“Stinkenheimer? Go rattle your ghosts elsewhere, Dotty. Stupid Stinky is perfectly content where he is, running his horses into the ground and playing lord of the manor. He doesn’t need my help for that.” Irritated by the interruption, refusing to explain family matters in front of his assistant, Grey aimed for the stairs to his attic lair. Thea might be a heathen nuisance, but he doubted she’d follow him there.
“Greybourne, Stewart Greybourne,” she shouted at him, placing herself between him and the stairs. “He is a drunken lecher and if you do not knock some sense into him, he will destroy what’s left of the place!”
“And this concerns me, why?” Grey asked, skull pounding again. “The whole pile may fall on his thick noggin for all I care. But it will be his own doing and none of mine.”
He was not superstitious. Just sensible. Linger in his heir’s company for long, and Grey might put paid to his own existence. If Thea thought the insolent sot would bestir himself to kill him, she was all about in her head. But then, Thea’s family had nearly done worse to her, so she had a right to be anxious.
Thea gestured dramatically at Miss Leonard. “Eleanor, tell him why it matters what happens to an estate, an illustrious one that has supported half the shire for generations.”
Eleanor? Thea was already calling her Eleanor? He’d known her for a year and hadn’t graduated beyond Leonard.
His brilliant assistant merely shrugged. “His lordship knows far better than I do what happens when servants are mistreated and fields left untended.”
“I left a perfectly good steward in charge of fields, manor, and money. Stupid Stew cannot be rid of him until I am dead. I am not totally oblivious, Dorothea. Give me some credit, as I give you credit for knowing what you are doing by choosing a bankrupt French artist for your consort. Our families are merely concerned with their pockets. You know that.”
Grey turned to. . . Eleanor. “Have the cook prepare tea and a cold collation, will you? I’m peckish.” Food might satisfy the imps hammering in his head.
“It’s prepared, sir.” She dropped a clumsy curtsy in her dull skirts but didn’t leave. “Where is Andrew?”
Grey gestured toward the back of the house. “Carving a path, I believe. Or looking for corpses. My punishment for staying in a place called Gravesyde—” He glared at his cousin. “—at the behest of someone I thought needed my assistance.”
Miss. . . Eleanor. . . rushed to the back window to look out the dirty pane. “What if there are more traps?”
“Do all women believe men are stupid?” Grey picked up Dotty Thea and set her aside so he could go downstairs. She smacked him on the back with the silly little bag she carried.
“Thick,” his cousin retorted. “All men are thick. They believe themselves invulnerable gods. Steel traps, Grey! Falling branches! Are you utterly blind? And Bellingham is down with the gout and can no longer ride the estate. Do you never read your correspondence?”
“I read yours, didn’t I?” Grey trotted down the stairs ahead of the women, as a gentleman was supposed to do. He probably wouldn’t bother catching the women should they fall, though. They were hardheaded enough to recover better than he.
Bellingham had the gout? Why hadn’t he heard about that? Well, no one could blame Grey for his steward’s excesses, at least. He hadn’t been there in years.
“It only took six months for you to act on my request,” Thea noted nastily. “I could have been carried off by pirates before you arrived. You are not saving lives by staying out of them, Cecil!”
He was in big trouble when Dotty Dorothea started using his given name. Grey didn’t want to know how his implacable assistant was taking this family squabble. When she followed them down, he gestured toward the kitchen. “Have tea served in the dining room and go fetch your brother.”
Leonard hesitated, actually hesitated, glancing between him and Thea, before nodding and hurrying off. Much more time in Thea’s company, and his perfect assistant would turn rebellious.
Grey mentally rolled his eyes at that ridiculous thought. He was worrying about a woman who’d dressed as a man, attended a university library, and worked in a boy’s school for years. Miss Leonard was already rebellious, just not loud about it.
Like Thea.
“I am living my life the way I wish to live it, Dorothea,” he corrected, holding out a chair for her as the cook rushed in to set out cups and plates. “Just as you are. We are fortunate to have that option. Why ruin a good thing by worrying about our chuckle-headed relations?”
“Not only thick, but borderline stupid,” she muttered as she took the seat he offered. “Those same chuckle-headed relations were responsible for attempting to lock up Davy and me in Bedlam. They still might. I’m still a few years from my twenty-fifth birthday.”
Grey recalled that tale and understood. “I daresay your comte will have something to say to that, if he’s half the man I see. I’ll be here for the next six months. No one is taking either of you anywhere you do not wish to go.”
She sighed. “You won’t be here if you’re dead, Cecil. How dense can any one man be?”
His assistants walked in just as Thea declared that inane announcement.
Before he could object, his cousin continued. “Can you not see? It is not Percival and his thugs that you should beware of, it’s your blamed heir!”
Grey watched the twin Leonards freeze. Dammit, he was not responsible for them. But if he really was in danger. . . He should give up the book and just go to Italy.
Or was that his tormentor’s intent—because running was Grey’s custom? Stupid Stewart, his heir, couldn’t hunt a rabbit. That took work and a more devious mind.
Eleanor appropriated the teapot the cook carried in and began pouring. “Or we might be wary of Mr. Comfrey’s killers,” she added with just a touch of sardonic sweetness. “Or perhaps whoever buried whatever is hidden in the hedgerows that Andrew just cleared.”
