some heavenly deity, he did decide to invest in McGale & McGale, she couldn’t allow him to think that she’d slept with him as a means to secure his money. Learning the truth about who she was would only make him view their every interaction as a betrayal.
Yet . . . if she told him everything, told him why she did what she did . . . He was a man with heart. He wouldn’t cast her aside because she’d fought to keep her family together. Would he?
And tomorrow, he and the others would visit the farm. Nervousness mixed with eagerness jumped through her—this was what she’d wanted for McGale & McGale. The culmination of her work at the Bazaar was less than twenty-four hours away. Hopefully, Cynthia and Fred would do their parts, and the end of the day would see their business with at least one new investor.
Her growling stomach interrupted her swirling thoughts. She pressed a hand to her belly, trying to quiet it. The food served tonight had been incredible, and she wanted more of it.
After grabbing a shawl, she peeked out of her room, and no one was in the hall. The last time the clock had chimed, it had been a quarter to one in the morning.
She took a candle and crept down the corridor.
Every country house had its idiosyncrasies, but thanks to her employment with Lady Catherton, Jess had enough of an idea about most houses’ layouts so she could find the kitchen and larder easily.
In short order, she arrived. It was a large room with a high, smoke-stained ceiling. The fire had been banked, and, to her relief, no one was about. But her true aim wasn’t here.
She found the larder quickly and shut the door behind her. Light from her candle revealed marble shelves lined with covered jars, while haunches of meat hung from hooks.
Jess put her candle on a table in the middle of the room, then approached the shelves as she rose up onto the tips of her toes to reach the honey pot.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. She froze, then cursed the fact that she had forgotten to douse her out-of-reach candle. Surely whoever was outside in the hallway could see light coming from under the door. If it was the butler or housekeeper, they’d likely investigate to make certain none of the staff was eating what belonged to the master.
But servants were quite forgiving of anything the master or his guests might do. She was Lady Whitfield, after all. Not Jess McGale.
The footsteps approached and then stopped outside of the larder. She arranged her shawl, straightened her shoulders, and tipped up her chin.
The door opened, and Jess’s plans to behave regally fell away.
It was Noel. Dressed only in his shirtsleeves, breeches, and boots.
His open shirt exposed his chest and the shadow of dark hair that dusted his pectorals. As he entered the larder and closed the door behind him, his muscles shifted beneath the fine lawn of his shirt.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, hating herself for the asinine question.
He raised a brow. “The master of the house is permitted to go wherever he likes, whenever he likes.” Then he ruined the aristocratic hauteur of his reply by saying, “And Cook told me that he’d put a meat pie aside for me in case I needed something to nibble on in the middle of the night.”
“Do you often come down to the larder after midnight?”
He set his candle down beside hers. “As habits go, it’s my least dissolute. You’re here for a snack, I imagine.”
“I am discovered. We share the benign inclination to ransack larders when everyone is asleep.”
She didn’t do it often at Lady Catherton’s home, and when she did, she made certain to grab only a few rusks or sugarplums. But she remembered all too well the lean years on the farm, when she’d gone to bed hungry and there had been nothing to eat in the middle of the night, and hardly anything for the morrow’s breakfast.
She could never tell Noel, of course.
Being alone with him in this tiny chamber made her heart pound. To keep herself from blurting truths about herself, she asked, “Anything here you want?”
“I’ve a taste for something sweet.” His gaze smoldered.
She inhaled sharply, but managed to say, “I have been told that I’m too astringent.”
“Only to men with an immature palate.” His eyes locked with hers, he prowled around the table until he was right beside her. “Do