“I require coffee after my exertions,” Braydon said, “and relief from rooms like this. We’ll enjoy it in my quarters.”
They returned to the staircase, and Kitty let Sillikin make her own way down, claws clicking on slippery marble. She’d have a carpet laid there, but that wouldn’t remove the sensation of entering a snow-palace stage or the presence of an invisible and hostile audience.
It was a relief to leave the hall toward the back and enter a part of the house with wooden floors and brown wainscoted walls. Not summer, but perhaps a dull autumn.
They passed the door Braydon had mentioned—the back door through which people could enter on business. People like his estate steward, she supposed, and perhaps his head groom and gardener. How many servants did he—did they—employ in total? An alarming number, she was sure.
A short corridor held three doors, and the first was open to show a young man at a desk covered with books and papers.
“My secretary, my dear. Worseley.” The man standing was surprisingly young for such a post and even blushed a little as he bowed. “Any discoveries today?” Braydon asked, then turned to Kitty. “As I said, I found the viscountcy’s minor papers in disorder. Worseley attempts order—in his idle moments.”
The young man smiled at the wry comment. “I’ve assembled and annotated the records to do with the Lincolnshire estate, sir. The one the dowager Lady Dauntry brought into the marriage. All seems in order now, and there’s reason for the lack of income.”
“That being?”
“It’s a mere remnant, sir. A house and garden.”
“Ah. Perhaps those details were obscured on purpose. What an excellent fellow you are.”
Worseley blushed with pleasure. Here was a different Braydon. He was almost playful, but there could be no doubt who was lord and master.
Of course, he’d been an officer in the army, and good officers knew how to bring out the best in their men. She tended to forget Braydon’s past because the soldiering didn’t show through the gloss. She found it impossible to imagine him muddy and tattered, even in the heat of battle.
He showed her the next room, which had glass-doored shelves packed with ledgers, folders, and document boxes. “The muniment room. Most of the important and current estate papers were properly kept. It’s only the more personal papers that are out of order. On to my inner sanctum.”
They entered, and Sillikin explored while Kitty assessed it by eye. It was a room much like his bedroom, and designed more for comfort than work. The pedestal desk, even holding neat piles of documents, seemed subordinate to a thick carpet, a large fire, and two very comfortably upholstered chairs by the fireside.
Kitty smiled. “I sense the fifth viscount overlaid by the sixth.”
“Sounds deuced odd.”
She was startled into a laugh. “I mean that your predecessor used this as his haven, not for work, and probably spent most of his time in one of the chairs. Who used the other?”
Sillikin abandoned hope of treasure and flopped down in front of the fire.
“I don’t know,” Braydon said, “but the one on the left is significantly less worn. The overlay?”
Kitty considered. “The desk gives off an aura of hard work—that’s you—and that cabinet is out of place.” She indicated the glossy black cabinet whose doors weredecorated with inlaid wood and mother-of-pearl. It was about five feet high. “You had it moved in here to hold more business papers than he ever bothered with.”
“You’re very shrewd.”
She didn’t like his tone. “At least you added the D.”
“I’ve seen no sign of shrewishness.”
“That’s because you haven’t crossed me yet.”
“Perhaps I should practice taming.”
“I recommend not!”
“You, my lady, are a shrew after all.”
“A word applied to any woman who speaks her mind.”
“Only when the mind is fierce.”
“And is there anythingwrongwith fierceness?”
