A Scoundrel By Moonlight. Anna Campbell
Ah, she wasn’t totally foolhardy. She retreated toward the door, eyes widening. He wished he could see their precise color. The light simply wasn’t good enough. “You’re trying to frighten me.”
“Perhaps I’m seeking a little respect,” he said smoothly.
She curtsied, but he could tell that her heart wasn’t in it. “Your lordship.”
He folded his arms and surveyed her under lowered brows. “So you know I’m Leath.”
“You said it’s your library. And her ladyship has a portrait in her room. I recognized you when you lit the candles.”
The world toadied to his wealth and influence, but the spark in this girl’s eyes looked like hostility. A challenge sizzled between them. Or perhaps the beginnings of attraction.
“At last a straight answer,” he said wryly. “Now can you bring yourself to tell me who you are?”
“Will you let me go if I do?”
Her audacity stole his breath. Nobody defied him or denied him or bargained with him. Most people tripped over themselves to do his bidding before he’d even worked out what his bidding was. “We’ll see.”
Her eyes narrowed, confirming his impression that she didn’t like him. He wondered why. “You have a reputation for keeping your hands off the housemaids, my lord.”
“What in Hades?” Her meaning smashed through his burgeoning interest. “Are you saying that you’re a … housemaid?”
A fleeting smile tilted her lips. His wayward heart jolted at the promise of other, more generous smiles. “Yes.”
“You don’t look like a blasted housemaid.” Nor did she speak like any housemaid he’d ever known. She sounded like a lady.
“You … you caught me at a disadvantage.”
“I’ll say I did.”
He waited for some retort, but her expression turned blank. For the first time, to his disappointment, she looked like a servant. Although this sudden docility meant that he might discover why she was in his library. Housemaids started work early and generally didn’t have the energy to run around after bedtime. “What’s your name?”
She dipped into another curtsy. He could have told her she overdid the meekness, but he held his peace.
“Trim, my lord.”
Trim? He couldn’t argue with that. “Trim what?”
He thought she might smile again, but she’d leashed her rebellious spirit as tightly as she tied back her hair. He wasn’t a man who experienced profound and sudden sexual urges. But he’d give this girl every sparkling diamond in the family vault if she’d take down her hair. If she let him touch it, he’d throw in the damned house as well.
“Nell Trim, sir.”
“Helen or Eleanor?”
“Eleanor.” Her voice retained its curiously flat quality and she stared somewhere over his shoulder.
Eleanor. An elegant name for an elegant woman. An elegant woman who was his housemaid.
“Very good.” Except Eleanor wasn’t a suitable name for a junior servant. Eleanor was a queen’s name. It brought dangerous, powerful women to mind. “What are you doing in my library, Trim?”
By rights, he should call a housemaid Nell, but with her slender neatness, Trim suited her so well.
“If I tell you, you’ll dismiss me.”
He kept his expression neutral. “I’ll dismiss you if you don’t.”
She leveled that direct stare upon him. “I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted something to read. I always return the books, my lord; you have my word.”
A housemaid who rifled his bookcases and offered her word? She became more extraordinary by the minute. “You can read?”
“Yes, sir.” In a show of deference that didn’t convince, she lowered her eyelids. Years in the political bear pit had taught him to read people. He was sure of two things about the trim Miss Eleanor Trim. One was that deference didn’t come naturally. The other was that somewhere in this odd conversation, she lied.
“So what did you choose?” She hadn’t carried a book when she’d run into him at the door.
“Nothing appealed. May I go, my lord? I’m on duty early.”
“Do I need to search you to see if you’ve stolen anything?” She could be a master criminal bamboozling him into complacency. Except he didn’t feel complacent. He felt alive and interested as nothing had interested him in months.
Temper lit her eyes. She didn’t like him questioning her honesty. “I’m not a thief.”
Ah, the false docility cracked. He hid his satisfaction. “How can I be sure?”
“You could check the room for anything missing, my lord.”
“I might do that.” Abruptly his sour mood descended once more. What the hell was he doing flirting with a housemaid in the middle of the night? Perhaps his political advisers were right about him needing a break.
He bent to pick up the candle the girl had dropped when he’d barged in on top of her. He lit it from the branch and passed it across, then unlocked the door. “You may go, Trim.”
She raised the candle and surveyed him as if uncertain whether this dismissal was good news or not. Her curtsy this time conveyed no ironic edge, then she backed toward the door. “Thank you, my lord.”
“For God’s sake, I’m not going to pounce on you,” he said on a spurt of irritation. It niggled that for a different man living in a different world, the thought of pouncing on the delectable Miss Trim was sinfully appealing.
Her eyes flashed up and he saw that beneath her drab exterior, she was fierce and strong. He awaited some astringent comeback. Instead she dragged the door open and fled.
Wise girl.
Blast, blast, blast.
Exhausted, angry, disgusted with herself, Nell collapsed onto the narrow bed in the small room that had become hers a fortnight ago. She buried her head in her hands.
Why, oh, why did the depraved marquess have to catch her searching his library? And when he did, why on earth hadn’t she behaved like a proper servant? Until now, she’d managed to hide any rebellious impulses under a subservient mask. If she’d been humble and silent, he’d have sent her away, instead of finding her of surpassing interest.
But she’d just been so furious to see him alive and well, when her beloved half sister had died in such shame and misery. Caught by surprise, she’d forgotten to play the circumspect domestic.
And now she’d attracted his attention.
She didn’t want to arouse James Fairbrother’s curiosity. She wanted to find the diary that proved his offenses, then leave Alloway Chase and pass the matter of Leath’s destruction over to the Duke of Sedgemoor, his sworn enemy. A woman of her humble background would get nowhere, taking on such a powerful man. But the duke could use the book to blackmail Leath into behaving himself, or publish the details and expose the marquess to trial by public opinion.
Nell hoped he chose the second course. Lord Leath deserved general condemnation.
In her bedroom at Mearsall, the plan had appeared straightforward, once she’d come to terms with the exalted status of Dorothy’s lover. A check of her stepfather’s old newspapers had confirmed his lordship’s