The last thing he wanted now was contact with another human being.
But his right foot did not strike down on the marble floor as expected, propelling his body forward down the hall. Instead, his left arm moved of its own accord and pushed open the library door.
Mr. Grimsby shot from his chair with a start. "Your Grace!"
"I beg your pardon." Ashland gestured with his arm. "Pray be seated. I had no wish to disturb you."
Grimsby's hand dropped to the open volume on the table before him. "I hope I haven't presumed, sir. I was unable to sleep, and thought a little reading might settle my mind."
"My library is at your disposal. Books are meant to be read, after all." Ashland found himself walking into the half-lit gloom, and the two candles on the table wavered in surprise. "Do sit, Mr. Grimsby. I don't stand on ceremony after midnight."
Grimsby dropped into his chair and watched Ashland warily as he strolled to the other side of the room. "Did you have a satisfactory evening, sir?"
Ashland ran his index finger along a row of leather bindings. The titles slid unseen past his eyes. Was that a trace of irony in the tutor's voice? "Not particularly. And you, Mr. Grimsby? You said you were unable to sleep. I hope you're not uncomfortable. You are quite free to change rooms, to order anything you like. We are earnest for you to stay."
"I have hardly yet proved my worth."
Ashland turned and leaned against the shelf behind him. Grimsby sat up straight, shoulders square, chin brave against the candlelight. "At this point, we have little choice. You have us at your mercy, Mr. Grimsby."
"You might wait another year before his lordship sits for his examinations." The brave chin jutted a trifle.
Ashland stifled an admiring smile. He remembered a young trooper once, scarcely eighteen and newly joined, with just such a jutting chin. What had happened to that young man? Ashland didn't want to know. He drew in a long breath, and the scent of the library laid upon his soul, familiar and comforting: leather and lemon oil, dust and wood. "We might. What are you reading, if I may be so vulgar as to ask?" He nodded at the book and crossed his arms.
"A novel, in fact. Miss Brontë."
"Well, well! Making yourself familiar with your surroundings, are you? Though I assure you, life at Ashland isn't nearly so romantic."
"The mood is captured well, however. The bleakness, the grand scale of it."
"My wife read them all constantly, over and over. That's her copy, I expect."
Grimsby made a startled movement, flipping the cover over. His eyes widened at the inscription on the frontispiece. "Oh! I beg your pardon."
"There's no need. It's only a book, after all. Leather and paper." Ashland pushed himself away from the shelf and walked toward the table where Grimsby sat, whiskers twitching with dismay. "I hope my son hasn't impressed you with gothic tales of the family. The duchess's name is not forbidden here." He laid himself into the opposite chair and stretched his legs across the darkened rug.
"It is an awkward subject, however."
"It is simply a fact. The duchess left this house over a decade ago, and we have since reconciled ourselves to the loss." He watched for Grimsby's reaction, but the young man only stared down at the cover of the book, at the small gilt lettering imprinted on the leather. "Are your parents still alive, Mr. Grimsby?" he heard himself ask.
Grimsby looked up at last, his blue eyes solemn behind the sheen of his spectacles. "They are not, Your Grace."
"But you speak of them still, do you not? Time, you see, heals all wounds. Well, not all," he said, lifting his right arm briefly and letting it fall into his lap. "But there's no point in ignoring our misfortunes."
"No, I suppose not."
Ashland leaned forward. The sherry, perhaps, was making him bold. "You're a circumspect fellow, Mr. Grimsby. I own myself curious. Have you nothing to relate about yourself?"
"Nothing to interest Your Grace, I'm certain."
Grimsby's face did not change; his gaze did not waver by so much as a lowered eyelash. But Ashland's finely honed senses came awake. Olympia's words echoed back from a dusty Kashmir road: Beware the man who has nothing at all to say for himself.
The Duke of Olympia, who had dispatched this young man to Ashland Abbey.
Ashland reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced his watch. Only a few minutes past midnight, after all. He replaced the watch, stretched his arms, and rose to his feet. "I believe I shall have a glass of sherry, Mr. Grimsby. Will you join me?"
"No, thank you, sir."
Ashland felt Grimsby's wary eyes follow him once more across the room to the tray of decanters on a little round table near the window. "Come, Mr. Grimsby. I insist. I find a glass sets me up perfectly before bed." He uncorked the crystal decanter with a clink and poured out two glasses.
Grimsby's eyes widened behind his spectacles as Ashland returned, the two glasses held between the fingers of his left hand. "Sir, I . . ."
Ashland set the glasses on the table. The candlelight flashed across the neat snowflake facets on the bowls. "I insist."
Grimsby reached out one delicate hand and picked up a glass.
"A toast, Mr. Grimsby," said Ashland, lifting his own glass and tilting it forward. He ignored the singing of anticipation in his veins. "To a prosperous relationship."
"Indeed, sir." Grimsby clinked Ashland's glass and took a cautious sip.
"Drink up, my good man. It's excellent sherry. I have it brought in directly from Portugal every year."
Grimsby drank again, more deeply. "Yes, very fine."
"You are wrong, you know, Mr. Grimsby. I am, in fact, genuinely interested in you. A young man of obvious intelligence and breeding, to say nothing of self-possession. Why, I find myself asking, would such a promising fellow accept a position of very small importance and remuneration, in such a lonely outpost of the world?" He drank his sherry and stretched out his legs, still encased in their polished leather riding boots, dark with use.
"You are too modest, Your Grace. The salary is more than generous."
"You haven't answered my question."
"Possibly you do not comprehend the limited opportunities available to a man my age, of no practical experience."
"You have the patronage of the Duke of Olympia." Ashland snapped out the words with a trifle more force than he intended. He was woefully out of practice at this. Keep your emotions in check, my boy, came the voice in his head. You are a man of great animal passion; it is both your strength and your weakness.
"Many others enjoy the patronage of the powerful. And after all, I am not particularly ambitious." Grimsby took another sip of sherry, as if to cover a hesitation. "I don't wish to be a man of business, in charge of important affairs. I only want my books, and enough money to keep myself."
"And a wife? Family? You have no desire for these comforts?"
"I . . . I suppose so." A flush rose from beneath Grimsby's whiskers. "One day."
"No inclination at all for female companionship?"
"Not so much as you, it seems."
Ashland had been drinking steadily, and his glass was now empty as he twiddled it between his fingers. "You disapprove of my errand tonight?"
"It is not my place." Grimsby looked down to the book before him and ran his finger along the edge of the binding. "I suppose it's no more than natural for you to . . . for the physical urge . . ."
"I understand you perfectly, Mr. Grimsby. I can only hope word of my appalling licentiousness does not find its way to my friend Olympia's ear. I am afraid he might disapprove."
Grimsby's head shot up. "Of course not, Your Grace! I shouldn't dream of such a thing!"
His tone was so shocked, so full of genuine dismay, so entirely innocent of the irony in Ashland's words, that Ashland found himself poised in the air, vacillating between suspicion and admiration. He said softly, "Then my friend Olympia has merely done me a favor, out of the generosity of his heart, in sending you to me?"
"I . . . I don't believe I understand you, sir."
Ashland stood. His head swam briefly, and righted itself. He placed his empty sherry glass on the table and observed how the candlelight radiated about Grimsby's golden hair like a halo. "Nothing at all, Mr. Grimsby. My intellect is a little disordered tonight, I fear."