And she’d essentially listed a whole household staff that could serve as an infantry.
As though she’d followed his very thought, she wrinkled her brow. “That is, servants who will come inside your chambers, Lucas. The staff refuses to step inside your rooms.” With good reason. He’d run off enough cowering men and young women who’d been assigned to his chambers. “But you do require assistance.” An empty humor filled him. He’d moved beyond help, long, long ago. She stared at him pointedly. Surely she didn’t expect anything of him, there. Then, she tugged her chair closer, the hardwood scraping the floor. “I am leaving for London, along with your father, and we cannot be here when the servants are not.”
Like a bloody child. I am like a bloody child they’d coddle. Then, isn’t that what he’d become? His insides twisted with an agony he’d believed himself long past feeling.
“I have hired a servant, Lucas,” his mother continued, bringing him back. “A servant whose role it will be to attend your rooms, and bring your food, and empty your...chamber pot,” she finished on a scandalized whisper. If her cheeks turned any redder, she’d burn fire.
If talk of emptying his body of waste and piss set her to blush, what would it do were she to learn he’d skinned and cooked and ate his regiment’s dog to survive? Having enough of her gentle admonishment and the ever-present pity in her eyes, he closed his own and shut her out. For all the hell he’d endured, it had been one of the gifts he’d managed to take back with him—the ability to drown out life and retreat within himself.
“Lucas,” his mother said softly. In a surprising show of strength, she touched his hand.
His body reflexively stiffened at that touch. And his brow beaded with sweat. All human touch had ceased to matter, except to enact pain and suffering. Please, God, release me...
“You cannot run this person off. I will not be able to find you a constant stream of servants until I return.”
He opened his eyes and stared blankly up at the awful cheerful mural overhead. Fields of green pastures and deep blue skies and puffy white clouds. All bucolic with no hint as to the evil in the world.
“Unless you’d rather I remain behind,” she murmured. “Because I will,” she continued quickly. “If you’d rather I remain here, instead, and care for you, then just—”
“Go,” the command ripped out of him, gravelly and sharp as a captain’s directive. Go from this room, and off to London, and let me be.
She took that for the assent she sought and climbed reluctantly to her feet. “I will return shortly and perform introductions.” She sailed off in a whir of skirts, retreating with greater speed than Boney’s forces through the frozen Russian roads.
As she closed the door behind her, Lucas rolled onto his side and stared at the drawn brocade curtains. He welcomed the hum of the familiar silence and his own tortured thoughts.
Chapter 2
They said Castle Rayne was haunted.
They said the ghosts of the lords and ladies who’d once dwelled within the sprawling estate roamed the halls and that was why no sane man or woman would take work there now. But then, most people, sane or otherwise, were not as desperate as Miss Eve Ormond.
From somewhere deep within the Earl of Lavery’s stone manor, better suited a medieval keep than a country estate, a door slammed. On a gasp, she jumped.
Heart racing, she focused on drawing in smooth, even breaths. It is just a door. Of course there were no ghosts here. At seven and twenty years of age, she’d long ceased fearing ghosts and goblins and shadows in the night. Time had proven there were far greater perils among the living.
She heard the rapid footfalls of people rushing through the halls and then silence once more fell. Eve stared at the closed door, tension thrumming inside her. She’d no place being here.
By the dark history that stretched between her family and the Raynes, these people would sooner see her to the devil than in their employ. Even if they did require reliable staff. Any staff, given the reports she had inadvertently been handed at the agency where she sought employment.
They’ll never know you as an Ormond. To the family she’d soon serve, Eve would exist as nothing more than a dutiful maid, overseeing whatever tasks they charged her with. They’d not know that she shared blood with the same ancestor who’d robbed them of an ancient artifact and then sold it off to their rival family.
She thrust aside the unwanted guilt in being here. The problem with being an unwed woman past the bloom of youth was that there were few options. For security. For work. For really, anything. It was that truth which brought Eve to the Earl of Lavery’s Kent estate. That...and also, the need to escape.
Seated in one of the earl’s parlors, Eve took in the room. The mahogany piano and gold satin wallpaper adorning the walls were at odds with the jagged stone mantel that harkened to long ago times. Everything in this property exuded wealth and influence. It was not vastly different from the world she’d once known, a world she’d been neatly and deliberately snipped out of. Her insides twisted in a vicious knot.
The elaborate gladius, glimmering in the morning light snagged her notice. Restless, Eve shoved to her feet and wandered past the broad piano, over to the mantel to take in that great weapon. The metal shone bright and mocking. The ornate hilt and marked carvings bespoke its origins. This was the piece that families had fought for. The gladius that her late ancestor, Captain Tobias Ormond, had stolen and sold. This same sword had seen the Ormonds ruined and now made them outcasts throughout England.
Not that Eve held Society, polite or otherwise, at fault. After all, welcoming the daughter of a traitor, hanged for treason, would take a wealth of generosity, she’d not expect of them, or anyone.
She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, as the shock and horror revisited her as real now as it had been the day she’d discovered her father’s treachery. Nay, his evil. For her father, the late Lieutenant Colonel Ormond, who’d proved a man could sell more than his soul, even now burned for his crimes against his country. Her gaze wandered once more to that gleaming sword.
Then, hadn’t the Ormonds proven their greed years earlier when they’d wrestled control of an ancient gladius from the Rayne family and sold it off to another, all to increase the size of the Ormond purses?
Eve balled her fingers into her skirts, welcoming the hate rolling through her. Hate for the father who’d betrayed his country and sold battlefield secrets to the French. She allowed that hate to calm her. Hatred for her late sire was good. It was safe. It kept her from thinking about her own precarious circumstances, as the fates rightly found her serving penance for her family’s sins.
“An impressive weapon, is it not?”
She gasped and spun around.
A young gentleman, tall with dark hair, stood in the doorway. With his sharp, angular features and broadly muscled frame, he’d be considered handsome by any Society standards. Yet, there was a jaded quality to his brown eyes that put Eve in mind of those unyielding marble statues; beautiful, but icy and unfeeling.
“Forgive me,” she said on a rush, sinking into a curtsy. “I did not hear you enter, sir.”
He ignored her greeting and came forward with a cocksure arrogance. Then stopped abruptly at the fireplace—beside her. His gaze lingered on the heart-shaped birthmark at the right corner of her lip. She held her breath until her lungs ached.
The Ormond mark, her father had once called it. And yet, any lord, lady, or servant in between could bear such a mark upon their skin.
When he again met her eyes, there was no hint of knowing. There was nothing more than that jaded hardness, before he looked again to that blade. “Men have fought and died for this sword, Mrs. Nelson,” he said suddenly, unexpectedly.