Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Page 3

  ‘Would you rather that I came in the house and sat with you? Your brother might think it was improper. But if you prefer it...’ His expression was innocent to the point of earnestness, but there was a glint in his eyes that said he knew how totally ridiculous the suggestion was and had only said it to torment her.

  ‘I would prefer that you just go away,’ she said, exasperated. ‘I take no pleasure in being confined in my own home. I have done nothing to deserve such punishment.’ He was new to the household. Lord knew what Hugh had told him about her. Perhaps it was still possible to make him understand. ‘You may think that you have been brought here to prevent an unfortunate marriage. But, in truth, it does not matter who I might form an attachment to. My brother means to keep me a spinster for no logical reason and denies me contact with society or anyone who might help me escape him.’

  At this, Mr Solomon shrugged, and all insolence disappeared. He became the loyal servant she should have known he was. ‘If he is your guardian, that is for him to decide.’

  ‘But you do not have to take part in the injustice,’ she replied. ‘If you were a decent man, you would not take a job such as this.’

  He shrugged again. ‘If I were a man of independent means, like the men in your family, I would not have to work at all. But it might surprise you to learn that the majority of the people in England cannot afford to be particular when employment is offered to them, especially when it is something as sensible as preventing a wilful young lady from doing herself harm.’

  She could not help a small gasp of shock. He might smile at her as if he were a gentleman talking to a lady, but he was not of her class. And there was an underlying bitterness in his words that announced her rank would earn her no sympathy with him. ‘Your need of employment does not make my brother’s treatment of me any more just,’ she said, knowing that right and wrong did not matter to a man with bills to pay. ‘As I said before, I have done nothing to deserve this confinement.’

  ‘And as I have said before, it is no concern of mine.’ He sighed in frustration, but his smile, which now seemed cold and professional, did not waver.

  ‘This is why I did not bother to speak to the men who guarded me before,’ she said, giving him a mocking imitation of his smile. ‘There is no mercy to be had from someone who has been bought and paid for by a murderer. But, as you say, that is no concern of yours. I suppose I should be content with my lot. If he wanted me dead, I’d be gone by now.’ She gave him a thoughtful look. ‘You, however? I hope for your sake that he does nothing more serious than sack you, should I manage to escape.’

  Then, before he could frame a retort, she turned on her heel and went back to the house.

  * * *

  Michael let out a slow breath as he watched Lady Olivia Bethune walking away from him. Stalking would be a more accurate description of her gait, but proper ladies did not stomp their feet, no matter how angry one made them. He had enraged her by playing the fool and it had given him great pleasure to do so.

  It had offended her that he could sit comfortably in her garden while doing the job he had been hired for. She was probably the sort that reminded her servants of their place by forcing them to look busy, even if there was nothing to do. If he had not provoked her by his actions, she would not have spoken to him at all. She had all but admitted that her previous guards were far beneath her notice.

  That made her parting words confusing. They had sounded like a warning to beware of her brother. It seemed she believed him a murderer, just as the rest of London did. If his own sister did not trust him, it confirmed the truth of the story, for who would know better than a member of the family?

  In the brief interview he’d had with the Duke, Scofield had seemed cold-blooded but not homicidal. Michael had worked for murderers before, and they’d gone out of their way to appear innocent. But Scofield behaved as most peers did, as if it did not matter one way or another what people thought of him.

  Nor had he shown any obvious signs of insanity. This was some comfort, at least. Though Michael had worked for mad men before, he hadn’t particularly enjoyed it. They were notoriously unreliable, with a tendency to lose all reason just before the final cheque had cleared. But Scofield’s voice had been steady and his eyes as clear as ice in December.

  The only thing that seemed mad was his obsession with keeping his sister from mixing with strangers. He had presented it as a problem with a single inappropriate suitor. But she seemed to see herself as a victim of unjust incarceration.

  If it was just a melodramatic attempt to gain his sympathy and turn him against his employer, it would not work. It was a shame to be on the wrong side of such an attractive young lady, but business was business. Despite what his mother might think, he was not being paid to flirt with the gentry, or to allow the gentry to flirt with him.

  But it would have taken more strength than he had to look at Lady Olivia and not consider the possibility of a flirtation. Her eyes sparkled with intelligence but were the smoky blue-grey of clouds that seemed to hide her true thoughts as she’d stared at him. And though she wore her smooth blonde hair in a tight knot, he was sure that it would run through his fingers like silk, should he pull it free of its pins. Her body was a marvel of lush curves held in check by firm stays and a modest but expensive gown.

  She was the picture of restraint, but he could see the fire burning in her, a passionate nature that must have alarmed her brother and caused his extreme strictures on her. She might pretend to be innocent, but she liked to sneak out of the house for liaisons with a man who was not yet her husband. If she would not protect her honour, someone must.

  Was it only the one man, he wondered, or was this Clement fellow the last in a long line of indiscretions? His mind strayed for a moment, imagining her, bare in the moonlight, lips parted and arms open in invitation.

  He closed his eyes tight against the fantasy. It did not matter how many men she might have known. She had made it clear enough just now that she had no interest in him as a man. It was not some mystical attraction that had drawn her to his side today. It was an upper class need to lecture an underling who appeared to be loafing on the job.

  She was very nearly of age. If his job lasted more than a few months, he would be trying to contain a woman who had a legal right to choose her own husband. But even if he had the stupidity to offer for her, she would not be marrying him.

  She would end up marrying someone very like the man she had chosen for herself. Mr Alister Clement had ample money and was from a decent family. He was even a member of the same club as Scofield and, though he had no title, he was welcome in the same social circles. If Michael had had a sister, Clement was exactly the sort of man he’d want to marry her—stable, responsible and pleasant.

  And since Michael’s imaginary sister would likely be as illegitimate as he was, the proper Mr Clement would never offer anything so respectable as marriage. It made Michael hate the fellow just a bit more.

  It also made him doubly glad that he was his mother’s only son, for he did not want to see family behaving as foolishly as Olivia Bethune was, imagining herself in love when she just wanted to run away from home with the first man who would take her.

  Of course, her brother was likely a mad killer. If the man’s own sister did not trust him, then she was smart to want to get away from Scofield. And if Michael discovered that her view of the situation was the right one...

  He leaned back against the tree and tipped his hat back over his eyes. He would decide what to do if and when that moment came. In the meantime, he would do his job, just as he had promised, and make sure that Lady Olivia stayed where she was.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The last few days before the elopement seemed to crawl by in a blur of interminable hours and sleepless nights spent wondering if her escape might truly succeed. Liv avoided her brother as much as possible, sure that a chance word or glance would give aw
ay her intentions.

  She also made no further visits to her new nemesis, Mr Solomon. Now that she had discovered who he was, she intended to ignore him, just as she had her other guards. She did not want to give him the impression that she welcomed the familiar way he spoke to her, or the smug way he smiled when he looked at her.

  But she could not help sneaking glances out through the back windows of the house to see if he was still in the garden. It did not help that her bedroom, the morning room and all of her favourite rooms of the house faced the garden, or that it had always given her pleasure to be either in that space or gazing out at it. He was not like the previous watchmen, who had made every effort to be discreetly out of the way. Mr Solomon refused to be forgotten.

  When she looked in the garden, sometimes he was there, other times not. She could find no discernible pattern to his schedule. It left her wondering where he might be when she could not see him. Was he at the front of the house? Inside it? Was he actually gone? Or was he standing right behind her?

  Without intending to, she turned suddenly to look. Of course, she found nothing. She was quite alone. But in her imagination, she heard him chuckling in triumph. He had displayed such insufferable overconfidence when they’d spoken that he was probably still patting himself on the back over it, imagining her starting at shadows and brooding on their next meeting.

  Thank the Lord, she would soon be seeing Alister, her comforting, predictable friend. He would take her away from this stifling house and she would never have to see Michael Solomon again. Strangely, the idea was not as exciting as it should have been. A part of her wished that he was in the garden right now, so she might go out and taunt him a bit before escaping triumphantly from his clutches.

  The thought made her smile. She elaborated on it in her mind as she filled the basket on her bed with spare chemises and stockings, a journal and the string of pearls her mother had given her that she could not bear to leave behind. She was going to escape. For the rest of his life, Michael Solomon would obsess over her. She would be ever-present in his thoughts, the only woman who had bested him. Perhaps he would sigh, a trifle wistfully, that there had not been more between them.

  She picked up the basket and walked to the kitchen, silently agreeing with him. It was a shame that they could not have spent more time together. Under other circumstances, they might have been friends. She would have enjoyed his banter had she met him at a dinner party and thought it more flirtatious than insulting. It had been a long time since a handsome man had got close enough to her to converse at all, much less tease her as audaciously as Mr Solomon had.

  If Alister had a fault, it was that he was too plain-spoken and agreeable. He did not bother to toy with her when they conversed. He said his piece and she approved of it because he was a very sensible man. They talked about things, or rather he talked and she listened and nodded. But that was not quite so stimulating as having a discussion.

  It was probably because their visits had been shortened by her brother’s interference. Once they were married, there would be all the time in the world to converse and debate if they wished to. She smiled, imagining the marriage they would have. They would chat amicably over dinner, for they never argued. And soon the house would be filled with the laughter of children. It would be nothing like the silent tomb of the house she shared with her brother.

  Now, she had arrived in the kitchen. And as they did for her each week, the cook and her helpers had prepared a table full of baskets to take to the widows and orphans. Liv slipped her own basket onto the table beside them and looked up to see Michael Solomon standing on the other side, a heavily buttered slice of bread in his hand.

  For a moment she could say nothing at all and had to resist the urge to snatch her own basket back before he lifted the cloth covering to see that it was full of ladies undergarments. Then she managed, ‘What are you doing here?’ The words came out in a high-pitched squeak and were the very opposite of the sound one wanted to make when one was totally innocent of mischief.

  ‘I am trying to be of help,’ he said with a benign smile, taking a bite of his buttered bread and backing into the path of a kitchen maid, as if to prove how utterly useless he had been so far. ‘If we are to go out together, you cannot be expected to carry all of the baskets.’

  ‘The footmen will carry them to the coach, just as they always do,’ she said, then added, ‘and we are not going out together. I am going with my maid, just as I always do.’ Of course, it would mean going back upstairs and convincing her maid that her services were needed, after all. Today, she had taken great pains to convince the girl that no one would mind if she took the whole morning to nap and not just doze during the rides between carriage stops.

  ‘It is of no matter to me whether the maid comes or not,’ Mr Solomon said, still smiling. ‘The more the merrier.’

  ‘It is not a question of whether or not she is needed,’ Liv snapped. ‘You are the one who is the interloper.’

  Now, his smile was sympathetic. ‘Then I will have to become accustomed to your dislike. For I am coming along, Lady Olivia. If it makes you feel better, I will ride on the seat with the driver.’

  She gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Do as you please, since it is apparent that I cannot stop you.’

  He nodded happily. ‘At last, we understand each other.’ Then he gathered two baskets in each hand and walked out through the back door and around the corner of the house towards the waiting carriage.

  The ride to the first stop was uneventful, as it usually was. The main difference came when they stopped and Mr Solomon jumped down from the driver’s seat, taking the basket from her and walking behind her up the narrow stairs that led to the first widow’s flat.

  Liv was greeted with the same respect as always, along with a soupçon of curiosity directed at the unliveried man accompanying her.

  She introduced him as an employee of her brother’s. That statement would have been just as true of a footman. But it was clear, with Mr Solomon’s charming smile and gentlemanly manners, that he was something more than a mere servant. The widows and grandmothers and impoverished maiden aunts they saw at each stop stared at him as Mrs Wilson did at her bag of boiled sweets, like a thing that could be savoured during the lonely evenings ahead.

  In turn, he smiled back at them as if he was meeting the patronesses of Almack’s, honoured to make their acquaintance and mindful of the time they spared from their busy day to take the baskets from him. He joked and they giggled like schoolgirls. He complimented and they blushed. They took no offence when he compared them to his own sainted mother, a handsome woman who was still very much in her prime.

  Liv watched in silence, with a grudging respect for him. Though the initial plan in making these visits had been to meet with Alister, she felt a genuine concern for the ladies she visited. She could detect nothing false in Mr Solomon’s treatment of them, and it was clear that they were enjoying themselves more than usual. Since they experienced very little in the way of happiness, she could not begrudge them this, even though it came from a source she did not appreciate.

  But now they were coming to the last stop, and she was left with a dilemma. She doubted that she could convince him to stay with the carriage as she did her maid, for he showed none of the maid’s usual signs of fatigue. But she had to make some effort to prevent him charging up the final set of stairs or he would ruin today’s plan and prevent any future visits with Alister.

  She racked her brain as the carriage came ever closer to their final destination, where her unsuspecting fiancé was waiting to take her away. There was no way to warn him of what was coming.

  When the carriage slowed to a stop in front of Mrs Wilson’s building, she leaned out of the window to announce to the footman that she was feeling far too tired to continue and requested that they start for home. But Mr Solomon had already hopped down from the driver’s seat and was opening the door.
‘Do not be faint of heart, Lady Olivia. I will help you up the stairs and carry your burden. You cannot leave a poor widow untended. And you have been doing such good work today. I am proud to be associated with you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said irritably, handing him the basket. It was no comfort that she had his good opinion, for that would change as soon as they entered the last building.

  ‘Are you not going to take the last basket as well?’ he asked, pointing to the one she had prepared for her elopement.

  ‘I do not think it will be necessary,’ she said. Perhaps it would be possible for Alister to overpower him. Then they could run for the back door. But Alister was not the sort to solve problems with brute force, and there was something about the set of Mr Solomon’s shoulders that hinted he was quite capable of handling himself in a fight.

  ‘Are you not bored with these endless stops?’ she enquired, offering him a sympathetic smile.

  ‘They are not endless,’ he said. ‘This is the last. But, even if it was not, I have been having a delightful time, and have the strength for as many more widows as you can produce.’ He gestured towards the house with his free hand. ‘Lead on, my lady. I am yours to command.’ This was in no way true, for he continued to refuse any direction that would make him stay with the carriage.

  ‘I am quite capable of managing the last one myself,’ she said. ‘Mrs Wilson is very shy of strangers and might not welcome you.’

  ‘I shall be on my best behaviour,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘I hate to put you to the trouble. It is really not necessary for you to accompany me to every stop,’ she added, pulling on the basket he was carrying.

  ‘On the contrary, I think it is.’ He released the basket to her so suddenly the possession of it threw her off-balance. Then he preceded her up the stairs.