Housemaid Heiress. Elizabeth Beacon

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      Could the wench’s eyes be best described as sea-green, aquamarine or turquoise? he mused. Without the abundant life behind them, they could be any of those fanciful colours. With it they were extraordinarily her own and then there was her mouth, so soft and yielding under his that he felt the rogue she thought him as his body clenched with need. He shook his head in an effort to gain control over his baser self. No sooner had he resolved to forget all idea of succumbing to Hetty’s artless charm that the memory of her tripped him up once more.

      Well, it had to stop—the little witch was quite right to wish him on Miss Rashton. He lacked the funds to keep his vagrant waif in anything but penury, if he ruined her for the sake of his pleasure and made it impossible for her to stay under his cousin’s roof. Anyway, it would inevitably be more than that—once he lost the self-control he had once prided himself on, he knew he could never stop his obsession ruining her in more ways than one.

      Hetty Smith was an ingenue with hard edges who could not possibly understand Virgil, he reassured himself, and marched from the room as if he was back on parade. He even managed to look delighted at the sight of the heiresses gathered in the drawing room, despite what fate and Miss Rashton had in store for him. At least he could not dwell on the third housemaid’s hidden depths in their presence, for fear of saying or doing something so idiotic even Miss Rashton gave him up as a lost cause.

      Chapter Six

      Thea climbed the back stairs to her attic, angrily muttering some satisfyingly unladylike oaths as she trudged up the seemingly endless flights of narrow wooden steps. His lordship’s practised kisses were not wondrous at all, obviously. Meanwhile every step taught her a salutary lesson in the many differences between an unimportant maid and the noble Viscount Strensham.

      She must move about the house like some sort of undesirable beetle emerging from the very walls, while for such as my lord there were elegant marble stairs gently rising to the heights of elegance. Which suited her very well. She was much safer here than she would have been as an unsuspecting guest. She sincerely hoped the ignoble viscount was enjoying his Pyrrhic victory though, because soon she would walk away from his cousin’s house with her fortune and her freedom intact, while he bore off a much lesser heiress, and serve him right too.

      Yet even after washing with the rough soap thought fit to keep servants clean and decent, and changing into her afternoon uniform, she was still haunted by the memory of Lord Strensham’s steely gaze softening for the open-mouthed idiot she became in his presence. She supposed he must think her an overeager trollop now. How could he do otherwise when she just stood round like a hypnotised rabbit waiting to be seduced whenever he felt amorously inclined? And why let him kiss her, when she knew he was an embittered cynic who meant nothing by it?

      Well, if she was nothing to him, she would make sure he meant less to her. If he chose to kiss half a dozen maids every morning, it wouldn’t matter tuppence to Hetty Smith. The thought of a bevy of starry-eyed females lining up before breakfast to receive such a dubious honour, appealed to her sense of the ridiculous and rapidly banished her frown. She had survived worse things, she told herself, and ran down the back stairs to help serve the refreshments Lady Lydia ordered al fresco on such a beautiful afternoon.

      Whisking unobtrusively into line, Thea recalled meals at Hardy House with a wry smile. Determined to do things right, Giles Hardy had sat at the head of a table long enough to seat a regiment, while his granddaughter sat at the foot and each had their own footman, with the butler orbiting between them like a satellite moon.

      ‘Earywigs in the cake and wapses in the lemonade again,’ whispered Carrie and Thea chuckled softly, but refused to join the second housemaid’s muttered litany on the lack of state kept at Rosecombe Park nowadays.

      Jane often complained about the family’s insistence on saving tax by employing maids rather than footmen, but Thea had given up pointing out that if they did not, Jane might not be here to flirt with those stalwart specimens of young manhood she yearned for so badly.

      ‘More lemonade from the house, Hetty, and be quick about it,’ ordered the Darraines’ stately butler, sparing the least significant foot soldier from a line he directed with the aplomb of a field marshal.

      Feeling her humble position under Lord Strensham’s steady gaze, Thea departed. She waited while one minion was spared to squeeze lemons and crush sugar and another fetched ice from the depleted store in the icehouse. Fifteen minutes spent in that sweltering kitchen fetching and carrying, and she could understand Cook’s bad temper and was beginning to share it.

      ‘Not before time,’ said the butler, sounding like an archbishop sorely tried by a minor cannon when she finally reappeared, hot and flustered from the kitchens.

      She waited for further orders and wondered if she was fated to play the lowly housemaid for the rest of her life. It occurred to her that, once upon a time, she would have formed part of Lady Lydia’s bevy of ladies with large moneybags and doubtful pedigrees eager to wed a lord. The appalling prospect of competing with Miss Rashton in the Viscount Stakes grated on her wounded pride—at least that must be what sent a stab of dark pain shooting through her.

      How the mighty are fallen, she thought ruefully, before diligently attending to her duties once again. The rightful heiress to one of the largest fortunes in the British Isles, she spent the evening carrying cans of hot water for the quality and closing curtains and attending to crumbs and spills.

      If she couldn’t sleep for thinking of a particularly annoying nobleman, slumbering in comfort and solitude a floor below and half a world away, that was because he was so infuriating. All three housemaids made do with one old bed in their stuffy attic under the leads, so to feel resentment of the privilege he so undeservedly enjoyed was perfectly natural, she assured herself. Thea set about counting sheep with grim determination and at last fell into an uneasy slumber.

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