“I didn’t pick him,” Nancy protested. “He turns my stomach.”
Gavin raised his brows. “But I heard you talking about him to Rose. In the nursery. You said he wrote you poetry, was about to offer—”
“Nothim.” Nancy let out a deep sigh. “Monsieur Lefebvre. My…French tutor. It was nothing. Papa overreacted.”
Her French tutor. Just as Miss Pemberton claimed.
“The night your father died,” he asked her carefully. “Did you go straight to your bedchamber after dancing?”
“No, I…” She blinked, broke eye contact, looked away. “I stopped by the nursery to visit the girls. I-I have to go. It’s my turn.”
After his niece fairly fled from him across the grass, Gavin made his way back to Miss Pemberton’s side.
“She told me about the French tutor,” he said. “Sort of. Said it was nothing and Heatherbrook overreacted.”
Miss Pemberton nodded slowly, hefting the weight of her mallet, but all she said was, “Hmmm.”
“Hmmm?” Gavin repeated incredulously. “Go—go touch her! I want to know if that blackguard ruined her. I hope Heatherbrook sent him packing with both eyes blackened. She’s seventeen, for God’s sake. Make sure Teasdale hasn’t touched her either. Go see if—”
“So much for your grand apology.” Miss Pemberton said, fingers clenched around her mallet as if she considered braining him with it. “You’re already back to ordering me around. Here’s some free advice, Mr. Lioncroft. People are far more eager to help those they wish to, not those who command them to.”
She snapped her mallet up beneath one arm and stalked off.
Wonderful. He’d managed to alienate his sole ally yet again.
“If you ask me,” came Rose’s dry voice from behind him, “you need to work on your wooing, Romeo.”
“If you ask me,” Gavin shot back without thinking, “you wouldn’t know a good match if it slapped you in the face like your rotter of a husband. What’s Nancy doing torn between a decrepit bag of bones and a vagabond French tutor, of all people? She should be in a London ballroom, taking her pick of eligible young bucks with educated accents and all their teeth.”
Rose’s mouth fell open. “You don’t know anything about it!”
“And why’s that?Youreturnedmyletters, not the other way around. And then you show up here and expect me to help match her up withthatancient lecher? Where’s the wedding going to be, by his plot in the family cemetery so he can tumble right in when the ceremony concludes?”
“You’re an ass.” Her hands fisted on her hips. “I should never have come to you.”
“So I’m an ass,” he scoffed. “That’s not news to either of us. Heatherbrook was one, too, and he finally got what was coming to him. Need I fear the same fate?”
“I didn’t kill my husband,” Rose hissed, “but I’m definitely considering killing you!”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Gavin raked her with a speculative glance. “Whatwereyou doing before you discovered his body? Wandering the halls alone?”
“No, I…” She hesitated. “I was with Nancy.”
“Where?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did you just ask Nancy? I saw you talking to her a moment ago.”
Gavin crossed his arms. “Actually, I did. And if you were together, you’ll tell me the same thing. Where were you?”
“The nursery?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” His voice rose so loud his sister backed up a step. “God damn it, Rose, be honest! I thought you thoughtIoffed the rotter.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Did you?”
“No!”
“Well, neither did I!”
