earlier he had been working. She had noticed the long hours he spent there, poring over stacks of paperwork and reviewing the sums in the heavy ledgers sitting on the corner of his desk. In a way it surprised her.
None of the wealthy elite who visited Harwood Hall did the slightest bit of work. They felt it was beneath their dignity, and instead were content to deplete whatever sums they had managed to inherit—her stepfather among them.
The thought sent a familiar jolt of anger shooting through her. Not only had Miles Whiting, her father’s cousin and the man next in line for the title, managed to gain the Harwood lands and fortune, he had also wormed his way into her grieving mother’s affections, convinced her to marry him, and thereby stolen Windmere, her mother’s ancestral home.
Miles Whiting—if she hadn’t managed to kill him—was the lowest form of humanity as far as Tory was concerned. He was a thief, a scoundrel, a molester of innocent young women. Beyond that, for the past several years she had begun to suspect he might even be responsible for the death of her father. For all that he had done, Tory had vowed a thousand times that someday Miles Whiting would pay.
Or perhaps he already had.
Resolved not to think of the baron and what might or might not have happened to him, Tory walked over to the fireplace in the corner of the study.
“How is the work progressing, Mrs. Rathbone?”
“There seems ta be a bit of a problem with this one. Perhaps you’ll be wantin’ ta take a look.”
Tory stepped closer. Bending down, she stuck her head into the opening and peered up the chimney—just as one of the sweeps knocked down a load of soot. Black dust flew into her eyes and mouth. Coughing, she inhaled a breath and sucked a snootful up her nose. Gagging and wheezing, she backed away from the chimney and turned a furious stare on Mrs. Rathbone.
“I guess they musta fixed the problem,” the older woman said. She was scarecrow-thin, with a sharp nose and wispy black hair shoved up beneath her mobcap. Though no smile appeared on her lips, there was an unmistakable gleam of triumph in her eyes.
“Yes…” Tory agreed through clenched teeth. “I guess they must have.” Turning, she started out of the room, her hands and face covered with soot. The way her luck had been going, she wasn’t at all surprised to see the earl of Brant lounging in the doorway, his broad shoulders shaking with mirth.
Tory cast him a glance that would have sliced a lesser man off at the knees. “I realize you are lord here, but in this I would advise you not to utter a single word.”
Tory walked past him, forcing him to step out of her way to avoid getting soot on his perfectly fitted, nut-brown coat. The earl kept smiling, but made no comment, wise enough, it seemed, to heed her words.
Upstairs in her room, cursing her stepfather and the circumstances that had brought her this low, Tory changed into the second set of garments Mrs. Wiggs had very opportunely provided. She took a moment to compose herself, then returned to her work downstairs.
It occurred to her that in the entire Brant household, her only ally was the butler, Mr. Timmons. But he was a meek, rather mildly mannered man and he mostly kept to himself.
It didn’t matter, Tory told herself as she had before. Nothing they could do was going to make her leave.
Cord reclaimed his study within the quarter hour, the chimney sweeps gone off to some other part of the house, Mrs. Rathbone wisely going with them. He wasn’t certain if the older woman were responsible for what had happened to his housekeeper, but he had a strong suspicion she was.
He didn’t like the idea of the Temple girl having problems, but he couldn’t help grinning as he remembered her black face and hands, the white circles of her eyes staring up at him in fury.
She wasn’t having an easy time of it. Still, Victoria Temple seemed capable of handling the job he had given her and he didn’t think she would appreciate his interference. She was an independent little baggage. He rather admired that about her. He found himself wondering where she had come from and why it was that she and her sister both possessed the manners and speech usually reserved for the upper classes. Perhaps in time, the information would surface.
Meanwhile, Cord had more important things to do than worry about his servants, no matter how intriguing they might be. This afternoon, he planned to interview the sailor, Edward Legg, in regard to the whereabouts of his cousin. Concern for Ethan loomed at the front of his mind and he meant to explore every avenue that might lead to his return.
Cord glanced toward the chessboard in the corner, a game in progress still laid out on the board and only half finished, the intricately carved pieces resting in the exact location they had been for nearly a year. The long-distance game had become a tradition between the two men, played whenever Ethan went to sea. In his letters to Cord, Ethan made known his moves, and in Cord’s reply, he countered. Their skill was fairly well matched, though at present, Cord was ahead two of the last three games.
In the current match, Cord had moved his queen and posted the information in a letter, which had been delivered to Ethan via military courier. But he had never received a reply. The chessboard sat in the corner, a silent reminder of his cousin’s disappearance. Cord had left instructions that the pieces not be touched until Captain Sharpe’s return. He sighed to think when that might be.
Seating himself behind the desk, he turned his thoughts away from Ethan to the stack of paperwork he needed to do, investments to be considered, accounting to be reviewed, but it wasn’t long before his mind began to wander, returning once more to the scene earlier in his study.
A faint smile tugged at his lips as it occurred to him that his housekeeper had had the audacity to issue him a command—and that he’d had the good sense to obey it.
At least the house was beginning to look better, the downstairs floors so shiny Tory could see her face, the household silver once more sparkling. Getting the servants to complete their assignments was like pulling the teeth of a chicken, or however the saying went. Still, little by little, the work was beginning to get done.
And Claire seemed happy in her new home. So far, Tory’s worries about the earl had not surfaced. Perhaps he was simply too busy to pay attention to a serving girl, no matter how beautiful she was. Still, she didn’t trust him. The earl was an unmarried man and exceedingly virile. There was every chance he was simply another lecher with designs on Claire.
The evening meal was over. Along with most of the servants, Claire had retired upstairs for the night, but Tory still wandered the shadowy halls. She wasn’t the least bit sleepy, or perhaps it was her stepfather that stirred her restless thoughts, worry that she had accidentally killed him—though at the time, there hadn’t been much of a choice.
Surely if he were dead, the authorities would have been searching for his murderer or might even have found her by now. She hadn’t seen anything in the newspapers, but she had only read them sporadically since her arrival in London. Mostly, she had simply been trying to survive.
Deciding that perhaps a book might help her fall asleep and hoping the earl wouldn’t mind if she borrowed one, Tory held the oil lamp out in front of her and climbed the short flight of stairs up from the basement. As she passed the earl’s study on the way to the library, she realized a lamp had been left burning on his desk. She was making her way in to snuff it out when she noticed the chessboard in the corner.
She had seen it before, had admired the exquisite inlaid
