Read The Courtship for Free Online

staff for a slow response to incessant demands, but also to force Esther to fetch and carry like a servant.
    “If you say so, miss.” He gave her a deliberate formal bow and let her hustle along the corridor. Was it lying if the other party knew the falsehood for what it was? Esther hoped not, because another day—another hour—in purgatory would have her…
    What had Lord Percival said? Howling like a wolf and wearing his wig backward.
    She brushed aside the memory while she waited for the scullery maid—Patricia—to put together the tea tray. Percival Windham hadn’t so much as smiled at her in the past three days. He’d smiled at everyone else—servants, horses, dogs, debutantes, they all merited his smiles—while Esther had earned only a few brooding glances.
    And she hadn’t set one slippered toe in the kitchen garden after dark. As the full moon waned, so had the glow of that encounter with Lord Percival.
    Esther picked up the tray—the blasted thing was heavy—and headed for the maid’s stairs.
    “Miss.” Patricia’s voice had Esther pausing. “Not them stairs.”
    The front stairs, the ones used by family on their rare sorties to the lower regions of the house, would be longer, though Esther understood Patricia’s point: the maid’s stairs were for the help.
    The damned tray was heavy. Esther shook her head and started for the maid’s stairs, only to understand halfway up that Patricia’s warning hadn’t been about appearances and self-respect, or not only about those things.
    “Miss Himmelfarb.” Jasper Layton lounged on the first landing, elbows propped on the banister as he gazed down at her. “What on earth could cause a proper young lady to lurk on the back stairs so early in the day?”
    Noon approached, but it was early by Sir Jasper’s standards. Without paint and powder, his appearance improved somewhat, though late nights in the card room had left dark circles beneath his eyes. Regardless of his toilet, he was still inclined to have his conversations with the tops of Esther’s breasts.
    “Sir Jasper. If you’ll excuse me, Lady Zephora will not want her tea cooling. I’ll wish you good day.”
    He shifted, lazily, just enough to trap Esther two steps beneath the landing. The superior position clearly appealed to him, too, so Esther let him enjoy it for a moment while she dropped her gaze to the tea tray.
    He stepped aside, allowing her to pass, and then she realized why. With the tray in her hands, she faced a closed door on the far side of the landing. Her choices were to wait for Sir Jasper to open the door, to try to balance the tray on her hip and open the door herself, or to set the tray on the floor, open the door, and then pick the tray up.
    While Sir Jasper ogled her backside, of course.
    “A small dilemma,” Sir Jasper observed from much too close behind her. “You study the dilemma, while I study the opportunities it presents.”
    A male hand slid around Esther’s waist. She closed her eyes and discarded options: she could scream, which would result in her being compromised if anybody heard her; she could stomp on the blighted man’s foot, which would anger him and not solve the problem; she could dump hot tea on his falls, which was social suicide though a nice thought to contemplate; or she could endure this small detour into hell.
    A second hand joined the first, easing up over Esther’s ribs. “Instead of playing chambermaid to those ninnies in hair bows, you might consider more pleasant diversions with me, you know. I can be very considerate and quite discreet.”
    He could also manage a fair impression of ants crawling over Esther’s skin. While he brushed his thumbs over the tops of her breasts and pushed his hips against her backside—thank God for her bustle—Esther sighed breathily.
    “Lady Zephora has no patience, sir. To delay for even a moment will guarantee her enmity.”
    “I can placate Lady Zephora.” His breath, reeking of the previous