“I know. Come now, let me fix your hair.” Annie guided their sister back to the family’s personal chambers, and Lottie led everyone else downstairs.
“What time is your Mr. Trent supposed to be here?” Imogen said.
“I do not know. We’ve not had much time to talk in the last week.” In fact, she’d seen him only once when she’d snuck late one night into the Hestia and found him sleeping at the desk in his study.
When his eyes had fluttered open, he’d given a groggy smile and said, “Am I dreaming?”
She’d wanted to prove to him that she was all too real by stripping bare and letting him sing pleasure across her skin. But he’d been too tired, his desk a mess of legal papers and half empty cups of tea and coffee. She’d helped him to his bed and asked why he was so ill-prepared from a paperwork perspective to take on another inn. Very out of character from what she knew of him. But half asleep he’d told her, with a yawn, that the mess was not for the Blue Sheep. That was coming along smoothly. The mess was for her.
“Trying to figure out how to keep a duke’s sister happy.” He’d dragged her onto the bed beside him and curled his body around her from behind. “The expansion will have to happen”—yawn—“much more quickly than I’d planned if I’m to give you everything you’re used to. Everything you deserve.”
“I don’t need any of it.” She’d kissed his knuckles. “No silks. No mansions. Just a few rooms and you.” For a long time, there’d been nothing but the sounds of their breathing, the sounds of an exhausted man sinking deep into slumber. “I’m not with child,” she admitted into that heavy, breath-filled air. And she’d wished it wasn’t so.
“Oh.” Not asleep entirely, then. He’d heard her.
She’d not asked him what that almost silent syllable had meant. The possibility of a child had not been the glue binding them.
Had it?
The stairs in the narrow hall Imogen and Isabella descendedseemed suddenly cold, as if a surprisingly cool summer wind had crept through a crack somewhere.
Rowan paced the length of the hallway outside his rooms at the top of Hestia until Poppins appeared out of the dark stairwell. “Is he coming?”
“Yes. Why are you lying to him?” Poppins leaned against the wall, crossed one ankle over the other.
“That is none of your business.”
“It is. Mr. Haws is a paying guest, and I get to decide if I want to work for you.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
Rowan stopped in the middle of opening the door to the room across the hall from his study. “You’re right. Haws is using the item in my safe to pressure a man into marrying his daughter. I won’t help him do that. He can keep it somewhere else.”
Poppins whistled. “Well then, I’ll still work for you. What a bounder.”
Rowan pushed into the room and through the various odds and ends stored there—old furniture and boxes of linen, various sundries for the hotel. No one entered this room but him and Poppins, and in the very corner was a large, rather ugly box—his Italian, iron floor safe. He lifted the key from his pocket and pressed it into the hidden cavity. Poppins did the same. Opening the safe required two keys. Neither man could open it without the other.
The mechanism inside clicked, and Rowan swung the door open. The letter lay there bright and square like a snake waiting to strike.
“Seems so harmless,” Poppins said, shutting the safe and locking it.
“It’s not.”
“How do you know?”
Answering that question meant a long discussion about Isabella. Not happening. “I know. That is enough. Do you trust me, or do you quit?”
Poppins shrugged. “I’ll stay around. For now.”
Footsteps on the other side of the door heralded the arrival ofRowan’s guest, and he met Mr. Haws in the hallway, locking the door to the hidden room behind him.
“Mr. Haws,” Rowan said, bowing deeply, “I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience. The safe will be in proper working order by the morning, I assure you.” He held out the letter to the older man.
Mr. Haws snatched it up and slipped it between his waistcoat and his shirt. “Itisan inconvenience. I’ve somewhere to be. Right now. And do you know where? At the Duke of Clearford’s House. We are the guests of honor. Not supposed to say anything, but we’re soon to becloselyrelated. My little Bethy has caught the duke’s eye.”
Rowan bowed again, afraid for the man to see his face. “My congratulations.”
“You will be able to advertise on my name, Mr. Trent. The best in society might not venture past your doors without the patronage of an esteemed man like myself.”
Poppins mumbled something about the best already breathing within these walls.
