It irked him beyond bearing to sleep on damp sheets and take shallow, tepid baths. Fielding might be a disaster when it came to clothing or barbering, but the man did an adequate job of ensuring Stephen had the bare minimum of comforts.
Still, he’d not hired Fielding to be his valet. He’d engaged the man to manage sensitive business matters, which the taciturn man handled with absolute discretion, tact, and ruthless efficiency.
Stephen had also promised his surly servant ample time to pursue his own affairs. Private affairs Stephen knew little about and wished to keep that way.
No, Fielding was not a valet. He was not even a normal employee. Fielding was not a normal anything.
Stephen pushed away thoughts of his enigmatic servant and surveyed the gloomy, moth-eaten chamber, no doubt the best one the earl had to offer. While the obvious decay might be uncomfortable, it was a good sign for Stephen’s purposes. Lord Trentham was desperate for money—ripe for the picking, as Jeremiah would have said, and then chuckled quietly, as though he’d gotten away with something criminal by speaking the vulgar cant of the streets.
Yes, the greedy Earl of Trentham was as good as in Stephen’s pocket.
He turned his mind to the real purpose for his visit: the Countess of Trentham, the earl’s aunt, who was actually younger than her nephew.
Seeing her after all these years had been like a kick to the throat and Stephen had hardly been able to breathe when he’d entered her library and found her standing there.
For fifteen years this woman had dominated his thoughts. He’d seen her face first thing when he’d woken up every morning and he’d drifted off to sleep with her, often carrying her into his dreams. She’d grown to monolithic proportions in his mind over the years. Today he’d realized the Lady Elinor of his memory was nothing like the reality.
Somehow, she’d grown in stature in his mind and Stephen hadn’t recalled her being so . . . slight. Fairy-like, really. Not that any of that mattered. After all, she was, without a doubt, the same person. For fifteen years he’d planned this, wondering countless times whether she would recognize him when the day came. She should have recognized him: the man whose life she’d ruined. But there hadn’t been even a flicker of recognition in her silver-gray eyes.
Well, why should there be? He’d been nothing but a servant—little more than a serf—and hardly worth remembering. Indeed, in many aristocratic households all the footmen were utterly stripped of their identity and given the same name for the convenience of their employers. The grand Lady Trentham had probably forgotten about the incident entirely.
Stephen’s lips twisted as he contemplated Lord Yarmouth’s arrogant little daughter, the woman who’d turned him into a criminal on the run, banished him to another country, forced him to change his bloody name, and left him blind in one eye.
And she’d done it all with only a kiss.
Not even a good kiss, if his memory served him correctly.
Stephen thought back to her as she’d looked in her cramped, shabby library today. It was clear his recollections had been those of a fifteen-year-old boy. His younger self—that poor, frightened servant—had built her into an irresistible siren in his memory. In reality she was nothing but a diminutive, somewhat colorless, aging matron.
So why had there been such a frisson of excitement when he’d touched her hand? The sharp, jolting sensation had been out of proportion to her size—a mere dab of a woman—and also for a woman possessed of her plain looks.
Oh, she was not homely, he admitted. But neither was she beautiful—hardly the type of woman a man would choose to ruin his life for. Not that he’d been given any say in the matter.
Still, he’d experienced an uncomfortable squeeze in his chest and a definite twinge in his cock when she’d looked up at him with her silvery-gray eyes.
Stephen shrugged away the momentary attraction. It was just his body’s reaction after so many years of anticipation. Besides, he was not, in the main, attracted to slight women. He preferred his women to be more substantial. He was a large man and he appreciated full figures and generous curves—a healthy armful beneath him in his bed.
Not that it mattered what his preferences were. This was business, not pleasure.
The only part of Elinor Trentham he’d remembered correctly was her eyes. They were large, clear, and gray. The last time he’d seen them they’d ranged from haughty to amused to desperate in the span of a few moments. Today they’d been unreadable.
Well, not quite. Stephen smiled. Her eyes had narrowed quite expressively whenever they’d rested on the current earl. Who could blame her? Trentham was a bullying worm of a man. Worse, he was stupid. Only a stupid man would blithely consider selling Blackfriars, one of the finest examples of late Gothic architecture in all of Britain, if not the world. Still, the rambling house would be a drain on a healthy estate, and the Earl of Trentham was not operating a healthy estate. Stephen grinned; the earl’s stupidity and venality worked in Stephen’s favor and would make taking the man’s birthright a true pleasure.
His venality would also help Stephen in his dealings with Elinor Trentham. There was no love lost between the dowager countess and her nephew and he had no qualms about dispossessing her. Trentham had been gleeful when he’d told Stephen the countess had no life estate on the house she occupied.
Yes, the man was lower than pond scum but he would serve Stephen’s purpose admirably.
A pale face with silvery eyes thrust aside all thoughts of the despicable earl. Stephen had spent years doing his research and had read everything written on the English peerage. He knew, for example, the wife of an earl did not take her husband’s surname upon marrying. She was not Elinor Atwood, but Elinor Trentham. She was