“Nor am I, sir,” he shot back, and suddenly Alexander felt like he was sixteen years old and his valet-cum-bodyguard had caught him in some minor wrongdoing.
Alexander rose, shoving some papers off the desk, and stalked to the door his man was holding open. “You and I are going to have to have a serious talk about all this,” he said in a dark voice.
Dickens didn’t back down. “That we are, sir. One of the upstairs maids informed me about the sheets.”
For the first time in perhaps a decade Alexander Griffiths felt color warm his face. Pushing past Dickens, he stalked down the hallways to the small front parlor kept for inconsequential and unwanted guests.
The woman was standing there, her back to him as she surveyed the view from the window, but she turned swiftly at his approach and managed an exceedingly graceful curtsey. A sight better than Sophie’s uneven attempts, he thought, then cursed himself. He had to stop thinking about her.
The woman was tall, with dark hair and a calm expression. She was attractive rather than beautiful, her clothes were expensive but not quite comme il faut, and the application of paint on her face was skillful. With sudden dread, Alexander knew who she was, and he wanted to turn and run, not listen to her. But he’d never run from anything in his life, and he’d never refused to face the consequences of his own actions.
“Good morning, your lordship. I’m Melinda. Mrs. Lefton sent me.”
“She did?” He was amazed he didn’t sound as hoarse and sick as he felt.
“I’m sorry it’s taken such a long time, but she wanted to make sure she had the right candidate for you.” She had a pretty smile, and in another lifetime she would have done very well. She took a look at his face and her smile faded slightly. “If I won’t suit then it’s no problem, my lord. The carriage is still waiting, and she can send someone else.”
“I-I’ve changed my mind.” He never stammered.
The woman didn’t even blink. “Of course, my lord,” she said immediately. Her well-bred voice couldn’t quite disguise the cockney beneath it. “Would you like Mrs. Lefton to send someone else?”
“No.” Without another word he turned on his heel and left her to Dickens to take care of, while he walked straight through the house and out into the gardens.
The day was slightly overcast, but still warm, and he would swim this afternoon. Swim until he wiped all memory of last night from his mind. He stood at the edge of the terrace, staring out over the length of the pool, and it was there Dickens found him.
“Your lordship.”
Alexander turned his head. “It took you long enough. Are you going to tear a strip off me for my bad behavior, Dicky?” He used the old nickname from his adolescence, when his father had first brought the retired boxer to look after him.
But Dickens didn’t unbend. “No, my lord. I merely wished to know if you had any idea where Miss Russell had gone.”
Alexander blinked. “Who?”
“Miss Russell, sir. I believe you called her Miss Sophie.” There was no inflection in Dickens’s voice; nonetheless Alexander felt flayed. “The staff and I are worried about her. She left no word and I’m not sure she has any place to go.”
He turned, burgeoning anger replacing at least part of his guilt. “What secrets have you been keeping from me, Dickens?”
The man didn’t flinch. “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”
He was feeling sick inside. “Miss Russell,” he repeated slowly. “Sophie Russell. I suppose it’s too much to hope she has nothing to do with the previous tenants of this house.”
“Who else would she be, your lordship?” Dickens was beyond disapproving. “Miss Sophia Russell, late of Renwick and Curzon Street, London, daughter of Mr. Eustace Russell. A proper young lady whom I believe you took advantage of last night.”
Alexander’s pungent curses flew through the air as he felt his world contract into one narrow path. Dickens stood impassively in the face of his profanity, saying nothing until Alexander had finally come to a halt. “Indeed, sir,” Dickens murmured. “We need to find her. I’ve had a few of the footmen out making inquiries in the village, but no one has seen her, and the cottage where she’d been staying with her old nanny has been occupied by some of your tenants whose own cottage burned last fortnight. She has no place to go.”
A slow, righteous anger was beginning to fill Alexander, an anger that wiped out any of the guilt that had been bothering him. He’d been tricked, cheated, lied to. Hell, a proper young woman had allowed him to seduce her, had participated willingly enough, leaving him with no choice at all. The Russell daughters had been cast adrift without a paddle, so to speak, and he’d just been fool enough to give them a lifeline.
Why else would she have shown up here, pretending to be someone else? Of course, she probably had no idea who Mrs. Lefton was, and she’d been annoyingly standoffish, but each time he’d put his hands on her she’d melted obligingly. He had no idea whether it had been a trap or not—at that moment he was just too angry and uncomfortable to give her the benefit of the doubt.
He could refuse to marry her, of course. There was no elderly relative to force him to do the right thing, and few would condemn him. He hadn’t paid much attention, but he knew Russell’s daughters had taken on their father’s disgrace and were considered outcasts from society. No one would blame him if he did nothing, and he didn’t give a damn if they did. They already blamed him for killing Jessamine—he hadn’t been welcome in society for years, and it had been no loss to him. Whether Jessamine had fallen or jumped from the roof at the manor house had ceased to matter, any more than the approval of a group of gossiping, overbred idiots. They had judged and condemned him already—seducing and abandoning one semi-respectable virgin would hardly matter.
Semi-respectable. He felt like a fool, to be gulled like that. He’d known something was off with her, but each time he’d questioned her she’d assured him that Lydia Lefton had sent her. She wouldn’t even know who Lydia Lefton was.
Damn the lying little bitch! He ought to wring her neck. It would be nothing more than she deserved if he simply forgot about her, let her go wherever she wanted, to find some other man to gull. She’d learned how to do the deed, after all. She’d already done it to get him to marry her—it was a short step from blackmail to doing it for money, and she’d been a quick learner.
And goddamn him. He turned on Dickens, coming up to him. “If you want to hit me, go right ahead,” he said in a quiet voice.
“I want to thrash the hell out of you as you deserve,” Dickens said, the threat almost comical in his gentrified voice. “But I’m too worried about Miss Russell. I can wait until we’ve found her.”