An Uninvited Guest
“Booker?” There was a faint grunt from behind me, where Booker was acting as my chair in the grass in front of the loch. I was soaking up some of the sun I’d missed during Auguste’s stay at the manor. Booker didn’t speak much, regardless of how I tried to coax the words, but he did always find some way of responding. I twisted to look up at him and found him already watching me, waiting for me to continue.
“I know you can feel, but is it…nice?” I asked. He was a surprisingly comfortable support for being made of marble, as if he could relax himself enough to suit me.
Booker’s forehead knotted in the center, a remarkably elegant little fold of flesh. If he had been a statue and not a living man—of a sort—the artist of such an expression would have been applauded for the detail.
“Like this,” I said, picking up his hand from where it rested on his leg. It was heavier than an average man’s hand but certainly not as much as rock should have weighed. I turned it over, palm up, and scratched my fingers lightly across the lines in his hand. There was a slight squeak of fingernails on polished marble. I did applaud Madame Mortimer for her detail, come to think of it.
Booker’s fingers twitched at the touch, and I beamed at the response. He nodded.
“Funny,” he said.
I pressed my thumb into the pad of flesh beneath his thumb and there was more resistance, but also give.
“I feel…like man,” Booker said, nodding shallowly again.
I turned a little more to face him, dropping his hand and lifting mine up to his face. He was cool and stiff to the touch, just like he ought to have been, but when I ran my fingertips over his bottom lip and pressed, I made a little dent in the stone flesh. I looked up at his eyes and wondered if I was imagining the warmth in that stony gray gaze. It was there, in the slight crinkle at the corner of his eyes.
How did one seduce a man of stone? Magdalena had said it happened but not who had done it, and so I had no one to ask for advice.
“Esther,” Booker rumbled with the smallest lift at the corners of his mouth, where I was still touching.
I had all but made up my mind to simply kiss the golem when we were interrupted.
“Esther, darling.”
Magdalena was leaning out of one of the downstairs windows, waving a fan in her hand at the pair of us.
“Sorry to interrupt, but may I borrow you for a chat?” she asked. She didn’t look sorry. She looked near to laughing. At least she didn’t look angry.
Booker picked us both up off the grass, and his arm around my waist was tight but not uncomfortable.
“Inside,” he said, patting me on the back, just above my ass. My eyebrows raised at that. His face was smooth as stone again, but from anyone else, that would have been wonderfully impertinent flirtation.
Like man, he had said. I would take him at his word. I snatched his hand up and wrapped my arm around his as he started to lead us back to the manor. Magdalena smirked at us both from the window and ducked inside again.
I was finally starting to get a handle on the twists and turns of the manor, but it was nice to have Booker leading the way. He knew every shortcut through the halls, and we arrived at Magdalena’s office in a moment. She was waiting for us at the round table, crystal ball pulled close to her, and a pile of illustrated cards spread over the tablecloth.
“Looking for more callers?” I asked, taking a seat across from her.
“More girls,” Magdalena murmured. “We have quite a few new gentlemen looking to attend the house. You don’t happen to know of anyone do you?”
I opened my mouth to say no, the other housemaids I’d known at the Pickerings had been better behaved than I and they’d all found good positions before the end. Then my memory snagged on another option. Eleanor Teague, the daughter of the family I had worked for first. We had caught each other with men and kept the secrets. Out of those secrets, a friendship had been built, one that tore at my heart when I took one risk too many and was asked to leave the house.
Eleanor was a proper lady, at least by birth, but she had a wicked imagination and her own illicit habits. She could have been married to some stuffy old bore by now but…if she wasn’t. She might not admit to it, but this was just the kind of house she would enjoy.
“I could send a letter,” I said, and Magdalena’s face brightened.
“Wonderful, I had a feeling you could help,” she said. “Now, why I called you in. Amon is still traveling, Dr. Underwood and Auguste are both occupied with business. I thought I might have another suitor for you to meet, but the cards are being…well, they say to wait. Do you mind terribly?”
I blinked at her and then down at the cards on the table. They had something to say about who I slept with? There was a faint shift out of the corner of my eye, Booker, and I realized that as odd as it was to say, the cards might have been right.
“I don’t mind waiting,” I said. It would give me time to further my suit with Booker. Or to enjoy my time with him.
“Lovely. You are a darling, Esther,” Magdalena said, reaching over to squeeze my hand. “One more favor. May I borrow Booker from you for an hour or so?”
“I stay with my lady,” Booker said before I could even think to whine a protest.
Both Magdalena and I turned to him, equally stunned, and found him staring at his own feet, a baffled openness on his face, expression lax.
“Auguste asked Booker to keep an eye on me after he smelled a stranger in my room,” I explained.
Magdalena was still watching Booker, but she didn’t look unhappy at his uncharacteristic speech. For the first time, the older woman was unreadable, an almost calculating sharpness to her gaze.
“I see,” she said, turning back to me. “Well I promise you both, my wards guard against intruders. No one can cross our threshold who is not meant to be here. It was likely an accident on the part of one of the other patrons. You are very safe.”
She held my gaze as strongly as if she were holding my face in her hands, and it took me serious mental effort to tear my eyes away long enough to check on Booker. He was watching me, waiting for instruction.
“That’s all right then,” I said, nodding to him.
“I promise it won’t be long,” Magdalena assured, and now her face was softened and sincere, cheeks full with a smile.
“I’ll be up in my room,” I told Booker as I stood, adding to Magdalena, “I’ll write to my friend about the house.”
“Wonderful!” Magdalena said, clapping her hands together. “Thank you, darling.”
Booker took a brief step in my direction as I made my way out, but stopped himself and I headed upstairs alone.
How much could I write to Eleanor without giving the greatest secrets of the manor away? I would have to make the position clear, it wouldn’t do to be vague about that part, but I could be vague on the details of the men. Private men with…unique needs. Or would that sound a bit too far for a girl like Eleanor? I’d seen firsthand that she wasn’t shy about her own pleasure, but I didn’t know how she might respond to a man who changed like Dr. Underwood. Or one who had a taste for blood.
Still, she didn’t have to come if she didn’t want to, and it would be better to be warned than spook her when she arrived. Maybe…maybe I could simply ask to meet her in London when Auguste took me. Then nothing too delicate would be written down.
I chewed over my thoughts as I reached my bedroom, heading to throw myself against the mattress.
But it wasn’t a mattress I landed against.
“Oof!”