“Is something amiss with the artifacts?” he asked as he lifted his arm to wipe the perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve.
“No. This is not about the artifacts. This is a personal matter. Could we speak privately?”
Her words surprised him. For one thing, Miss Wade seldom said more than two words together. Second, he could not imagine her having any personal matters, particularly not ones she would wish to discuss with him. His curiosity aroused, he walked with her to the antika. “What is it you wish to discuss?” he asked once they were inside.
“I—” she began, then stopped and closed her mouth, looking straight ahead, staring into the cleft of his unbuttoned shirt as if she were looking right through him. The sunlight through the windows glinted off the lenses of her spectacles, preventing him from looking into her eyes, and the rest of her countenance, as usual, revealed no hint of what she was thinking. He waited.
The silence lengthened. Impatient to return to his work, Anthony cleared his throat, and that got her attention. She took a deep breath, lifted her face, and said the last thing he would have expected.
“I am resigning my post here.”
“What?” Anthony knew he could not have heard her correctly. “What do you mean?”
“I am leaving.” She reached into the pocket of her heavy work apron and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “I have here my letter of resignation.”
He stared at the folded sheet of paper she held out, but he did not take it from her hand. Instead, he folded his arms across his chest, and said the only thing he could think of. “I refuse to accept it.”
A flicker of consternation crossed her face, a hint of emotion from the machine. He was even more taken aback.
“But you can’t refuse,” she said, frowning. “You can’t.”
“Unless the king tells me no, I can do anything I want,” he said, hoping he sounded quite smug. “I am a duke, after all.”
That reply only disconcerted her for a moment. “Is your lofty rank supposed to intimidate me, your grace?” she asked in her quiet voice, a surprising hint of anger in it he had never heard before. She slapped the letter against his chest, and when he did not take it, she pulled her hand back and let the paper float to the floor. “I am resigning my position. I will be leaving one month from now.”
She started to turn away, but his voice stopped her. “Where are you going, in heaven’s name? If you have been persuaded away by some other excavation—”
“I will be staying with Lady Hammond at Enderby. She is going to introduce me into society and help me find my mother’s family.”
That was just as ridiculous now as it had been last night when his sister had suggested it. There were only seven months before the opening of the museum. Seven short months in which they had an enormous amount of work to do.
Damn Viola’s sudden interest in romantic endeavors. She knew how important this excavation was to him, and also how crucial Miss Wade’s expertise was to getting it completed. He had no intention of letting this little scheme of theirs go any further.
“I can appreciate your desire to find your connections, Miss Wade, but you can easily make inquiries about your relations from here. Viola will not carry out any plans involving your departure from here without my consent. I refuse to give it, and will tell her so.”
A smile he could not help but describe as triumphant curved her lips. “Lady Hammond said that all I needed to do was speak with you and officially resign my post, giving you one month to find a replacement.” She gestured to the letter on the floor. “Now I have done so.”
“Find a replacement? God, woman, people like you do not grow on trees! You know perfectly well that anyone with your skill at restoration is committed to a project years in advance. It took me three years to get your father. The museum opens in seven months, and you know the villa will take at least five years. Replacing you is impossible at this point. I have assured the Society of Antiquarians that this museum will be opened in time for the London season, so that we might generate as much interest as possible. I will not have the opening delayed a year because you’ve got it into your head all of a sudden to go off to London in search of a husband and the frivolous amusements of society. You cannot leave until this project is finished. I have obligations to fulfill, and I have given my word.”
“You, you, you!” she cried, an outburst that astonished him, not only because she dared to speak to him in such a way, but also because it was the first display of real emotion he had ever witnessed from her. “You may be a duke, but you are not the sun around which the world revolves. In fact, you are quite the opposite, for you are the most selfish man I have ever known. Inconsiderate, too, for you order your servants and staff about without so much as a please or a thank you. You care nothing for the feelings of others, and you are arrogant enough to believe that your rank entitles you to behave that way. I—” She broke off and wrapped her arms around herself as if attempting to contain her emotions. As well she should, for this torrent of inexplicable criticism was both unjustified and unpardonable.
He opened his mouth to dress her down for her impudence, as he would any other person in his employ, but she spoke before he had the chance to do so. “The plain truth, your grace, is that I do not like you, and I do not wish to work for you any longer. Speak to Lady Hammond if you wish, but I am leaving in one month regardless of whether or not you forbid her to help me.”
Anthony watched her back as she walked out of the antika without another word, not knowing quite whether to go after her or go after Viola for putting idiotic notions into her head. In the end, he did neither.
Instead, he bent down and retrieved Miss Wade’s letter of resignation from the floor. He opened it and scanned the two lines written in her precise and perfect script.
As he refolded the letter, a memory came into his mind of the day she had arrived at Tremore Hall five months earlier. Today was not the first time Miss Wade had given him cause for surprise.
For a long time, he had wanted to excavate the Roman remains on his estate, and had envisioned a museum in which to put them. Not just a place for the wealthy and privileged to view a part of their history, but one open to British citizens of all classes. There was nothing else like it in London.
Sir Henry Wade had been widely acknowledged as the best antiquarian living, and Anthony had wanted the best for his excavation. He had spent three years trying to persuade Sir Henry to take on the villa excavation and the restoration of its antiquities, to no avail. He had been forced to use other, much less skilled restorers, and he had found their expertise woefully inadequate, but he had persisted in his attempts to persuade Sir Henry to return to England and take over the project, and the man had finally agreed to come.
But it had not been that eminent gentleman he had found waiting for him in the anteroom off of Tremore’s great hall that March day five months ago. Standing amid the stone statues, green marble columns, and crystal chandeliers of the anteroom, he had found a young woman with a round, solemn face and gold-rimmed spectacles, a woman who had proclaimed to his house steward that she was Sir Henry’s daughter. Dressed in a worn brown traveling cloak, wearing brown boots of heavy leather and a wide-brimmed straw hat, with a plain black portmanteau at her feet, she had looked as dry as the Moroccan desert from which she had come.
In a soft, well-bred voice that displayed no discernible personal feeling, she had told him of her father’s death and her arrival here to take Sir Henry’s place and complete his excavation.
His immediate refusal should have sent her scurrying for the door, but it had not. She had ignored his words as if he had not spoken at all. She had told him of her knowledge and experience in a recital of concise facts, listing in methodical fashion all the reasons why he should allow her to step into what would have been her father’s position.
