“Good morning, my lord,” she said dutifully, rising and curtsying.
“Good morning, Miss Trim,” he said as if he’d never touched her and kissed her and asked her to become his lover. Without facing her directly, he glanced across the papers and packets littering his desk. “Ah, the mail is in. Capital.”
She was foolish to mourn his lack of attention, but still regret stabbed her. As he lifted a large package, she glumly returned to work. He never let her touch his correspondence until he’d sorted it. “One for me, I think.”
It was all for him, she wanted to point out. Sexual frustration and lack of sleep turned her mood acidic, not that he deigned to notice. Last night, she’d lain awake into the small hours, wondering whether to leave. Or sneak out of her room and run down the miles of corridor to Leath’s apartments.
Only his scant recent interest in her had kept her chastely tucked up in her lonely bed. Wretched. Longing. Confused.
She bent her head, trying to ignore the marquess as he settled behind his large desk. Eventually, she stopped fighting and glanced up.
The cold gray light shone starkly on him, highlighting his thick black hair, damp from his rainy ride, and the aristocratic, commanding features. If only James Fairbrother wasn’t so handsome. But she’d long ago realized that more than his looks attracted her. She admired his intellect and humor, and the deep streak of kindness beneath his occasionally forbidding exterior. Working with Leath had taught her more about the world than she’d ever imagined in quiet little Mearsall, despite her stepfather’s scholarly interests. Until she’d met the marquess, she’d had no idea of the complexities of the nation or the personalities behind the power.
She frowned at his lordship’s air of suppressed excitement. “Good news, sir?” she asked, before remembering that she’d do better to keep her mouth shut.
“Yes.” He gave her his first proper smile since their conversation in the clearing. “Come here, Miss Trim.”
He never called her Eleanor now. Nor had he renewed his invitation to call him James. Of course not. They were back to master and servant.
Obediently she rose and stepped in front of his desk. “Yes, my lord?”
“Please sit down.”
Worried, she drew a chair forward and sat. Had she done something wrong?
“This is for you,” he said with the secret smile that always heated her blood.
She needed to catch her breath before she took the packet contained inside the first one. She frowned. “What is it?”
“See.” His lordship leaned back in his chair. The smile now flirted with his eyes. Whatever this was, it gave him pleasure.
Puzzled, disturbed—the marquess in a fine mood was perilously appealing—she inspected the packet. It was heavy and marked with official seals. The wrapping was ragged and stained and looked like it had been through a war.
She squinted to decipher the faded writing. Astonishment flooded her. She raised her eyes to find Leath observing her with a tenderness that sliced through her heart. When he was distant, she could barely resist him. When he treated her as though he cared for her happiness, she was sunk.
Except that he didn’t have to tell her that he’d gone to considerable trouble to place this particular object in her hands. And he’d done it because he cared.
“It’s my father’s war record,” she forced out in a choked voice.
“It is.”
“You found it. After all this time.” She gulped to dislodge the emotion damming her throat. Her hands crushed the brown paper. “How?”
He shrugged. “I pulled a few strings, asked the righ
t questions, spoke sternly to a few dullards who were unacceptably slow to respond.”
She knew enough about the War Office’s labyrinthine processes to recognize his modesty. He must have pursued this issue to the ends of the earth. “Where… where did they find everything?”
“In some dusty corner of Whitehall, misfiled with old military ordinances.”
She blinked, telling herself she wouldn’t cry. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“I can guess.” Regret clouded his steel-gray eyes. “I’m sorry that it arrives too late to be any use to your mother.”
“Perhaps she should have enlisted the help of the marvelous Marquess of Leath,” Nell said, attempting lightness, but sincerity thickened her voice. Because what he’d done was marvelous. The most marvelous thing that anyone had ever done for her. Probably the most marvelous thing that anyone would ever do for her.
Her praise made him uncomfortable. “It was nothing, Miss Trim.”