The Housemaid’s Scandalous Secret

Her voice trailed away. Ross waited for her to speak, to tell him more, but she didn’t. She merely stared into the distance as though she were alone, or he were no more important than his horse. Less so, for she evidently loved horses. He felt a strange sensation come over him and he could hardly believe it himself when he realised he was affronted because she was unconcerned whether he moved on or stayed.

He tried again. ‘How long have you been a lady’s maid?’ he asked, doing his best to be patient, though it was not really in his nature. He had her attention again and she smiled.

‘Oh—long enough,’ she replied, studying him covertly, her gaze sliding over him.

Ross felt the touch of her gaze, felt the hunter within him rise in response to that artless glance. He almost groaned. ‘And is it your intention to always be a lady’s maid? Would you not like to return to India?’

A glow appeared in her eyes. ‘Oh, yes—and perhaps I will, one day, but I have to make my own way in the world, sir …’

‘Colonel. Colonel Ross Montague.’

Ross studied her for a moment, frowning. She was looking at him, silent and unblinking, in the same way the dark-eyed Indian women stared in that unfathomable way. Having lived there for some considerable time, he suspected it was something she had developed almost unconsciously over the years, through her association with some of those doe-eyed women.

Spending many years in India had shaped Ross’s ideal of feminine beauty. He was no great admirer of European standards—the pink and white belles who had begun to invade India, accompanying parents attached in some form to the East India Company. With their insipid colouring, their simpering ways and carefully arranged ringlets, they set their caps at him, attracting him not one whit.

Ross sought his pleasures with the dusky, dark-eyed maidens, who offered a chance of escape from the stifling rounds of British social life, although there had been singularly few of late. This, it may be added, was not from lack of opportunity. Ross Montague was no celibate, but two things obsessed him—India, with its beauty and glamour and its cruel mystery, and the East India Company, with its precious collection of merchant traders from London who were conquering a subcontinent and maintained their own army administering justice and laws to the Indians.

In India fortune had done nothing but smile on Ross. Young men with ambition and ability could go far. He had served with distinction; working his way up through the ranks he had now been rewarded with a promotion to colonel. But on receiving a letter from home, he had felt the sands of his good fortune were running out.

One of his cousins had been killed in the bloody shambles of the battle at Waterloo and another of his cousins, the heir to the Montague dukedom, had been listed as missing somewhere in Spain. Bound by the ties of present and future relationships to the house of Montague, Ross had returned to England at a time when his presence was likely to be of great comfort to his relatives there.

But India held his heart and imagination and he had little time for anything else—and certainly not marriage. He hadn’t wanted a wife before he’d joined the army. Nothing had changed.

‘How old are you?’ he inquired abruptly.

The unexpectedness of the question appeared to take Lisette by surprise, and she answered in unconscious obedience to the authority in his voice. ‘Twenty,’ she replied, having reached that age as the ship sailed round the Cape of Africa.

He raised an intrigued eyebrow, choosing to ignore her awkward response. ‘And you have a place.’

Her mouth quivered, but then she looked away, rather awkwardly. She felt her heart tighten. ‘Not beyond three weeks. Now my employer’s husband has retired from the Company he is to move his family to Brighton where they have a full complement of staff already. I have been told I must seek another situation.’

As she stood there she looked vulnerable for the first time. Her air of impregnable self-sufficiency vanished and Ross saw her troubled and rather desperate. ‘You have references?’

‘Oh, yes—well, just the one. I can only hope it will secure me another position—even that of a scullery maid would be better than nothing at all.’

‘Even though it would be a blow to your pride?’

‘I’m truly not proud,’ she said with a bewitching smile. ‘I’m wilful, I suppose. Stubborn too. And headstrong. But not, I think, proud.’

At that moment appeared Lottie Arbuthnot, her employer’s daughter, treading with care over obstacles and holding her skirts to her sides so as not to mark them on the many barrels and casks piled up on the dock. On reaching Lisette she pricked her with her needle-like eyes.

‘Lisette! Here you are. Mama is becoming quite vexed. How long you have been in securing a carriage.’

Ross turned and looked at her with an apologetic gesture. ‘The fault is all mine—or perhaps I should say it was my horse who waylaid her. Having been released from the confines of his quarters on board, he ran amok when he reached the dock. Had Miss Napier not been so adept at handling horses there is no telling what damage he might have done.’

Staring up at the handsome colonel, Lottie disregarded his comment about Lisette and with a simpering smile fluttered her eyelashes in what Lisette consider to be an appallingly fast manner. ‘Then you are forgiven, sir. I am Miss Lottie Arbuthnot. Miss Napier is servant to my ma and me.’

‘So I understand,’ Ross replied with a wry smile, beginning to feel pity for Miss Napier.

Lottie’s arrival rudely shook Lisette out of the trance that seemed to have taken over her. It wasn’t until that moment that she realised she had lost all sense of propriety. Colonel Montague must think her forward and impertinent. Embarrassment swept over her, washing her face in colour. Lottie was a moody, spiteful girl who had made her life extremely difficult on board ship as she had tried to do her best for both her and Mrs Arbuthnot, to whom she owed much gratitude.

Mrs Arbuthnot had taught her the refinements of being a lady’s maid. She wore a smart black or dark grey dress and starched muslin apron and cap and could dip a curtsey as gracefully as a debutante. But all through the voyage she had been at the mercy of Lottie’s every whim. It must be Lisette who helped her dress, Lisette who brought her tea. Oh, that she would never have to see the girl again!

‘Lisette.’ Lottie spoke peevishly. ‘See, your face is quite red. Are you unwell?’

‘No, I—I think it must be the heat,’ she stammered. ‘Excuse me. I’ll go in search of a conveyance.’

‘Allow me,’ Ross said, handing the horse to Blackstock, who appeared at that moment. In no time at all he had secured a conveyance to take Miss Napier and the Arbuthnot family to Chelsea.

As Lottie continued to prattle on, Lisette saw Colonel Montague was watching her steadily, and she sensed the unbidden, unspoken communication between them. He knows what I’m thinking, she thought. It may be all imagination but she knew he was as bored and irritated by Lottie as she was. She felt instantly ashamed, knowing that Lottie could not help being the person she was.

Feeling in her pocket for some sweets, she handed them to him.

He smiled at her. ‘Are these for me or the horse?’

A gentle flush mantled her cheeks. ‘For Bengal, of course. If he should prove difficult you might be glad of them.’

Lowering her head she bade Colonel Montague a polite goodbye and walked back to the ship, a step behind Miss Arbuthnot. Yet she continued to feel his presence behind her, large and intensely masculine. Her senses skittered—she clamped a firm hold on them and lifted her chin, but she felt a cool tingle slither down her spine and the touch of his blue gaze on the sensitive skin on her nape.

As she walked, Ross thought she did so with the grace and presence of a dancer. As she had told him of her circumstances, he had been taken aback when her look became one of nervous apprehension. How different she’d suddenly appeared from the girl who had stepped in front of his horse, when her proud, self-possession had raised his interest. At first, not knowing what was the matter, he had thought that perhaps she was ill, but then he’d realised that she was afraid. Though her assurance and confidence had aroused him, that glimpse of vulnerability had drawn forth emotions he had only felt once before—in India—with a girl and a raging river … A girl who had also moved like a dancer.

Emerging from the river and seeing her small footprints in the mud, assured that she had survived the night, he had determined to banish the native girl from his mind. But all the way to Bombay he had not stopped looking for the girl in the pink, star-spangled sari and thick, black oiled plait hanging to her waist. The memory of that night and the girl had stayed with him, the way the hot heat of a candle flame stared at for a few moments would burn behind closed eyelids.

Those same emotions made him want to protect this girl, to keep her from harm. His fancy took flight and he imagined himself as her champion, secretly carrying her colours beneath his armour next to his heart, watching that proud smile on her face turn inward to a sweet, imploring look of appeal. Before his imagination could propel him to even more exquisitely poignant pangs of desire, Blackstock told him he would make the necessary arrangements for his baggage to be sent on to Lady Mannering’s house in Bloomsbury.

Ross immediately mounted his restive horse and nosed him away from the dock, the clip-clopping of the horse’s shoes ringing sharp and clear in the bright morning air. But he had made a mental note of where Miss Napier could be located, tucking the information into a corner of his mind to be resurrected when he so desired.

Light streaming through the long windows fell in bright shafts upon the black-and-white marble floor. Ross felt a warm glow. The house belonged to his widowed maternal aunt, Lady Grace Mannering. In his absence the house had lost neither its old appeal nor its very special associations with those happy years he had spent as a boy in London with his sister, Araminta.

Drawn by the bittersweet memories stirred by hearing lilting strains of a merry tune being played on the piano, he strode across the hall to the door of the music room and pushed it open to find Araminta seated at the instrument.

She stopped playing and turned towards the door and the man who stood there. Joyous disbelief held her immobilised for a split second, then she shouted, ‘Ross!’ and amid squeals of laughter and ecstatic shrieks, she bounced off the stool and burst into an unladylike run. Almost knocking him over she flung her arms around his neck in a fierce hug, laughing with joy and nearly choking him in her enthusiasm. Embracing her in return, a full moment passed before Araminta relaxed her stranglehold.

‘Oh, Ross, dear brother, is it really you? You look wonderful. I’ve missed you so much. I don’t know what I would have done without your letters,’ she gushed, hugging him again.

Pulling him down onto the sofa, his legs disappearing amid a flurry of skirts, all at once she launched into a torrent of questions ranging from where he had been, what he had been doing and how long was he going to stay, hardly giving him time to reply.

When he had the chance he studied her closely. Five years had gone by since he had last seen her and the girl he had known had been replaced by a lovely young woman. Her shining light brown hair was a tumble of rebellious curls and her eyes as deeply blue as his own.

‘I’m happy to see you looking so well, Araminta,’ he said, realising just how much he had missed his only sibling. ‘I hardly recognised you. Why, you must have grown taller by half a head in the time I’ve been gone. You look so mature.’

‘And you are very handsome, Ross,’ Araminta declared breathlessly, ‘and so distinguished in your military uniform. You are a colonel now?’

He nodded. ‘I was promoted just before I left India.’

‘Will you go back there?’

‘Of course. I’m home on extended leave—for how long depends on what I find when I get to Castonbury Park.’