“I will behappyto help you with the papers, Mercy,” Lisa offered. “I’ve been told I’m ever so good with organizing things. We could work together on the project, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I said glumly, aware of Lady Sybilla’s pale eyes on me. She might be old, but she had a gaze like a basilisk. “That would be helpful.”
“There, now, isn’t that nice? We have solved that problem. And I hear you’re solving one of your own,” she said, putting her hand on Alden’s arm.
He looked up, startled. “Eh?”
“I’m told that you found a secret passageway in the house, one that someone has been using to spy on all of us, but that you’ve come up with a brilliant idea on how to catch the culprit by putting some sort of chemical on the light switches that the person uses. I have to say, that’s the cleverest idea I’ve heard in a very long time.”
Alden stared at her for a few seconds, then transferred his gaze to me. Only by then, it was a glare. A furious glare. “Mercy, might I have a word in your ear?”
“Uh... sure.” I followed him when he marched over to the far side of the room, where a marble fireplace that probably hadn’t been used in at least fifty years lurked with an oddly menacing air. Lady Sybilla and Fenice left the room, leaving me alone with Alden. “What’s up?”
He whirled around to face me, his eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flaring. “You told Lisa about our plan to catch whoever is sneaking around in my house?”
“No, of course not.” I cleared my throat. “I did tell Fenice, but I figured that was OK. I mean, she was all freaked out about the idea of someone being in the house able to watch her, so that means she couldn’t be doing it. Not that I ever thought it was her. Or Vandal, for that matter.”
“Oh?” He stiffened. “Why are you so quick to exclude Vandal?”
I whapped him on the arm. “Silly, your jealousy is showing.”
“I’m not jealous,” he replied with great dignity, which was immediately blown when he added, “You’re not falling for him, are you?”
“Of course not.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that the only man I was falling for was standing right in front of me, but I decided that not even I was ready to investigate that thought, and I certainly wasn’t up to talking about it with the man who expected me to be leaving in a week. “I simply meant that he isn’t the sort of man who would go skulking around the innards of a house spying on people. For one thing, I have it on the best authority that he’s spending most of his free time wooing the local ladies, and for another, he hardly ever comes up to the house for meals, let alone anything else.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“No,” I said, leaning in to give his lower lip a little nibble. “But neither does your unwarranted suspicion based on jealousy.”
“I told you that I’m not jealous.”
“Of course you’re not, darling,” Lisa said, oozing overto us, her hips swaying with exaggerated movements. “A man like you would never have cause to be jealous.”
“Dude,” I told her, shaking my head. “Do you spend all your free time watching oldFalcon Crestreruns? Because you’re sure doing the same sort of scene-eating overacting that they used to have on that show.”
“Scene-eating!” she snarled, her hands fisting. “Overacting?”
“In spades,” I told her, at the end of my tether. “Since the day you came here, Alden has made it perfectly clear that he was not interested in a sexual or romantic relationship with you. And yet you continue to slink around and cast innuendos at him, and make sly little digs at me, and butter him up one side and down the other. Well, I’ve had it with your shenanigans. Just knock it off already, and we’ll get along fine.”
She gawked at me for a moment, then turned to Alden with her hands spread wide. “You see? Itryto be nice, but she’s foreverinsultingme, and trying tobelittleme in front of others.”
“What do you mean,you see?” I asked suspiciously. “Have you been complaining to Alden about me? Oh! You have, haven’t you?”
She smiled.
Alden looked incredibly uncomfortable, and began fidgeting, a sure warning he was about to run off.
“Don’t you dare,” I told him, poking him in the chest with my finger. “If I’m going to have a dramatic scene with Lisa, the least you can do is stand there and be supportive! So get with the program!”
He thought for a moment, then applauded politely. “Brava, Mercy.”
Lisatched, and with a last lingering look at Alden(my rant clearly had no effect on her), she hustled her hips out of the room, murmuring something about attending to Lady Sybilla’s latest literary output.
“That’s your idea of support?” I asked Alden, my lips thinned.
He shrugged. “It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. If you give me ten minutes, I could write you a supportive note.”
“All right, but later.” I couldn’t help but smile at him. “I like your notes.”
