Lord of Darkness (Maiden Lane #5)(4)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“You did write to tell Godric you were coming,” Sarah murmured.

Megs bit her lip. “Ah …”

A light appearing at a narrow window immediately to the right saved her from having to admit that she hadn’t notified her husband of their trip. The door opened with an ominous creaking.

A lone servant stood in the doorway, stoop-shouldered, his head topped by a flaking white wig, a single candlestick in one hand.

The man drew a slow, rattling breath. “Mr. St. John is not rec—”

“Oh, thank you,” Megs said as she walked straight at the butler.

For a moment she feared the man wouldn’t move. His rheumy eyes widened and then he shifted just enough so that she could glide by.

She pivoted once inside and began removing her gloves. “I am Lady Margaret St. John, Mr. St. John’s wife.”

The butler’s shaggy eyebrows snapped down. “Wife—”

“Yes.” She bestowed a smile on him and for a moment he merely goggled. “And you are …?”

He straightened and she realized his posture had made him look older than he really was. The man couldn’t be past his midthirties. “Moulder, m’lady. The butler.”

“Splendid!” Megs handed him her gloves as she glanced about the hallway. Not impressive. There appeared to be a veritable village of spiders living in the beamed ceiling. She spotted a candelabra on a table nearby and, taking the candle from Moulder, began lighting it. “Now, Moulder, I have my dear great-aunt waiting in the carriage outside—you may call her Miss Howard—as well as Miss St. John here, Mr. St. John’s eldest little sister … if that makes any sense at all.”

Sarah grinned cheerfully as she deposited her own gloves in the bemused butler’s hands. “I haven’t been to London in several years. You must be new.”

Moulder’s mouth opened. “I—”

“We also have our three lady’s maids,” Megs continued, handing the candle back to the butler as he snapped his mouth shut, “four footmen between ours and my great-aunt’s, and the two coachmen. Great-Aunt Elvina would insist on her own carriage, although I have to admit I’m not sure how we’d have all fit in only one carriage anyway.”

“It would never have worked,” Sarah said. “And your aunt snores.”

Megs shrugged. “True.” She turned back to the butler. “Naturally we brought Higgins the gardener and Charlie the bootblack boy because he is such a dear and because he’s Higgins’s nephew and rather attached to him. Oh, and Her Grace, who is in a delicate condition and appears to take only chicken livers well minced and simmered in white wine these days. Now, have you got all that?”

Moulder goggled. “Ah …”

“Wonderful.” Megs shot him another smile. “Where is my husband?”

Alarm seemed to break through the butler’s confusion. “Mr. St. John is in the library, m’lady, but he’s—”

“No, no!” Megs patted the air reassuringly. “No need to show me. I’m sure Sarah and I can find the library all by ourselves. Best you deal with my aunt’s needs and see to the servants’ supper—and Her Grace’s. It was such a very long journey, you know.”

She picked up the lit candelabra and marched up the stairs.

Sarah trotted up beside her, chuckling under her breath. “Luckily you’ve started in the right direction, at least. The library, if I remember correctly, is on the first floor, second door on the left.”

“Oh, good,” Megs muttered. Having once screwed her courage to this point, it would be fatal to back down now. “I’m sure you’re looking forward to seeing your brother again just as much as I.”

“Naturally,” Sarah murmured. “But I won’t be so gauche as to ruin your reunion with Godric.”

Megs stopped on the first-floor landing. “What?”

“Tomorrow morning is soon enough to see my brother.” Sarah smiled gently from three steps below. “I’ll go help with Great-Aunt Elvina.”

“Oh, but—”

Megs’s feeble protest was made to the empty air. Sarah had already scampered lightly down the stairs.

Right. Library. Second door on the left.

Megs took a deep breath and turned to face the gloomy hallway. It’d been two years since she’d last seen her husband, but she remembered him—from the little she’d seen of him before their marriage—as a nice enough gentleman. Certainly not ogrelike, anyway. His brown eyes had been quite kind at their wedding ceremony. Megs squinted doubtfully as she marched down the corridor. Or were his eyes blue? Well, whatever color they’d been, his eyes had been kind.

Surely that much couldn’t have changed in two years?

Megs grasped the doorknob to the library and quickly opened it before any last-minute second thoughts could dissuade her.

After all that, the library was something of an anticlimax.

Dim and cramped like the corridor, the room’s only light came from the embers of a dying fire and a single candle by an old, overstuffed armchair. She tiptoed closer. The occupant of the ancient armchair looked …

Equally ancient.

He wore a burgundy banyan frayed pink at the hem and elbows. His stockinged feet, lodged in disreputable slippers, were crossed on a tufted footstool so close to the fireplace that the fabric nearest the hearth bore traces of earlier singeing. His head lolled against his shoulder, casually covered by a soft, dark green turban with a rather rakish gilt tassel hanging over his left eye. Half-moon spectacles were perched perilously on his forehead, and if it weren’t for the deep snores issuing from between his lips, she might’ve thought Godric St. John had died.

Of old age.

Megs blinked and straightened. Surely her husband couldn’t be that old. She had a vague notion that he was a bit older than her brother Griffin, who had arranged their marriage and who was himself three and thirty, but try as she might, she couldn’t remember her husband’s actual age being mentioned.

It had been the darkest hour of her existence, and, perhaps thankfully, much of it was obscured in her mind.

Megs peered anxiously down at the sleeping man. He was slack-jawed and snoring, but his eyelashes lay thick and black against his cheeks. She stared for a moment, oddly caught by the sight.

Her lips firmed. Many men married late in life and were still able to perform. The Duke of Frye had managed just last year and he was well past seventy. Surely Godric, then, could do the deed.