Clara gave him a narrow-eyed glare, but walked out of the room. Allan dived for his discarded banyan, picked up his nightshirt, and pressed a quick kiss to Mel’s lips. “Not their business,” he assured her, before hurrying off.
Mel had a sibling. She did not doubt that Allan’s brothers would make it their business. So, for that matter, would Harmony. She sighed. There was no point in fretting about thatnow. She needed to wash, dress, and brush her hair. It was growing longer and beginning to curl. It was just as well she no longer had to be a convincing man.
Clara arrived back, as if on cue, while Mel was struggling to do up one of the fashionable dresses that Thomasina and the aunts had decreed for her. This time, she knocked, and only entered when Mel called, “Come.”
“I thought you might need help with your buttons and your hair,” said Clara, as she sailed across the room. “You and Allan, Melody? I thought something was going on. Baldwin thought it unlikely, but there you were.”
“There we were,” Mel agreed.Where are we?They had not discussed it. Mel had set out to have a casual affair. Or, at least, that was what she had told herself. It was a lie, though. Surely her feelings could not have deepened so quickly in fewer than twenty-four hours. She must have been falling in love with Allan almost from their first meeting.
Even if he was dictatorial and annoying.Not really. He just bears the weight of being the first and feeling responsible.
“Is that all you are going to say?” Clara was now making efficient work of threading ribbon through her curls to form a simple but elegant coiffure.
“Yes,” Mel replied. She was a widow. Allan was a widower. They did not need to answer to anyone.
“Very well,” said Clara. “I shall not tease you. There. You are ready for the day. No one would know you spent the night—”
“Clara!”
The other lady grinned and made a motion as sewing her lips together. Mel shook her head and led the way downstairs, and then had to step aside and let Clara show her the way to the servants’ hall.
Allan was there already. Her eyes went to him as soon as she entered the long narrow room—as usual, she realized. Hehad become her lodestar, the point to which she turned at every moment.
He looked around and smiled, though she could have sworn neither she nor Clara had made a noise as they came in. “Mrs. Blackmore, please come and sit down. And Lady Baldwin, too. Please allow me to present my friends. Mrs. Palmer is the cook at Sheppard House, and has always been good to me and my brothers. Jenny is her assistant, and Polly is the head housemaid.”
The three servants bowed in greeting.
Allan explained, “These good people have heard that Isaac and Jerome are now safely beyond the marquess’s reach, and that we are rejecting his control. They wish to help us.”
“There are five more, my lord,” said the cook. “We couldn’t all leave at once, but we shall send the others out on messages this afternoon. To market, and to buy ribbons and furniture polish, and the like. That is, if you want to see them all today.”
Excellent. Who knows more about a household than its maids?Silent, invisible, and ubiquitous, maids saw far more than their masters ever knew. If these eight servants had chosen sides in this silent battle between the brothers and the marquess, the odds had changed decisively, and in Allan’s and his brothers’ favor.
“We do,” Mel said. She sat down at the table, accepted the cup of coffee that Allan handed her, and prepared to milk this new source for every drop of information they could give her.
