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“I’ll have you know,” Chase said indignantly, “I have been hard at work during your absence. Witness the renovation in progress around you. I built that bar myself, thank you very much. It only needs a few coats of lacquer. And if that’s not sufficient for you—in the past week alone I’ve gone through a decade of bank ledgers, given seven orgasms, and interviewed five governesses. And no, none of the governesses were recipients of the orgasms, although a few of them looked as though they could use one.”
“Five candidates, and you didn’t find one to hire?”
“I hired each and every one of them. None of them lasted more than two days. In fact, the latest didn’t even make it past the nursery door. A pity, too. I had hopes for her. She was different.”
Normally, Chase was the one coaxing women to leave. He wished he’d been able to make Alexandra Mountbatten stay.
Barrow peered at him. “That was odd.”
“What was odd?”
“You sighed.”
“That’s not odd at all. Not lately.”
“Well, it was the tone of the sigh. Not weary or annoyed. It was . . . wistful.”
Chase gave him a sidelong look. “I have never been wistful a day in my life. I am entirely devoid of wist.” He tugged on his waistcoat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an engagement this evening. The women of London can’t pleasure themselves, you know. I mean, they can pleasure themselves. But on occasion they generously let me have a go at it.”
“Who is she this time?”
“Do you really care?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” Barrow gave him a look that cut like a switch. “Someday you’ll have to put a stop to this.”
Chase bristled. “You are a solicitor. Not a judge. Spare me the moralizing. I make women no promises I don’t intend to keep.”
In truth, he made no promises at all. His lovers knew precisely what he had on offer—pleasure—and what he didn’t have to give—anything more. No emotional attachment, no romance, no love.
No marriage.
As war, illness, and his own unforgivable failures would have it, in the space of three years, Chase had gone from fourth in line for his uncle’s title to the presumptive heir. It was a development few could have imagined, and one that nobody, Chase included, had desired. But once his uncle let go the thin cord connecting him to life, Chase would become the Duke of Belvoir, fully responsible for lands, investments, tenants.
There was only one traditional responsibility he wouldn’t take on.
He wouldn’t be fathering an heir.
The Belvoir title should have been Anthony’s by rights, and Chase refused to usurp his cousin’s birthright. His line was the crooked, rotting branch of the family tree, and he meant to saw it off. Cleanly and completely. It was the least he could do to atone.
And since there would be no marriage or children in his future, didn’t he deserve a bit of stolen pleasure in the present? A touch of closeness, now and then. Whispered words in his ear, the heat of skin against skin. The scent and taste and softness of a woman as she surrendered her pleasure to him.
A few scattered, blessed hours of forgetting everything else.
“Which of these would look better hanging above the bar?” Chase held up two paintings. “The fan dancer, or the bathing nymphs? The nymphs have those delightful bare bottoms, but that saucy look in the fan dancer’s eyes is undeniably captivating.”
Barrow ignored the question. “So if you haven’t found—or kept—a governess, who’s minding the girls?”
“One of the maids. Hattie, I think.”
No sooner had he said this than screams and a thunder of footsteps came barreling down the stairs.
Hattie appeared in the doorway, her hair askew and her apron slashed to tatters. “Mr. Reynaud, I regret to say that I cannot continue in your employ.”
He cut her off. “Say no more. You’ll have severance wages and a letter of character waiting in the morning.”
The maid fled, babbling with gratitude.
Once he heard the door close, Chase sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands. There went his plans for the evening.
“Now that,” Barrow said, “was a despairing sigh.”
The front doorbell rang. “I’d better answer that myself.” Chase rose to his feet. “I’m not certain I have any servants remaining to do it.”
He opened the door, and there she was: Miss Alexandra Mountbatten. Soaked to the skin, her dark hair dripping.
He tried not to look downward, and when he did so anyway, he told himself it was out of concern for her well-being. He was concerned for her well-being. Especially if one defined “well-being” to mean “breasts.”
So he noticed her nipples. What of it? He spent a ridiculous portion of his waking hours thinking of nipples. Hers just happened to be the nearest, and the most chilled. Hard as jewels beneath her bodice. Red as rubies, maybe. Or pink topaz, pale amethyst . . . ? No. Given her dark coloring, they were most likely a rich, polished amber.
The chattering of teeth pulled his attention back upward. God, he was every bit the repulsive cad she’d called him, and more.
She caught her bluish bottom lip beneath her teeth. “Is the post still available?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Name your price.”
“Ten pounds a week. Another hundred once they’ve gone off to school.”
“Five pounds a week,” he countered. “And two hundred once they’ve gone off to school.”
“One more thing.” From beneath a dripping umbrella of eyelashes, her eyes met his. “I want the use of your telescope. The one down in your . . .”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the door. “Cave of Carnality?”
“Yes.”
Chase supposed he had offered her an astronomical sum. Besides, he wasn’t making use of it. “Very well.”
She sniffled. “I’ll report first thing tomorrow.”
He caught her arm as she turned to leave. “Good God. At least come in and get warm first.”
I’ll warm you.
He chased the errant thought away, like he would an eager puppy. She was in his employ now, and there would be no such ideas. Even he had that much decency.
“Thank you, no. I’ll need to pack my things.”
She walked away, leaving a trail of sloshy bootprints. Chase looked about the entrance hall for an umbrella and found none. Of course there wouldn’t be a greatcoat, either, not in the middle of June.
With a curse, he bolted through the door empty-handed and dashed after her. “Miss Mountbatten.”
She stopped and turned on her heel. “Yes?”
“You’re not leaving dressed like that.” He shrugged out of his tailored topcoat, shaking it down his arms.
“I can’t accept your coat.”
“You can, and you will.” He swung the coat around her shoulders and tucked it tight. She was so petite, the garment’s hem nearly reached her boots. The sight was equal parts comic and piteous.
“But—”
He jerked on the coat’s lapels, drawing them together. “Yes, yes. I know you’re bossy. As a governess, it’s to your credit. But I’m your employer, as of two minutes ago. For as much as I’m paying you, I expect you to do as I say.” As he worked the buttons through their holes, he went on. “Given the alacrity with which you fled my offer of employment this morning, it’s obvious something dire occurred to make you change your mind. If I were any sort of decent fellow, I would ask about that dire situation and sort it out. Seeing as I am a selfish blackguard, however, I intend to take full advantage of your lowered circumstances.”
There, now. He had her buttoned, and he stood back to look at her. She looked like a sausage roll.
A soggy sausage roll.
A soggy, confused sausage roll with slick ebony hair that would feel like satin ribbons between his fingertips.
Right. He dragged himself back to the point.
“I need a governess. Not just any governess, Miss Mountbatten. I need you. Which is why I will not have you walking home in the rain and catching the grippe.”
“But it isn’t—”
“I insist. Most insistently.”
She blinked at him. “Very well.”
Finally, she heeded his demands. She walked down the pavement and turned the corner, disappearing from view.
As he returned to the house, Chase took note of an unexpected sensation. Or rather, the lack of an expected sensation. Miss Mountbatten had appeared at his front door soaked to the skin, and he hadn’t yet felt a single raindrop.
He tipped his head to the sky. Strange. Nothing overhead but the periwinkle and orange streaks of twilight.
It wasn’t raining.
In fact, now that he thought of it, it hadn’t rained all day.
Chapter Four (#u4fc783d2-94ad-5d57-ba14-150cc7d31447)
At home, Alexandra unwrapped herself from Mr. Reynaud’s coat and hung it on a peg. She’d likely ruined the thing. The garment had smelled deliciously of mint and sandalwood when he’d wrapped it about her shoulders. Now it reeked of the Thames.
After bathing and changing into a clean shift and dressing gown, she followed the scent of baking biscuits down to the kitchen. Thank heaven for Nicola and freshly baked biscuits.
She sat down at the table and laid her head on folded arms. “Hullo, Nic.”
Nicola whisked a tray of biscuits from the oven. A sweet, lemony steam permeated the kitchen. “Goodness, has the day gone already?”
“It has, I’m afraid.” And what a day it had been. Alex lifted her head. “Do you remember the Bookshop Rake?”
“The Bookshop Rake?” Nicola frowned. “It’s not a poem or limerick, is it? I’m useless at those.”
“No, it’s a man. We met with him in Hatchard’s last autumn. I was carrying a stack of your books in one arm, and reading one of my own with my free hand. He and I collided. I was startled, dropped everything. He helped me gather up the books.”
Nicola piled the biscuits onto a plate and carried it to the table, setting it between them.
“Tall,” Alex prompted. “Brown hair, green eyes, fine attire. Handsome. Flirtatious. We all decided he must be a terrible rake.” And we didn’t guess the half of it. “Penny teased me for months. Surely you must remember.”
Nicola lowered herself into a chair, thoughtful. “Maybe I do recall. Was I buying natural history books?”
“Cookery and Roman architecture.”
“Oh. Hm.” Biscuit in one hand and book in the other, Nicola was already absorbed in other thoughts.
Alexandra reached for a biscuit and took a resigned bite. That was Nicola for you. She jettisoned useless information like ballast. She needed the brain space to cram in more facts and theories, Alex supposed. And to come up with her ideas.
When Nicola was concentrating, she set aside everything else. She would neglect the passing of hours and days, if not for the odor of burnt cakes coming from the kitchen, or the clamor of the twenty-three—
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
The twenty-three clocks.
So it began. The chiming, ringing, chirping, and bonging from timepieces that stood, hung, sat—even danced—in every corner of the house.
Alexandra couldn’t complain about the noise. Nicola’s clocks were the only reason she could afford to live in a place like Bloom Square. In exchange for a room in her friend’s inherited Mayfair house, Alex bartered her timekeeping services. The din was loud enough when they all struck the hour in unison . . . but if they fell out of synchrony, the noise went on for ages.
After the last chime sounded, Alex spoke to whatever fraction of her friend’s divided attention she could command. “He offered me a post. The Bookshop Rake.”
“The Bookshop Rake?” Lady Penelope Campion burst through the kitchen door, flushed and breathless, holding a flour sack in one hand and clutching a bundle to her chest with the other. “Did I hear mention of the Bookshop Rake?”
With a soft moan, Alex laid her head on the table again.
“Oh, Alexandra.” Penny dropped the sack, sat down beside her, and clutched her arm. “You’ve found each other at last. I knew you would.”
“It wasn’t like that. Not in the slightest.”
“Tell me everything. Was he just as handsome as he was in Hatchard’s?”
“Please, Penny. I beg you. Hear me out before you start dreaming up names for the children.”
“Oh!” Penny snapped her fingers. “I nearly forgot the reason for my visit. It’s Bixby’s cart. He was chasing after the goslings, and he popped the axle out of place.” At the sound of his name, the rat terrier poked his head out from the blanket. Penny clucked and fussed over him. “What a little scoundrel you are. If you had all four legs, I shouldn’t know what to do with you.”
Nicola reached for the sack and withdrew the contraption inside—a tiny cart she’d rigged up to serve in place of Bixby’s hind legs. She turned it over, inspecting the axle. “Won’t take but a moment.”
“There, now. Alex, you were saying . . . ?”
“She was saying he offered her work.” Nicola retrieved her little caddy of hand tools and sorted through the wrenches and pliers. “That’s all.”
