of such a task. Including you.”

  Sutcliffe laughed. “Everett, you do enjoy your jokes. Look here, do you want some of my tea?”

  Joss recognized this as an expansive offer. “No, though I thank you.” He cleared his throat. “To return to the reason for our presence in Bath: are you interested in the cost of finding your blackmailer? I cannot promise that will put a stop to the demands for money, though of course once the person is known, further action can be decided on.”

  “What do you mean, the cost? You said you would take care of the matter.”

  Joss turned to look at the baron, who blinked at him with great puzzlement over the rim of his china cup. Joss could blame him no more than he could blame the baron’s young son Toddy. He simply did not understand consequences.

  This was the fault of the whole family. Sutcliffe had been inclined to asthma as a boy, and the health of the precious only son and heir to the Sutcliffe barony had to be safeguarded. Kitty Everett had inherited her Indian mother’s fondness for plants and, at the boy’s father’s request, had prepared a tincture of somalata that cured the worst and most frightening of the boy’s symptoms.

  Sutcliffe had long since outgrown his asthma, but never his fondness for the drug’s stimulating effects. Joss had tried in small ways to break his cousin’s increasing reliance on it, but Sutcliffe could no more entertain the idea of abandoning this addiction than the others that ruled him.

  Thus the fate of poor Jessie the maid. Though Sutcliffe might not mean harm, he caused it all the same.

  Respectable employment for a reasonable employer. This was his dream, or so he had told Augusta. She had faulted him for restricting his life to a small circle—but right now, such a wish seemed as distant a prospect as India itself.

  Unless he considered taking the position Lord Chatfield had offered. Would learning secrets to gratify a marquess’s whims be better or worse than tidying up Sutcliffe’s messes, protecting him from himself?

  “You’re right,” Joss said. “I told you I would take care of the matter of your blackmail, and I will. I’ll let you know when there’s any further news.”

  ***

  He soon departed, leaving Sutcliffe in happy abandon with his spyglass and tea service. Knowing that the baron was again spying out the window, Joss tossed it a wave before continuing on his way to Trim Street.

  The daylight was all but gone now, and Joss found his way back to his lodging by memory as much as sight. The world was shape and shadow, and he had much to think about as he walked.

  For he had grown up not in Sutcliffe’s shadow, but as it. While Joss’s mother served as a companion and chaperone to the future baron’s six sisters, the future heir was tutored. An indifferent, jittery student, he was steadied by the presence of his younger cousin, who proved a much more eager learner.

  The boys became youths became men, and each took the presence of the other—the behavior of the other—for granted. Sutcliffe did what he wished; Joss dealt with the consequences. Yet he had never, it seemed, been regarded as essential. Not if he was of less import than maintaining a bedchamber dedicated entirely to spying.

  Even so, Sutcliffe was all the family Joss had. The baron’s numerous sisters were indifferent to him, and they all lived far north in Lancashire, where the distaff branches of the family dwelled on parcels of land willed to them through careful settlements.

  They were fortunate in that regard. Kitty Sutcliffe Everett had been less so. In a house full of relatives, she and Joss had always been alone, shifted to the outside.

  From the outside, one developed a different perspective. One could see a great deal. Perhaps even as much as others could see with a spyglass.

  A rueful smile tugged at his lips—and then his lodging house loomed tall before him, lamplight winking like a lodestar from the drawing room window. As he entered, Joss felt in his pocket for coins, wondering if he could order tea. Best not to. He had overspent himself earlier in paying for Augusta’s dinner.

  He had meant well by the invitation. It had even gone well, for a time. He yearned for her, or for what she meant to him: a woman bright and lovely and able to afford any possibility. There weren’t many women such as that.

  Well. She certainly knew it. She knew she could do better for herself. And that had been that, hadn’t it?

  His cold fingers were clumsy with the latch on his chamber door. Stripping off his gloves, he finally coaxed the stubborn thing open—only to find the expected cold, dark room ablaze with lamplight and a generous fire.

  Augusta Meredith was sitting on his narrow bed, dressed in pale silk, her hair shining like temptation. “I’ve ordered a tea tray and biscuits,” she said. “But we don’t have to eat at all.”

  Seventeen
r />   If Augusta could have designed the expression that crossed Joss’s face when he caught sight of her, it would have been just this: his eyes widened, his lips curved into a smile. But quickly, he wiped this expression from his face, instead narrowing his eyes. “How did you get in? The door was locked.”

  “Money.” Doubtless he would dislike the answer, but it was the truth. “I gave coins to all the servants. They remembered me as your cousin, and I said it was your birthday and I wanted to surprise you.”

  “My cousin, you say. And my birthday.” He knocked the door shut behind him. “I seem to have come in possession of a great many unexpected items.”

  “You have not possessed me.” She stood, facing him across the small room. “Yet.”

  “This is most unexpected coming from the woman who wanted only to hold my hand for a single minute, then darted away when I became too honest for her taste. What the devil are you up to, my dear fake widow?”

  She deserved every bit of his wariness, yet it still stung. “I have asked you,” she said in a creditably crisp voice, “not to call me that. It is most insulting to be called fake all the time.”

  “There’s more to the phrase than that.” Joss stepped toward her once, then again, until they stood almost body to body.

  Her eyes were at the level of his jaw: that clean, hard line he had shaved this afternoon, now just beginning to show a shadow of stubble. She wanted to touch it, to lean her head against his chest and catch his sandalwood scent, to let the beat of his heart carry her away. “I’m not a widow. So is it the ‘my’ part or the ‘dear’ part in which I am meant to believe?”

  “I could never call you mine. You just informed me of that fact.”

  “Dear?” This was nothing but a whisper as she swayed closer.

  “Damnation,” he muttered. “I can’t—no, Augusta.” He stepped backward so quickly he stumbled a bit, then crossed to examine the fire. “Quite a generous allowance of coal. Did you pay Mrs. Jeffries for an extra bucket, or shall I have to hock something to cover the debt after you leave?”