Her Majesty's Necromancer (The Ministry of Curiosities #2)(6)

"Now that you're back, you can serve 'em," he grumbled. "Your pretty face will be more 'preciated than mine."

"Is something wrong?" I asked. "Where's Seth?"

"Out. He gets to run errands and I get stuck here serving tea. It ain't fair."

"Tell that to Death," Cook said with a grunt of laughter.

I carried the tray to the parlor and was just about to enter when I overheard Lady Harcourt mention my name. An eavesdropper hears nothing good, so Mama once told me, but I couldn't help myself. I hugged the wall and inched closer to the doorway.





CHAPTER 2


"She shouldn't be given so much leeway," Lady Harcourt said in her perfect clipped tones.

There was no answer and I couldn't imagine how Lincoln reacted to her comment.

"Charlie's a maid now," Lady Harcourt continued, "and maids do not rearrange furniture."

"I don't care how the furniture is arranged," Lincoln intoned.

"That is not the point. The point is that you are the master, and you set this room up in a certain way. She shouldn't come along and move things as if she were mistress here."

"Lichfield has needed a woman's touch for some time. Charlie is the only woman here. If she wishes to move things, I don't mind."

Lady Harcourt sighed. "You're much too easy on her."

I almost choked on my tongue to stop myself bursting into laughter. If she'd seen the way he drilled me in our training sessions, she wouldn't claim he was easy on me. Indeed, the thought of Lincoln being easy about anything was absurd.

I should have taken advantage of the pause in the conversation to announce tea, but I needed a few moments to compose myself, and by the time I had, she was speaking again.

"You need a wife, Lincoln."

My lips parted in a silent gasp. I leaned forward, straining to hear Lincoln's response. But if he gave one, it wasn't audible from where I stood.

"You think you won't marry, but you will. Lichfield needs a mistress, for one thing."

"There are too many secrets here. A wife would only get in the way."

"Then you need the right wife." Was she offering herself? A woman who already knew ministry secrets? "Besides, you ought to have a companion." Her voice had become velvety thick, throaty.

I held my breath and tried not to picture her draping herself over Lincoln and he holding her, but the image wouldn't go away.

"I have all the company I need," he said.

I breathed again and relaxed my fingers. I didn't realize I'd been clutching the tray so tightly.

"Oh, Lincoln." A swish of silk skirts followed her deep sigh. "What about love?"

"You know I'm not capable of it."

I blinked slowly. This was obviously a conversation they'd had before, and I felt horrid for eavesdropping on their private moment, but I couldn't drag myself away now. I'd wanted to learn more about Lincoln and this seemed to be the only way to do it.

"You are capable," she said. "You simply don't know what it is. Since you've had no love in your life, you don't see it when it's staring you in the face."

"That's enough, Julia."

"No, it's not. You owe it to me to listen." She paused again, perhaps waiting for his response. "You need to love and be loved in return, just as much as anyone."

"Julia—"

"Don't deny it. I can see it in the way you protect your family."

His family! I knew Lincoln had parents, both of them still living, but he told me he'd never known them. He'd been raised by General Eastbrooke, to be the leader of the Ministry of Curiosities, since birth, so perhaps she was referring to the general's family. It was likely he thought of them as his own.

"I have no family," Lincoln said in that cool, bland voice of his.

"Oh, my darling—"

"Don't."

Silk rustled and swished. "But Lincoln—"

"It's time you left. There's nothing more to discuss."

I backed up a few steps then walked forward. I was several feet from the parlor door when Lincoln emerged. Our gazes locked and a spark of surprise burned in the depths of his eyes.

"You're back," he said to me.

"I brought tea." I held up the tray, feeling somewhat exposed and terribly guilty. Did he suspect I'd overheard their conversation? It was impossible to tell.

"Lady Harcourt was just leaving."

Lady Harcourt sailed past us as smoothly as a swan on a lake, her head high, her long white neck exposed above the low-cut gown. She didn't meet my gaze, or his, and if it weren't for the vein pulsing in her throat, I would have thought her unperturbed by his dismissal.

"Take the tea back to the kitchen," Lincoln told me. "Have one of the men bring a cup to my rooms."

One of the men, not me.

Lincoln followed Lady Harcourt to the front door, but it opened and shut before he reached it. I slipped back to the kitchen as her carriage drove off.

"Does Mr. Fitzroy have a family?" I asked as I set the tray down on the central table.

Seth had returned and he looked up along with the others upon my entry. "None that we know of," he said. "He doesn't want tea?"