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He raised an eyebrow. “They’re not helping?”

“They can clean,” she said grudgingly. “Wouldn’t trust ’em for a minute.”

“They won’t take anything, I can guarantee it,” he said, already accustomed to Bertha’s dour attitude.

“No one can guarantee servants won’t steal.”

“I can. You want me to finish with that quail?”

She looked at him then, a suspicious expression on her face. “I’ve never heard of a butler helping out in the kitchen.”

“Well, this isn’t an ordinary household, and I’m not an ordinary butler.”

“You’re certainly not.” She shoved the carcass at him and he rolled up his sleeves. “How’s Miss Georgie?”

“She’s fine. Her feet hurt, but the salve I used should fix her up.”

There was a dangerous silence. “You put salve on her feet? Her bare feet?” Bertha intoned with awful menace.

“I did. And don’t tell me that now I have to marry her—I didn’t touch her above her ankles.”

Bertha hooted with laughter. “The day I see a Manning marry a butler will be the day I give up on the world. She’d be sent to live on the streets before such a catastrophe.”

He didn’t react. “Well, then it’s a good thing I was simply treating her injuries since no one else in the household seems to care about her.”

“You care about her?” Bertha demanded in horror.

“I don’t like to see any innocent thing hurting.” He was starting to find this conversation highly annoying.

“And that’s exactly what she is. An innocent, and you’re to keep your wicked hands off her.”

He sighed. “I have no interest in putting my hands on her. She’s a child.”

“She’s twenty, practically on the shelf.”

“And I’m thirty-one and not interested in virgins.”

He half expected Bertha to explode, but she was a smart old bird. She simply nodded. “Make sure you don’t change your mind.”

There was a noise outside the green baize door, and Bertha was suddenly alert. “Christ!” she said in disgust. “It’s herself.”

Before Rafferty could ask, the door flew open and a vision appeared.

For a moment he thought it was a particularly colorful version of Miss Norah Manning, but a moment later, he realized his mistake.

The woman standing there in sapphire silk, dripping with jewelry, was at least twenty years older, for all that she was as great a beauty as her daughter.

“Cook!” she announced in a deep, extravagant voice. “I’ve come to check on the household!” Her magnificent gray eyes focused on him. “And this must be the new butler I keep hearing about.”

He rose from his seat at the table and his dead bird and bowed low. “Rafferty, Lady Manning.”

The woman let out a trilling laugh. “You are a handsome one, aren’t you? And so tall! I do like a tall man.”

Rafferty wondered whether he dared stoop. She came closer, smelling of expensive perfume, and he could see that her jewels were paste. Excellent copies, but fakes nonetheless. He wondered if she knew.

“How very clever of little Georgie to find you,” she continued, running her eyes up and down his body. “We’ve been simply bereft since our last butler left us. We’re a very particular household, you understand, and we don’t hire just anybody.”

“I noticed, my lady.”

She fluttered. “And such a deliciously deep voice. I may have you read to me when you bring my warm chocolate in the evening. Just the thing for falling asleep. You can read, can’t you?”

He didn’t miss the warning look Bertha shot him, but he simply bowed. “I can. Whatever your ladyship wishes,” he said, raising the timbre of his voice slightly.

But Liliane Manning was past noticing, and he realized she was practically drooling at his feet. This was an unneeded complication, but one he was more than adept at handling. His face and height had attracted all sorts of unwanted attention over the years, and he knew what to do to discourage it.

The door flew open, and Norah Manning marched in, a militant set to her shoulders, exposed in a new and very expensive evening gown. Despite the Mannings’ enforced economies, they clearly hadn’t spread as far to mother and older daughter.

“Didn’t I tell you, mother?” she demanded in a strident voice.

But her mother was still gazing at him fondly. “He’s quite something, Norah. You forgot to mention how handsome he was. He’ll do very well for welcoming our guests.”

“Which guests?” Bertha muttered behind him, but Lady Manning paid no attention.

He braced himself, waiting for Norah’s scorn, but those magnificent purple eyes simply followed her mother’s, and she had a thoughtful expression on her face. “George picked him up in the slums,” she warned.

“I do wish you wouldn’t call her ‘George.’ It’s such a manly name. And we should be more than grateful to her. Imagine finding such a diamond in a lump of coal.”

Rafferty wasn’t thrilled at being called a lump of coal, but he was even less fond of Norah’s expression.

She came forward, walking around him like she was inspecting a prime piece of horseflesh.

Apparently. she decided she liked what she saw after all.

“He’s not bad,” she said suddenly. “We just have to make sure George doesn’t appropriate him. ”

“He wouldn’t look twice at her,” Liliane announced.

Bertha choked at that, then covered it with a fit of coughing.

“Now you two go along with you,” she said, bustling forward with the temerity of an old, valued servant.

“I’ve got dinner to cook and Rafferty’s got his own tasks.

You’ve met him and you’ve approved of him, now haven’t you, so all’s well.

” She began shooing them toward the door.

But Norah Manning lingered, her cool eyes like a proprietary touch on his body. “Perhaps you’ll do after all,” she murmured, closer than he would like.

“I will strive to deliver satisfaction, Miss Manning,” he said without inflection, keeping his gaze lowered when he’d rather meet it directly.

She really was an astonishingly beautiful woman, from her unusual violet eyes to her perfect figure to her cupid’s bow of a mouth.

That mouth that was usually curled in disdain.

He liked beautiful women—what man didn’t? And he could have this one, ruin her value on the marriage mart for his own pleasure. It would serve her right.

He’d sooner bed an adder. He lifted his gaze, and found she was watching him, an arrested expression in her eyes, as if seeing something for the first time. He wanted to groan.

“I suppose we’ll let George keep you,” she said finally. “She has so little to amuse her, poor dear, and, of course, no prospects. Let her have her little pet.”

“Not so little, Miss Norah,” Bertha piped up, and Rafferty had forgotten she was there. “And Miss Georgie will do just fine if you ask me. You need to concentrate on your own business and find a rich man to marry.”

Norah turned away from him with a wave of her hand. “They bore me,” she said. “I might want to sow a few wild oats before I settle down. After all, my mother certainly does, and she’s received everywhere.”

“Your mother waited until after she married and had children,” Bertha pointed out.

“But I’m even more beautiful than she was,” Norah said with complete assurance. “If I happen to blot my copybook, then the right sort of man won’t mind.”

“It’s exactly the right sort of man who would mind,” Bertha said, eyeing her. “Get along with you, now. We’ve got work to do here, and no doubt you’re going out again. That’s a new dress or I miss my guess.”

Norah preened, and even her self-congratulatory air couldn’t dim her beauty.

“You don’t know the trouble I had talking Papa into getting me a new one.

I reminded him it was an investment in the future, but he still fussed, and Madame Racette insisted, absolutely insisted on being paid up front.

I’ve a mind to take my custom elsewhere.

Oh, I am so dreadfully tired of worrying about something as tawdry as money. ”

“Tawdry,” he muttered, and she cast a quick, suspicious glance at him, but he’d already lowered his gaze once more.

“See that you keep an eye on this one, Bertha,” Norah said. “We don’t really know where he came from.” The green baize door closed silently behind her, and Bertha turned to look at him.

“You’ve got this household in a rumble, that’s for sure,” she said.

“There’s Miss Georgie half in love with you, the mistress casting eyes at you, and even the beauty giving you a second look.

You’d best be careful. Touch any of them, and you’ll be out on your bum so fast you won’t know what hit you. ”

“I’ll endeavor to know my place,” he murmured dulcetly.

“Ha!” said Bertha. “I don’t know if having food on the table is worth all the trouble you’ll be bringing to this house.”

“There’ll be no trouble at all, Bertha. If you think I can’t handle two difficult women, then you underestimate me. And Georgie’s no problem.”

“Miss Georgiana to you,” Bertha snapped.

“She needs to be married and out of this household,” he observed.

“That’s not going to happen. Not until Miss Norah makes up her bloomin’ mind,” Bertha said. “And she’s just not interested, I tell you. You’re the only man she’s looked at twice, and if her father knew, you’d be out on your arse so fast your head would spin.”

Georgie might not want to get married, but he was going to see to it anyway. She didn’t belong here, a punching bag for her beauteous sister. She needed a home and a man of her own, someone young who’d adore her, not some prosy old widower with a dozen children.

Getting her married wouldn’t be that difficult—she was pretty, lively, sweet, and intelligent.

He’d accomplished harder things in his life, and he wasn’t about to admit defeat so early in the game.

Finding Belding’s money wasn’t going to take all his time—he could perform this little act of mercy as well.

No, he’d see Miss Georgiana Manning happily married to an adoring young man with democratic views.

And Rafferty wouldn’t mind a bit. Or at least, not much.