Page 39 of Meet A Rogue At Midnight
“We’ll have to take the servant’s door.”
“The servant’s door,” Jonas grated. “Is that for his benefit?”
No need to say whose benefit. Mr. Haggerty stood at the epicenter of the drawing room, arms crossed tightly, an elegant scowl on his face as he watched her and Jonas in the entry hall.
“No. It’s for mine,” she hissed, her gaze darting to Mr. Haggerty. “My boots are there. Mrs. Tillmouth noticed they needed a good cleaning after last night.”
“Because you were with me.” Jonas slipped into his coat.
“Exactly.” Keeping her voice low, she marched off to the kitchen. There was nothing graceful about her charge.
Jonas lumbered silently beside her, but he gloated. She’d seen the same expression on his face when he’d bested other village boys in summer foot races or fisticuffs. But, this was not a game, nor was she a prize to be won.
“I may as well have announced to the entire household I was not at the Sheep’s Head. If I was, the mud from Plumtree’s roads wouldn’t have been on my boots,” she said under her breath while pushing into the kitchen. “Because I was chasing down a certain stubborn man.”
Mrs. Tillmouth sipped a dish of tea at the kitchen table, the household account book open before her. “Mr. Braithwaite, Miss Olivia. How nice to see you.”
Mrs. Malcolm, the cook, wiped her hands in her apron, beaming at Jonas from her place by the stove. “Bless me! I’d heard the young Mr. Braithwaite was back in Plumtree. Now that I’ve clapped eyes on you, I’ll bake your favorite biscuits. You always had the heartiest of appetites.” Her apple cheeks deepened as she added, “And what a fine, strapping man you’ve become.”
“Thank you Mrs. Malcolm, Mrs. Tillmouth. It’s good to be home.”
Mrs. Tillmouth set down her tea. “Rumor has it you’re not long for Plumtree. Are there more fascinating adventures ahead?”
“At present, ma’am, I’m bound for the tower. It’s both fascinating and an adventure in there.”
“You sound just like Miss Olivia and her father, bless the man.” The housekeeper tittered. “I had hoped you would rescue Miss Olivia from that pile of stones.”
“He’s working on the Roman chair that was delivered from the Learmouth excavation,” Livvy said. “I’m to show him something, and I need my boots.”
“Of course. Your mother told me about Mr. Braithwaite helping the family. A good thing he learned at the Captain’s side all those years. A fine trade, furniture making.” Her smile sparked with mischief as she looked to Livvy. “Your boots are on the back step. I had to take a brush to them.”
Did the whole household know she was up to no good? Livvy led Jonas through the kitchen to the servant’s door. She grabbed a ring of keys off a hook. Jonas cocked his head when she dropped them into her pocket.
“The towerdoeshave a lock. It’s rusted and hangs behind the door.”
“We wouldn’t want your Mr. Haggerty to have any doubts,” he said as she swept outside the servant’s entrance.
Mr. Haggerty’s snipe about the servant’s door stung and, no doubt, the swipe struck a blow to Jonas. Growing up, she and Elspeth took the servant’s entrance when they came home from a ramble, their shoes dirty from a summer day’s adventure. Their friends had done the same, stealing Mrs. Malcolm’s warm biscuits from the kitchen table.
Her mother and father had acted as tutor when they were young. It wasn’t until both girls were older that a governess came to the Halsey household. The sole purpose of the governess was to instill decorum and teach French. For Livvy, the latter was a dismal failure. The former was, too.
Wrung out and exhausted, she plopped down on the wet bench beside her boots drying in the sun. “I missed you this morning.”
Jonas donned his hat, frowning at the large, expensive carriage parked outside the Halsey barn. “I needed to talk with the Captain. I should’ve sent word.” His gaze pierced her from under the brim of his hat. “I didn’t know you were expecting guests.”
She tipped forward to untie her shoe, huffing at her impossibly stiff corset. “Mr. Haggerty’s arrival was a surprise. We didn’t expect him this soon.”
The stable master’s dog sniffed a carriage wheel. Head basking in the sun, he lifted a hind leg and gave the wheel a dousing. Jonas chuckled at the sight.
“But youdidexpect him.”
She tried again to bend low. “He is betrothed to me. A fact that didn’t seem to bother you last night.”
His mouth flattened in a grim line. She fussed with the bottom of her stomacher where a stay dug deep into the side of her waist. The corset, like the gown, was made for a youthful woman. The whalebone’s pinch and her ugly gown reminded her, she was twenty-four, not a young girl anymore. Life had changed and she needed to change with it, otherwise the things she wanted—a husband, children, to write a few Romanesque adventures—would all go up in smoke.
Like it or not, her best chance at what she wanted was inside her drawing room. Mr. Haggerty had made it clear what he wanted. Jonas had not.
She tried again to bend forward. “This blasted corset.”
