Her face fell.
“Do you know what happened to your old officer?” he prodded.
She avoided his gaze, as if embarrassed. “I asked my father to write him a reference,” she finally said. “I understand he returned to work for the Metropolitan Police.”
That had been the decent thing to do, give him a reference, though in his opinion her officer deserved to be fired for his poor performance.
She looked subdued behind her wineglass, so he changed the topic.
“The house,” he said. “Is it to your liking?”
She gave a polite nod. “It is, yes.”
“Make changes, if you want.”
“Thank you.” She put down her glass. “May I ask why you don’t keep any staff?”
She had noted the absence of regular staff last evening and, to her credit, hadn’t fainted.
“Cook and Tommy the lad weren’t to your liking?” he asked, for he did keep some staff.
“No, they seemed decent,” she said quickly, “though Tommy seemed rather young.”
“He’s twelve,” Lucian said. “Old enough. I’ll employ a girl to tend to the fire in your rooms but thought you might want to choose her.”
“I would, thank you,” she said. “But what of a butler? A valet, a housekeeper? Parlormaids? Footmen? Grooms?”
“I’ve no need for them. I use few rooms, I prefer to dress and shave myself, and I value privacy over convenience.” Besides, he hadn’t been born into the habit of perceiving other humans as part of the inventory as long as they wore a uniform, and he didn’t care for feeling surrounded by crowds. Harriet looked a little nervous, unsurprisingly. The new etiquette book for gentlemen on his nightstand had reminded him that upper-class rules were plentiful and specific. Harriet probably knew the type of velvet a woman was allowed for trimming the lapels of such and such a jacket and all the various ways of how to properly sign off a letter depending on the recipient, and by those standards, his household was barbaric.
“I assume Mr. Matthews is your man of all work, then?” she said.
“Of sorts.”
“He plays the flute,” she said. “I heard him last evening, and again this morning.”
He supposed he’d have to hire more staff so she could organize social events at his house, and he loathed it already. Perhaps he should give her a house just for holding dinners and the like. Then again, making nice with society had been the plan all along. “You’ll find he plays obsessively,” he said. “Matthews.”
“He plays very well,” she replied. “He must have enjoyed an excellent musical education. How did he come to work for you?”
He did not, for a while, understand why he told her the truth that moment. “He was in debtors’ prison when I found him.”
She looked intrigued rather than shocked. “Why?”
“Because he has a gambling problem. Might explain his obsession with his flute,” he added. “Obsessive minds tend to obsess about more than one thing.”
“I meant why would you recruit your closest assistant from the jail?” she whispered.
“Leverage,” he replied. “My assistant knows more about my affairs than any other man in London. Matthews won’t blab.”
“And how long has he been in your employ?” Her expression was troubled now.
“Three years.”
She’d be proper shocked if he told her he had bailed out Matthews specifically because he had been in Rutland’s employ as his secretary. A source had alerted Lucian that Rutland had left the man to rot. The information about Rutland’s business affairs and weak spots he had squeezed from Matthews during his first week of unexpected freedom had been worth its weight in gold.
Their meals were served, and Harriet ate in contemplative silence while he watched her between his own bites like a lecher. He couldn’t help it; she handled her cutlery with an innate lazy gracefulness that a part of him found hopelessly mesmerizing. Perhaps sensing the turn of his mind, Harriet attempted more conversation.
“Why aren’t you in New York?” she asked. “I understand the New York Stock Exchange is vastly more developed than the London Stock Exchange.”
“It is.”
“Is it true that Americans are more appreciative of self-made men?”
“Americans don’t care where the money comes from as long as there’s lots of it,” he confirmed. “So society in New York invented other criteria to create hierarchies—how far back one’s ancestors arrived to make their land grab, for one.”