The creature appeared to be a man.
What robbed her of every word was the way he looked.
He wore a pink and yellow brocade waistcoat with elaborate buttons and a deep purple coat over it. The waist looked pinched, as though he were wearing a corset, while the shoulders were wide, almost as if padded. The edges of his shirt were so high that they poked into his cheeks, and his hair towered so high on his head that Ellen wondered if it was a wig. His trousers were so tight you could see his thigh muscles straining against them. Unless that, too, was padding.
He wore paint. The cheeks were white, the lips red. And unless she was mistaken, there was a line of kohl under his eyes.
It occurred to Ellen that she was staring.
At about the same time, she realised he was staring back at her very similarly through his raised quizzing glass.
Ellen snapped her mouth shut. "Well. That was unanticipated."
He did not answer but continued to look silently at her travel-worn clothes, her threadbare pelisse and mud-splattered boots, as if she were a dirty stain on his exquisite silken Persian carpet. His nose wrinkled as if he smelled something malodorous.
A hot rush ran down her neck.
He raised an eyebrow.
His gaze continued down her dress and froze.
"I say. What, by the beard of Zeus, is this?" His voice was laced with such horror that Ellen instinctively turned. But apart from the green brocade curtain and a celadon vase on the side table, there was nothing.
Confused, she turned back, only to see him pointing his white, manicured fingers at her.
No, not at her.
At Noni.
He'd emerged from behind the sofa and was hiding behind her, his face buried in her skirts.
Ellen took him gently by the shoulders and pushed him forward. "This is Noni. Your ward."
He took a step back in his diamond-buckled shoes.
In a daze, Ellen took in that his stockings matched the colour and pattern of his waistcoat: a striped pink-yellow.
"Jenkins," the creature complained, pulling out a handkerchief and holding it to his nose, "explain the meaning of this."
Ellen stiffened. The man was not only being insufferably rude; he was showing a shocking lack of feeling for his ward.
"This is Miss Ellen Robinson, and this child is called Noni, my lord. Miss Robinson is a schoolmistress from the Seminary for Young Ladies in Bath."
He dropped the handkerchief. "A schoolmistress?" A look of antipathy flashed across his face. His kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed.
Ellen lifted her chin. "Precisely. I am an instructress. And this, as we have noted twice already, is Noni, your ward. I have returned him to you because we cannot possibly keep him at the seminary. What he needs is not a school for young women, but a ... " Mother, she had been about to say, but bit her lip just in time. "He, er, needs special care in a nursery, because he is too young, and he is a boy."
"I don't understand," Tewkbury complained.
Ellen sighed. Was he really as stupid as he looked? "Noni, would you like to greet your guardian?" She bent down to the boy, but he continued to hide his face in her skirts, shaking his head emphatically.
"But, my dear, you seem to suffer from a misunderstanding. As far as I know, I am not a guardian." He turned to Jenkins. "Am I?"
"I couldn't say for sure, sir. If you are, you have not informed me of it. Unless you have agreed to some sort of guardianship under special circumstances."
"Special circumstances." His lordship frowned. His quizzing glass dropped from his hand. "A terrible thought assails me, Jenkins. Did I, could I, would I have agreed to it while I was in my cups? Or rather, a wager? From the depths of my consciousness, I seem to recall a wager with Witherington. Which I may have lost."
"That cannot be ruled out, my lord."
