Page 16 of A Duke Never Tells

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

JAMES CLAY

The distant sound of metal clanging and clattering thudded into James’s rather pleasant dream about attending a soiree in Mayfair. In the middle of a waltz with someone whose face he couldn’t quite make out, but whose presence made him smile like an idiot, a footman walked up and dumped an armload of pots and pans onto the highly polished dance floor. Two couples over, the formerly dignified dowager Duchess of Ayres promptly fell over them.

He opened his eyes, sitting up as the sound of clanging continued to reverberate against the thin walls around him. His candle had guttered and he had no idea what time it was, but he grabbed for his black butler’s trousers in the dark and pulled them on before stumbling over his chair to reach the door. “Ouch! Damnation.”

Yanking the door open, he strode into the narrow hallway of the servants’ quarters. Two of the other doors opened at the same time, Timothy blinking sleepily from one, and the remaining downstairs maid peeking out from the other.

Swearing and hoping he hadn’t broken his toe, James turned up the short corridor. “What the devil is going on?” he demanded as he entered the kitchen.

A multitude of pots and a ladle in her hands, Mrs. Carvey jumped, spinning around to face him. “It—they fell,” she said, setting her armload on the worktable with yet another clatter and kneeling down to reach for more items. “And me about to start breakfast.”

“They” had indeed fallen. The set of shelves affixed to the wall—and until a moment ago holding most of the kitchen’s large supply of cooking implements—now lay in pieces, broken over the stove, the sink, and across the stone floor.

“What did you do?” he asked, glaring at the cook and still trying to remember with whom he’d been dancing. It had been important, damn it all. “Beat them to death with a pan?”

“No, Your Grace! I only set a pot back in its place, and the top shelf attacked me! Nearly fell right on me, it did, tearing the rest of them away with it, and me just trying to boil some eggs.” Plunking down another armful, she jabbed her finger toward his temporary room. “I told Austin that rot had got into the wood, but he went and left and took most of the candlesticks and spoons with him.”

Silver candlesticks and spoons didn’t have anything to do with this, but James understood why she’d worded her protest that way. She’d stayed, while the former butler had neglected his duties and stolen items from the house and left.

“Carpenters are to be here again today,” he commented, swallowing the less-than-charitable comment he’d been about to make. He squatted to retrieve a large cooking pot no doubt left from the days when the house had been full of hungry guests and staff. “I’ll have them make you a storage cabinet.”

“That would be most welcome,” she said, nodding at his chest, and he belatedly remembered he was half naked and barefoot. Well, his staff at Clay House in London had become accustomed to his frequent lack of proper dress; Earnhurst would have to do so, as well.

“You weren’t injured, were you?” he asked, and her gaze lifted to his face again.

“No, Your Grace. Thank you for asking.”

“Mm-hmm. I’m James, Mrs. Carvey. Please remember that.” At the same time, he was also the duke, and he wasn’t going to clean this mess up by himself. He straightened to bang a ladle against the giant pot. “Timothy! Downstairs maid! To the kitchen, if you please.”

“Her name is Hannah,” Mrs. Carvey whispered.

Ah. A bit of assistance could be had in exchange for cabinetry. That would be worth remembering. “Hannah! To the kitchen.”

The two servants appeared, Hannah still in her simple white night rail and white cap. “Your… James?” Timothy asked.

“Help clean this up. Stack them as Mrs. Carvey wishes, and then find the stable boy and have him assist—”

“Peter,” Mrs. Carvey put in.

“Have Peter assist you in dismantling the shelves and clearing the space here for their replacements.”

“As you say, James.” Timothy set aside his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, diving into the mess to help extricate the still-usable items.

Hannah did so as well, though she kept glancing sideways at his torso. James sighed. “I’m going to go finish dressing and rouse everyone else.”

At least no one had blamed him for the pots and pans, though he had no doubt that Riniken would as soon as the man heard about it—which he would. James didn’t know how he did it, but his father’s man of business knew every damned iota of every splinter in the entire house.

He might have been dressed and out again in five minutes except for his bloody cravat, and he divided his time between attempting to tie a simple, symmetrical knot and cursing Goodfrey for not wak ing and coming to help with the stupid thing. And then he cursed himself for requiring someone to help him dress, even though all of Society would have looked askance at him if he didn’t have a valet.

Finally he gave up, stuffing the uneven ends of the cravat cloth into the top of his green waistcoat and pulling his black jacket over the whole mess. When he returned to the kitchen the estate’s entire staff seemed to be present already, stacking and moving cutlery and pots and pulling apart bits of lumber to throw them outside.

James looked at them for a moment. In his experience, asking a servant to do other than what he or she had been hired to do could be considered at the least insulting, and at the most grounds for quitting. Yet there all six of them were, from the cook to the head groom to the junior footman, all chatting and laughing and straightening up the mess. All the ones who’d stayed.

“Thank you,” he said, and with a ragged clattering of metal and wood they turned to look at him. “I mean, thank you for putting up with the mess Earnhurst has become, and for allowing the farce Mr. Riniken and I are engaged in to continue, and for helping Mrs. Carvey this morning.”

“Your father the duke was a fine man,” Randall the old footman stated, nodding. “And Earnhurst Castle was such a jewel it made other houses jealous to know we were employed here. Those who left, they gave up hoping. Not us, though. We’re ready for it to be returned to what it was. And we’ll do whatever is necessary to help.”

James inclined his head. “Including lying to our uninvited guests, which I very much appreciate. I’ll see if I can manage to avoid disappointing all of you.” With that he turned on his heel and headed back up the hallway to make one more attempt at tying his damned neckcloth.

After ruining four of them he managed to make a decent, even knot, if he said so himself. When he emerged from his tiny room again, Robert the head groom stood leaning against the opposite wall.

“Did something fall on you, as well?” James asked, heading for the library to select another book for Miss Mabel. She’d read the grain book, or most of it, anyway, but his random selection yesterday had been an outdated treatise on forest preservation so dull that the title alone had nearly put him to sleep. Chatting with her for better than an hour had managed to be the most enjoyable part of his day by far, even with the sticky questions about his past as a duke’s bastard son and his dastardly, older half brother.

Today he meant to select a title with his eyes open for his own sake, if nothing else. Despite the fun of inventing his own life, he was already coming to regret not just telling her the truth. Spinning tales and then remembering what he’d said took a great deal of concentration. At least he’d chosen gambling as his previous profession; he knew a great deal about gambling.

“James?”

Blinking, he returned his attention to the groom. “Yes. I was contemplating. What do you require?”

“I found an old dining room chair and fitted wheels to it,” Robert said, falling in beside him. “And handles for pushing.”

In James’s experience, servants bowed and walked behind their master, out of the way, unobtrusive, and ready to sprint off and carry out any orders. This standing straight and walking beside him thing was damned odd. And also more efficient, more interesting, and beside the point, he added to himself, nodding. “Thank you.”

“Do you want me to haul it upstairs for the miss?”

“No. Put it in the foyer, if you would. With a blanket to be sure she doesn’t take a chill.”

The groom huffed. “That’s all we’d need; them ladies stuck here for another month.”

“Precisely,” he said, though he’d actually been thinking only that he didn’t want Mabel Gooster to get chilled, and that he wanted her to be comfortable. How oddly considerate of him.

As Robert returned to the kitchen, James continued into the library. It had drizzled overnight, and the musty smell had increased tenfold. “Good God.”

“There you are.”

He turned around as Riniken walked into the library, shutting the door behind himself. “Don’t do that, Riniken; you’ll suffocate us.”

“It smells horrible, doesn’t it? Someone should do something about it.” Riniken sat at the table placed in the middle of the room.

“Yes, yes. Send for a book restorer to see if any of that mess nearest the window can be salvaged. I’ll set the footmen to shifting the remaining books and undamaged bookcases to the other side of the room, and you call in whichever architects and carpenters you think can best manage repairs to the structure of the house.”

The man of business blinked. “I… will do that directly after breakfast. And the stairs?”

“You said you had a craftsman in mind. Send for him, as well. If he can save some of the original balusters, at least, that would probably be best. All the wood is being stored in one of the stable stalls.”

“Color me all astonished,” Riniken said, eyeing him.

“The stairs, as I said, were necessary. Mabel might have broken her neck. I may be an idiot, but I do know it’s bad business to allow your home to go about murdering people.” Especially pretty, warmhearted young ladies with twinkling eyes the color of cornflowers. He tilted his head. “What did you come to harangue me about this morning?”

“Two things,” the man of business replied, with his usual crisp delivery. Perhaps that was what the old duke had liked about Riniken so much; the way he didn’t bother with polite conversation and merely cut through the chitchat with facts. The chitchat, though, was always the most interesting part.

“Go on.”

“Lady Sophronia avoided me all day yesterday, saying she had a megrim. I believe it was an ailment caused by you turning me into a monster, though I could be wrong.”

James grinned. “If you hadn’t made yourself a part of the household better than a decade ago, I couldn’t have adopted you.”

“Ah. So your being my bastard brother is my fault? Keeping in mind, of course, that presently I am you. You’ve made yourself a villain.”

“I am a villain,” James retorted. “The evidence is all around us. What’s your second complaint?”

“It’s not a complaint. After some maneuvering, I managed to convince Lady Sophronia that assisting me with reviewing the library and sorting books would be a kindness to history and not just to me, so I’ll manage the book shifting.”

“Splendid. If that’s all, I have a selection of my own to make.”

“You’re reading? Don’t you have a few other tasks to hand?”

“It’s not for me. Mabel’s a keen reader, and she asked me to choose another book for her. Her third in three days. I’m somewhat impressed by her.” He’d also begun looking forward to seeing her each day; at least the aspersions she cast at the duke were clever. It was the first occasion he’d ever had to see himself through someone else’s mirror—even if his reflection currently looked like Elliott Riniken.

“Good. I was going to ask you to entertain the companion again. I’m doing my damnedest to demonstrate that Earnhurst Castle is a work in progress rather than a ruin, and that the duke—you, by the way—is not a villain, and to do that I need to have actual conversations with Lady Sophronia before she leaves for London.”

It made sense, but James hated giving Riniken credit for anything. “You’ve got an earl’s daughter sorting books? That’s not very dukish, Your Grace.”

“She’s a keen reader as well, apparently. Once she saw the damage, she insisted on helping. This morning I reminded her of her promise.” The man of business shrugged. “It dovetails well with your orders, so I don’t see the harm.”

“Neither do I. If she’s a reader, mayhap she can help keep the subjects in order. Don’t want guests to see a Shakespeare folio placed adjacent to a study of dung beetles and then declare me illiterate.”

Riniken tilted his head. “I can never tell if you’re being sincere or sarcastic,” he said, sighing, “though I suppose it doesn’t signify. You’re doing something, thank God.”

“Sometimes I’m both sincere and sarcastic,” James noted, walking to the nearest row of shelves and rejecting a half dozen titles before he found one that would do. “It’s a skill of mine. Carry on, Your Grace.”

Leaving the fake duke behind in the library, he returned to the kitchen for a plate of boiled eggs, toast, bacon, and a pot of tea. It was a damned armful even with a tray to hold it all, but the remainder of the staff had fallen into an argument about whether pots should be hung from pegs or set on shelves.

So, sticking his chin into the teacup to hold it steady and with both arms carrying the tray atop the substantial book, he returned to the main part of the house and climbed the stairs. It was bloody tricky to keep the tray steady enough that the hot water in the teapot didn’t spill, the eggs didn’t tip out of their cups, and the melting butter didn’t slide off the toast. How the devil a footman could manage those feats simultaneously and still manage to bow as they entered a room, he had no idea.

Miss Mabel’s door was shut. Scowling at it, he tried to shift the tray into one hand so he could knock. That unbalanced the eggs and nearly sent the whole thing over, and he grabbed it again. Well, that wouldn’t work. Glancing toward the stairs, he kicked the bottom of the door as gently as he could.

“Come in,” she called.

That was easier said than done. Elbow, arse, knee, foot—clearly the handle was in need of oiling, because he couldn’t budge it. Grumbling, James set the tray on the floor, pushed down the brass handle, shoved open the door with his backside, and retrieved the tray. “Breakfast,” he said, stepping into the room.

“What were you doing out there?” the lady’s companion asked, grinning as she shifted pillows behind her back and sat up straighter. “It sounded like you were attempting a dance of some sort.”

“I don’t generally carry trays,” he said stiffly, setting it down on her writing table.

“Oh, no, of course you don’t,” she said hurriedly, a line appearing between her fine brows. “And I remain extremely grateful to you for seeing me fed.”

And now he felt bad for grumbling when she’d been confined to the bed for three days now. “Nonsense. How do you like your tea?”

“Oh. Cream and three sugars, if you please.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You have expensive taste, Mabel.”

Her cheeks reddened. “Do I? I generally take one sugar, actually, but—”

He liked the additional color the blush brought to her face. She’d been indoors for too long, already. Taking the idiotically tiny tongs, he plucked up three lumps of sugar and dropped them into the cup. “I was teasing. Considering it’s Earnhurst’s fault you fell, I reckon you could have ten sugars if you wished to.”

She chuckled, her shoulders lowering as she relaxed again. “There wouldn’t be any room for the tea if I took ten sugars.”

“Very logical of you.” Pouring the hot tea into the cup and adding the cream, he brought it over and set it on her nightstand. “How’s your ankle?”

“Throbbing a little, but better every day. I heard something clanging earlier. What happened?”

“The pot shelves or whatever they’re called gave way in the kitchen. Interrupted a very pleasant dream I was having, too.” As he retrieved her plate of eggs and bacon he recalled that the faceless woman with whom he’d been dancing had had hair the color of a raven’s wings, as did Mabel. And she’d been wearing a yellow gown—the color Mabel had worn when she’d arrived with her employer. Hmm.

He’d never dallied with servants. Never had, never would. Even if she wasn’t quite a servant, but a friend of a higher-ranking lady’s family. Possibly even gentry. Even if she had raven hair, eyes the color of the sky, and a warm, silly, lighthearted wit that made him feel… cheery. Happy. Optimistic. Protective. Things he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

“James?”

Shaking himself, he set the plate beside the tea. “Beg pardon?”

“I asked you what your very pleasant dream was,” Mabel said, clapping her hands at the sight of her breakfast.

A woman who so appreciated food, and yet looked so slender—he couldn’t quite account for it, but her joy was definitely infectious. “I dreamed that I was dancing with you,” he said, taking a seat on her visiting chair.

“I… Did you?”

“I did.” Her blush deepened, and he tilted his head. Was he making her uncomfortable, or was she pleased? “It was quite a chore, though, because you had no legs at all and I had to hold you up the entire time,” he improvised, grinning.

She laughed, her eyes merry. “You’ve clearly spent too much time carrying me about, you poor thing.”

“I still maintain that hauling you from room to room is more pleasant than stacking dishes and several other butler duties.”

“I’m glad I rank above crockery, at least.” Still chuckling, she dove into spreading the butter across every nook and cranny of her toast. “I had a dream, too.”

“Did you? Was I in it?” And damn it all, he wanted to be.

“You were, actually. I dreamed that I worked in a bakery, and my job was to sample everything. You were a customer, and I ate all your biscuits.”

“I had you sacked for that, I hope. A man has to defend his biscuits.”

Laughing again, she stirred her tea and took a sip. “Well done, James. You make a fine cup of tea.”

James inclined his head. “Thank you.” He sat back, stretching out his legs and crossing his ankles. “I had some concerns that the tree management book might have you dreaming about saplings or something.”

“It did help me fall asleep,” she admitted, wrinkling her nose, “despite my efforts. The author was very fond of trees. Birch, pine, oak, and especially larch. His enthusiasm was inspiring, but I suppose it’s appropriate that a book about trees was very wooden.”

Snorting, he reached for a fork and napkin and handed them over to her. “I almost hesitate to admit that I peeked at the title of the book I selected for you today. It can’t possibly top grain production or forestry in your heart, I fear.”

“I’ll be gentle with my disappointment,” she quipped, holding out her free hand. “Let’s see it.”

“Here you go.” James handed it to her, a skitter coursing along his nerves again as their fingers brushed. Damn. He hadn’t imagined that. Or dreamed it. Mabel Gooster was trouble. Women didn’t make him feel sparks. Not after a brush of fingers—for the third time. He didn’t count times they touched, either. And he was engaged.

“Oh.” Setting aside her tea, she turned the book to look at it. “Oh.”

James frowned. If he didn’t keep his mind on the conversation, she would tromp all over him. God, he adored cleverness. A one-word commentary, though? Very irregular. “What? It’s a fine book, I’m certain.” And it happened to be one of his favorites.

Mabel glanced up at him, her light blue eyes… sparkling? Dancing? Brimming with tears?

“Give it back, if you’re going to be upset by it.” Genuinely concerned, he held out a hand for it.

“No! No. I mean, do you realize what this is?”

“Yes. Gulliver’s Travels. ”

“No, it’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver.”

“Which is Gulliver’s Travels. ”

“It’s the first edition of Gulliver, before it came to be known by its more common name. Before Jonathan Swift admitted to being the author. This is a very valuable book, James. It’s nearly a hundred years old. I’m not certain His Grace would approve of me walking about with it. I don’t want to see you admonished or otherwise punished for humoring me.”

It troubled her because it was too dear. That… He didn’t quite know what to make of that. The women with whom he spent time, and whose company he’d enjoyed far less, expected gifts of jewels or gold or silver. “The…” His voice rattled a little, and he cleared his throat. “I’m only lending it to you,” he revised. “And His Grace is moving books out of the library so repairs can be made. You’re not walking about anywhere with it, so I don’t foresee any difficulties. If you want to read it. Do you?”

“Oh, my, yes,” she breathed. “It’s one of my favorites. It seems like such a series of silly adventures on the surface, until you look closely and realize how very savage Swift was with his opinions of politicians and society.”

“Then enjoy it,” he said, wondering if any other woman of his acquaintance would have dared display her intellect as unconcernedly as Miss Mabel Gooster had just done. He doubted it. “Do you require assistance with dressing?” he asked, looking for a distraction. Yes, she was lovely. But it wasn’t only her physical delights he’d begun to admire. He enjoyed her company, her conversation, and her wit, and the blue of her eyes and her dimples when she laughed. The abrupt wish to kiss her seized him, and he curled his fingers into his palms.

Her eyes widened. “That is improper, sir!”

James furrowed his brow. What the devil had he even said? “What? No, I didn’t mean I would help you dress. I thought to send Hannah up to help you. She’s the downstairs maid.” And he’d known her name since this morning.

“My… lady helps me dress,” Mabel countered, still blushing furiously. “She’s engaged with His Grace this morning, though.”

“Yes. Library business. I have a bit of a surprise for you, though, so you need to dress. I’ll send Hannah up in a half hour or so. Is that enough time for you to savor your breakfast?” He grinned as her gaze slid back over to her brimming plate.

“Yes. I can be finished with savoring in thirty minutes. If I’m allowed a self-satisfied smile from time to time for an hour or so after that.”

Nodding, he stood again. “Your terms are satisfactory. I have to go see to some butler things, but I’ll return shortly. After you’ve dressed.”

And after he’d regained his senses, which would possibly take much longer.