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Chapter Twenty-One

Rafferty started the day in a foul humor, one he couldn’t very well indulge, but he snapped at Jane and growled at Martina.

It was the least of his problems. The Manning women were at home to guests, and Georgie had come down late, hollow-eyed and refusing to look at him.

Andrew Salton wasn’t among the young men who surrounded Norah, which was a blessing.

Rafferty was in a thoroughly devilish mood, and Salton had hurt Georgie.

He might be tempted to take his revenge.

He headed to the door at the latest summons, opening it to reveal a footman in dark blue livery. Familiar-looking livery. “The Dowager Duchess of Ormond has come to call,” he announced in a damnably loud voice, and the buzz of conversation dropped to a whispered hush.

For a brief moment, he considered shutting the door in the footman’s face, but he knew he couldn’t get away with it. Keeping his expression impassive, he opened the door wider to usher the tiny figure of his grandmother into the house.

She took one long, meditative look at him, wiping out any fond hope that she didn’t know he was here, and then nodded. “You clean up well,” she said in an icy voice, and swept past him into the salon.

Under any other circumstances, he would have found the Mannings’ flustered response to their august guest to be amusing.

Liliane Manning had dropped her fan in her hurry to rise and curtsey, and even Norah looked properly cowed.

He allowed himself a brief glimpse at Georgie, then wished he hadn’t.

She was looking at the dowager duchess, the woman with the same vivid blue eyes that were a match to his, and there was an odd expression on her face.

She couldn’t have figured it out, he thought.

How could a butler be connected to a peer of the realm?

If he stood still long enough for Georgie to confront him, he’d simply tell her he was a bastard offspring of the old duke, and she’d have no choice but to believe it.

It was far more likely than the truth. And he was a bastard in word and deed when it came to Georgie, even if he was as legitimate as Georgie herself.

This would convince her that he truly was out of reach, though in fact he wasn’t sure which was lower on the rungs of social acceptability—bastard or butler.

In the ensuing half hour, he might be tempted to think he’d imagined his grandmother’s assessing gaze and cryptic words.

She had been brought up by high sticklers, and she was social, gracious, and charming, setting the nervous room at ease.

Everyone except Georgie, who kept watching the two of them, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. Damn it all!

The dowager duchess rose gracefully when the prescribed time had come to an end, and he wondered if he dared disappear.

Her footman had remained in the hallway, standing at attention, his eyes straight ahead, so clearly he had no idea she had come for any other reason than to visit her neighbors.

When she rose, Rafferty moved to open the door for her, forestalling the footman, and she paused, looking up at him.

“I have requested the receipt for the wonderful scones Lady Manning is famous for. You will bring it.” There was no question of disobedience in her voice, and he nodded, never having seen her famous scones.

“As you wish, Your Grace,” he said in a low voice.

“This afternoon.” She glanced back into the room, and her eyes lit on Georgie for a moment, before glancing at Norah. ”I don’t know what game you’re playing, but enough is enough.”

Fortunately her voice was so low and angry that only he could hear it, though he spared a quick glance into the room to make certain. They were all looking suitably awed by their august visitor. Everyone but Georgie, who was watching the two of them with barely disguised interest.

And then his grandmother was gone, and the room broke into nervous chatter. Rafferty disappeared back into the hallway, out of Georgie’s range of vision. She saw more than he would have liked, but he could only play it as it lay.

It wasn’t until the last guest left that the dam broke.

“Would you believe it?” Liliane said in awe.

“The Dowager Duchess of Ormond visiting us! We’ve come up in the world.

I was afraid they disapproved of the heir’s attentions to you and sent him away, but it must have been a mere coincidence.

Mark my words, she was checking to see if it would be a suitable alliance. ”

“I’m not going to marry him—he’s too much of a boy,” Norah said haughtily.

“We’ll see. He might not be back from his grand tour in time. Still, it’s very encouraging.”

“Not interested,” Norah said sternly. “Let George have him. He’s better than a butler.”

“Stop that at once, Norah,” her mother decreed. “That’s just silliness.”

“Talk to George about it and you’ll see how serious she is.”

Rafferty kept his face impassive when Liliane Manning gave him the receipt for the scones, though he’d had to listen to Bertha’s complaints as she laboriously wrote it out, and then he was out in the crisp fall air, heading for Ormond House for only the second time In fifteen years.

He went to the servants’ entrance, in the unlikely hope he could simply drop off the paper, but he’d forgotten how gossip spread through a household.

The kitchen at the house was positively crammed with servants, from housemaids to footmen to the august butler himself, someone new to Rafferty.

He ignored them all, ready to thrust the paper into the cook’s meaty hand and beat a retreat, when old Robinson the gardener pushed through the crowd of innocent-looking servants, his old eyes full of tears, and Rafferty felt a pang.

“Master Jamie,” he said in a wavery voice. “I thought never to see you again.”

He should have looked at him blankly, denied the name, and escaped. But Robinson had put him on his first pony, had taught him how to whittle, had been his companion in mischief. He was an old man now and the other servants were watching them, hanging on their every word.

“Hello, Robinson,” he said, and an audible sigh filled the room.

“Her Grace will see you now,” the superior-looking butler announced, and Rafferty had no choice. He followed the man from the room, ignoring the excited buzz of conversation when the door closed behind him.

The house had changed little in the ensuing years, but then his grandmother was far from a frivolous creature.

She would see no need to change the drapes or the wall coverings if the current were in good shape, and she was sitting in the small yellow parlor she’d always preferred, where he’d endured lectures on his bad behavior and exquisitely formal teas as she tried to drill some manners into a wild boy.

When the butler pushed open the door and he saw his grandmother in her familiar chair, it felt as if all the years fell away and he was still an obstreperous child, too wild to accept his role in life.

“Thank you, Adams,” her grace said, dismissing the butler. “We’ll have tea in a few minutes.”

A few minutes? How long was she planning on keeping him here, forcing him through the exquisite ritual once more? At least by now he could carry it off without rattling his cup or spilling his tea.

He heard the door close behind him, and took a step forward. “Grandmother,” he greeted her in a low voice.

“You could come and kiss me,” she said with some asperity, and he did so, his lips brushing her papery-thin cheek. His grandmother blinked, as if she had something in her eye, but showed no other reaction.

“Sit down, Jamie,” she said. “You hurt my neck looking up at you. When in the world did you grow so tall? It doesn’t run in our family. Your cousin is not that much taller than your father was.”

He said nothing as he sat gingerly on one of her spindly chairs, having no answer. “Did you tell him?”

“He just left for his grand tour. I’ll tell him when he returns.”

“There’s no need. I don’t intend to make any claim on the family.”

“And what if the family wants to make a claim on you?” she countered.

“It would be foolish. I’m the child of your youngest son, with two uncles and five cousins between me and the title. You don’t need another heir.”

“What if I want one?”

“I don’t belong in this life anymore. It’s been too many years.”

“Are you going to try to convince me you belong as a butler?” she scoffed.

“I’ve done a good job.”

“You’ve been there a week at most. Hardly a proper amount of time to shine in your new profession. What did you do before you fell in with the dreadful Mannings?”

“They’re not dreadful,” he protested instantly. “They’re just foolish.”

“As I said. The mother is an idiot, the older girl, while a great beauty, looks to be a harridan, and I’ve heard stories of the brother’s drunkenness. Only the younger girl seems halfway presentable.”

He resisted the impulse to protest. Neddy was a drunkard, Norah was indeed a harridan, and their mother foolish in the extreme. Trust his grandmother to know quality when she saw it, in Georgie’s presence.

“They’re my responsibility,” he said in a reproving voice.

“They’re beneath you.”

His laugh was sharp and cynical. “I don’t think so.”

“What have you been doing these last fifteen years?” she demanded, changing tack. “Why didn’t you come to see me?”

He ignored the faintly plaintive note in her voice. “I’ve been a sailor, a horse trainer, a highwayman, and a thief,” he said defiantly. “This is the first honest job I’ve held in years.”

She took it all in with no visible response. “How very adventurous of you,” she said. “And did you enjoy it?”

“Yes.”

“Then what made you seek honest work? Or do I already know the answer to that impertinent question?”

“What do you mean?”

“That girl is in love with you.”