The Earl Next Door: The Bachelor Lords of London Read online

“Maybe this was the spirit’s home, before we stripped it,” Joseph whispered, “and now it’s cross because we carried away all its possessions.” He crept up another step.

  “Yes, and how bitter it now sounds. Laughing in the . . . I believe it’s in the music room.” He shoved off the top step and walked lightly down the landing, poking his head into each room as he went.

  The noises, now a clatter of footsteps and banging—Was someone opening a window?—were loud and most certainly coming from the music room. The fully enclosed music room. One of many rooms with no direct access to the outside. Because they were thirty bloody feet off the ground.

  He swore, cursing this burden, the newest in the long line of burdens he’d encountered while settling his uncle’s estate. The sounds and ruckus had stopped, naturally, now that they had bothered to have a look, but he motioned for Joseph to stay behind him.

  Moving deftly, he fell against the wall behind the door. He nudged his head around the jamb. He scanned the room.

  Nothing.

  Four walls. Dusty floorboards. No furniture, because they’d hauled it off to auction last week. Not even a footstool remained.

  Slowly, he edged back. Had they imagined the entire thing?

  A window was open, he saw, its drapes fluttering in the morning breeze. That was odd and suspicious.

  He stepped toward it.

  And collided squarely with a girl.

  No, not a girl.

  His scrambling fingers felt a fully formed woman, curved and supple. She stilled under his grip for half a second, feigning docility. He craned to get a look at her, and she darted to the right. He grunted and lunged, snatching her back.

  They tangled—arms against elbows, her hair in his face, her hands swatting—until finally he clamped down. He jerked the two of them back behind the door, muzzled her mouth with his palm, and scanned the room again.

  Still vacant.

  She’d been standing behind this very door; it was why he hadn’t seen her before. He’d have lost his thumb for such carelessness in Greece.

  “Joseph! It’s a woman. Doubtful she’s alone. Check every room in the house. Mind yourself.”

  The boy appeared in the doorway, wide-eyed, and Trevor jerked his head. Joseph nodded and darted away.

  Trevor checked the room again. It was empty and silent except for her muffled struggle and the drapes snapping in the breeze. Carefully, he loosened his hold to crane around and have a look at her.

  Bad idea.

  In one glance, the room blurred and blinked and then dissolved entirely away. His whole consciousness became a pair of alarmed green eyes staring back at him.

  He stumbled backward a step, taking her with him, and bumped into the wall.

  She had hair the color of honey. The struggle had pulled it from a complicated knot on the top of her head, and now it fanned over them both. He felt it against his cheek.

  She was young, but how young? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? No older than that, certainly. Well cared for, too, with a creamy complexion and small nose, long lashes, smooth hands. She smelled like a florist’s cart. She looked him directly in the eye without a moment’s hesitation.

  “If there are others,” he managed to say, “do not think of alerting them. Not. One. Word.”

  She tried to speak, soft lips moving under his palm, but her words were muffled by his hand.

  “A simple nod of the head will do,” he told her. “Are you alone?”

  Instead of answering, she bit him. Not deeply, but hard enough to startle. His hand jerked, and she used the moment to yank her head to the side.

  “If you please,” she said, breathing heavily, “you’re suffocating me. I’m not at all given to screaming. It is not necessary to—”

  “Are. You. Alone?” he ground out, leaning over her.

  “I’ve come with my maid,” she said to the wall.

  What sort of intruder was accompanied by a maid?

  “If you please,” she said, “you’re hurting my shoulder.”

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “Where is who?”

  “The maid.”

  “My maid is not dangerous. She’s barely five-feet tall and nearly sixty years old. And she is nowhere. She has gone back into my house.”

  “Your house? How did she manage that? This is my house, or did you lose your way and break into the wrong one? Ow!”

  Her boot made piercing contact with his instep. “Look,” she said, struggling, “clearly, there has been a misunderstanding, but you cannot possibly think that I can harm you; you’re twice my size. Please, sir!” She ground her sharp heel deeper into the side of his boot. “You really can let me go. When I am unrestrained, I absolutely can explain.”

  Let her go? He looked down at his hands. His brain had been so preoccupied with her face that he had nearly forgotten about her body.

  Nearly.

  She felt warm and soft and alive. The fabric of her jacket was stiff, but he clearly felt contours. Firmness here, softness elsewhere. Dainty elbow, delicate wrists and fingers.

  Reluctantly, he released her, his fingers skimming the expensive wool of her traveling suit as they took the long route to fall away.

  “Thank you.” She gasped, stumbling out of his arms. She yanked down the hem of her jacket and whipped her hair over her shoulder.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “I am Piety Grey,” she said, recovering enough to offer a dazzling smile. “Of New York City. Recently relocated to London. To Henrietta Place. I have bought the house next door.”

  She stuck her hand out, like a man intending to shake.

  He stared at it, not quite sure what to do. She quickly retracted it. “But perhaps you don’t shake hands upon first meeting in England.”

  “Falcondale,” he replied, reaching out his hand. Her gloveless palm felt small and cool. It was, perhaps, the first time he acknowledged the quality of the palm of someone else’s hand. He shook.

  “We do, actually, shake hands in England, although typically not . . . Well, I can’t really say. I’ve been away for quite some time, and even before I left, it was never my focus.”

  “Falcondale?” she asked. “As in the earl? Lord Falcondale?” She flung her arms wide. “But I was led to believe you resided in your country home this time of year.”

  “You were led to believe what?” His voice cracked.

  “It was in the contract,” she said. “Surely you remember. The solicitors went back and forth in order to get the dates correct. My arrival in London was to be timed with your departure for the country.”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “It is me, your lordship,” she prompted. “The woman who will be renovating the house next door? What a pleasure to meet you! And on my very first day in London.”

  While he struggled with that statement, she affected more smiling, solicitous head nodding, and hand clasping. All of it was a little too joyous and felicitous and delighting. Trevor took an uneasy step back.

  “I suppose it is obvious that I have found the doors and the shared passage.” She gestured to the wall behind her. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself first by way of your front door. I never would have stumbled to your side of the wall if I had realized what I had found. I thought it was a closet.”

  “Closet?” he repeated.

  “There,” she said, pointing again.

  Trevor swiveled his gaze like a tourist, sightseeing in his own home. In a far corner, a small door stood ajar in the shadows. She crossed to the small door, explaining, “It appears exactly the same on my side. Like storage, no? I thought, how lucky for me, another closet. But it wasn’t. It was the passage.” She smiled at him. “Our passage.”

  Our passage?

  He gaped at her. “I’ve never seen that door before in my life.”

  “Oh,” she said, and her smile went a little off. “Well, it’s inconsequential, really, compared to our larger agreement. By the time I vacate your ho
use, it’ll be nailed up, tight as a tomb, and you may go on ignoring it.”

  Trevor stared, trying to mince through confusion so deep, his ears had begun to ring.

  “This little door,” she explained slowly, soothingly, “leads from your house,” she patted the plaster beside the door, “through a small, tunneled-out passageway to my new house. See? It goes back and forth, between the two homes. Of course the buildings share this wall, as most row houses do.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, scrambling to keep up.

  “The passage connects to a room in my new house. It’s an odd, unexplained sort of fluke in the masonry,” she continued. “Well, not a fluke, really, as someone, at some point, must have planned for it, and tunneled it out, and installed doors on both sides. But it’s hardly typical and largely unnecessary; however, in the case of my renovations—”

  “Stop.” Trevor closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you please, do stop. Miss . . . ?” He squinted at her. “What did you say you’re called?”

  “Piety Grey.”

  “Please, stop, Miss Grey. I grasp that there is a passage. This I can plainly see. However, the bit that bears repeating, if you please, was your mention of an ‘agreement.’ Or, ‘contract,’ was it?”

  She opened her mouth to answer him and then closed it, eyeing him critically. He stared back, raising an eyebrow.

  “The agreement,” she began pointedly, “stipulated in our—yours and mine—paid, binding contract.” She eyed him. “It grants me the right to temporarily board in your home while carpenters make crucial repairs next door.”

  Oh, God.

  Trevor said nothing—there was too much, perhaps, in that moment to say—and she finished, “I have paid you a fee to reside here in your house during the months you take up residence in your country estate.”

  “A paid contract?” Trevor repeated hoarsely.

  “But this was the most crucial piece, my lord. I cannot believe you have no memory of the fifty pounds I paid to let this house.”

  Trevor gasped. “Fifty pounds? Surely you’re joking.”

  “Surely you’re joking,” she laughed, but it was a strained, nervous sort of laugh, frantic and panicked. She began to pace.

  “This . . . this was all finalized,” she said, “signed and sealed and notarized.” She gestured to the right and left. “My lawyers in New York, your solicitors here in London.” She stopped and turned to face him. “You cannot mean that you have no memory of it? The money? The payment’s been issued and gone for months. Even before I sailed from New York. I know we have only corresponded via solicitors until now.” Miss Grey pressed on. “But surely you cannot say that you don’t recall any of this. I have a document signed by your own hand . . . ”

  “Not by my hand.”

  “But you agreed.”

  “I agreed to nothing,” he said. “Even if it made sense, which it does not, I would never agree to lease out my home to a—” He ran his hand through his hair again. “To anyone. But especially not to—” He ended abruptly, overwhelmed suddenly by the urge to do as he had done in Greece and simply give the order, Get out. He walked to the small door instead and slammed it shut.

  “Sorry,” he said, reaching for calm. “Let me begin again.” He looked at her. “Are you married, Miss Grey? Are we saying, Miss Grey, or Mrs. Grey?”

  “It’s Miss.” She raised her chin.

  “Of course,” he said. “Very well. What of your father, where is he?”

  She blinked. After a long moment, she said, “My father is deceased.”

  “Your guardian, then? Who looks after your affairs?”

  “I, alone, have moved to London and purchased the house, sir. I am in control of my own affairs.”

  Rather than grapple with that statement, Trevor found words for what he should have said from the very start. “Miss Grey,” he began, grabbing the back of his neck, “I am the new owner of this house. I have only just inherited it, the title, all of it. The previous earl, my uncle, has died. Some six weeks ago. Any arrangement you made would have been with him.”

  Miss Piety Grey gasped. “Died? I’m so sorry for your loss, my lord.”

  “Don’t be. Be sorry that you made a deal with a dead man.”

  Another gasp. “I beg your pardon, I have a docume—”

  “Look,” he interrupted, “I’m selling the house. As soon as possible. I’m not sure of the sum it will fetch, but, assuming my solicitor confirms the legality of your arrangement with the late earl, perhaps I can repay your family some part of it.”

  “If I wanted to reverse the settlement,” she said, “which I do not, the money would go to me, not my family.”

  “That makes no sense, but very well,” he said. “The repayment would go to you, but this house will be put up for sale next week. In the meantime, I live here. You cannot, you shall not, reside inside it. Legal, binding documents or no. It’s entirely out of the question.”

  Miss Grey narrowed her eyes. “I see. Of course, I could not predict your uncle’s untimely death, but I do wonder why you were not informed of our arrangement when you inherited? The paperwork to finalize the settlement was, at least on my end, oppressive. Did your uncle leave you no will, no ledgers? Did he not speak of it?”

  “We were not familiar,” Trevor said. “I am still sifting through his, er, ledgers. My first priority was to take stock and sell everything of value.”

  Miss Piety Grey crossed her arms over her chest. “Sixty?” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I am offering you ten pounds more. To honor the agreement I made with your uncle.”

  “You’re mad,” he said. “Even if I could move out so that you could move in, which I have no intention of doing, you could enjoy an extended stay at one of London’s finest hotels for that sum. Why not book a proper suite of rooms in St. James and wait out the repairs?”

  “No,” she said quickly—too quickly.

  He studied her. “Why in God’s name not?”

  She drew breath to answer but then looked away. She was revising, taking care with what she said. Everything else had come out in a veritable gush, but now, she edited. It was, perhaps, her most revealing tell. Revealing what, he couldn’t say, but he knew when someone was withholding. Or lying.

  “If you please, Miss Grey?”

  She glanced up and offered a grim smile. “A hotel would never do,” she said quietly, almost shakily. “My circumstances require that I set up house immediately. I must move in,” she said, ticking off the list of “musts” on her fingers, “hire a staff, buy furnishings, establish myself in the neighborhood.”

  When she looked at him again, she was emphatic. “I cannot appear transient,” she said. “I am not transient.”

  Before he could respond, Joseph trooped into the room. The boy glanced quickly at Trevor but stared at the young woman. “They’re empty,” the boy said, his voice cracking. “The other rooms.”

  “Yes, Joe. She is alone,” Trevor said, turning to look out the window. “And, you’ll be relieved to learn she is neither ghost nor forgotten maid. She is . . . ” He looked at her.

  “Piety Grey,” she provided again, reviving her smile.

  “This is my serving boy, Joseph.”

  She nodded and turned her smile on defenseless, impressionable Joe. “But you must meet my maid,” she said, darting to the passage.

  “Tiny!” She shouted the word through the doorway. “Do come and meet our new neighbors!”

  No, we must not meet your maid, Trevor thought, even as the sound of frustrated effort rustled from the other side of the tiny half door.

  From the mouth of the passage crawled a petite, middle-aged woman with brown skin. She was dressed in the plain uniform of a servant, except for the bright-orange turban securing her hair. Her expression registered somewhere between diligent retainer and perturbed relation. Before she spoke, she looked at Trevor squarely in the eye.

  “Missy Pie,
” she said, “all the house trunks are inside. They finished ten minutes ago and then invited themselves in, right through the front door. Wandering around like company. Swarmed the ground floor, looking for Lord-knows-what. If you don’t get them outside, they’ll break something or steal it. They’re thick as ants on your jewelry trunk right now.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Piety Grey, looping her arm around Tiny’s and patting the top of her hand.

  “Lord Falcondale,” she said, “this is my companion and maid, Tiny Baker. As you can see, I was not exaggerating about her harmlessness.”

  To the maid, she said, “Tiny, the earl next door has died, and this is his nephew. The situation, I’m afraid, is not as we expected.”

  The woman narrowed her eyes at the earl, studying him shrewdly, looking back and forth between him and her charge.

  Miss Grey went on, “If you’ll excuse us, my lord, we hired hostlers in South Hampton, and they have agreed to help us with the unpacking. I’m afraid they are more accustomed to horses than people.”

  She nodded to her maid and released her, and the woman ducked through the passage.

  Piety went on, “Of course, we have yet to unload our personal trunks because we planned to reside here.” She looked around. “I traveled from New York with very few fixtures, but it appears what I brought might be useful here. Have you no furniture?”

  “The house is empty by design,” he told her impatiently. “The furniture has been sold—and hopefully the house will soon follow. It is empty except the bare necessities for the boy and me.”

  “Very well.” She scanned the room like someone of a mind to provision. He cleared his throat and stepped in front of her view.

  Miss Grey snapped her gaze to his face and went on, “My English solicitor has been notified of my arrival, but I do not expect to meet him for a day or so. No one could venture a guess as to precisely how many weeks it would take us to reach London from New York.” She paused, rubbing two fingers back and forth over her brow. “In the meantime, please think over my offer of an additional ten pounds. I’d like to discuss it more.”

  Before his next denial, she added, “In future, of course, I will apply to your front door. Please do forgive my intrusion here. You have been most kind.”