Page 30 of Better Off Wed

Instead, she was trapped in this bedchamber, left to hope that Jeremy was the man her imagination had painted him to be.

Chapter 9

Like the blue bedchamber, the library was paneled with warm wood and darkly furnished, making the large space feel cozier than it was. After several hours striding through the cold, damp woods in Thornton’s uncongenial company, with absolutely no interest in whatever prey they were meant to be stalking, and no desire to shoot it should it be cornered or made to take flight, Jeremy had been grateful when his host had called for them to return to the house, and even more grateful when he ordered a fire to be lit.

But when a maid arrived to light it, rather than a footman, he instantly wished he had told Thornton not to bother. His own comfort was nothing. The stout, brown-haired girl cut a wide berth around the earl as she crossed to the hearth, he noted. But not wide enough to keep Thornton from casting an assessing eye over her backside when she bent to her work.

Jeremy stood. “Tell me about this,” he asked Thornton, gesturing toward the nearest item to hand.

Thornton dragged his attention from the maid’s figure to his desktop. “The inkwell?”

Only now did Jeremy look where he had pointed. An inkwell? Good God, the thing looked very little different from what might be purchased in any stationer’s shop. “Er…yes?”

Thornton approached the desk, his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat, the maid at least momentarily forgotten. “You have a good eye, Sterling. That was used by one of Charles the Second’s mistresses to pen some rather daring love poems—I won it in a hand of cards, from a chap who claimed to be descended from the woman’s cousin.”

“Fascinating piece,” Jeremy said, hoping his tone did not betray his skepticism. Then again, Thornton struck him as too avaricious to be easily taken in. He remembered what Laura had said about having tried twice before to trick the man into giving up something of value. Looking about the study, he understood now that the problem was made more complex by the sheer number of valuables in Thornton’s possession—which was an item he could not bear to part with? Which was an item he wanted no one to connect with him?

The maid had completed her task and very nearly managed to escape the room when Thornton turned and pinned her with a glance. “You’re new here.”

The girl sank into a curtsy and looked as if she wished she could go right on sinking, through the floor. “Aye, milord. Dora Pratt, milord. Mrs. Tenney hired me last Lady Day, on my sister Dinah’s word.”

“Pratt…Pratt…” He readily took the opportunity to look her up and down again as he mulled the name. “The butcher’s girls?”

An almost imperceptible nod.

“Have Mrs. Tenney send up coffee,” he ordered and turned back toward the desk.

Every butcher Jeremy had ever seen had arms like anvils. He wondered whether the image of such a man, the idea of what the girl’s father might feel should he discover how Thornton had looked at her, had given Thornton pause. But of course, the girl’s treatment ought not to hinge on the existence of male relations, just as Laura had pointed out. And either way, the earl had power far beyond fisticuffs. As if to prove it, Jeremy heard him murmuring “Dora” under his breath, committing the name to memory.

Cataloging another treasure.

Thornton was a product and a creature of the world of men: a fair shot, a gossip (so long as that gossip could be passed off as politics), and a braggart. He knew he could do and say as he pleased, and he spared little thought for others who were not similarly situated.

Under the best of circumstances, Jeremy would’ve found the man’s company boring. Under the present circumstances…well, he had bitten his tongue and unclenched his fists more times today than he could count, trying to remember that he was meant to be working his way into Thornton’s confidence.

Despite the morning’s unpleasantness, however, Jeremy had been glad of an excuse to go out and clear his head. Waking with Laura snuggled up against his shoulder, her unruly golden curls tickling his cheek, had been…overwhelming. So he had slipped out of bed, found his freshly polished boots waiting outside the door, and gone downstairs, not sure of what he sought, only knowing that he did not dare hope to find it in Thornton Hall’s blue bedchamber.

You are mad, he’d told her. But he’d gone along with her scheme last night, nonetheless.

He wouldn’t abandon it now, no matter how distasteful he found Thornton.

“Do you mind if I have a look around?” Jeremy asked.

The words startled Thornton from his reverie, and he grunted his assent as he began to shuffle through a large pile of correspondence.

As he wandered around the library, Jeremy took in the expected items: antique furniture, artwork, books by the hundreds on every subject imaginable. He also saw a number of objects that raised his eyebrows and sent his thoughts skittering off in untoward directions. Paintings that looked perfectly unexceptional…until he tilted his head at a particular angle. Marble statuary that rightfully belonged in some far-off temple to a pagan goddess—of fertility, if the bosomy curves and jutting phalluses were anything to judge by. Metal and jade pieces about whose function he did not intend to hazard a guess.

Since the man obviously entertained guests in this room, at least on occasion, one might think he would have qualms about some of the pieces on prominent display—if he were the sort of man capable of feeling shame. Laura had expressed her doubts on that point, and Jeremy was increasingly inclined to agree with her.

He strolled onward, careful not to indicate any special interest by pausing in one place too long. Thornton continued with his correspondence, pausing to peruse the occasional letter, flicking most of them aside half unread.

His back was to the door, so he did not see the maid return, tray in hand. Fully absorbed by the contents of the last letter he had opened, he did not hear Dora’s silent footsteps across the thick carpet. “Coffee, milord,” she said as she moved to place the laden tray on one corner of the desk.

“Bloody hell,” the earl cried in surprise, his obvious displeasure making Dora flinch. The tray wobbled in her hands. From halfway across the room, Jeremy watched the event unfold as the silver urn tipped and coffee sloshed across the desktop.

Jeremy hurried forward as a furious Thornton shouted, “You clumsy c—”

“An accident, clearly,” Jeremy said, momentarily forgetting his part and speaking across whatever horrible aspersion Thornton had been about to cast on the frightened girl. Calmly he righted the urn, and with his handkerchief, he began to mop up the spilled coffee.