Lord Copperpot’s Country Estate, October 1814
It hadn’t been much of a feat to get Mr. Broughton to agree to relinquish his position as valet to Lord Copperpot for the foreseeable future.
As Beau had expected, a healthy sum of money and the promise that he would be assured a position in the future was all it took to convince the chap to take an extended holiday. Lord Copperpot, for his part, was only too ready to keep Beau on as his valet. He’d been pleased by his work and probably relished the idea of no longer having to worry about his valet’s sobriety on any given night.
Weeks had passed however, and Beau was slowly going mad. It wasn’t that the work of a valet was too much for him. It was quite routine, actually, once one got used to it. No. His problem with the weeks he’d spent at Lord Copperpot’s estate was the proximity to Marianne. Specifically, the fact that he was in her company quite often, he wanted her as much as he ever had, and he could do nothing about it.
The monotony of his days was broken only by glimpses of Marianne and the letters he received from Kendall. The earl, of course, did not put his address on the letters he wrote, nor did he frank them as he was entitled to do as a member of Parliament. He also didn’t seal them with his crest. Any of those actions would draw too much attention to the correspondence. Instead, Kendall wrote on plain paper, not vellum, and Beau was able to get the letters in the daily post call without any of the other servants at Lord Copperpot’s estate thinking anything was amiss.
Kendall’s letters informed Beau that Kendall and Miss Wharton were to be married in the spring. Seems the earl had, in fact, found the love of his life while posing as a footman at the house party.
Worth, however, was in trouble. According to Kendall, the duke had left the house party after forfeiting the bet, and all he’d done since returning to London was drink too much. Apparently, his mood had further declined a few weeks ago when he’d received the invitation to Lady Julianna Montgomery’s wedding to the Marquess of Murdock.
Worthington was in love with Lady Julianna. The fool always had been, but the day that Beau went out to the stables at Clayton’s house party and attempted to tell the sop as much, the duke had steadfastly refused to listen. Stubborn arse. Now Beau was hours away in Guildford, completely unable to deliver one of his famous speeches to get Worth to see reason. Kendall would have to help Worth in his time of need.
Thankfully, Kendall reported that hehadtasked himself with ensuring that Worth didn’t drink himself into an early grave, while listening to story after story about the lovely Lady Julianna.
When he wasn’t thinking about his lovesick friend, or obsessing over the identity of the traitor, Beau had plenty of time to think about Marianne. He saw her daily. Their paths crossed several times a day, actually, given the fact that Lord and Lady Copperpot occupied bedchambers with adjoining doors. He often saw her in the corridor as they were both exiting the rooms.
Lady Wilhelmina’s bedchamber was just across the hall from her parents’ rooms, and if Marianne wasn’t coming out of Lady Copperpot’s bedchamber, where she helped with duties since Mrs. Wimbley’s health continued to be spotty, Marianne was coming or going from the younger woman’s bedchamber.
Beau always nodded to Marianne in way of greeting. At times, one of them would actually say a couple of words such as, “Good afternoon.” But for the most part, they acted as if they barely knew each other. They certainly didn’t act as if they’d ever spent three passionate nights in each other’s arms.
For her part, Marianne appeared to have no problem whatsoever with their agreement to keep their hands off of one another while they worked toward discovering the traitor. The two of them met briefly once a week to compare notes. They’d fallen into it quite casually. It was usually done on Monday mornings.
After seeing to Lady Wilhelmina’s clothing before she went down to the servants’ dining room, Marianne would exit the young woman’s bedchamber at half past eight. Near this same time, Beau would ensure he finished laying out his lordship’s clothing for whatever outing or event Lord Copperpot had planned for the late morning. He would exit his lordship’s bedchamber and meet Marianne in the stairwell of the servant’s staircase at the far end of the hall, much as they had done at Clayton’s estate.
They spent no more than five minutes together at these meetings. And Beau would pretend the entire time that the scent of her hair didn’t make him want to pull it down from its pins so that he might run his fingers through it. He pretended that the sight of the freckles along the bridge of her nose didn’t make him want to kiss each one of them individually. And he further pretended that the mere proximity to her didn’t make him hard. But all of these things were true, and they were slowly driving him mad.
Their time together in the staircase was brief mainly because there wasn’t much to report. Beau had long ago become convinced that Lord Copperpot wasn’t the culprit. During his weeks at the estate, Beau had managed to ask all of Copperpot’s likely servants if they could write, and had invented excuses to see their handwriting. None of it matched the Bidassoa traitor’s letter.
Beau’s weekly check-ins with Marianne usually consisted of both of them saying they had nothing new to report and then nodding primly toward each other, while one of them went up the stairs and the other went down. The entire unsatisfying routine made Beau want to punch his fist through the wall each time it was over.
In fact, the only progress they’d made in the traitor investigation to date was the bland discovery of what the three noblemen had been discussing in the study at Clayton’s house.
The Home Office had intercepted some correspondence between Lord Copperpot, Lord Hightower, and Lord Cunningham sent after the house party, which indicated the three men were planning…a ball. A bloody party, of all things. Nothing clandestine. Nothing suspicious. And when Beau replayed through his mind the bits and pieces of the conversation that he’d heard at Clayton’s house, he realized that that’s exactly what he’d been listening to. Three fathers planning a shared ball for their unbetrothed daughters.
Lord Copperpot’s London residence was set to be the location of the ball, scheduled for the evening of the fourteenth of October. And the Home Office had made it quite clear to Beau and Marianne that they were expected to remain at Copperpot’s estate in the meantime, then go to London for the ball with the family and investigate further.
After nearly two torturous months at Lord Copperpot’s estate, they were all set to travel to London tomorrow, two days prior to the ball. Beau had already devised a way to travel in a coach with Marianne, alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Bright and early the next morning, Marianne settled into the servants’ coach and waited for the other maids to join her. When nearly half an hour had passed, and she was still alone, she began to wonder what was keeping them.
As the coach began to roll forward, she was about to pop her head out of the window and call to the coachman to wait for the other maids, but then the door opened and Beau jumped inside.
He landed on the seat opposite her with a huge grin on his face and dusted off his jacket, easy as you please.
She blinked at him. “What are you doing? Where are Miss Harper and Mrs. Wimbley?”
Beau leaned to the side of the seat and braced an elbow against the squabs. “I convinced them to ride with the footmen.”
“With the footmen? That’s not proper.” Marianne frowned at him.
“Perhaps not, but the money I gave them made it worth their risk.”
Marianne folded her arms over her chest. “You think you can just pay off any poor servant and get what you want, don’t you?”
