Kasey Michaels - What a Gentleman Desires

She had no quick answers for him. At the moment, what she wanted most was to be alone. To think about Rose, come to grips with what she’d suspected since her very first weeks at Fernwood. Valentine Redgrave had given her more answers than he could possibly know, but there were still so many questions. “Children! It’s time to go!”

Lydia came scampering back down the pathway, clutching a small bouquet of roses she promptly thrust at Valentine. “Here, my prince. Tobias snipped off all the thorns for me.”

Lydia’s girlish lovesickness was palpable. Daisy rolled her eyes. This was why, throughout history, men retained such swollen heads: women persisted in foolishly adoring them for no good reason. Just like poor, poor Rose. I have to get away from this man. I have to think. I don’t want to think...

Daisy turned to the child in near desperation. “Where’s William, Lydia?”

“His mud pies aren’t dry, and Tobias says they’ll fall to pieces if they aren’t allowed to dry. They’re very nice. Tobias showed him how to push colored pebbles in them to make faces, and tiny leaves for hair.” She looked up at Valentine. “Not that I would enjoy doing anything so young and silly.” She then quickly hid her hands, caked with drying mud, behind her back.

“I’ll come back for them later,” Daisy promised, shooing the girl ahead of her.

“Farewell, dear prince!” Lydia called back to Valentine, who once again demonstrated his finesse with a courtly bow—young, handsome, carefree—just as if words like rape and hellfire club had never passed his lips.

Then he turned about, to depart the greenhouse, without setting a time or place for them to meet again. He’d probably just pop up like some jack-in-the-box when she least expected him. She watched as he took up a cane he must have rested against one of the other potting tables, gave it a twirl or two before tucking it beneath his arm.

Truly, the man was insufferable. Yet she felt safer knowing he was here. Safer, but oh, so very much sadder. And even more determined to confront Charles Mailer, now that she knew what to ask him. Not where did you imprison my sister? but what did you do with her body? Because there was no more room for hope now, was there? She’d known that from the beginning....

Willing her hands not to shake or her voice to waver, Daisy proceeded along the center pathway determined, and dry-eyed, to make an appreciative fuss over William’s mud pies.

CHAPTER FOUR

VALENTINETOSSEDTHEbouquet on a table and the cane onto the bed before lightly hoisting himself up onto the high mattress and flinging himself down on his back to glare at the light summer canopy above his head.

“Pouting, sir?” Piffkin said blandly, retrieving the cane and putting it, it would seem to the casual observer, out of harm’s way. “Lovely flowers, though. Shall I order you a sweet to help boost you out of the doldrums?”

“You could fashion me a gag and then tie it tightly while you’re at it,” Valentine muttered, putting his hands behind his head and crossing his legs at the ankle. “Piffkin? Why have you never told me I talk too much?”

“Couldn’t get a word in edgewise, I suppose,” the valet said, shaking his head. “You’ve drying mud caked on the soles of your boots. I’ll have them, please.”

Grumbling under his breath, Val pushed himself upright and turned so that his legs hung over the edge of the bed. “Before you rail at me, there’s also a smudge on my left knee, rightly earned as I rescued a young princess.”

“Huzzah. And may I add it is an honor to be in your employ,” Piffkin commented as, with Valentine’s foot in his back to assist him, the boots were removed. “I’ll have the buckskins now, sir.”

Valentine complied, and was handed a dark blue silk banyan in return, tying it tightly about his waist. He did all of this without conscious thought. He’d been taking orders from Piffkin since he was in short coats, and some things shouldn’t change or else the entire world order could be turned upside-down. “Don’t you want to know why I was pouting?”

“You’re done, then? Good. I would imagine, since you were heading out to confront the suspicious governess, that you were met with failure and, worse, may have given yourself away in the process. Should I be packing, sir, or do you wish to dispatch Lord Mailer to his dark reward before we go? Your stiletto, sir,” he ended, handing over the blade that had been secured in a special sleeve inside the right boot. “I suggest a swift, straight cut across the windpipe, but from behind, please, as bloodstains are the very devil in the laundry.”

Valentine rewarded the valet with a lopsided grin. “You speak as if I go about routinely killing people.”

“No, sir. I speak as if certain you will be forced to dispatch at least one someone before this week is out. I doubt you’ll have a choice.”

“Peeking at my correspondence again? Because that’s pretty much what Simon told me I’d have to do. Rest assured, Piffkin, if that does prove to be the case, I won’t spend weeks agonizing over the deed. This is war.”

“More than war, Master Valentine. Hellfire.”

Valentine deposited his long body on what he hoped would prove a comfortable chair, and then raised his stockinged feet up onto the low table. “Is there anything you don’t know, Piffkin?”

“Yes, sir. It would appear I remain at a loss to know why Miss Marchant has so upset you.”

“I suppose I could quote Lord Mailer and say it’s because I suspect she may be smart. Because that’s certainly true. Smart. Too smart not to have noticed something strange is going on here, and too smart to attempt to deny she has some suspicions. On the other hand, she may also have some names for me, which would be an immense help.”

“How gratifying. However, I believe we’re still missing the bits that contributed to your pout, sir,” Piffkin said, taking a brush to the dried mud on his master’s buckskins.

“I’m getting to them, if you’ll allow me to first say I believe I shall never enter another greenhouse. The strangest things seem to happen in them.”

“You’re not dirty enough to have fallen into a pit.”

“There are pits and then there are pits. In this case I suppose you’d say a human pit.”

“You’re in danger of falling into Miss Marchant? That hardly seems proper, Master Valentine.”

“You’re such a wit, Piffkin,” Valentine said dully. “Consider her more of an enigma. I don’t think she just happened to find herself employed here. From what I deduced from Mailer, I’m not inclined to think there was an advertisement placed in the local or London newspapers. I believe she sought out a position here in particular. I think she’s come here with some motive of her own, showing up unbidden to worm her way in as governess to a pair of infants who have as much use for a governess as you have need of a comb.”

The valet raised a hand to the sleek, polished pate above his bushy brows. “I am experimenting with a new wax. However, it does, sadly, cost you one pound six per pot. Not an extremely large pot.”

“But worth every groat, I’m sure. I could probably read by the glow from your head in a full moon. Speaking of which—our Miss Marchant has confirmed my information that the Society have been gathering here during the full moon. She’s seen them, at least the ones who stay here at Fernwood. But I was forced to tell her more than I wished in my attempts to get what I thought was the truth from her, and now she refuses to leave, even after I handed her some rather unlovely information that would have had any reasonable woman hot-footedly racing for the nearest posting inn. I never should have said a word to her, not a single word.”