Page 6 of Who’s That Earl

It wasn’t a question. Briefly, Jane considered ordering Agnes to send the man away instead. To tell him to call again in the morning. Or never. But curiosity burrowed beneath her skin, like one of the dogs nuzzling insistently under her hand to be petted.

“If I must.”

Unwilling to appear disheveled before a stranger—before anyone, really—Jane paused to raise a hand to smooth her hair and then to shake the wrinkles from her skirt. Her efforts earned a sly glance from Agnes, who doubtless saw it as primping before meeting a handsome man. Finally, Jane gathered the wayward papers, depositing them in a neat stack beside the ones pinned to the desktop by her penknife.

With a nod to the housekeeper to precede her, she strode toward the door. Both dogs lifted their heads to watch her go, but neither showed any inclination to follow. No one would ever mistake them for watchdogs.

When she entered the room where the stranger had been left to wait, her first thought was that Agnes might also have mentioned he was tall. Six feet, at least, by Jane’s estimate, and the cavernous Great Hall of Dunnock Castle had a way of making things look smaller than they really were.

Tall and broad. His arms were crossed in front of him, pulling his greatcoat taut across his shoulders as he studied a timeworn tapestry hanging above the hearth—the empty hearth. She did not make a habit of keeping fires burning to welcome guests. Despite the chilly reception, there was something easy, familiar, about his posture. She recognized his type. The sort of man who would sprawl if one offered him a chair. Which she had no intention of doing.

His back was turned to her, so she could assess little more than the cut of his coat—neither new nor fashionable—and its dampness. No coach and six for this gentleman, unless he’d left them in the village and walked.

As she approached, the scuff of her soft-soled shoes across the flagstone seemed not to alert him to her presence. Deep in thought, apparently. Or hard of hearing, like the sexton.

A half-dozen feet away, she stopped and spoke in a ringing voice. “You wished to see me, sir?”

His reaction—the slight lift of his shoulders, the slow turn of his head—hinted more at annoyance than surprise. “There must have been some misunderstanding.” A Scotsman, by his accent, though his brogue was considerably softer than the ones she heard about Dunnock. “I asked to speak with Robin Ratliff’s secretary.”

“And so you are.”

All of Dunnock Castle, the village of Balisaig, even Mr. Canfield, believed Jane to be the famous author’s secretary—though personally she preferred the title of amanuensis.

Ratliff’s genius, as she’d told the skeleton staff of Dunnock, demanded his total seclusion from the world. She managed to avoid questions largely by claiming he was traveling for research, or for pleasure, for months at a time. If anyone interrupted her while she was writing, Jane claimed to be merely copying out the author’s notes.

She’d constructed an elaborate fiction, far more elaborate than the ones printed in cheap duodecimo volumes with Gothic typeface on the title page, the ones that found their way into housemaids’ garrets and respectable drawing rooms alike. Ratliff’s books had made her rich, but posing as Ratliff’s assistant had given her something money and celebrity could not, something more valuable still. Believing her to be little more than a servant, people largely left her in peace.

Well, most people. Beneath her skirts, her toe began to tap as she glared at the stranger’s back. She could see nothing more of his face than the firm edge of a jaw that hadn’t been shaved that morning. His attention was still half-caught by the tapestry, which depicted some long-ago battle, the winning side led by the man who’d first been honored as the Earl of Magnus, so the story went.

“I was referring to Mr. Higginbotham,” he said. How could a man sound both lazy and impatient at once?

“There is no Mr. Higginbotham.” Out of habit, she dropped her gaze to the unrelieved black of her woolen dress and heaved a mournful sigh. “At least, not anymore.”

It was a show of sorrow she had made many times, and always to the purpose. After the initial murmuring of pity, people looked past a respectable widow in her weeds, even a young one. Which was exactly how Jane wanted it.

In truth, there had never been a Mr. Higginbotham. Jane had invented him too: the perfect man, as kind, as gentle, as unlike a Robin Ratliff character, either hero or villain, as she could make him. Most important, he’d been generous enough to leave her with a widow’s independence before she was even of age.

In addition to privacy, the assumed name of Mrs. Higginbotham also provided Jane with an extra measure of protection from anyone who wished her ill—or who would wish her ill, if they knew the truth. A society that frowned on female ambition. That threatening letter writer. Her family.

Not a soul from London to the Scottish Highlands recognized her as—

“Miss Quayle?”

At that, she jerked up her head. She had been so busy schooling her expression into something appropriately doleful, she had not realized the stranger had turned fully to face her. Now that he had doffed his hat, she could see his wavy dark brown hair and the thick brows that framed expressive hazel eyes.

A familiar face, and not only in the sense of easygoing. Known to her. Or at least, known to the woman she had once been.

Bewilderment, surprise, disbelief skated across Lieutenant Thomas Sutherland’s sun-browned features as he took a tentative step toward her, one hand extended. She could almost fancy he had found something for which he’d long been searching and was afraid one false move might drive it away again.

Further evidence that her mind was prone to foolish fancies tonight.

“I have not been addressed by that name for many years,” she said, ignoring the impulse to lay her fingers across his palm, as she had once done so long ago.

Her cool, distant tone seemed to recall him to his purpose. He straightened, dropped his hand to his side, and tucked his hat beneath his arm. “As I said, I have an urgent matter of business to discuss with Mr.—er, with Robin Ratliff’s secretary.”

“Amanuensis,” she swiftly corrected.

“God bless you.”