Tucking her cane under her arm, the countess pulled her gloves on. “Given the significance of the role I’ve assigned, in a household that you’ll not otherwise be required to oversee, you’ll be generously compensated. Shall we say two hundred pounds, Miss Read?”
Merry’s lips parted, but she could not get a proper word out. Two hundred pounds? That was an amount that would have taken her father six years in his role as steward to earn.
“His lordship and I are set to depart within the hour. Given your only recent arrival, I’ve ordered your carriage to depart on the morrow afternoon.” With that decree, the countess sailed over to the door.
She tapped the bottom of her cane against the panel that was nicked and marked with initials and images that Merry and her siblings had left over the years.
Merry rushed over to open the door and then sank into a deep curtsy. “My ladyship,” she murmured.
Without so much as a parting greeting, the countess started down the walkway.
The nearly three-quarters-full moon hung like an orb upon the night sky, bathing the snow-covered path in white so bright it was nearly blinding.
The countess paused in the middle of the snow-covered path. A servant rushed forward to meet her, but she waved the strapping footman off. “Lord and Lady St. Albans,” she said as she turned back to face Merry.
Merry brought her eyebrows together. “My lady?”
“Your siblings had the wrong of it. My son did not stumble into the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge’s, but rather, the Marquess and Marchioness of St. Albans’.”
Oh, bloody hell. Even with the frigid sting of the winter air, Merry felt her entire body go hot. The countess gave her a knowing look.
With that, the regal woman marched off like the queen striding down a red carpet at court. Merry stood there with the door agape, letting all the precious heat slip out, all in the name of deference—until the countess boarded the carriage at the end of the drive. The pink conveyance lurched into motion, and the austere woman was gone.
When Merry closed the door, she turned and found her siblings and mother staring back.
“You’re leaving,” Matilda bemoaned.
“It will only be for a short while,” she promised. “I’ll be home before the holiday festivities even commence.”
Instead of rejoining her earlier pleasures with her siblings, Merry reluctantly quit the main gathering room in exchange for the rooms she’d shared with her sister through the years.
A room she’d spend just one night in before being scuttled off to London to play at the role of decorator for the ungrateful, if generous, Lord and Lady Maldavers.
There was some consolation in knowing that while she worked, she’d be invisible to the lofty Holmans and therefore able to spread holiday cheer throughout their no-doubt cheerless household.
Merry smiled.
Chapter One
Two days later
London, England
Ding-ding-ding.
Lucas Holman, the Viscount Grimslee was dying.
Ding.
There was nothing else for the dull pain threatening to split his skull in two every time that high-pitched chime echoed around his darkened chambers.
Ding.
Despite his prior opinion on the matter, it appeared there was a God, after all, because the infernal chiming stopped.
With a forcible effort, Luke struggled to open his eyes. A welcome inky blackness hung over the room. It was still too much. Sliding his eyes closed, he searched a hand around.
Luke’s fingers connected with the slit in the curtains hanging over his four-poster bed, and with infinitely slow movements, he parted the heavy fabric.
Even that minutest swoosh of the velvet landed like a blow to his head.
Oh, God. His stomach roiled. Death would be preferable to this.
When he trusted he could move without casting up the contents of his stomach, he rolled over and dragged himself to the edge of the mattress. At some point, the fire had died in his hearth, and a chill spread through the room. Even with that, sweat beaded on his brow at the efforts he expended, and he welcomed the cold.
He hovered there, facedown, and promptly fell asleep. His slumber proved all too short.
Ding-ding.
Luke groaned. This was his penance, then.
Ding.
Nay, punishment, for the night spent drinking at his clubs.
Ding-ding.
Somewhere after the fifth peal of the clock, he stopped trying to keep track of that hellish chiming. “I’m going to hack you up and burn you for kindling,” he said, his words muffled by a mouthful of blanket.
Once more, there was a beautiful surcease in that ringing.
So, it was somewhere between five and twelve o’clock. Though whether it was day or night—or even, for that matter, what day it was—was all still a great mystery. Not that it mattered, either way. With the ton having retreated to their country properties for the Christmastide season—his parents fortunately among those numbers—Luke had no responsibilities.
None.
There were no gentlemen with whom to discuss the state of England.
No brothers to see, though they hadn’t been seen since his youngest brother had been accused and, with the help of their other brother, cleared of treason.
And there was no wife. Or betrothed.
There was no Josephine.
His chest spasmed at the reminder that was always near just how badly he’d bumbled, well, everything.
He who, until five months ago, had never so much as had a cravat askew.
For thirty years, he’d made his role as heir to the earldom—and all the estates, wealth, and responsibilities that went with it—his only priority. From the moment he’d left the nursery for the schoolroom, the importance of the Holman name and legacy had been well ingrained into him. And never had he deviated from those commitments. With his head for business, the responsibilities of seeing to the familial finances had fallen to him. A mantle he’d taken on as happily as he had any other before… and after it. Between those efforts and maintaining proper relationships with ranking members of the peerage, there’d been no time for pleasure… until he’d met Miss Josephine Pratt.
She’d been unconventional, spirited, with a head for books, and he’d been alternately horrified and entranced by her. And then had come his brother’s scandal with the Home Office, and it had commanded all of Luke’s energies.
Nay, that wasn’t altogether true. You broke it off with her because you thought it was best to sever all ties with her… for the both of them…
If he could have mustered the energy for a sufficient chuckle without throwing up in his bed, he would have set that cynical mirth free. Instead, Luke managed to lift his right hand in a mock toast to the empty room. “And all in the name of honor,” he whispered into his sheets.
There was a light scratch at the door, because even knocks in the Holman household were delivered with utmost decorum.
Ignoring that irritating rap, Luke stretched both palms out and drew the curtains tightly closed.
They’d go away, because the servants were as loyal as the London day was wet and knew, unless instructions were given, they weren’t to bother a Holman with visitors who’d arrived without an appointment.
Or, they had known.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
“My lord?” His valet’s slightly strident voice stretched through the heavy oak panel.