The butler scratched at the half-open door.
“Yes, Timms?”
He stepped into the doorway. “I beg your pardon, my lady, but Lord Kilcairn is in the library.”
Alexandra’s heart stopped.
“Lord Kilcairn?” Vixen repeated, glancing sideways at her companion. “I shall go see to him.”
“Actually, my lady, he requested a word with Miss Gallant. He said it was a matter of some urgency.”
“Lex, do you—”
“I’d best go, then,” Alexandra said unsteadily, rising to kiss Victoria on one cheek. “Thank you, and please don’t say anything.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No. I can manage Lord Kilcairn on my own.” Her poor attempt at self-confidence didn’t even convince herself, but Vixen nodded.
“I’ll be close by.”
The image of petite Victoria defending her against tall, powerful Kilcairn almost made Alexandra smile, and she held firmly to that silly image as she followed the butler down the hallway. Lucien stood in the center of the library, facing the doorway. She took one look at his face and dismissed Timms.
“Lucien,” she said, folding her hands behind her back.
His sensuous lips set in a thin, grim line and his tanned face pale and strained, the earl didn’t budge as the Fontaines’ butler softly closed the door. Gray eyes studied her face for a long moment. “I wanted to apologize,” he said, his voice low and toneless.
“Ap—apologize?”
Lucien cleared his throat. “Yes. As you said, you are an employee, hired to tutor my cousin. We suffered a…temporary lack of restraint, but I had no right to involve you in my personal difficulties. I won’t do so again.”
Looking at his straight-backed, proud stance, Alexandra doubted he’d ever apologized to anyone before in his entire life. Even so, this was an aspect of Lucien Balfour she felt almost acquainted with. This was his honorable side, the part of himself he usually joked about—the side that had stood between her and Virgil Retting and let her cousin escape virtually unscathed simply because she’d asked him to.
“How did you know I’d be here?” she asked, mostly to give herself time to decipher which game he was playing now—if any.
“Lady Victoria is the only acquaintance you’ve mentioned in London. Will you come back?”
That was it, she realized. He thought she’d left for good, or that she was about to. And he had come to find her, to stop her, to ask her to return. She, a ruined governess, had made Lucien Balfour bend. Trying to keep her breathing and her heartbeat steady, Alexandra nodded. “I said I would help Rose with her party, and I will do so.”
Again he hesitated. “And after that?”
“I have been offered a teaching position at Miss Grenville’s Academy. I will accept it.”
A muscle in his lean cheek jumped, but otherwise he remained as still as a Grecian statue. “As you wish. My cousin was distressed at your…abrupt departure. I request that you return to see her as soon as you are able.”
“I shall.”
She expected him to offer to escort her back to Balfour House, but he walked past her and opened the door without another word. A moment later the front door shut. Alexandra stood there for several minutes. Finally he’d given her what she’d demanded when she first arrived: distance, respect, and propriety. She should have been relieved. She had her position, and no more temptations of physical or marital intimacy. Yet all she could think was that now he’d never want to kiss her again, much less make love to her. Instead of relief, she felt distinctly like crying.
Lucien made a point of not returning home until nearly midnight. He had dinner at White’s with some friends, and then spent the next few hours losing at faro to several substandard players.
He wanted to return home, to make certain she was there, and that she hadn’t packed up her things and her little dog and left. But if he rushed back, or worse yet, if he went home to wait for her, then she would know that every sentence he’d uttered at Fontaine House had been a lie.
His original plan of marrying Alexandra Gallant still seemed utterly brilliant. His execution of said plan, though, had been clumsy, stupid, and completely reprehensible. What he remained certain of was that he needed her to stay. Practical as she was, eventually she would see his point. Until then, he would consider himself in very unfriendly territory, with possible disaster behind each misstep or misspoken word.
After all, foul human that his father had been, even he had managed to marry the bride he’d chosen. Maybe Alexandra was right, and he couldn’t have everything he wanted. But he would have her—or at least he’d make a damned good try at it.
To his surprise, his first obstacle wasn’t Alexandra, but Robert Ellis, Lord Belton. With a good-morning only long enough to confirm in person that Alexandra had returned, he left the breakfast room and went out to the stable to view a new pair of carriage horses he’d purchased.
