Situations at Marchmont House were highly paid and of high status. One couldn’t hope to do as well elsewhere. Furthermore, one mightn’t find any work anywhere else, because Harrison let offending servants go without a character. A servant who hadn’t a letter of recommendation was unlikely to find another good position. Too, Harrison could be vindictive, spreading poison about those he’d dismissed. No one within ten miles of London would hire them for even the most menial positions.
“He was a bully, as I knew,” Zoe said after the last of the servants, a scullery maid, had left the study.
“I didn’t,” Marchmont said. “I never noticed anything amiss. I had no idea that most of my servants lived in fear of him. Even if I had noticed, I probably would have thought that was as it ought to be. But fear and respect are not the same thing. Gad, Zoe, what a mess.”
He got up and walked to the fire and gazed into the grate, his hands clasped behind him.
It was the way her father so often stood, thinking as he stared into the fire.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You trusted these people and they betrayed your trust.”
He shook his head. “Not everyone can resist temptation. If I had taken responsibility, they wouldn’t have been tempted. I set a bad example. I was not the master of the house. Someone had to be. And it’s too tempting, when one has great power, to abuse it.” He turned back to her. “What would happen in the harem, in such a case? Off with their heads?”
She nodded. “No one would care whether they were truly innocent or guilty.”
“I know I ought to have the lot of them—Harrison, Cook, Dove, Dunstan, Hoare—taken up and prosecuted. But they’ll hang—and then I’ll always wonder whether, if I’d behaved differently, none of this would have happened.”
“If Harrison and the housekeeper have any sense, they’ll be on their way out of the country by this time,” Zoe said. “It doesn’t seem fair that they should escape and the others hang.”
“The others are equally guilty. We can add to that the crime of stupidity for lingering in the house a minute after you’d opened the ledgers.” He still studied the burning coals.
“It wouldn’t be the first time servants have underestimated my obstinacy,” Zoe said. “When you came to the library last night and told me to come to bed, I wanted to. I wanted us to kiss and make up. I didn’t want to keep staring at those columns of numbers. You know I never liked sums.”
“I know.”
“But I’m like the dog with the bone. As soon as I saw something wasn’t right, it became a challenge, to find out exactly what was wrong and how and where. It was the same in the harem. If I weren’t so obstinate, I should never have got away. But I was determined to master the place. And because I mastered it, when the time came, I found the way out.”
“Oh, Zoe.” He turned to look at her, but she didn’t need to read his face. She heard it all in his anguished voice. She went to him. It was instinctive. She put her arms around him, the way she’d done this morning, because she loved him—she couldn’t help it—and she wanted him to be happy.
His arms went around her, the way they’d done this morning, warm and strong and reassuring. He kissed the top of her head, and the tenderness of that small touch made her heart ache.
“Your mother and father never gave up hope, but I did,” he said tightly. “I gave up on you, on everything. You never gave up.”
“I’m stubborn,” she murmured against his chest.
“Don’t give up on me, Zoe Octavia. Don’t ever give up on me.”
“I won’t,” she said.
AndNo,I won’t, she thought.I’m afraid I never will.
Fifteen
Only a few short weeks ago, the Duke of Marchmont couldn’t be bothered to decide which waistcoat to wear.
Now he found himself holding the power of life and death over his felonious servants.
He had to make a decision, and he had to do it quickly. Dove, Hoare, and Cook were locked in Harrison’s parlor, guarded by an army of footmen and maidservants.
Marchmont wanted to seek Lexham’s advice, but that seemed like passing off responsibility.
He wanted to seek Zoe’s advice, but that would be cheating, too.
He sent Osgood and Zoe out of the study.
He paced. He stared into the fire the way Lexham always did, hoping to find the answers there, as Lexham so often seemed to do. The coals produced only the usual glow and heat, smoke and ashes. They offered no solutions.
Finally he returned to the writing table, where he’d laid out the various pieces of evidence. He looked at Harrison’s records. He looked at Osgood’s. He skimmed the diaries. He traced the expenditures. Osgood’s accounts included a great many wagers. The totals the duke had lost must easily match, if not surpass, the servants’ pilfering, outrageous as it was.
