“She is a child,” she said. “My greatest delight is in seeing her smile and hearing her laugh.”
“Are those skills you can teach, Miss Hamilton?” he asked. “I have never seen or heard you do either.”
“I can give her my full attention,” she said, “and praise where it is due and encouragement when praise would be inappropriate. And I can give her enough freedom so that she will feel like a child.”
He searched her eyes with his so that she felt breathless, and resisted the temptation to panic. She wished she had taken a step back from him when she had first risen from the stool and it would have seemed more natural to do so than to do it now. She felt strangely that she could be scorched by the heat from his body, even though he stood several feet away. His face was too close, as close as it was in all her nightmares, bent over her naked body.
“Your working day is at an end, ma’am,” he said. His voice had changed in tone. It was cold, cynical. “You are dismissed. I shall go and join my daughter in the stables.”
“Yes, your grace.” She turned to leave.
“Miss Hamilton?”
She half-turned her head.
“I am pleased with what I have seen of your work this afternoon,” he said.
She stood still for a moment before leaving the room and closing the door behind her. She drew in deep lungfuls of air before proceeding on her way up to her room.
LORD BROCKLEHURST SENT HIS card up to one of the rooms at the Pulteney Hotel and paced the lobby impatiently.
It was a stroke of raw luck, he knew, despite the fact that the Bow Street Runner had reported the detail to him the day before with puffed chest and important air, as if he had manufactured the whole thing with his superior police skills.
The list of guests for Willoughby Hall had been disappointing. Only two of them he knew even vaguely. There would have been no realistic chance of striking up a close enough friendship with either of them that he could have invited himself along to the house. Besides, all except one couple, with whom he had no acquaintance at all, had left London already.
He would have had to do things the way he did not want to do them. He would have had to go down to Dorsetshire in his capacity as a justice of the peace to arrest Isabella and bring her home for trial. He did not want his hand to be so forced. He did not want all his options to be cut.
Dammit, he did not want to see that lovely neck ringed by a noose.
But only one day after delivering the list and declaring that Lord Thomas Kent was nowhere in Britain, and after having had his bill paid, Snedburg had come bustling back, puffed with importance, to announce that his lordship had that morning set foot on English soil from the deck of an East India Company ship.
“Of course, sir,” he had said, “I know from experience that when the nobility disappear from our shores, it is often to take employment with one of the companies. It was a simple, though time-consuming matter, you will understand, to make inquiries. What could have been more fortunate than to discover not only that his lordship had indeed taken himself to India but also that he was bringing himself back again?” He had coughed with self-satisfaction.
Lord Brocklehurst had paid the man more generously than he ought, he felt. Living in town was deuced expensive.
An employee of the hotel bowed in front of him and informed him that Lord Thomas Kent would receive him in his suite. Lord Brocklehurst turned to the staircase.
Lord Thomas Kent was a few years younger than he. The two men had never been very close friends, merely friendly acquaintances who had frequented the same gaming hells and taverns many years before.
Lord Thomas was in his sitting room, dressed in a long brocade dressing gown, when Lord Brocklehurst was admitted by a servant. He had grown more handsome with the passing of early youth, the latter noticed: bronzed, dark-haired, slim, a man of a little above average height.
“Bradshaw,” he said, extending his right hand, his teeth very white against his sun-browned face. “I hardly recognized you from the title on your card. Your father passed on, did he?”
“Five years ago,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “You are looking well, Kent.”
“I’ve never felt better,” the other said. “I thought not a soul knew of my return. I thought I would have to do the rounds of all the clubs today and leave my card at every door in Mayfair. This is a pleasant surprise.”
“I heard in passing,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “Been gone long, have you, Kent?”
“For well over five years,” the other said. “Ever since that debacle over the dukedom. I went running with my tail between my legs. Doubtless you heard.”