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“I prefer a serendipitous amanuensis.” He did, God help him.
Why hire from an agency if you could instead hire from a rose garden?
“Miss Finch,” he said, “the job is yours.”
—
“Pardon!” Nina gasped, twisting away from Mr. De’Ath. “I’ve a midge in my eye.” She clapped a palm to her face. Mercifully, the world went dark. She pressed her eyelids closed, stilling them. She’d been blinking like the blazes.
“Early in the season, isn’t it?” Mr. De’Ath’s drawl sounded humorous. Encouraged by his tone, she lowered her hand, untwisting so she faced him.
Maybe he hadn’t been serious? Surely he wasn’t so eccentric—or guilt-stricken—that he wanted a parlormaid as his secretary?
“Not a midge.” She swallowed. “Dust.” She gave a dusty cough.
His eyes glinted behind his spectacles. His lips curled.
No, he didn’t look serious.
“You can start tomorrow,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ll show you to the gate. If there’s a crush of countesses, we’ll divert to an alternate route.”
He started strolling down the path, back in the direction from which he’d come.
Bloody sodding son of a whoreson’s frog’s bollocks in hell. Jack’s oaths strung together in her mind as she grabbed her valise and darted after him.
Of course, Mr. De’Ath didn’t look serious. Did he ever? He had the devil’s own face for cleverness. Long, wicked lips lazing between a smile and a sneer. Perpetually arched black brows, their slant suggestive of skepticism or mockery. And those quicksilver eyes, their expression keen, and keenly amused, as though he were always glimpsing something in the world that confirmed his sense of the absurd.
Damn bugger blast.
“I’m very grateful.” She caught up with him. “But, you see, it’s impossible. I don’t know anything about the theater or . . .” Her throat clamped down on her voice, and she had to swallow hard.
“Art,” she managed. Drat it all. Did she smell of deceit? She’d been sweating in all this ghastly black wool, and now she felt clamminess beneath her arms, in the crooks of her elbows. Not from the day’s heat, but from her mounting dread.
“It’s what I know that matters.” He glanced down at her. “An amanuensis takes dictation. I speak, you write. You can write?”
“Slowly, though.” She sighed, a regretful sigh, and tried to look dejected. “I couldn’t keep up.”
“You’d improve with practice,” he said comfortably. “Are we settled, then?”
No! She smiled, close-lipped, to keep the cry from slipping out. As a sacked maid, shouldn’t she jump at the opportunity? She needed to act the part. Too much blundering now and he might begin to wonder. Maybe he’d return to the house, inquire after her reference. Maybe he’d read it—two paragraphs singing her praises, signed daintily by Jack, with the name Margaret, Baroness of Cynddylan. Jack had been proud of his handiwork. But maybe Mr. De’Ath kept in his head a list of Welsh peers. Maybe he’d spot the invention. Ask questions. Connect her to the other anomaly he’d glimpsed in the house: Jack’s blasted Rembrandt.
Maybe he suspected her already.
The position he offered was a lure. He planned to reel her in, to catch her.
Her heart hammered.
They were passing out of the rose garden. She looked across the sweeping expanse of grounds. In the distance, the house towered above the lime trees. Tables covered with white linens had been arranged on the lawn. Footmen went back and forth on the ribbon-lined walks, arms loaded with winking silver.
“Good,” said Mr. De’Ath, as if her silence gave confirmation. He drifted under a cherry tree and stopped. She pulled back so she didn’t have to crane to look at him. He was surprisingly tall. Broad through the shoulders.
Nothing about his physical person corresponded with renowned art critic. His proportions seemed unscholarly in the extreme. Shouldn’t he have a stoop? And he was half as old as his intellectual celebrity suggested.
How many times as handsome?
The answer had no relevance. She didn’t give a fig if a man was fizzing, absolutely gorgeous, as her friend Ruby would say. Men were much the same to her.
“What did my brother pay you?” he asked. “I’ll double it.”
