“Yes, of course,” Bea murmured soothingly, for there was no reason to reveal her frustration. She had already made an unfavorable impression on the housekeeper by plaguing her with queries and heedlessly ignoring the ruling of an official constable. No doubt she considered Kesgrave House’s new mistress to be intolerably brash and assertive as well.
Intolerably, Bea thought wryly, as if there were some measure of brashness and assertiveness that was tolerable.
Deciding she had mortified them both enough, Bea thanked Mrs. Wallace for her time and assistance. “You have been very helpful.”
“My pleasure, your grace,” she said, tapping the little notebook with her finger before asking if the duchess had any thoughts regarding the management of the house. “Perhaps you would like to discuss menus now?”
Bea, who had assumed she could do nothing worse than interrogate the servant about her relationship with a decapitated French chef, felt herself sink lower in the other woman’s estimation as she admitted to having no thoughts regarding the planning of that week’s meals.
Mrs. Wallace, seemingly incapable of grasping this concept, said with baffled incredulity, “None at all?”
In the housekeeper’s bewilderment, Bea felt her inadequacy keenly, for a real duchess would have dozens if not hundreds of thoughts on that week’s menus, and scrambling to come up with a single thing, she recalled her determination to make an outrageous demand.
Oh, but if outrageous demands were difficult to think of while wandering the passageways of the servants’ quarters by oneself, they were impossible to produce while sitting in the drawing room in the company of one’s housekeeper. Wretchedly, she stared at Mrs. Wallace with a vacant expression and tried to come up with a lovely indulgence that her exalted status suddenly made available to her. Surely, there was something she had craved during her years of deprivation with her aunt and uncle. Unfortunately, just thinking of her aunt reminded her of everything that was intimidating about Kesgrave’s position: the eight footmen, the litany of maids, the pinery.
Of course, yes, the pinery!
Knowing little about the process of growing a tropical fruit in the chilly British climate, she could only feel awe at its production and unable to conceive of anything more decadent or absurd, she apologized for misspeaking and requested that a plate of fresh pineapple slices be served every morning with her toast.
Chapter Five
In seeking out Kesgrave in his study, Bea had intended only to inform him of her immediate plans. She had not meant to stand in the doorway like a lovestruck schoolgirl sighing over her handsome dancing master—and yet that was exactly what she did. As soon as she arrived at the room, she could not help but pause on the threshold to gape at the golden brilliance of his locks.
How luminously they glowed in the light from the window.
She was spared the further indignity of staring dreamily at the elegant line of his nose or the appealing curve of his jaw by the tilt of his head. If he had not been bent over a ledger, there was no telling how deeply she might have descended into besotted appreciation.
Would she have spent the rest of the day gazing in awe at her beautiful husband and marveling at the utter inexplicability of desire—the way satiating it had somehow made it stronger?
Mr. Stephens coughed, alerting the duke to her presence, and rose to his feet. “I see the tea has grown cold. I will fetch us a fresh pot from the kitchen. If you will excuse me, your grace,” he said with a polite nod at Beatrice.
“You were perfectly correct to fire Mr. Wright,” she said in mocking reference to the identity she had briefly assumed in order to gain entry to a victim’s house during an earlier investigation. “Mr. Stephens is a far better steward. Mr. Wright would never have thought to discreetly absent himself, preferring instead to gawk at the new mistress of the house with her oddly elaborate curls.”
Kesgrave smiled as he stood and pushed his chair away from the desk. “Why oddly? Are they arranged in the Waterfall or the Mathematical?”
“An excellent point, your grace, and I happily concede it,” she said, crossing the threshold and closing the door behind her. “I should have said excessively elaborate, although then you would have compared it to the Infinitesimal.”
“Such a cravat style does not exist,” he said.
“Then you would have invented it to suit your needs,” she replied.
He shook his head as he strode across the room to her. “I would never play fast and loose with the truth. Do you not know me at all?”
She drew her brows together as she examined him in a quizzical manner. “Are you not Mr. Theodore Davies, lowly law clerk and dashing figment of my imagination?”
His grin widened as he stopped a mere inch from her and said with amusement, “I am no figment.”
No, he was not, she thought, gazing into the spectacular blue of his eyes and feeling lodged there.
Terra firma.
When she made no reply, he lowered his head and murmured, “Hello, my love,” before capturing her lips with his own.
’Twas splendid indeed, the sensations he created with his touch—his lips, his hands, both gently searching—and she could scarcely comprehend how it was possible to feel suddenly as if she were floating when seconds ago the ground had been so solidly beneath her.
“He is not coming back,” Kesgrave said softly as he pressed a kiss to her neck.
“All right,” she said, reassured by the comment without properly understanding it. “Who?”
Delighted by her confusion, he laughed lightly and said, “Stephens. He will wait to be summoned. Another way in which he is vastly superior to Mr. Wright.”
Heat suffused her body at this statement, but it was not embarrassment at the thought of the steward patiently cooling his heels belowstairs while they satisfied their desire. No, it was lust, hot and sweet.
But this was not why she had come to the study, she thought vaguely, nor was it the
