Never Lie To A Lady Part 11

To her shock, the Marquess of Nash stood on the doorstep. Behind him, Mr. Hamm and his minion were wrestling the rolled carpet from their cart. Kemble vanished into the depths of the room. Xanthia felt faintly unsteady. "Lord Nash," she managed to say. "What on earth?"

Nash had his hat in his hand. "I was just in the neighborhood," he said. "I thought I should like to see precisely what a 'grimy little office' in Wapping looks like. May I come in?"

Xanthia stood aside. "You may as well," she said. "Everyone else has."

Kemble, however, had leapt to attention, albeit at a distance. He was rearranging the Holland-covers for the painters, but Xanthia could sense that the man was watching Nash from one eye, quivering like a bird dog on point. Even the cowed clerks were peeking up from their ledgers.

Nash let his gaze drift round the large room. "You are redecorating, I see."

"There is no re-to it." In the back of the room, Kemble snapped out the next cover like a freshly starched bedsheet. "This place has always been a nightmare. Mustard-colored walls, fly-specked windows, oily, unfinished floors-utterly depressing."

Xanthia flashed a muted smile in Nash's direction. "Some of our servants are opinionated," she murmured.

"Miss Neville, shall I bring up tea now?" Kemble was on his knees, carefully tucking the cloth around the edges of a desk. "And kindly tell Mr. Lloyd I need his opinion on this cabbage-rose pattern for the curtains, if he would be so good as to come back down."

Xanthia blinked uncertainly. "Mr. George, I do not think Lloyd will much care wh-"

"Nonetheless," Kemble interjected. "I wish him to come down."

Suddenly Xanthia understood. Kemble wanted her to take Lord Nash upstairs. Alone. Which was perfectly logical, really. There could be but two reasons for Nash's visit-and neither could be discussed in front of the staff. As to Nash, he had drifted off to examine a set of Hogarth prints, which had been cheaply framed and badly hung on the wall by the door.

Kemble s.n.a.t.c.hed a ledger from Mr. Bakely's desk. "And Miss Neville, pray take this with you as you go."

Bakely opened his mouth to protest, and Kemble stepped discreetly on his toe. But when Kemble made no move to bring her the ledger, Xanthia crossed the room a little impatiently and s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his hand. "My goodness, aren't you a fast worker!" he murmured. "I stand in awe."

"Thank you," she murmured, stepping away. "Tea would be delightful."

"Right away, ma'am,"

"Oh, and Mr. George?" she said quietly.

"Yes, Miss Neville?"

"The pale melon must go," she said. "I am sorry, but I cannot bear it. And no rug. About that, I am adamant. We have too many muddy boots in and out of here. It would soon be ruined."

Kemble's eyes sparked with temper. "And the draperies?"

"You and Lloyd must decide," she answered. "But no ruffles. No fluff. No frill. Do we understand one another?"

"Indeed not," he said huffily. "But the choices are yours to make."

Exasperated, Xanthia returned to the door, and to her unexpected guest. "Will you come up to my luxuriously appointed office, Lord Nash?" she asked dryly. "I have a view of St. Savior's Docks which will simply take your breath away."

"And G.o.d knows I love nothing so much as the sight of a picturesque dockyard," said Nash. "Lead on, Macduff."

"Lay on," Xanthia corrected, starting up the stairs.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It is 'Lay on, Macduff,'" she said. "Macbeth is inviting Macduff to fight him. To come forward and attack. Really, Lord Nash, did you not learn your Shakespeare properly at Eton?"

"I'm afraid I have never learnt it at all," said Nash quietly.

She glanced over her shoulder. "I beg your pardon?"

"I was struggling to learn English when the boys my age were at Eton," he said. "I do not think I would have quite fit in."

Something in his tone made Xanthia falter. And again, there was that sudden flash of understanding; of kinship. Yes, she knew too well what he felt. "Forgive me," she said. "I-I meant only to tease you, not to insult you."

"No insult is taken," said Nash. "I make every effort to look the part of a proper British n.o.bleman, Miss Neville, but it is all a bit of a ruse, you see. Deep down, I am just rough-elbowed, Continental riffraff."

Xanthia managed a grin. "Continental riffraff?" she said. "That sounds exciting."

He laughed and leaned past her to open the door.

"Oh, no, the next one, please," she said. "That door leads to our rather untidy storage room. I should die of embarra.s.sment were you to see it."

Lord Nash smiled and opened the next door. Behind his desk, Gareth Lloyd jerked to his feet. Quickly, Xanthia made the introductions, then instructed Lloyd to go downstairs and attend to the draperies. A few heated words ensued; but in the end, Lloyd stomped back down the stairs.

Suddenly, Xanthia found herself alone with Nash. It was dashed unnerving, too, when she recalled her rather risque behavior by the river. What must the man think of her?

Nash was prowling about the untidy work s.p.a.ce, which now held three desks, the broken crate, a long worktable, and the map which covered one wall. There were also two armchairs and a small tea table by the cold, clean-swept hearth.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked politely.

"Not until I have seen your glorious view." Nash was still holding his hat.

"Do forgive the staff, my lord." Xanthia took the hat and laid it on her desk. "They are not especially skilled in the art of office etiquette." Then she led him to the deep cas.e.m.e.nt window. "There," she said, pointing to the opposite sh.o.r.e. "That is Rotherhithe Wall, and the entrance to St. Savior's. And you see Mill Stairs, just there? And the stave yard, and the timber yard? Oh, and that building, I believe, was the cooperage-before the roof fell and the rats moved in."

"Good Lord."

"And, of course, beneath it all, is the Thames, churning with mud and G.o.d only knows what else," she finished. "Scenic, is it not?"

Nash leaned close; so close, she could feel the heat of him against her shoulder. She felt her discomfiture-and her pulse-ratchet up. "Utterly idyllic," he answered. "I wonder you get any work done."

She laughed and tried to turn from the window. But Nash did not give way. "And I also wonder," he murmured, his eyes roaming her face, "-yes, I wonder what the devil possessed me to come down here."

For an instant, Xanthia couldn't catch her breath. When she finally did, it was tinged with his warm, deeply masculine scent. "Perhaps you've something you wish shipped?" she said with specious cheer. "You may, of course, trust all your transportation needs to Neville's. We are the very best in the business."

The strange intimacy was broken. Nash chuckled, and let her pa.s.s. "I shall remember that, my dear, when next I need something sent to-oh, where do you go, anyway?"

"To h.e.l.l and back, Lord Nash, if there's money to be made." She motioned him to the chairs by the hearth. "But whatever it is you've come for, you may as well have tea first."

Her timing was excellent. One of the clerks rapped softly on the door, then shouldered his way through with the battered old pewter tea service. "That Mr. George fellow is upset we haven't any cakes, ma'am," he said. "I'm to go up to the bakery and fetch some."

Xanthia refused the cakes and sent him out again. She poured tea, and she and Nash exchanged opinions about the weather. Nash thought it might rain. She did not.

It felt so strange to discuss such mundane things after all that had pa.s.sed between them. Xanthia knew she should concentrate on what de Vendenheim had asked of her, but she could not get past the fact that Nash was here-in her office, prowling around like a caged panther and interjecting himself into her ordinary world in a way which sent her senses reeling.

The man was the stuff of female fantasies; a man who made one think of breathless sighs and tangled sheets, not the sort of man who turned up for tea in the middle of one's workday afternoon. But he was here, and he was behaving with restrained civility-though his dark, too-long hair and obsidian eyes made him look just a little untamed. She let her eyes drift over his snug breeches and tall, black Hessians, which emphasized his height and lean musculature. His riding coat was close-fitted across a pair of fine, broad shoulders, and tailored with a decidedly Continental cut.

Good manners took over and kept Xanthia from staring at him as pointedly and as intently as she might have wished. "You rode, I collect?"

"Yes, I wished to take the air," he said.

She laughed. "In Wapping?" she asked. "Oh, never mind! Tell me, my lord, of your background. Was English not your mother tongue?"

He smiled self-deprecatingly, "No, not my mother's," he agreed. "She despised England and everything in it, I think."

"Ah," said Xanthia. "Where was she from? The Continent, I daresay, with that sort of att.i.tude."

He laughed again. "Yes, you are quite right," he admitted. "She was from Montenegro. Do you know it?"

Xanthia nodded. "Oh, indeed," she answered, setting down her cup and saucer. "It is a breathtakingly beautiful country, or so I'm told. I can imagine one might miss it a great deal."

"You cannot imagine how truly lovely it is, Miss Neville, until you have seen it," he answered. "The vivid blue of the Adriatic set against a backdrop of dark, richly forested mountains. As a child, I thought it an almost magical place."

"You grew up there?"

The marquess shrugged. "Mother was a bit of a vagabond," he said. "She was of Russian descent on one side, and she moved in only the best circles. We traveled incessantly. Vienna. Prague. St. Petersburg. But if we had a home-yes, it was Montenegro."

"And Montenegro is to the north of"-Deliberately, she furrowed her brow-"yes, Albania, correct? And Greece?"

Nash smiled. "I suppose that in your line of work, one must have a good sense of geography."

"Indeed," she agreed. "And of politics, too. For example, we are not always able to refit in Athens when we might otherwise prefer to do so. Revolution can be a dreadful inconvenience to commerce."

"I can a.s.sure you, my dear, that no one is more inconvenienced by the revolution than the Greeks themselves," he said quietly. "But in the end, they will prevail."

"Is that your wish?" she asked lightly.

Nash visibly stiffened. "I am no friend to the Turks," he admitted. "My family has been fighting them for centuries. For what little it is worth, yes, by G.o.d, I hope the Greeks run the Aegean red with Turkish blood."

Xanthia had struck a nerve, it seemed. It would be unwise to press this line of conversation. "Do you miss your homeland greatly?"

Nash nodded when she lifted the teapot. "I did miss it quite desperately, at first," he answered, as she refreshed his cup. "But the war was raging, and my father had inherited an English t.i.tle. He had responsibilities here."

"Your line had not been expected to inherit?" she asked.

Nash shook his head. "By no means," he said. "My brother and I were promised from childhood to Czar Peter-for his Imperial Guard-when we came of age. That was to have been our destiny, you see. But then Father's brother and nephew died in a yachting accident"-here, he lifted his hands in a remarkably Continental gesture-"and destiny changed her mind, I suppose, and sent us to Brierwood, the family seat in Hampshire."

Xanthia tried to relax in her chair. Hampshire. The man who had been murdered had been traveling through Hampshire. "How exciting it must have been for you," she managed. "What was it like to first see your family estate and know that one day it would all be yours?"

"At the time, I was not the heir." He paused to sip politely from his tea. "My brother Petar was the elder. Regrettably, he died young."

This, Xanthia had not heard. "I am so sorry," she said. "I gather your mother disliked England on sight?"

Nash smiled sardonically. "My mother remained in Hampshire but a short while, then chose to return to her old life. My father...well, things had been turbulent. I think by then he was not sorry to see her go."

"How sad that sounds," said Xanthia.

Nash shrugged as if it scarcely mattered. "My father had a new life; a life of wealth and English privilege," he said. "And English duty. But those things meant nothing to her; she was cut off from her world. She said she could not breathe here. So she left-and died shortly thereafter."

Xanthia did not miss the remorse in his voice. "How tragic," she murmured. "But it was no one's fault, was it?"

Nash lifted one eyebrow. "No, no one's fault," he answered, setting down his teacup. "Tell me, Miss Neville how does your business go on?"

Xanthia glanced at him across the table. Clearly the discussion of his family was at an end, too. "Quite well, I thank you," she said. "We have increased our sailings by thirty-five percent, and our profits by almost ten since relocating."

"Good Lord." He shot her a look of surprise. "You must be minting money in the cellars and buying ships at a prodigious rate."

Xanthia inclined her head in agreement. "Yet another reason for being here," she said. "One can buy-or lease-almost anything easily and quickly."

"And yet with all this expenditure of capital, you are still turning a huge profit?" he said. "I wonder you did not relocate sooner."

Xanthia cut her gaze toward the window and the thronging river beyond. She tried to focus not on the deep, seductive rumble of Lord Nash's voice, but on the task de Vendenheim had laid before her. She had to know if he was guilty. She could not delay-for any number of reasons.

"Unfortunately, London has its disadvantages, too," she finally said. "Where there is opportunity, Lord Nash, there is always danger. Is that not an old Chinese proverb?"

"Danger? Of what sort?"

She smiled tightly. "Customs men are everywhere, for example," she said. "And they are sticklers for the letter of the law."

He looked at her darkly. "Miss Neville, you shock me."

"Oh, come now, Nash," she said. "Have you never drunk untaxed brandy?"

"G.o.d, no," he said with a faint shudder. "I do not drink the stuff at all."

She looked at him in mild surprise. "What, pray, do you drink?"

He hesitated. "The occasional gla.s.s of red wine," he said. "And okhotnichya."

Xanthia furrowed her brow. "What is that?"

He smiled faintly. "A spirit made of rye."

"Rye?" Xanthia wrinkled her nose. "Like a...what do the Russians call it? Like a vodka?"

He set his head to one side and studied at her. "Yes, a strong vodka," he said. "You know it?"

Xanthia laughed. "Lord Nash, if it can be bottled or barreled, I have likely heard of it-and probably transported it," she said. "I also know it is not a libation for the faint of heart."

He laughed, a rich but faintly sardonic sound. "Deceivingly, Miss Neville, the word vodka means 'little water,'" he said. "Russians are masters of the understatement."

"And how is okhotnichya different from vodka?"

"Okhotnichya means the spirits were distilled with strong herbs," he explained. "Like cloves and citrus peel-or even anise."