“I beg your pardon, my lord,” David interrupted, and saw his lordship’s eyes bulge. “There are a few small matters first. My salary.”
“I told you. A hundred and twenty.”
“Three hundred, my lord.”
Maltravers went a pleasing shade of puce and indicated that he would be consigned to perdition if he’d pay any such sum. David pointed out that the exceptional wage would purchase exceptional services. Lord Maltravers cursed David’s insolence; David bowed and reminded him that he had been approached by other gentlemen who lacked his lordship’s birth but would not have difficulty finding the money. The words Francis Webster did not have to be spoken. Lord Maltravers, trapped between a natural reluctance to do as he was bid and an equally natural disdain to lower himself by haggling, made gobbling noises and informed David that he’d damned well better earn it. “Starting with answering my questions.”
David gave him a wide, toothy smile. “I shall be delighted to assist your lordship as soon as the contract of service is signed.”
He thought Lord Maltravers might strike him. “That is a formality,” his lordship spluttered. “You have my agreement. You need nothing else.”
David let the smile drop away. “I would not dream of contradicting your lordship. Once the contract is signed, I am entirely at your lordship’s service.”
It was a courtship. Women withheld themselves for as long as possible because their power lay in denial. Once a woman gave in to a man’s wants, she had nothing left to bargain with. If she did not have a marriage contract before she gave up her sole advantage, she could be left with nothing at all; if she did, she became subordinate to her new master. This was just the same. Lord Maltravers’s contract would trap David in his service, and he could then avenge the humiliations of this interview at leisure.
His lordship nodded. “Wait here. I’ll have it drawn up.”
“If you wish me to enter your service at once, my lord, may I suggest that I use the time for your benefit?” David had surrendered; time to be humble and eager to please. “Might I take the opportunity to learn the ways of the house from your lordship’s current valet while he is here?”
Lord Maltravers evidently hadn’t considered the man he was about to dismiss on the spot. “Oh yes.” He rang the bell and gave orders for his man of business and for his valet. In a short time, the latter arrived, a man named Standish whom David had met before. Standish’s face tightened at the sight of London’s best-known gentleman’s gentleman.
“You’re dismissed, Standish,” Lord Maltravers said without preamble. “I’ve taken on Cyprian. You’ll show him the…” He waved his hand irritably to indicate a valet’s tasks. “There will be something for you in lieu of notice. Go on.”
Standish bowed. He took David up the stairs to Lord Maltravers’s magnificent chambers, where he shut the door. “Well, thank you very much for that, Mr. Cyprian. Thank you so much for coming in here and losing me my place. I wish you joy of him.”
“Now wait. Is he proposing to turn you off just like that?” David asked. “Mr. Standish, I had no idea—”
“Why, you heard he was the best of masters?” Standish snorted. “Tight-fisted vat of pickled pork rind, he is, and if he wasn’t a duke’s heir, I shouldn’t stay. Not that I’ve the choice now. If I left his service, he’d have me haled back here, he had the law on a footman who’d had enough last year, but if his lordship wishes to break contract, well then.” He sniffed angrily. “I could tell you how his lordship likes things, but it makes no difference, because you’ll never get it right anyway. You want to watch the mornings most. If he’s got a sore head or a sore belly, he’ll throw things. Caught me a nasty one with a snuffbox.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Oh, yes,” Standish said with glee, and proceeded with a litany of abuses and insults that had been heaped on him in Lord Maltravers’s service.
“Well, that sounds…eccentric,” David said as the flow of reminiscence dried to a trickle. “This isn’t what I’m used to, I can tell you. I was very happy with Lord Richard, till he started to poke his nose into politics and employ radical wretches with Bow Street Runners after them and goodness knows who else. Like that Mr. Skelton. You see a lot of him here as well, I suppose.”
David’s reputation for omniscience was a useful thing. Standish didn’t even blink. “The Home Office gentleman? He’s here daily at the moment. If you don’t like politics, you’ve come to the wrong house.”