Housemaid Heiress

She hesitated too long, cravenly fearing what lay ahead and not wanting to leave behind the first sense of security she had experienced in months. Trying to melt into the shadows and slide out of the door while her ladyship was preoccupied with gathering Nick’s possessions, she cannoned into a familiar broad chest.

‘And just where do you think you’re going?’ Major Ashfield demanded sternly, putting out a hand to stop her bouncing backwards into Lady Lydia.

She swung round to stare at him with pleading eyes, hoping he would let her slip off into the woods.

‘Yes, you cannot just leave, my dear!’ the beauty added in the mellow contralto voice that had almost made Thea dislike her—she was so perfectly everything her various governesses always insisted she was not. ‘You have cared for poor Nick, after all.’

‘I did nothing more than keep the fire burning, watch his sleep and give him water whenever he wanted it,’ Thea protested.

‘Something he will thank you for himself when he is feeling better, but won’t you speak to me in private, my dear?’

Thea hesitated, unsure that a lady could have much to say to a homeless nobody. At last the mixture of her ladyship’s pleading smile and imperious manner disarmed Thea into staying when Major Ashfield went to stop Nick’s black stallion kicking down his makeshift stable.

‘Don’t worry,’ her ladyship told her airily, when Thea protested about the waiting carriage and her ladyship’s entourage, ‘they can look after themselves for five minutes.’

‘I’m sure they can, my lady,’ she agreed, trying to hide a smile at the idea of three stalwart gentlemen who had held his Majesty’s commission in crack regiments being unable to organise a simple expedition without this vital female’s assistance.

‘Although I probably shouldn’t leave them for ten, so let’s get to more important matters. I am fond of both my husband’s cousins, and you rendered them a service I want to thank you for.’

‘When I realised they were real gentlemen, I was glad of the company, my lady. It’s very lonely here after dark. I was too scared to sleep the first night.’

‘You couldn’t induce me to stay here half an hour in the dark for a handsome bet, let alone a whole night, but are you hard working and honest, Hetty? Marcus says you were brought up a foundling, so you must be, if their teachings have any effect at all.’

‘I’m as honest as I dare to be, my lady.’

Lady Lydia shot her a penetrating look, but seemed convinced by Thea’s steady gaze.

‘If you truly do not mind hard work, my third housemaid has left to look after her little brothers and sisters now her poor mother has died. You can have a month’s trial in the post, if you care to risk not suiting me?’

‘I wish for nothing so much as a roof over my head and a place in the world, my lady.’

‘Even such a very humble one? You speak well and seem used to better things.’

‘I shall hardly find them lurking in woods or being moved on by the constables in every village where I dare show my face.’

‘True, then you will accept my offer?’

‘Gladly, Lady Lydia, and I promise you will never regret your kindness in making it to one in great need.’

‘Your hard work will be thanks enough for me. Follow this road north for about six miles, then cross Rosecombe Common. The village edges on to it and the first cottage on the green belongs to my husband’s old nurse. She will happily take you in when I explain what you have done for Nick. Then come to the Park tomorrow to see if you might suit. It will sit better if the other servants think you a connection of hers.’

‘You are very considerate, Lady Lydia.’

‘See if you still think so in a few months’ time, when the Park is full of guests and you have to tramp up and down the stairs half a dozen times an hour. Now we must say goodbye, Hetty, and there must be no familiarity between us in future, if you wish to be accepted by my household.’

‘Certainly not, my lady,’ Thea said, managing to look shocked in the style of all the best servants she had ever come across, who considered such encroachments a cardinal sin on both sides.

‘Although I might give in to curiosity when we are alone,’ her ladyship joked, as Thea resolved to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The walk in broad daylight, over ground where her pursuers could have easily caught her, had been an experience Thea never cared to dwell on afterwards, but it had passed without incident. Maybe the Winfordes had given up, or thought she could not have got so far from her home in Devon alone. Once they might have been right, but fear and loathing had spurred her to self-reliance. Grandfather would hardly have believed his indulged granddaughter could change so much, so little wonder if the Winfordes thought her so feeble.

Thea presented herself at the back door of the great house at Rosecombe the next morning, dressed in a print gown she and Nurse Turner had spent the previous evening taking in. Having subjected her to a grilling that would have done justice to Bow Street, the housekeeper conducted her to my lady’s sitting room, so she could interrogate her as well.

‘Any relative of Nanny Turner’s is worthy of a trial,’ Lady Lydia declared at last, ‘but make sure she is trained all over again, Meldon. You know how particular I am about having things done my way.’

‘Of course, my lady.’

‘The usual wage, and find her something decent to wear,’ her ladyship concluded and they curtsied and silently left the room.

‘The head housemaid will send down your new clothes, and you will be expected at six o’clock sharp tomorrow, ready for work.’

‘Yes, Mrs Meldon. Thank you, ma’am.’

‘Thank me by doing your duty and learning our ways quickly.’

‘I always do my best, ma’am.’

The dignified woman just sniffed in the proscribed style, and Thea went out of the side door with a lighter heart. She managed to walk down the path that led to the village without dancing a jig, but it was a close-run thing. Maybe she would evade the Winfordes for the five more months she needed after all. Even if she had to live on very little a year after she came of age, at least it would be her choice.

‘I take it your mission was successful?’ a deep voice she wished she could forget asked as she rounded the corner that would take her into the Park.

‘Major, you startled me.’

‘Miss Smith, I could hardly bid you farewell in front of your future colleagues or the lady of the house, now could I?’

He was going, then? A traitorous voice within told her that would take the shine off her new life quicker than anything, but she silenced it and faced him with composure.

‘You should not be talking to me, sir. I could lose my place.’

‘Since I have no intention of doing you such a backhand turn, will you walk with me?’

‘Aye, sir,’ she could not resist saying, even knowing she was courting a danger that had nothing to do with her enemies for once.

It was two miles to the village and she was glad of company. She tried to believe any would have done and failed miserably. This morning he was fresh shaven and his dark mane subdued to strict military order, and he looked even more handsome than he had done dishevelled and weary that first night.

I spent the night with this man, she mused, a wry smile quirking her lips at the very thought. If the starchy housekeeper ever found out, Thea would be out the back door faster than Mrs Meldon could say ‘trollop.’

‘Do you think you will suit, Miss Smith?’

‘I’m sure of it, desperation is a fine teacher.’

‘Oblige me by not abusing Lydia’s trust. I didn’t finagle this place for you so you could run off with the family silver.’

‘I thought it was Lady Lydia’s idea to offer me a job?’

‘So did she. The only way to handle her ladyship is to let her have the ordering of everything. Ned always does, so long as it suits him. I learnt my strategy from a master, which is something else you would do well to remember. My cousin is very far from being the slow-top he often does his best to appear.’

‘Why should I take advantage of either?’ she protested hotly, stung by his assumption that she would abuse the trust of people who had taken in a stormy petrel.

‘Who knows, Miss Smith? I certainly do not. That is a conveniently common name, by the way.’

‘Only when it’s not yours, Major.’

‘You are either a steadfast liar or exactly what you seem, and at the moment I can’t quite make up my mind which.’

‘Then put me out of your mind. You did your duty and provided a sanctuary that lets me keep my honour. Any obligation is satisfied, and I do not intend to lose a place where I have no need to fight off my master.’

‘Ned hasn’t noted another female’s existence since he met Lydia.’

His voice was warm as he spoke of the lovely Lady Lydia and his guarded eyes softened. Thea wondered with a fierce pang of jealousy if he was in love with his cousin’s wife. Not that it mattered of course, he would never feel more than fleeting desire for humble Miss Smith, and heaven forbid that he should discover her real identity. Then she would see his clear grey eyes cloud with distaste and his firm mouth straighten in revulsion. She would rather face Lady Winforde than that particular scenario.

‘And I would be an idiot to endanger such a place for a life crime.’

‘Yet I can’t help but be struck by the fact that you speak very much better than your peers, and express yourself in surprisingly sophisticated language. Who are you really, Miss Smith?’

She was a fool, she silently decided, and tried hard to pretend he had not shaken her composure. She could not seem to draw back behind a mask of humble ignorance when she was with him, which meant she cared what he thought. Nonsense of course, they could not mean anything to one another.

‘I am nobody,’ she replied bleakly.

‘At some stage you must have been somebody, to acquire such a vocabulary.’

‘I might have thought I was, but I was mistaken,’ she admitted, suddenly tempted to pour out the whole unsavoury story after all. ‘My first mistress was a good woman, who wanted her servants to read and write, however humble their origins,’ she improvised hastily instead. ‘She taught me to read fluently when her eyesight began to fail.’

As lies went, it sounded convincing, she thought miserably, and tried to believe it under the acute scrutiny of Major Ashfield’s steady grey eyes.

‘And when she died you went back to domestic service?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why are your hands those of a lady who has recently suffered a reverse?’

He took those offending hands in his and she jumped as a lightning beat of responsive heat shot through her at his touch. Hoping he would take it for a flinch of revulsion, she stared numbly at her hands cupped in his.

‘I take care of myself,’ she offered hopefully.

‘Without noticeable success.’

‘In this case I seem to have done better.’

‘So you do, but I suspect you were a ladies’ maid in this former life, and this role will be a comedown,’ he finally concluded.

Thea had to bite back a sigh of relief. ‘I shall learn to bear it,’ she said truthfully. ‘Destitution is a fine teacher.’

His grip on her slender hands gentled, some of the feelings she longed to inspire in him lighting his gaze, or so it seemed. ‘I’m glad Lyddie saved you from starving or selling yourself even so.’

‘I would starve,’ she breathed.

‘You would be surprised what a person can be driven to, when there is no alternative,’ Marcus replied bitterly and dropped her hand to step away.

‘I probably wouldn’t, you know.’

‘But you aren’t driven by the need of others,’ he murmured, almost as if he was reminding himself of some significant factor she knew nothing of.

‘No, luckily I only have my own to consider.’

Unless she could describe herself as driven by the Winfordes’ greed, and she refused to do so.

‘And as you are no spoilt miss, accustomed only to eating sugarplums and reading gothic novels, I suppose you will do well enough here.’

‘I shall,’ she agreed serenely enough.

If she had been such an idle damsel, she never would be again. She didn’t regret her uselessness, but mourned her blackened reputation. If not for that, she would have faced her major as someone more equal. She might even have told him the truth, which would have been folly of the finest order.

‘Once I thought I could order the world at my own convenience,’ he continued absently, as if he was thinking out loud. ‘And rapidly discovered the error of my ways when I joined the army. Now my father and grandfather have made me a pawn in their game. God knows they have been playing it all my life, and I thought Grandfather would win. He delighted in conundrums and his treasure hunts were famous all over Gloucestershire at one time. Playing games where you do not know the rules can be the very devil, Miss Smith.’

‘Perhaps we are all pawns in a much larger one?’

‘Maybe, but now I must go and perform the new role set out for me. Just as tomorrow you take up yours.’

‘And you consider my lot the easier of the two?’

‘You are too perceptive by far, but I would rather say it is the simpler. I have seen too much of hardship lately to dismiss yours as easy, and I shall adapt. Here we are at the crossroads already. Even you can hardly come to any harm between here and Nurse Turner’s cottage, so we will say goodbye. Being seen walking with me would do your reputation no good.’

Thea felt a bitter smile tug at her lips, but managed to banish it. He had dismissed her with one shrug of his mighty shoulders. Instead of learning to love him, she could just as easily hate a man who could so casually say his goodbyes to her.

Chapter Four

‘Goodbye, then, Major, and thank you for my new post. I did little enough to earn it.’

‘Goodbye, Hetty, and thank you. Would that I were a different man.’

‘Should you not say if I were not so humble, or so poor?’ she challenged, and let out a great shush of breath when she was clipped into a powerful embrace and kissed ruthlessly.

‘Say rather if I were a better, more worthy man,’ he told her in a dangerous undertone and despite all his warnings that they might be seen, he obviously enjoyed the experience and promptly did it again.

Now she knew why she had never responded to the halfhearted overtures of Grandfather’s fortune hunters, she decided hazily, and if she had a shudder to spare it might go on Granby’s revolting embrace. As it was, she was too consumed by the explosion of heat that seemed to course back and forward between their greedy mouths. Of course she could not possibly have felt such intimacy with another man, she decided dazedly. He was the one designed to unlock the passionate nature she hadn’t known she had until that morning in the hut, and she was more than half inclined to wish it imprisoned again. This would come to nothing, despite the heated magic that bound her to him as if for life itself.

If she had not loved its presence so deeply, she might have bitten his sensual mouth for awakening her to such need, such endless, unmet need, when she might easily have gone through life never knowing what passion was. He nibbled a line of infinitely gentle bites along her lower lip, then smoothed them away with his tongue, running it along her soft damp skin as if he loved the taste of her.

She whimpered, and a stern part of her longed to think it was in protest against what he was doing, but what she really wanted was more; more of him; more of his kisses, just simply more. She moaned her approval as he once more deepened his kiss and this time opened his wicked, wonderful mouth on hers and probed her velvet warmth with his tongue. All the steel seeped out of her bones and she arched towards him ever more closely, binding her soft curves to hard muscles and strength without any menace but the one she wanted.

For all her lofty resolutions that she would stay untouched for a lifetime in memory of a man who would soon forget her, she suddenly knew that she was wrong. To be loved and left by Major Ashfield of the 95th Rifles would warm those stark and lonely years that were all the future seemed to offer her now. She could never have his respectable attentions, so why not simply melt into his powerful embrace and save her regrets for after he was gone?

Now he was trailing more urgent kisses down the exposed length of her throat, and when exactly had he exposed it? She felt fine tremors of heat shake her and knew they were both on the edge of being consumed. Could the fact that they were standing on a public highway where anyone might see them go hang? Could she ignore the last whisper of caution that warned against this? Could she throw away all the kindness Lady Lydia was offering her for one tumble with that lady’s handsome relative?

Probably, she conceded, as his wondering hand trailed a line of fire down her backbone, but she could not do the same for him. Despite those bitter words that seemed to condemn him as a heartless philanderer, she knew her seduction would haunt him once he found out he was her only lover. The only one she would ever have, for how could other men follow ardent desire combined with such tenderness? Yet the thought that he would wake up one morning in his new life and remember what he had done, and feel it as a betrayal rather than a glory, was one she could not live with.

Forcing her dazzled eyes open, she saw how his molten grey gaze dwelt on her disgracefully open gown, apparently fascinated by the rise and fall of her creamy breasts. She catalogued the flush of heated desire across his hard cheekbones and the wondering curve of his shapely mouth, that looked as if it remembered hers and wanted more. Then she drew back and shook her tousled head. His dark hair was disordered once more, by her wandering, wondering hands. I did that, she told herself in awe. I was his lover for just a brief, uncrowned reign of mere minutes. And now I am not.

‘No,’ she whispered when she could find enough breath even for that feeble objection. ‘I would not have you dishonour yourself, Major.’

With an almost animal sound of denial and possession, he went to tug her back into his strong arms and cover her all-too-willing lips with kisses, so they could both forget her ‘no.’

‘Nor would I have you dishonour me,’ she added inexorably, scant inches from the ultimate temptation of surrender, and still he seemed ready to read actions rather than words.

That earlier promise he made about honouring his obligations bit like acid into any lingering dream she was clinging to. ‘And I could not let you tarnish your name, Major Ashfield.’

He stepped back from her as if she had slapped him and stood, chest heaving and looking as if he had just run a heat with the devil.

‘Tarnish?’ he rasped out. ‘How could I tarnish a name my father dragged through every patch of filth he could mire it with?’

‘By muddying your own along with his.’

‘Oh, preach me no such piety, Miss Smith. Just tell me no and mean it, then have done with me.’

‘I can’t,’ she whispered miserably and for just a few seconds felt useless, hateful tears salt her eyes.

‘At least that’s honest,’ he told her fiercely.

‘As am I,’ she informed him proudly, and for the first time in weeks truly meant it. She had been in danger of taking herself at the Winfordes’ valuation.

‘Then you cast your bait in dangerous waters, madam. You must be more careful what you catch.’

Sending him a look of pure hatred, Thea decided she would never forgive him for what he had done today, then looked down her nose at him as if he was Sir Granby Winforde himself and stalked away without another word.

‘You had best do up your gown and tidy your hair if you don’t want to be run out of this village as well,’ his deep voice taunted behind her.

Overcome by an irresistible impulse, she swung round and stuck her tongue out at him like a street urchin.

‘Goodbye to you too, my dear,’ he called cheerfully, then turned on his heel and strode away whistling, as if not a single kiss or caress of that steamy encounter had meant a thing to him.

‘I am not your dear!’ she yelled defiantly and stormed up the wooded bank and on to the Common, completely forgetful of her safety and the dictates of everyday good sense for once.

‘I hate you, Marcus Ashfield. I hate you every bit as much as you want me to, and I wish I could forget you as easily as you will me,’ she raged. ‘When you find a more deluded female to warm your bed, I hope she leads you a merry dance, then walks away as if she hasn’t a care in the world.’

She calmed down at last and returned to her temporary home and scrubbed and dusted every corner of Miss Turner’s cottage in return for her kindness. By the time the woman came back from clucking over her precious Master Nick that evening, Thea was calm again and ready to share their simple supper. They retired early, for Thea had a brisk walk to look forward to and a hard day’s work. It was a very long time before she slept. When Thea did, she was glad her hostess was rather deaf, for she had woken from a nightmare on a panicked scream.

It was strange living on the wrong side of the myriad of doors designed to hide servants in the service of their betters. The sun rose and set on her labours, but Thea got used to her duties. The news that Major Ashfield was the new Viscount Strensham galled her more. Of course it made no difference. With her name besmirched she couldn’t marry him, although his title would free her fortune. Yet could she have lived with his cold logic, if he had found out who she really was and offered marriage for mercenary reasons? Yes, the instant reply came, then she contemplated such an unequal match and shuddered.

The great idiot had already hurt her more than the Winfordes had succeeded in doing by stripping her of home and worldly advantages. Marcus Ashfield had left her without the luxury of hope. Some last childish part of her had harboured the delusion that one day she might meet a man who valued her for herself alone. She did not have that vague hope now and, if she hadn’t been so busy, she might have been miserable.

She found comfort in the thought that, even if she were a lady, he would dish out the same hurt. The deluded girl she had been could well have gone into a decline, so at least she was saved making that discovery too late.

Then one April morning the sounds of church bells pealing out joyously interrupted the calm of Rosecombe, and such small considerations as a bruised heart faded into unimportance. The now nearly recovered Captain Prestbury rode out with his cousin to find out what was going on, to be met with the joyful news that Bonaparte had surrendered to the Allies. The cousins galloped back to Rosecombe with joy in their hearts.

‘Peace at last, my love!’ Sir Edward shouted, and threw himself off his horse to share the glad news with the woman he loved so much.

‘Oh, Ned, is it truly all over?’ her ladyship gasped breathlessly, as he seized her and swung her round, all the time laughing with joy.

‘Unless Farmer Boughton has been at the apple brandy, which I doubt as he has been a teetotaller ever since I can remember.’

‘Then we must ring the bell so we can share the news, my love.’

As they were standing in the hall under the bemused gaze of most of their household, there was no need, and there was much cheering and chattering with joy and relief. They were given a half-day to celebrate and by nightfall bonfires were blazing for miles around.

‘Not celebrating, Miss Smith?’ Captain Prestbury asked Thea as she melted into the shadows where he watched joy being unconfined.

‘Of course, Captain, who would not?’ she replied cautiously, wishing she had checked the darkness before she tried to melt into it.

‘Someone who finds it hard to believe it’s all over I suppose.’

‘It does seem strange.’