The Sins of Lord Lockwood (Rules for the Reckless #6)(3)
The coach slowed, drawing up at the curb beside a house lit from top to bottom. Anna cracked the window. The faint strains of a jig flavored the night air.
The newspapers had also spoken of her husband’s penchant for parties. He used these glamorous gatherings to introduce his friends to new artists. Apparently one such party was under way tonight.
She was not dressed for it. Her wool cloak was travel stained, and beneath it she wore a walking dress of brown taffeta on which Jeannie had sloshed tea not three hours before. If somebody mistook her for a maid . . . She loosed a slow breath.
A fine anger had been brewing in her for days now. She had good reasons for her trip to London, and only one of them concerned her husband. Nevertheless, what a waste if she did not get to hit somebody! Preferably it would be Lockwood, but in a pinch, any of his friends would serve.
Jeannie saw her temper. The girl was clever when it came to people. She caught Anna’s wrist as the driver opened the door for them. “A hotel?” she suggested. “The guidebook recommended several. We could dress your hair, and change into something more . . . fitting? The English are very formal, you know.”
“Are they, indeed? What an expert you are.” Marvelous, too, how Jeannie’s accent kept changing to match their surroundings. In Newcastle, she’d dropped her r’s; by the time the train had passed Peterborough, she’d lost her lilt. “Tell me,” Anna said. “How does a girl raised by Loch Lomond sound more English now than the Queen?”
Jeannie blushed. “Oh, ma’am. I have always wanted to visit London. You know it!”
“I do know it. And I warn you, if I catch you humming a single bar of ‘Rule, Britannia!’ I’ll leave you behind when I go home.”
Jeannie sniffed and flounced out of the cab. The poor goose had grown up dreaming of sparkle and lace. Hoping for luxury, she’d leapt at the chance to work as a lady’s maid, just as her mother had once done for Anna’s mother. But what a disappointment she’d found in her mistress’s households! Wool instead of silk, mud in the carpets, whisky in tin cups instead of champagne.
Nevertheless, Anna had promised to supervise and educate her, and she would continue to do her best at it. “I am the mistress of this house,” Anna said after joining Jeannie on the curb. “However I dress is precisely how I am meant to dress. It is the guests who will feel themselves inappropriate. Do you understand?”
The girl opened her mouth to argue, then evidently thought better of it. With a hike of her chin, she followed the driver around back to oversee the removal of the luggage.
Anna adjusted the hem of her cloak, straightened her shoulders, and marched up the steps to bang the knocker.
The door creaked open. Somebody had left it ajar. Somebody was getting sacked tonight. Anna did not pay for incompetence in her staff.
She stepped into the entry hall, a rectangular space paved by checkerboard marble, topped by a curving split staircase, also of marble. The English had no restraint: they piled ancient statues into every nook and cranny, and managed to find ways to make staircases expensive. That bronze balustrade had probably cost her a year’s interest on her harvest profits in the lowlands.
From behind her came some noise. She turned and found herself locking eyes with a squat, barrel-chested man whose bald skull gleamed in the gaslight.
“Guest?” he croaked—then frowned as his gaze ran down her bedraggled cloak. “Servants around the back,” he said, and shot a stream of tobacco juice into a spittoon standing behind the door.
Anna snorted. The English are very formal, are they? “I am no servant.” Whereas Jeannie’s accent had smoothed, her own had grown new burrs with every southbound mile they’d traveled. She now sounded like one of the islanders, and the little man frowned in consternation.
“What?” he demanded. “Speak English.”
She stepped toward him. He looked startled by his own retreat, and moved his hand into his jacket—a threatening gesture that she acknowledged with a lift of one brow.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Brandish a weapon at your master’s wife.”
His jaw slackened. She caught a glimpse of the tobacco packed into his mouth. “You aren’t,” he said uncertainly.
She smiled.
She had not been born beautiful, like Jeannie. Her cousins teased her that her pale green eyes were witchy, her copper hair the color of devil’s flames. But she had been born with a talent for smiling: with the mere curve of her mouth, she could make men stumble and gape, or quail in momentary fear, for reasons they would never manage to explain to themselves.
The brute was not immune. He let go of his weapon, his eyes widening. “You are the countess.”
She narrowed her eyes. What an odd remark. Had Lockwood been describing her to his staff? “Naturally. And your name, sir?”
“Danvers. But, ma’am, his lordship ain’t . . .” His gaze shifted past her. Jeannie was staggering across the threshold, a trunk sliding from her grip.
“Assist Miss Galbraith,” Anna said. “And have our rooms aired and readied. Which way is Lord Lockwood?”
The man made a helpless grunt. Then he lifted his finger to point down the darkened hall. “But, ma’am—my lady—I’ll warn you—”
She did not accept advice from rogues. Besides, what news could he impart of her husband that she did not already know? It took an utter blackguard to abandon his newlywed bride on her wedding night, and to disappear for three years without a word, much less to let her discover his return, months delayed, by a headline in the newspaper.