He frowned. “Is her health worse?”
Miss Trim’s gaze became shuttered. “She doesn’t complain.”
So she was loyal to his mother. Perhaps the marchioness’s favor wasn’t completely misplaced. “She wouldn’t.”
The girl’s eyes narrowed and he remembered what had made him mistrust her motives from the first. Whatever lip service she gave to his title, she didn’t like him.
How bizarre.
He muffled a wry laugh. What an arrogant coxcomb he was. He’d never before wondered if his employees liked him. They did a job. He paid them—generously. Most of the time, he hardly thought about them.
He thought about Miss Trim far too often.
“She’s looking better for your return, my lord.”
Ha, another barely hidden accusation of neglect. He ought to put this presumptuous chit in her place and tell her that if anyone wanted him in London fulfilling his father’s dreams, it was the marchioness.
The girl shifted restlessly, behavior unacceptable in a well-trained domestic. It was clear that Miss Trim would dearly love to finish this conversation.
Too bad.
“You will tell me if my mother’s health deteriorates.” More order than request.
Her shoulders went straight as a ruler. She didn’t like being told what to do, yet domestics were accustomed to having every move regulated. Whatever Miss Trim had done before coming to Alloway Chase, he’d lay money that she’d been nobody’s household drudge.
Which begged the question—just why was she here?
“Perhaps you should ask her yourself, sir.”
“I doubt she’d tell me.”
A faint smile lightened her expression. “You’re probably right. But I suspect a man of your cleverness could get an answer.”
“Lately I’ve lost all confidence in my cleverness,” he said with a sigh, thinking how little he’d managed to glean from this interview. Miss Trim’s ability to evade a straight answer put his parliamentary colleagues to shame.
Briefly he thought she might respond to that, but another of those damned evocative silences descended. Into the quiet, the clock outside chimed eleven. He’d kept her too long. Too long for his peace of mind. Too long for her reputation with the other servants.
Just … too long.
He gestured dismissal. “That will be all, Trim.”
After a brief curtsy, she disappeared through the door with a speed that betrayed her eagerness to escape. He stood and stared unseeing through the window at the flat gray disk of the lake. A premonition that he invited danger by singling out this girl weighted his belly.
He wondered about his strange affinity with Miss Trim. He wondered about the hunger she aroused. He’d never felt anything like this before. If he wanted a woman—and he made sure he only wanted women who wouldn’t cause trouble—he made arrangements, scratched the itch, and moved on to more important issues.
He couldn’t dismiss the delectable Miss Trim as unimportant, whatever he tried to tell himself. The thought of tumbling her thundered through him like an earthquake. His head might insist that he’d recover from his inappropriate interest. His ravenous senses told him that he had to have her soon or go mad with it.
That edgy, roundabout conversation just now had been a mistake. He was more intrigued than ever. And more convinced that she concealed secrets.
Even worse, he knew that he wouldn’t leave her alone, whatever the risks.
Nor was his mood improved when he checked the mail piled on the desk to find two more of the sad little letters that had haunted him this last year. The revelations of his uncle’s crimes seemed never to end, but for Leath, the most pathetic results of Neville Fairbrother’s activities were the begging notes from women raising children in poverty and disgrace. Letters addressed to Leath because Lord Neville had assumed his nephew’s identity when he’d seduced these girls.
For most of his life, Leath had done his best to ignore his odious relative, so he had no idea how long the swine had played this particular game. From the timing of the letters, Leath guessed at most a few months before his uncle’s suicide.
Why had Neville Fairbrother stolen his nephew’s name? The answer had died last year with his uncle, but Leath could guess. Some spiteful attempt to destroy his nephew’s reputation. A way of diverting blame from where it belonged. Perhaps even an attempt to impress the women with a marquess’s title.
Whatever his uncle’s motives, the scheme couldn’t have continued indefinitely. While it was clear that the man had threatened his victims to keep their mouths shut, he must have known that his deceit would emerge. Perhaps he thought that family pride would keep Leath complicit, even after the masquerade was exposed.
The women who had written to Leath had all been so desperate that they’d braved his uncle’s wrath to ask for help. His heart ached for these innocents. The scale of the devastation Neville Fairbrother had left behind beggared imagination.
Leath had employed a confidential agent to locate the women and offer aid. Otherwise he’d kept the letters private. Good God, if this got out, especially if people believed Leath rather than his repulsive uncle had fathered the children, all hope of high office would disintegrate.
His confidential agent could help him with something else. Miss Trim had arrived bearing glowing references. Perhaps it was time someone investigated her background.
From the corridor, Nell watched Leath entering his mother’s rooms. She hadn’t seen his lordship since that nerve-racking interview yesterday when he’d expressed his distrust. His expression this morning portended trouble. She had a premonition that the trouble concerned Lady Leath’s lowborn companion.
Nell slipped into her small office. She set down the ink she’d got from Mr. Crane—who was young and handsome and eager to help, and forgotten the moment she left his company—and crossed to close the door to the marchioness’s sitting room.
“… Miss Trim isn’t suitable.” Leath’s deep voice carried to where she stood.
Nell couldn’t see mother or son, but she guessed that the marchioness was in her accustomed place on the chaise longue and his lordship paced the floor as he did when he was impatient.
“James, we had this argument when you arrived a fortnight ago.” The marchioness’s voice was softer.
“I thought I’d give her the benefit of the doubt before my final decision.”
“Your final decision?” Lady Leath asked sharply.
“Mamma, you know I’m considering your welfare.”
“I know you’ve taken an unreasoning dislike to Miss Trim.”
“She doesn’t deserve your confidence.”
“I grieve to think I raised such a snob. Your father took people on their own merits.”
“Well, my father was clearly a better man in every way.”
Despite everything, Nell felt a twinge of sympathy. Something in his weary tone indicated that he didn’t appreciate the comparison to his brilliant father.
“Nell is from a respectable family. Poverty isn’t a crime.”
“I don’t know anything about her background, and when I ask her, she’s remarkably noncommittal.”