The Postilion (The Masqueraders #2) - S.M. LaViolette Page 0,56
as she and Pike carefully wiggled the block of gray stone until it fit into the gap that Pike had chiseled out.
“His lordship wants to see you.”
Once the stone had been shimmied into its space—Pike had done an excellent job, she grudgingly admitted—Benna stood up slowly, her lower back on fire.
She took off her cap, shoved her damp hair off her forehead, and glanced down at her filthy breeches. “He wants me like this?”
“He said immediately.”
Benna snatched her coat off its peg, her heart thudding at the terse summons.
She turned to Pike, who was staring at her with a fish-eyed stare. Not that he could help it, since his gray-green eyes naturally bulged out like those of a fish.
“Go measure the block for the next one. I doubt I’ll be long. Don’t try to lift it until I come back,” she added.
He nodded. “Aye, sir.”
Benna ignored the emphasis he put on the word “sir.” The man had reason to be irritable; at thirty-five, he was more than a decade her senior.
Following the old butler back to the house was a process more painful than undergoing a tooth extraction. Not only was Nance’s snaillike pace maddening, but it gave her far too much time to wonder what this was about.
Had Jago finally made up his mind to send her away?
She shuddered at the thought. Oh please, God. Don’t let him send me away.
Somehow I think that God won’t be on your side in this issue, darling.
Geoff was right. She’d lied to the man—and continued to do so—and had made a fool of him. Doubtless the earl was reminded of that fact every time he saw her face.
Benna crept behind Nance while, in her head, she covered the same ground she’d gone over and over and over since that night in Truro, like a desperate farmer who worked an arid plot of land he already knew would yield no harvest.
After things had ended with Geoff, Benna had lost all the money she’d so carefully scrimped and saved.
All she had now was what she’d been able to save these past ten months or so; it simply wasn’t enough money to allow her to go somewhere and hide until she turned twenty-five. She had to keep working.
If the earl discharged her, she would most likely have to go someplace else. Someplace away from Redruth—away from him.
Yes, it was irrational, foolish, and not a little bit pitiful that the thought of never again seeing the Earl of Trebolton left her feeling nauseated. Especially now, when he could hardly stand to be around her. She should be grateful to get away from him and quit rubbing salt on an open wound.
At least that’s what she tried to tell herself.
By the time they reached the top step of the servant entrance Benna felt like an exhausted hound that had lost the scent of the fox.
She deftly skirted the old man and opened the door for him.
Nance sniffed at the small courtesy and headed toward the kitchen. “You don’t need me to lead you up there,” he threw over his shoulder.
Feeling as if she were walking a gang plank, Benna used the back stairs, trudging up as slowly as Nance. She encountered a new maid on her way to the second floor—so, that was at least seven new employees that she’d seen.
That did not seem to be the actions of a man who was skint.
Then again, his increased spending might mean that he had expectations from some other quarter, rather than the estate, itself.
And what other source of money could an unmarried male aristocrat count on?
Benna couldn’t think about that right now.
She scratched on the door to his study.
It was the same room and the same man yet nothing felt the same.
Lord Trebolton’s quill was flying across the parchment, his dark head bent over the desk.
“I’ll be just a moment.” He did not look up. Nor did he sound happy.
Things had changed.
He wrote something with a flourish—a signature?— and then sanded the sheet before looking up.
His mouth was pressed into a stern line, but there was an odd gleam in his eyes. “Good afternoon, Ben. Have a seat.” The earl gestured to the chair in front of his desk. Right in front of his desk, almost as if it had been put there for some sort of interrogation.
Benna sat, clutching her hat with both hands and staring at the cluttered surface of his desk rather than the man behind it.