Louise Allen – Contracted As His Countess (страница 10)
Now it would be his again. He could almost feel the worn leather of the desktop in the study under his fingers, smell the familiar scent of lemon and beeswax polish, pipe smoke and his grandmother’s lavender soap.
Soon he would set foot in that room for the first time in more than six years. When his grandparents died his father made the house his London base and Jack had removed himself before he was thrown out. First he wanted to drop into Brooks’s where his post was directed when he was out of town. He had been accepted as a member years ago, before his father died and, despite the fact that most of his fellow members considered that he was letting them all down by refusing to use the title, he ignored the dark looks and mutterings for the sake of convenience. The wives of the members were concerned only that he, landless, did not flirt with their impressionable daughters who should be making good matches, or lure their sons into the kind of dissipation his brother and father had been infamous for. They generally ignored him, omitted him from their guest lists and pretended the aristocratic black sheep did not exist.
It was ironic, he had thought in the early days when the snubs and whispers had hurt. His father and brother had been frivolous, spendthrift, indolent wastrels, but they were accepted. Jack had neither the taste, nor the time and money, for indiscriminate wenching, reckless gambling or drinking himself into a stupor, but he was the one looked down on.
His fellow aristocrats might despise him, but they did not shun his talents for solving problems on their behalf. He had spent the past week in Lincolnshire, concluding the last commission he intended taking, and wondered if he would miss the work. Not the tedium, of which there was plenty, but the puzzle of solving a problem and the occasional excitement, even danger. This last case had involved the plausible gentleman who had insinuated his way into the life of a certain young viscount, much to the alarm of his trustees The man had put up a satisfactory fight when confronted by Jack and the officers of the law armed with a warrant for his arrest on forgery charges and it had been a pleasure to let off some of his tight-wound emotions.
Jack was absently rubbing his bruised knuckles as the carriage turned down St James’s Street and pulled up outside the club. Yes, some things he’d miss. Earls were supposed to be respectable these days, on the surface at least.
‘Mr Ransome.’ The hall porter opened the door for him. ‘There is post awaiting you in the office, sir. Would you like it now, sir, or when you leave?’
‘Now, thank you.’ Jack tipped the man, then carried the correspondence through to the library. With a twinge of amusement he recognised the need to clear away everything to give himself a fresh start.
An hour later a plump little butler flung the door open with a flourish as Jack made himself walk slowly up the steps. ‘Sir. Welcome. I am Partridge.’
Jack stepped inside, took a deep breath, looked around. ‘What the
‘Sir? Miss Aylmer—’
Jack looked around the hall and almost turned right around again. It was the wrong house, surely? But there was the famous twisted ironwork of the staircase, the foliage and hidden birds he had searched for and delighted in as a child.
‘Miss Aylmer had better be at home because I want to talk to her. Now. What the devil
Partridge took a step back and then, bravely, held his ground. ‘The redecoration of this floor has just been completed, Mr Ransome. The house had been let furnished for some time—it required modernising so Miss Aylmer gave instructions. No expense or effort has been spared, I assure you.’
Jack strode past him to the end of the hall and stopped, one hand on the study door, his stomach churning. This was the heart of the house for him, the place where his grandfather had sat behind the battered old desk that had been his own father’s, reading and rereading his familiar books, shutting out the reality of the baffling world outside. Jack would sit in the armchair in the corner, his feet not reaching the floor, and listen to the old man’s rambling stories while his grandmother sat sewing, watching the two loves of her life.
The door opened at a push. He took one look and spun round to the butler. ‘Where is the furniture? The books? Where is the damn desk?’
‘Mr Ransome—’ The butler was positively wringing his hands.
‘Is something wrong?’ enquired a voice behind him.
‘This.’ Jack swept his hand round in a gesture to encompass the entire hideous gilded mess. ‘This abomination.’
‘I instructed Mr Lansing to refurnish in the most modern taste. Is this not correct in some way? I carried out the most extensive research on what was fashionable.’
‘It is hideous. Appalling.’
‘I know nothing about fashionable interiors, but—’
‘That much, Miss Aylmer, is evident. You ordered this? Have you no taste whatsoever?’ She opened her mouth, but he swept on. ‘Where are the original contents?’
‘Partridge?’ She said it calmly enough, but her eyes were wide now and her cheeks white.
‘Everything was moved to the upper floors, Miss Aylmer. As I said, only this floor has been completed and there were sufficient rooms to store everything until we had orders about its disposal.’
‘Nothing will be disposed of except for this…this tawdry rubbish. Get whoever was responsible for the decoration and the furnishings back here, have it all reinstated as it was. Starting with the study.’
‘Mr Ransome, if I might have a word?’
A faint tremor underneath the taut words made him stop, breathe. Jack had his anger under control by the time he turned back to her.
Madelyn sank down on to a hard, upright chair, her back perfectly straight, her head up. Her hair had been curled, crimped and piled up, leaving her neck naked and vulnerable.
Lady Fairfield was presumably responsible for the eau-de-Nil travelling dress she was wearing. Neither the hair style or the gown suited her and she seemed unlike herself, as though she was dressing up. For some reason that only increased his bad humour. He had not realised his wife-to-be was quite so plain, quite so awkward.
‘Where am I to reside while this work is carried out?’ she asked. Somehow, she was keeping her voice steady, but the hem of her gown moved. He assumed she was controlling anger with an effort, trembling with indignation. He did not care. Let her have a shouting match if that was what she wanted.
‘They can do it room by room. I imagine that will not discommode you too much. There are enough apartments on this floor to provide alternative dining and drawing rooms and I assume you can manage without the use of the study.’ He sat down on something that appeared to have been looted from a pharaoh’s tomb. At least sitting on it he did not have to look at the thing.
‘Certainly I can. I regret that my assumption that you would wish your London house to be in the latest mode was so far misplaced.’
Anger at the shock at finding everything so changed was subsiding into a roiling stomach and a strong desire to down half a bottle of brandy. He hadn’t felt this bad since his grandfather died, he realised. It was like losing him all over again.
Jack looked across at his betrothed and felt a pang of guilt. This was still Madelyn’s house and she was trying to do the right thing. Probably, at this moment, she was wondering what she had done to promise herself to such an angry man.
‘I apologise for swearing. You meant it for the best, no doubt.’ He was a gentleman, he reminded himself. He should not take out his disappointment and temper on a lady, even if she was the cause of that disappointment.
She turned that wide blue-grey gaze on him, and he found he could manage to get the scowl off his face if he really tried. ‘This was my home, but why I should imagine it would stay unchanged for so many years I do not know.’ It was an explanation and, he supposed, a poor sort of apology.
‘Your home? But I had assumed that Dersington Mote would be the house that was of chief importance to you.’
‘That was where my father and brother lived. My mother died when I was ten and my grandparents did not think it was the right place for a child.’ That had been on the day when his grandmother had arrived to find he had a black eye and bruised cheek as a result of disturbing his father by crying at night over the loss of his mother. He tipped his head back against the hard, uncomfortable upholstery, closed his eyes and wondered why he felt so weary.