“Miss Gallantis looking after you,” the earl interrupted, still behind his paper. “I am tolerating you.”
The girl’s pretty blue eyes filled with tears. “Mama said you would be glad to have us here, since you have no one else.”
TheLondon Timessmacked onto the table. Alexandra jumped, ready to come to her pupil’s defense, but at the angry expression on the earl’s face, she stifled her censure. There was clearly something going on beyond what had been said, and before she jumped into the middle she wanted to know what it was.
“A new situation is never easy on anyone,” she said in her mildest voice, and sipped her tea.
Kilcairn looked at her in silence for several long seconds, obviously weighing what he wanted to say against what politeness dictated he should say. “Quite right, Miss Gallant,” he finally muttered, and stood. “Excuse me, Miss Gallant, Cousin Rose.” With the butler on his heels, he slammed back out into the hallway.
“Oh, thank goodness. I’m so glad he’s gone,” Rose breathed when the door had closed.
“He does have rather…strong opinions,” Alexandra agreed absently, wondering what had set him off. Surely it hadn’t been Rose’s offhand comment about his being alone. Not after the rumors she’d heard about his endless evenings of drunken debauchery with friends and women of questionable morals.
“He’s awful. I thought for certain you would leave, too.”
Alexandra forced her attention back to her student. “Too?”
“As soon as we arrived he dismissed my Miss Brookhollow, and she’d been with me for nearly a year. And the governesses he hired after we arrived were just dreadful.”
“How were they dreadful?”
“They were all old, wrinkly, and mean. But then they would say something Lucien didn’t like, and he would swear at them and they’d run off—so I suppose it doesn’t matter if I didn’t like them, anyway.”
Alexandra sat for a moment, absorbing that convoluted bit of information. The incarnation of hell on earth seemed to have a much milder temper than her cousin. “It has been trying for you, no doubt. But that is over with, and things will get better from here.”
“Does that mean you intend to stay?”
That was a very good question. “I shall stay as long as I’m needed,” she said carefully, hoping the earl wasn’t eavesdropping. She had the feeling she might need the leverage of being able to quit.
Rose’s slender shoulders slumped in a sigh. “Thank goodness.”
“Well, then.” Alexandra swept her gaze along the frills of Rose’s hideous peacock gown again. “I’d like to meet your mother. And perhaps after breakfast we’d best get to work.”
Lucien pulled the rapier free from the ebony walking cane that concealed it. Flexing the long, thin blade between his fingers, he eyed the weapon’s new owner. “This wouldn’t do much more than cause a few scratches, Daubner.”
“Come, come, Kilcairn, it’s a work of art.”
Stout, chubby fingers reached for the blade, but Lucien flicked it out of his companion’s reach. He might not be able to take his annoyance out on his houseguests, but his friends weren’t going to be so lucky. “Artworks have on occasion nearly bored me to death, but I don’t think they’re truly lethal,” he said dryly. “Get yourself something stouter.”
“A man needs a stout staff for emergencies,” a third voice said from the shop’s entry.
Lucien looked up. “Robert,” he acknowledged, hoping the rest of his cronies weren’t going to appear, as well. He was too damned distracted this morning for the wolf pack—the main reason he’d settled for conversing with slow-witted William Jeffries, Lord Daubner. “Some of us are naturally equipped with stout staffs.”
With a jaunty grin, Robert Ellis, the Viscount of Belton, descended the steps and joined them in the blade shop. “So why are you purchasing such a flimsy one?”
“It’s not for me,” Kilcairn returned, and flicked the blade in Daubner’s direction. “Our count feels the need to enhance his apparatus.”
Lord Daubner chuckled uneasily, his slightly protruding eyes on the rapier. “As Belton said, it’s just for emergencies. And Wallace gave me a good price, didn’t you, Wallace?”
“Aye, my lord.”
From the corner of his eye Lucien noted the shopkeeper backing into the storeroom to avoid being drawn further into the conversation. Lucien stifled a dark smile. Wallace could give Miss Gallant a lesson in avoiding trouble. “You might as well walk down the street clutching a spoon as this sad thing.”
“It’s not the weapon, Lucien.” Robert lifted another rapier down from the wall. “It’s how you wield it.”
“Oh, goodness gracious,” Wallace muttered from the storeroom doorway.
“Gadzooks,” Daubner blustered, waddling at full speed for the corner.
