“I’m always punctual,” Alexandra said, taming the rain-frizzled wisps of her black hair.
“Yes, I suppose you would be.”
“I’ve brought the chronometer.” She opened her valise on a nearby bench, withdrawing a brass instrument that looked like a giant’s pocket watch. “I can assure you, the time is accurate to the second. I take it to Greenwich once a fortnight to be synchronized at the meridian, and once a year it’s calibrated by—”
“You don’t need to sell me on your services, Alex. I have every confidence.”
Alexandra smiled. “Thank you.”
Emma drew her into the sitting room. “First, tea. You need something to warm you after coming in from that rain. Then we’ll make a survey of the house and take an inventory of the timepieces.”
“You needn’t do that. The housekeeper can take me around.”
“Believe me, it will be a useful exercise. There are wings of this place even I’m not familiar with yet.”
“Yes, but in the other fine houses, I only set one or two clocks, and then the butler—”
Emma cut her off. “This is not one of the other fine houses. You alone will set each and every timepiece in the house. Weekly. And you will bill us at three times your usual rate.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Very well, then. We’ll multiply it by five.” The maid brought in a tray with cups and a teapot. Emma waited until she’d left, then lifted the pot to pour. “I know—all too well—what it’s like to be an unmarried young woman in London, working for a living at criminally low wages.”
Alexandra accepted the teacup and stared into it. “If you’d truly like to do me a favor . . .”
“Anything.”
“I need a new walking dress. Something a bit smarter, for when I go calling on potential customers. Perhaps you’d be so good as to advise me on the style, or help me select the fabric?”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll sew it for you myself.” She held off Alexandra’s objection. “I would love nothing more.”
“It’s too much.”
“Not at all. Other ladies have the pianoforte or watercolors. My one accomplishment is dressmaking. Strange as it sounds, I miss the challenge. It’s you who’d be doing me a favor.”
Many of the ladies who visited Madame’s had been elegant and fashionable to begin with—but Emma’s favorites were the ones who weren’t. The quiet girls, the spinsters, the simply overlooked. Dressmaking wasn’t superficial with them. A well-made, flattering gown had the ability to draw forth inner qualities: not only loveliness, but confidence.
Alexandra Mountbatten was a beauty in hiding.
“If you insist,” she said shyly.
“I insist. I’ll only need to take your measurements, and then I’ll draw up a few sketches.”
“Goodness. We had better see to the clocks before all that.”
They began a survey of the house. It became clear after just a few rooms that this was going to take a bit of time. The drawing room alone had three clocks: one standing, one ormolu, and one a sort of Viennese fancywork with a dancing couple who twirled on the hour.
They worked their way through the morning room, the music room, and the dining room. Alex kept notes of every timepiece, room by room.
When they came to the door of the ballroom, Emma stopped and pressed her ear to the door. Clanging and intermittent grunting could be heard from within.
“We’ll come back to that one later,” she whispered, steering Alex back down the corridor to the safety of the entrance hall.
They made their way upstairs, where Emma struggled to remember the names of all the guest bedchambers. Some were easy, like the Rose Room and the Green Suite, but they had to resort to making up names for the rest: the Unsettling Portrait Room, the Hideous Wallpaper Annex, and the Suite of Ridiculous Size.
“What’s this one?” Alex opened the next door. “Oh, it’s the grandest yet.”
“These are the duke’s rooms.”
Emma paused in the corridor. She hadn’t been prepared for this. To be honest, she only knew these rooms to be her husband’s because they were just down the corridor from hers. She’d never been inside them, and she was embarrassed to admit it. Even to Alex.
She shouldn’t be ashamed to enter, should she? She was mistress of the house, after all. It was no intrusion for her to come in and inventory the clocks. It wasn’t as though she meant to rifle through his chest of drawers and sniff his laundry.
Besides, she knew him to be downstairs—clanging and grunting with poor Khan. Lord, what suffering he inflicted on the man.
Emma moved into the room, pretending to have the same confidence she’d shown when exploring the others.
Alexandra scribbled in her carnet, taking note of the clock on the mantel of the antechamber before proceeding into the bedroom. There, she peered at the small timepiece at his bedside.
“Is there a clock in the dressing room?” Alex asked.
“I don’t . . .” Emma cursed her own ignorance. Rather than admit it, she plowed forward in false surety. “I meant to say, no. There isn’t.”
“Did you want me to set the pocket watch?”
“The pocket watch?”
Alexandra nodded toward the washstand. To the side of the basin and ewer stood a military rank of gentleman’s toiletries: tooth powder, shaving soap and razor, cologne, a linen towel . . . and at the end of those, a silver tray holding a stickpin, pocket watch, and an assortment of shillings and pence.
“I’m not certain,” Emma said, unwilling to go that far. “I’ll ask him about it later.”
Her gaze tracked back to that shaving soap and razor. She’d never stopped to consider it before, but it must be astoundingly difficult for him to shave around his scars. Yet he did so anyway, every day. Every evening, too, come to think of it. When he suckled her breasts or settled between her thighs—her skin heated at the memories—she never felt the scrape of whiskers against her skin.
Did he go to all that trouble just for her?
The thought was deeply stirring. She felt her body softening in unconnected places. The corners of her mouth. Her knees. Her heart.
To distract herself, she wandered to a corner of the antechamber, where a Holland cloth had been draped over some tall, narrow furnishing. Could it be another clock, out of use? If so, Emma hoped it needed repair. She could pay Alex a frightful sum for mending it.
However, when she pulled the cloth aside, she did not discover a clock behind it.
She found a mirror.
A full-length looking glass in a gilt oval frame, cracked to pieces. A spiderweb of splinters radiated from the center. Each shard reflected at a different angle, piecing her image into a patchwork Emma.
She touched her fingertips to the center of the shattered web. It looked as if someone—a strong, tall someone—had driven his fist into the glass.
A lump rose in her throat.
Alexandra tugged at her elbow. “Emma, someone’s coming.”
Oh, no.
Someone was coming. Worse by far, she knew who it must be. Steps that heavy could only belong to one person in this house.
The duke.
“We should move on anyhow,” Alexandra said.
Emma whirled in place, desperate. If they left the suite now, they would confront him in the corridor—and he would be suspicious of her intent. Displeased, or even furious.
A door creaked. He’d entered through the antechamber.
Emma grabbed Alexandra by the wrist and tugged her to the other side of the room. Together, they dove behind a settee.
“Why are we hiding?” Alexandra whispered. “It’s your house. Your husband.”
“I know.” Emma fluttered her hands. “But I panicked.”
“I suppose we’re stuck now. Let’s hope he doesn’t mean to stay.”
Emma put a finger to her lips for silence as the duke’s footsteps moved into the bedchamber. The room fell almost silent. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, she peeked around the corner of the settee. His back was to her, and he—
God have mercy. He was disrobing.