Chapter 115

The bedroom door was flung open with such force the dents in the wall increased.
"Was it you who ordered Chasens to stop lacing my morning coffee with brandy?"
"Excuse me? Leave us, Mrs. Ferret."
"Yes. Ma'am."
Splendor dismissed her rapidly shrinking scalp as quickly as she did the curtseying Mrs. Ferret. Not twenty-four hours in the place and already, if they were laid end to end on paper, the complaints would fill the building. The moaning would too.
The building? They would run from one end of the street to the other. And back again. After last night too. And with her hair like a bird's nest of knots and tangles on top of her head. Wherever Mrs. Ferret's skills lay, it wasn't in hairdressing. All that was needed was a few eggs stuck in it to complete things. Although really, Splendor was past thinking it mattered. A locked door was as good as a slammed one that way.
At least the bedroom door clicked shut behind Mrs. Ferret before her skills included witnessing a row and blabbing it to the servants. Not that there appeared to be any servants. Just Chasens.
"I said, did you order Chasens to stop ... "
"There is something I can do for you, Your Grace, that you've come barging-"
"Did you order Chasens to stop lacing my coffee with brandy?"
Coldness crept up her spine like a spider. She hadn't ordered Chasens to do anything, which meant one thing. Not twenty-four hours in the place and Topaz was helping herself to everything in sight. Splendor fought to calm her heart, hammering beneath her silk peignoir. She reached for a hairpin-at least these were still there-and her complexion actually benefited from the rouge. Bouchard and Malmaison, even if there were no prizes for guessing what lady it belonged to.
"In addition to preening yourself as if there was something to preen?" Stillmore demanded.
She pushed her fingers through the knot of hair that had fallen over her forehead. That was instead of pushing her fist into his face, something she didn't have time to do right now when Topaz had probably nicked the dining room silver.
"Well, I didn't notice you taking issue with whether there was or not, the other night."
"That was then, this is now. Keep your nose, already gargantuan enough to resemble an elephant's trunk, out of my affairs here."
She peered at herself in the glass. "My nose?" Unless it had grown overnight after being walloped with these brooms? "I don't see that I interfere. Straighten things o-"
"You're my wife in ruination only." He drew his brows together in a perfect sneer. "So why don't you just damn well keep it that way? Do you understand?"
"Perfectly. I may be stupid, but I'm not an idiot." She pushed the chair back. "Please don't let it be said that I don't understand. Let me just go right now and order Chasens to put the brandy back. So you can drink yourself to death."
"Are you trying to be funny?"
He grasped her arm, detaining her, so the lines of his body, still in his damned dressing gown, stood against hers. A good thing though, that he stopped her. Walk through the door the fury that rose, and she wouldn't stop there. She was unlikely to find another to walk back through so easily.
She shrugged. "Me? Your Grace? No. Not that I'm aware of."
He donned his blandest expression. "Keep it that way. Understood? As for you, and your friend, traipsing about my house at midnight, knocking over buckets and broomsticks and generally disturbing my peace, I'd like it if you were aware of that too and refrained for the duration of your stay when I've been good enough to have your friend here. Is that understood?"
She lowered her eyelashes, tugged her arm free. To say anything about the locked door was to show she'd been back in that corridor. To say anything might lead to another row as it had last night. Three months.
"But of course, Your Grace. Whatever you say."

***

Whatever he said would be a first, although there was no denying the sight of her there, in that peignoir, soft, creamy, pretty, her hair tumbling about her shoulders did things to his blood pressure. And not just his blood pressure. Anyone could want a woman-anyone-the way he wanted her. It took much more than that to keep one as he'd discovered to his cost, falling head over heels at the sight of a shapely figure. Marietta. Babs.
Not a bad man?
Just one who'd done questionable things, as a result of his marriage breaking down. He wasn't lily white. While she was. Virgins didn't interest him as a rule.
'Bates isn't married to her, is he?' Had been uttered in exasperation. Catterton, where he kept imagining her running wild across the lawn, her strawberry-blonde hair spilling over her shoulders, had been chosen in exasperation. The truth was her forwardness, her determination to lurch from one mess to another, her everything, had him by the balls. Whoever she was, whatever she was hiding, it pursued her. Maybe she pursued it? But he knew lies-real lies and subterfuge that could ruin a man-when he saw them. And he did not see that kind here. There was something warm about her, and when he'd slept with her, he had felt calm in ways he never had with Babs, ways he'd never expected to thank anyone for.
Yes, he could and should find out about her. Was he really so opposed to having a woman in his life though? She was here for three months. Couldn't he at least try to see if he could live with her? Maybe take it from there?Then ... if not? Well that would be the time to find out. Because then he'd be doing it for the right reasons.