Lion stalked to the window, where the park beyond was blanketed in white and the snowflakes falling from the sky showed no sign of slowing. If this kept up, the roads would remain impassable for days. Perhaps even a week or—sweet God above—more. He was as stuck with the dreadful Miss Fox as her carriage was mired in the snowbank.
Irritated at the very thought of sharing the same roof with the vexing American, he quit his study, determined to confront her. He was halfway up the staircase before it occurred to him that it wasn’t done for a gentleman to knock at the door of an unwed woman, even if she decidedly wasn’t a lady.
Lion paused. He could ring for Mrs. Burton or perhaps even one of the few maids left belowstairs. Any one of them might do, and without the danger to Miss Fox’s dubious reputation. His fingers tightened on the railing. No, he couldn’t rely on any other female in his household. He had no doubt that Miss Fox would simply browbeat them into accepting her eccentric whims.
It would have to be Lion.
With each footfall that took him closer to the room she’d been given, his annoyance grew. She had already interrupted hissolitude. She had appeared uninvited. She had brought adogas a companion. She had nearly managed to freeze to death in a broken-down carriage. And now, she was disturbing his peace.
Disregarding the tranquility of his household.
He had no doubt Marchingham Hall was a paltry comparison to her father’s magnificent mansion in New York City. However, it was his ancestral home, and she was a guest, albeit an unwanted one. Lion reached her door and raised his fist to rap on it. The very least she could do was to?—
The door opened, and the maiden aunt who had also accompanied Miss Adelia Fox, Miss Pearl Fox, gave a start as she nearly collided with him.
“Your Grace!” she squeaked.
He rolled his lips inward and offered a slight bow. “Miss Fox.”
“Forgive me my lack of grace,” the elder Miss Fox said. “I didn’t intend to trample you.”
She was a handsome woman, with a pleasant, soft-cheeked visage, gold spectacles perched on her nose, and kindly blue eyes, her ebony curls shot through with silver. She was dressed elegantly in an austere travel gown, and he very much doubted that she had been the one racing about in the chamber.
His eyes narrowed. “It is I who must beg your pardon, Miss Fox. I heard a disturbance and came to investigate the source.”
“A disturbance?” The elder Miss Fox blinked owlishly. “Oh, that must have been me. Do forgive me.”
“You,” he repeated, disbelief tingeing his voice.
“Yes, it was me. I saw a mouse, you see.”
Something that sounded suspiciously like a bark emerged from deeper within the room. Lion was a head taller than Miss Fox, and although he’d been trying to avert his gaze in a gentlemanly fashion, he looked up and spied Miss Adelia Fox by the fireplace, wrapped in a blanket, her feet shockingly bare asthey were propped up by the fire, her golden hair unbound and cascading down her back…and was that a mongrel stretched on the carpets?
The elder Miss Fox jostled into him and snapped the door closed at her back.
“I was just off to dress for dinner, Your Grace,” Miss Fox said.
And that was when Lion realized that Miss Adelia Fox was not alone in being a menace. Apparently,allthe Misses Fox were lying, shameless bits of baggage. Even the one old enough to be his mother.
“Is the hound within?” he asked tightly.
The elder Miss Fox blinked yet again. “That would have been the mice.”
“Mice do not bark, Miss Fox.”
“Perhaps my niece sneezed,” she suggested brightly. “If you’ll excuse me, Your Grace?”
Without awaiting his response, she hastened down the hall and disappeared into the room she’d been allotted. Lion turned back to the closed door before him, the acute sensation of losing control of his own damned household making his gut clench.
To the devil with propriety. Who was here to witness his ungentlemanly behavior? He had naught but a handful of domestics. Snow had blanketed the world. And Miss Adelia Fox had defied him.
He rapped sharply on her door.
Onhisdoor, as it happened.
“Yes?”
Her dulcet voice was distant, as if she were still by the fire. Unbidden, the image of her rose in his mind. She had removed her stockings. He’d witnessed the curve of a shapely calf, a slim ankle. Heat prickled over his skin, awareness seeping through him. Had her gown been raised any higher, he might have seen her knees.
