“When finally we reached Henrietta Place, Trevor called for the carriage to bypass the front door in favor of the stable. We did this on rainy days if Piety was not with us, because it allowed us to enter the house by this room, rather than tracking mud in through the front door. So the carriage finally came to a stop just there...” Joseph pointed out the door window “...and we splashed through the alley.
“And I’ll never forget, Trevor tucked the leather cover and my paper inside his greatcoat to protect it from the rain. And I thought, ‘He wants it dry to throw it in the fire.’”
“So fatalistic,” Tessa said.
Joseph raised his eyebrows. “I’ve developed a much thicker skin.”
“Yes, I know all about your thick skin,” said Tessa, and she raised an eyebrow.
For half a beat, Joseph lost track of the story. He cocked his head. The atmosphere in the room, the energy in the air, had changed. They hadn’t touched, but something passed between them. A wave, a current. He longed to follow it with his hands.
“Right,” he said slowly, eyeing her.
There was a high shelf lined with hats behind her head, and he leaned forward and grabbed it, propping himself over her. She looked up to see his face.
“We left the carriage,” he repeated, “and stomped through the mud of the alley to this door. When we were inside, I shucked out of my outer coat and stooped immediately, down on one knee. My first duty in this room was always to pull Trevor’s muddy boots from his feet. Later, I would return to clean the leather and polish them. He wouldn’t wear them into the house until I had cared for them. I kept a clean pair here for that very purpose. I’d knelt at his feet and pried his filthy boots a thousand times.
“But this time,” Joseph went on, his voice low, “Trevor said to me, ‘We’re all finished with that, Joe.’”
“He calls you Joe?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“May I call you Joe?”
You may call me whatever you like,he thought, but he said, “Yes. Although I like the way you say ‘Joseph.’”
She blushed. “But what did the earl mean?”
“Well, this is what I asked him. I can still hear my voice asking, ‘What d’you mean?’ And Trevor said, ‘No more pulling my boots. No more cleaning my boots. No more service for you of any kind, ever again.’
“And I was devastated. I was only seventeen, but I struggled to rise from the floor like an old man. I actually thought I might bloody cry. I said, ‘Are you sacking me, my lord?’ Only very rarely did I invoke his title, and when I did then, my voice broke. I was ready to take my treatise and fling it into the mud outside.”
“Oh, Joseph,” Tessa whispered. She raised her small, perfect hand and rested it on his chest. Joseph stared at it. He wanted desperately to take it up and press it against his cheek, to nuzzle her palm, to kiss her fingertips. It had been years since he’d thought of this story, and he was surprised to feel a welling of emotion, almost as raw as that rainy afternoon, years ago.
“His opinion of me,” Joseph said, trying to make her understand, “was so much more important than any other of my ambitions.”
“And what happened?”
Joseph shrugged. “He told me he was terminating my employment. He said no boy with talent equal to mine should be wasted cleaning his boots. He told me Piety would hire someone else to look after him. And then, he told me I should clear out of my room in the servants’ quarters and take a family room on the third floor. He said, ‘You will devote yourself to your studies full time. You will be like a... like an annoying relative who freeloads off of my hospitality and will not leave. Only we both know you are not terribly annoying, and certainly you have earned your place in this house. You’ve been toiling here, largely unpaid, since you were a boy. And that says nothing of the great debt I owe your mother for her years of service to mine.’
“And then, as I was trying to sort through the magnitude of what he’d said, he added, ‘In a year or two, we will send you off to university, so I might as well get used to someone else looking after me now. To break him in.’”
Tears welled in Tessa’s eyes, and she blinked. “But what did you do?”
“I knew Trevor well enough to not belabor the point or overblow the gesture. I said something like, ‘But surely I will pull your boots once more? Now? We’re flooding the boot room. They’re filthy, Trev.’
“And I’ll never forget. He said, ‘No, you won’t. That part of your life is over. Take the paper you’ve written and show it to Piety. Tell her the changes she and I have been planning begin today. She will show you your new room. Supper is at eight o’clock.’
“And then he handed me the treatise and turned away. I did not argue. And I have not worked as a servant since that day.”
Tessa breathed in a hitched breath and wiped a tear from her eye. The hand on his chest curled in slightly, her fingertips digging in to his lapel. He felt her touch all the way to his lungs. He looked from her hand to her.
“It’s hard for me to envision you working as a valet,” she said.
“I preferred ‘man of all work’ at the time, I believe,” he joked.
Tessa held his gaze and then looked bashfully away. She saw a boiler hat hanging beside her on a peg, and she reached out and ran a finger along the smooth bill.
