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“The position,” he said. “Does it suit?”
“The position? The secretarial position! Oh yes, certainly.” Her voice, overemphatic, filled the small compartment. She felt a perfect fool, but he looked satisfied.
“Good. I’m told my home is a convivial place to work.” He set his spectacles back on his nose and smiled. “Inspiring, even. You met Kuznetsov. Did he mention he was a novelist?”
“He did.” She answered instantly. “Before he mentioned he was a butler.”
De’Ath laughed that molasses-ripple laugh. “He spends more hours writing than he does buttling. I can’t comment on his prose style. My Russian is only fair. But he impresses with the sheer volume of pages. We despoil entire forests in this household, between myself, Kuznetsov, and the poets. I include paper with room and board.” He shook his head. “My stationer is a rich man.”
This glibness irritated her slightly. Stationers weren’t rich. They were tradesmen. De’Ath was rich. He was rich by birth.
Money trouble with the duke notwithstanding.
“I hope you’re well stocked.” She crossed her arms. “Rotten luck, if everyone’s waiting for their wages and their paper.”
“Indeed.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “A small chance, I said, that wages would be delayed. The possibility is so remote, I see no need to worry the rest of the staff.”
She couldn’t mistake his meaning.
“Of course,” she murmured.
“The scales will soon fall from my brother’s eyes.”
“You tried to knock them off.” She looked pointedly at his bandaged hand. “How’d that work for you?”
De’Ath laughed again. “You’re memorable, Miss Finch, and memorably blunt. Something else you picked up from your brother?”
Her stomach tightened. Drat it. She’d mentioned she had a brother, hadn’t she? So what, though? She had a brother. Many women had brothers. Thousands. Millions. Her numbering among them revealed little.
“Aye,” she said, something she had picked up from Jack. “He’s a blunt, honest, decent man, my brother.”
“With the capacity to out-curse Miss Holroyd?” De’Ath raised his brows, amusement still stamped on his face.
“He’s a bit rough-spoken.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. Jack had been subject to ridicule at the Royal Academy for his accent and his slouch. Rich men like De’Ath had refused on sight to believe he possessed a great or genuine talent.
“You’re close, the two of you.” The way he said it, she knew it wasn’t a question.
“He raised me.” She looked away, uncomfortable. De’Ath had a strange knack for eliciting truthful responses.
She could feel his gaze on her.
“Your brother,” he said at last. “He told you to take me up on my offer, didn’t he?”
Her eyes flew to him. He wore a slight smile and was trailing his fingers idly through the fringe on the window curtain.
“I’ve been wondering why you changed your mind. What about the countryside, the cottage, the pastry shop? The gooseberry tarts?”
He wondered about her.
Her temples pounded. A shiver moved over her, dread and something else. Giddy, stupid excitement.
“We discussed your offer and decided it was the more sensible option.” She suppressed a sigh and did her best to wipe the bitterness from her voice. “I can bake scones when I’m sixty.”
His eyes narrowed. “I hope you won’t have to wait so long as that.” The corner of his mouth crept up higher. “But who knows? You might develop a passion for art in the meantime that’s just as fulfilling.”
“I doubt it.” She frowned. De’Ath had no idea how misguided the notion was. Her love of baking had burgeoned as her love of painting had dwindled. These days, she looked at pictures in the way a coroner looked at bodies. Dispassionately. She used to feel moved, standing in front of certain pictures, long ago. Sometimes—though rarely—she still felt swept away, painting one.
Nothing—no one—could fan those embers into passion.
