Hope. Hope had brought her to London, when Sense would have had her depart for Paris. Hope that burned in her like an altar lamp, a flame of a prayer for him, for them, for a miracle.
She sighed. All this, even after she’d written his secretary and accepted the honor and responsibility for his wedding breakfast and his wedding cake. When would she ever learn?
When Verity returned to 26 Cambury Lane at half past four, night had already fallen. She was the only one in the house: Mr. Durbin had plans to meet friends at a pub and then attend a music hall show; Ellen and Mavis, she had the feeling, would try to stay out as late as possible without sending Mrs. Abercromby into a rage; Mrs. Abercromby had said she’d be back at eight, the same time Verity had told Becky and Marjorie to return, to make a favorable impression upon the housekeeper.
In the kitchen she filled a kettle, intending to boil water to carry to her attic room for a sponge bath. Then she remembered what Mavis had said earlier about the lovely plumbed tub in Mr. Somerset’s bath.
She hadn’t known such a luxury in years, not since she stopped sharing Bertie’s bed. The thought of lowering herself neck-deep into hot water was almost too delicious to contemplate. She glanced at the man’s pocketwatch she always carried—those made for women kept shoddy time. Quarter ’til five. If she was in the tub by quarter past, she would have finished her soak, dressed, and wiped down the tub by six, two hours before anyone returned.
What a mad idea.
Oh, why the hell not? He would have wanted Cinderella to have a proper bath at his house, wouldn’t he?
The hot water brought back memories, first of Bertie, of the time when he’d accused her, smilingly, of loving him only for his tub. And then it dredged up far older memories—of the baths she’d suffered through as a child, the dozens of dresses she’d had at her disposal when she emerged from those baths, and the lovely woods and streams she could see from her vanity as her maid untangled her wet hair. Except in those days, she never looked at the woods and streams of her ancestral estate, she’d always looked beyond them, intent only on the world outside.
The world outside would turn out to be thrilling, heartbreaking, and difficult at every step—it had certainly taught her to jump at the chance of a hot bath, however illicit and risky.
She’d been in this bath before, of course—it was here that she’d cleaned herself up after Mr. Somerset had rescued her from the footpads—but she remembered little of the room. It was small, with dark blue walls, an oval-backed chair on which she’d laid her clothes and her towel, and a waist-high chest of drawers.
A large radiator to one side of the tub kept the bath toasty—God bless these newfangled modernities—and dried her drawers, which she’d washed earlier when she laundered herself before the soak. On the other side of the tub was a stool on which she’d set a glass of cold water. She wetted a handkerchief with the cold water and smoothed the handkerchief over her face so that she wouldn’t become light-headed in all the hot water and steam.
She leaned her head back and sighed as the knotty muscles of her lower back slowly relaxed. This was just what she needed. Not until she had completely immersed herself did she realize how tense she’d been for the past few days.
She’d expected to have dealt with a summons from him already, and had waited, all edges and nerves, to rebuff him, not knowing how he would react to her refusal to meet with him, or how she would respond should he resort to an ultimatum.
But so far, nothing. Four days she’d been in London, and the only interaction they’d had was through her food: She personally cooked him his breakfast, if toasting and buttering bread could be called cooking, and he always finished most of what she left in the holding cabinet for him at night. No summons, no notes, and only one directive conveyed through Mrs. Abercromby about a dinner that he’d host the week after. It was as if he’d submitted to some mad impulse by ordering her to come to London and, once that was done, forgot her entirely.
While she went about on pins and needles, ate too much pudding, and slept ill. While her awareness of him built and built. Every morning from the kitchen window she watched him leave, her eyes fastened to the cuffs of his trousers and the swing of his frock coat, her heart as hungry as a London stray. His valet liked to iron his shirts in the servants’ hall; the scent of clean linen and generous starch filled her with lascivious thoughts of stripping those same shirts off him. And even when she strictly minded her own business, a silly maid like Mavis would bring up the naughty notion of being found by the master in his bathtub.
A frightening, problematic, and awfully arousing thought.