“It will be easier, my lord, if you will sit, as even your collar is above my eye level.”
“Very well.” He dragged a stool to the center of the room and sat his lordly arse upon it.
“And since you don’t want to have stray hairs on that lovely white linen,” Anna went on, “I would dispense with the shirt, were I you.”
“Always happy to dispense with clothing at the request of a woman.” The earl whipped his shirt over his head.
“Do you want your hair cut, my lord?” Anna tested the sharpness of the scissor blades against her thumb. “Or perhaps not?”
“Cut,” his lordship replied, giving her a slow perusal. “I gather from your vexed expression there is something for which I must apologize. I confess to a mood both distracted and resentful.”
“When somebody does you a decent turn,” she said as she began to comb out his damp hair, “you do not respond with sarcasm and innuendo, my lord.” She took particular care at the back of his head, where she knew he was yet healing from the drubbing she’d given him.
“You have a deft touch. Much more considerate than my valet.”
“Your valet is a self-important little toady,” Anna said, working around to the side of his head, “and that is not an apology.”
“Well, I am sorry,” the earl said, grabbing her hand by the wrist to still the comb. “I have an appointment at Carlton House this afternoon, and I most petulantly and assuredly do not want to go.”
“Carlton House?” Anna lowered her hand, but the earl did not release her. “What an important fellow you are, to have business with the Regent himself.”
He turned her hand over and studied the lines of her palm for a moment.
He smoothed his thumb over her palm. “Prinny will likely stick his head in the door briefly, tell us how much he appreciates our contributions to this great land, and then resume his afternoon’s entertainments.”
“But you cannot refuse to go,” Anna said, taking a guess, “for it is a great honor, and so on.”
“It is a tiresome damned pain in my arse,” the earl groused. “You have no wedding ring, Mrs. Seaton, nor does your finger look to have ever been graced by one.”
“Since I have no husband at present,” Anna said, retrieving her hand, “a ring is understandably absent also.”
“Who was this grandfather,” the earl asked, “the one who taught you how to do Tolliver’s job while smelling a great deal better than Tolliver?”
“My paternal grandfather raised me, more or less from childhood on,” Anna said, knowing the truth would serve up to a point. “He was a florist and a perfumer and a very good man.”
“Hence the flowers throughout my humble abode. Don’t take off too much,” he directed. “I prefer not to look newly shorn.”
“You have no time for this,” Anna said, hazarding another guess as she snipped carefully to trim up the curling hair at his nape. She’d snip, snip then brush the trimmings from his bare shoulders. It went like that, snip, snip, brush until she leaned up and blew gently on his nape instead, then resumed snipping.
When she leaned in again, she caught the scent of his woodsy, spicy cologne. The fragrance and putting her mouth just a few inches from his exposed nape left her insides with an odd, fluttery disconcerted feeling. She lingered behind him, hoping her blush was subsiding as she finished her task. “There.” This time she brushed her fingers over his neck several more times. “I believe you are presentable, or your hair is.”
“The rest of me is yet underdressed.” He held out his hand for the scissors. “Now where is my damned shirt?”
She handed him his damned shirt and would have turned to go, except his cravat had also sprouted wings and flown off to an obscure location on the door of his wardrobe, followed by his cuff links, and stickpin, and so forth. When he started muttering that neck-cloths were altogether inane in the blistering heat, she gently pushed his fingers aside and put both hands on his shoulders.
“Steady on.” She looked him right in the eye. “It’s only a silly committee, and you need only leave a bank draft then be about your day. How elegant do you want to look?”
“I want to look as plain as I can without being a Quaker,” the earl said. “My father loves this sort of thing, back-slapping, trading stories, and haggling politics.”
Anna finished a simple, elegant knot and took the stickpin from the earl’s hand. “Once again, you find yourself doing that which you do not enjoy, because it is your duty. Quizzing glass?”
“No. I do put a pair of spectacles on a fob.”
“How many fobs, and do you carry a watch?” Anna found a pair of spectacles on the escritoire and waited while the earl sorted through his collection of fobs. He presented her with one simple gold chain.
“I do not carry a time piece to Carlton House,” he explained, “for it serves only to reinforce how many hours I am wasting on the Regent’s business.” Anna bent to thread the chain through the buttonhole of his waistcoat and tucked the glasses into his watch pocket, giving the earl’s tummy a little pat when the chain was hanging just so across his middle.
“Will I do?” the earl asked, smiling at her proprietary gesture.
“Not without a coat, you won’t, though in this heat, no one would censor you for simply carrying it until you arrived at your destination.”
“Coat.” The earl scowled, looking perplexed.
“On the clothespress,” Anna said, shaking her head in amusement.
“So it is.” The earl nodded, but his eyes were on Anna. “It appears you’ve put me to rights, Anna Seaton, my thanks.”
He bent and kissed her cheek, a gesture so startling in its spontaneity and simple affection, she could only stand speechless as the earl whisked his coat across his arm and strode from his room. The door slammed shut behind him as he yelled for Lord Valentine to meet him in the mews immediately or suffer a walk in the afternoon’s heat.
Dumbstruck, Anna sat on the stool the earl had used for his trimming. He had a backward sort of charm to him, Anna thought, her fingers drifting over her cheek. After four days of barking orders, hurling thunderbolts, and scribbling lists at her in Tolliver’s absence, he thanked her with a lovely little kiss.
She should have chided him—might have, if he’d held still long enough—but he’d caught her unawares, just as when he’d frowned at her hand and seen she had no wedding ring.
Her pleasure at the earl’s kiss evaporating, Anna looked at her left hand. Why hadn’t she thought of this detail, for pity’s sake? Dress the part, she reminded herself.
She hung up some discarded ensembles of court-worthy attire, straightened up both the escritoire and the earl’s bureau, which looked as if a strong wind had blown all into disarray. When she opened his wardrobe, she unashamedly leaned in and took a big whiff of the expensive, masculine scent of him while running her hand along the sleeve of a finely tailored dark green riding jacket.
He was a handsome man, but he was also a very astute man, one who would continue to spot details and put together facts, until he began to see through her to the lies and deceptions. Before then, of course, she would be gone.
When he finally returned to his townhouse that evening, the earl handed his hat, gloves, and cane to a footman then made his way through the dark house to the kitchens, wanting nothing so much as a tall, cold glass of sweetened lemonade. He could summon a servant to fetch it but was too restless and keyed up to wait.
“My lord?” Mrs. Seaton sat at the long wooden table in the kitchen, shelling peas into a wooden bowl, but stood as he entered the room.
“Don’t get up. I’m only here to filch myself some cold lemonade.”