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The water flowing into the bath took on a golden hue as it deepened against the pristine white. In the oppressive heat, it looked irresistibly enticing. She was suddenly aware of the musky scent of her skin; the damp heat coming off it. He turned the taps off and the surface of the water shivered and glittered. The room suddenly seemed very quiet.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said softly. With his eyes downcast, he walked past her to the door, but paused with his hand on it. ‘If you’ll allow me, I’ll bring up a towel and leave it outside. If it’s all right for me to go into your room…?’
Their eyes met.
‘Jem…’
It wasn’t too late to stop this madness. To assert her authority and take back control.
‘If you’d rather I didn’t, I understand,’ he said. ‘But you looked after me when I needed it, and I’d like to do the same for you.’
She wanted to say that she didn’t need looking after. That’s what Mrs Furniss would have said, had she been standing there in her black silk, with her keys at her waist. But there was only Kate, unlaced, unlocked, undone, her eyes still hot from crying.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
Her room smelled of roses.
The chipped enamel slipper bath stood in front of the fireplace, the few inches of water it contained looking cold and unappealing compared to the crystal depths he’d run for her upstairs. Her discarded clothes were laid over the back of the chair by her desk, along with the towel she had set out, ready to use.
His heart stuttered in his chest.
He tried not to look at them. Tried not to notice the lace-trimmed straps of her chemise, the delicately boned satin corset, or to remember how it had felt to hold her against him. The delicate bones of her. The satin hair.
He’d failed before he’d started.
The girls he had known—had been with—were mostly servants like himself and the corsets he unhooked were made of rough cotton canvas. There had occasionally been women upstairs who had sought to alleviate the boredom of their privileged lives, or subvert the rules by instigating a dalliance with a footman. Those women had corsets like this: satin-smooth and shell pink, like the flesh they contained.
He wondered again who she was, the woman beneath the austere housekeeper’s black. She’d been shaking as he’d held her, all her armour fallen away. Where had she come from? What was she so afraid of?
In front of him stood the desk, with its little locked drawer at the back, where all the household keys were kept. Her housekeeper’s ledger lay on the blotter and beside it, in a puddle of silver, her chatelaine. He picked it up and let it trickle between his hands, so the key to the drawer swung like a stage hypnotist’s watch on its chain.
It would be the work of a second to unlock the drawer and find the library key. To find any key he wanted—they were all labelled. It was the kind of opportunity he had dreamed of: the whole house silent and empty above him… his to explore. He would never get another chance like this.
In his mind he pictured the chessboard, the carved figure of the queen.
There was a mirror on the wall between the room’s two windows. The man who stared back at him from its murky depths was hollow-cheeked and remote, his face shadowed by fading bruises. For a long moment he held his own gaze, regarding his image as if it were a stranger’s and finding it was one he didn’t warm to.
He’d used that face like the key on the chain, to open doors and gain access to privileges (and pleasures) unavailable to others. He’d used it to get work and women. He’d used it to turn Annie Harris’s head and steal her from under the nose of the stable lad who’d been patiently courting her for months. He’d used it to attract Kate Furniss’s attention and to win her trust.
He looked down at the chatelaine in his hand and felt a flash of self-disgust. Opening his fingers, he tipped it back onto the desk.
The stranger in the glass looked at him with a mixture of pity and disdain. You idiot, he sneered silently. If she’s the queen, you’re a pawn. You’ll never be worthy of her anyway.
Abruptly he turned away and set about emptying the bath.
He did it for no other reason than to save her the trouble, throwing himself into the laborious task with a sort of perverse satisfaction. When he’d finished, he took the towel from the back of the chair and carried it up to the Jaipur Suite, where he left it outside the bathroom door and retreated.
Chapter 13
Mr Goddard returned at teatime.
Kate heard the wagon rattle into the stable yard, and Mrs Gatley’s voice (she always spoke at a volume that could carry across a kitchen and above the clash of pans) reminding him about the cheese and onion flan in the larder, calling Jem to assist. Kate knew that she should go out and welcome Mr Goddard, enquire about the day, and give him a chance to enjoy his moment of celebrity, but she kept to her room.
Much to her relief, there had been no sign of Jem when she came downstairs, flushed and damp from the bath. When she went back to her parlour, she discovered that the laborious tasks of emptying the tin tub, rolling back the rug, and restoring the room to order had been done. It was almost as if none of it had ever happened.
Except it had, and she would have to face him again sometime.
In the aftermath of her terror and the weeping that followed, she felt bruised and fragile, as if a hard shell had cracked and peeled away, leaving her exposed. Once again he had seen her, and this time it had changed everything.