She nodded knowingly. “Unless I am mistaken, grooms manage horses and carriages and shopping and umbrellas. What use would I have of a groom in a library?”
“Well,” he began, the word heavy with facetiousness, “if Iknew—”
“Why were you in the dining room?” She’d dropped the paper and glared at him. “Why did you follow us?”
“I—” began Shaw, but he stopped.
She nodded to herself. Direct questions had that effect on all but the most astute liars. He didn’t have the look of a liar, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t another of Girdleston’s puppets. How could she have been so foolish as to accept anything or anyone offered by Titus Girdleston?
“Are you a spy?” she asked casually, returning to the papers. Certainly he behaved less and less like a groom.
“What?”
“You’ve admitted to a new post inside the house, despite your insistence that we regard you as a groom. You’ve tailed me from dinner. And you are still here,in the library,where no groom ever need tread.”
She came to the bottom of the stack and found only markers for gambling debts and bills for hair tonic and snuff boxes.
“Are you suggesting that you could have dragged the duke all this way yourself?” he asked.
“I could have managed. Never let it be said that I am ungrateful for your assistance. Thank you, Mr. Sham.”
“It’sShaw.” A frustrated pause. “Look, sweetheart, I’m here to serve. Whatever you need.” Another pause. “Obviously.”
Helena felt color rise into her cheeks. No servant had ever referred to her as anything but “my lady” or “Lady Helena,” and she’d never been called “sweetheart,” not once. She slid from the desk, twitchy and unsettled. Two parallel bookshelves stretched to the back of the room, and she disappeared between them, studying titles. First insubordination and impertinence and nowsweetheart?
“What’s to be found in the duke’s study?” Shaw asked—same question, new variation. He was definitely a spy. How stupid and careless had she been? Acquiringa spywithin ten minutes of her arrival? She cursed under her breath.
“Can you read, Mr. Shaw?” she asked.
“Yes, I read.” His tone made it obvious that she’d insulted him. She told herself that she didn’t care. She told herself that she would send him away, in earnest this time. She kept walking.
“You’re searching for something?” he guessed.
“I’m searching, and you’re spying,” she said. “How astute we both are.”
“I’m not a spy.”
“No?” she asked. “So you’venotbeen hired by Titus Girdleston to follow, and observe, and report like aspy?”
She reached the end of the shelf—a vast collection on dog breeds and animal husbandry—and turned, disappearing down another cavern of shelves.
“Nope...” He followed her.
“If you are not a spy,” she said, “and you are not a groom—”
“I am a groom.”
She whirled around. “You look nothing like a groom. You’re too large, you show absolutely no deference, and you look ridiculous in livery. No man of your... your... bearing would pursue employment that stipulatedyellow velvet. No groom would stalk me through a library.”
“If you thought I was something other than a groom, then why did you agree to my service?”
Ah, the question of the century, she thought.Second only to,Why am I arguing with you now?
He persisted. “When Girdleston offered, why not refuse?”
She said, “You looked useful.”
“I am useful.”
