Secrets and Lords. Justine Elyot
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it, and he marched, dragging her along with him, to the nearest empty room, into which he unceremoniously pushed her.
‘Please,’ she remonstrated. ‘Please let me go back to bed. I didn’t mean to be here, I swear it.’
He took his hand from her and folded his arms, glowering darkly down at her.
‘I don’t know who you are or what you saw,’ he said in a low, menacing tone. ‘But, whatever it was, you’ll do well to forget it. Do you understand me? Not a word to anyone.’
‘I promise, sir, I won’t … I didn’t … anyway. I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure.’
‘Hmm, I’m sure,’ he said, looking at her assessingly, his eyes all over her, making her flush hot and drop her gaze to the ground.
‘I’d better get back,’ she said, half-turning.
He put his fingers under her chin, gently holding her in position, shaking his head and tutting his disagreement with this proposition.
‘You are the new parlourmaid, aren’t you?’
She nodded, constricted somewhat by his unyielding grip on her face.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Edie. Edie Cr–, uh, Prior.’
‘Edie Cruuur-Prior?’ he repeated, tauntingly. ‘Unusual name.’
‘Just the Prior. I changed my name when my mother remarried. I forget, sometimes.’
He regarded her for a silent stretch of time, during which Edie committed his face to memory – its angles and shadows, the prominent nose, the full, sensual lips, the gleaming eyes, the lustrous dark hair, the cruel, handsome whole of it.
He looked utterly heartless to her, and glitteringly magnetic at the same time.
She was more afraid than ever.
‘You know who I am, of course?’
‘You’re Sir Charles, I think, sir.’
‘That’s right. I’m Charles Deverell, Lord Exley, heir to the estate. How’s life in service so far, Edie?’
‘Tiring,’ she said, tripping over the words in her anxiety. ‘I’m tired. I should sleep.’
‘Yes, they treat you like working dogs down there, don’t they? My hounds have a better life. But I’ll give you a little tip, Edie. Be a good girl, and you might find that there are perks to your job.’
His fingers brushed up her cheek, so lightly that the caress in them could almost be attributed to the air.
‘Are you a good girl, Edie?’ he whispered.
Weakness rinsed through her limbs. She had no reply to offer.
‘Tired,’ she whispered, her lips quivering.
He seemed to take a step back, though in reality he did not move. The seductive intensity in his eyes broke and he smiled, half-laughing.
‘Yes, you’re right, it’s late and I don’t have much more in me, much as I’d like to test the proposition.’
‘You and Lady Deverell–’
He held up a finger.
‘I’ve told you. Seal your lips. Well, until I want to unseal them, that is.’
That dazzling grin again, unsettling as a punch to the solar plexus.
‘I suggest,’ he continued, ‘that you take the three wise monkeys as your template while you’re working here.’
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
‘I understand, sir.’ She looked towards the door and he relented.
‘Run along then, Edie Cruur-Prior. Perhaps I should speak to Mrs Munn tomorrow about having a lock put on your dormitory door. But only if I can have a key.’
She turned and fled, running through the corridors and up the staircases, losing her way half a dozen times, until the low-ceilinged corridor that housed the staff dormitories appeared at the head of the uncarpeted back stairs.
All three of her roommates were deep in sleep, making the most of time away from dishpans and dustpans. A flash of lightning lit the room and she noticed how red and coarse Peggy, the young scullery maid’s, hands already were, and her only fourteen years old.
Edie inspected her own hands, pale and unblemished. How long would they remain so?
Her stomach was in knots and her head whirling when she lay down and tried to sleep through the thunderous rain. This had been a terrible idea. She had knowledge she did not want now, about Lady Deverell, and she had played directly into the hands of Sir Charles, who might now hound her with seduction attempts.
Which she would, of course, repel.
Of course.
He was attractive and all that, but he was dangerous. Far too dangerous, a giant ‘Keep Away’ sign in masculine form. She couldn’t afford to take risks.
But he chased her into uneasy sleep, as if the warmth she had felt radiating from his dressing-gowned post-coital body had seeped into her pores and remained there, a vestige of his presence tormenting her from a distance.
In her dreams, his fingers brushed her face again, and then they went further, snaking into her hair, luring her closer, until their bodies touched and then their lips. If dream kisses were like real kisses, then how did people ever stop? The richness of the sensation turned her inside out and left her helpless and overwhelmed.
***
A hideous clangour shook her out of Charles Deverell’s dream arms and ripped his dream lips from hers. The other girls were already out of their beds, yawningly splashing their faces in the basin or pulling on uniforms.
She took twice as long as they did to get ready and had to rush breakfast. She did not have time to talk at all until she and Jenny were in the corridor with their feather dusters and their tins of wax, ready to set to work on the skirting boards.
‘What does Sir Charles generally do all day?’ she asked.
Jenny gave her a furious look.
‘I want to know so that I can avoid him,’ Edie explained.
‘Oh, I see. He goes out a lot, motoring in that new monster of his. Plays tennis with Lady Mary. Walks his dogs.’ She looked up as if the ceiling might give her more information. ‘Not much, when you think about it. What I’d give to live his life.’
‘Does he have nothing more to occupy him at all?’
‘He has some dealings with the estate and some of Lord Deverell’s landed tenants. There’s a manufactory outside Kingsreach that he sometimes goes and … does things … at. I don’t know. It ain’t my place to know, is it?’
‘I suppose not. And … Her Ladyship. Has she a great many interests?’
‘Lord, why are you asking me? She is always going out to lunch. And she works for a lot of charities, sits on committees, all that kind of thing.’
Boredom has thrown them together. Boredom and disaffection.
And passion. But Edie did not want to think about passion.
She had no choice but to do so, however, when she and Jenny entered the morning room to clean it and found Sir Charles there again, as he had been yesterday. Was he here because he knew she would be?
Edie kept her head down, passing behind his chair in the hope that he might not notice her.
But the hope was vain.
‘Our Lady Macbeth,’ he said, putting down his newspaper.
Edie, whose hands already shook,