The very idea gave a raspy edge to his voice. “Is everything all right?”
“Not at the moment,” his mother said, “but I hope it will be.”
“Have you spoken to Eloise since her return from France?” Athena asked.
A nervous prickle spread like a rash beneath his clothes. “Why do you ask?”
“Because she has quit her position,” his mother told him with the exacting bluntness of an executioner’s blade.
A painful jolt tore its way through him. “She’s gone?”
“She departed about twenty minutes ago with admirable haste.”
William wasn’t sure how he managed to cross to the nearby chair when he couldn’t feel his legs or his feet. Indeed, it was almost as if his consciousness was hovering somewhere above his body, watching his tragic life unfold from a distance.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, finding the seat and relaxing against the sturdy frame the chair offered. “I’d no idea this would happen. It’s not at all how it was meant to be.”
“So you did speak with her?” Athena prodded.
William shrugged. “She wanted to open a culinary school, and I thought to make that dream of hers come true.”
His mother regarded him with unnerving sharpness. “How?”
“I planned on using the house Papa helped me buy. The idea was for Eloise to turn it into her business.”
Athena and Mama both stared at him in stupefied wonder.
“That’s actually a sweet gesture,” Athena eventually said. “Ridiculously generous, but wonderfully romantic.”
“I thought so,” William grumbled, “but Eloise didn’t agree. She fled when I showed it to her this morning and—”
“Hold on,” his mother said. “You said you meant on moving out.”
“I do,” William replied.
His mother narrowed her gaze. “So what you’re saying is that this incredible gesture you made involved you taking up residence in that house together with Eloise while she...cooks for you?”
“And teaches her students,” he added since this was a very important point.
Mama raised her eyebrows. “I won’t even bother addressing how you planned on poaching one of my servants, because there are clearly far more important issues to discuss, like the fact that you are an absolute dolt, William Townsbridge.”
William sat up a little bit straighter. “I beg your pardon?”
“Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything less sickening to a woman’s ears than being told she can have her heart’s desire as long as she’s willing to warm a man’s bed.”
Athena gasped. Her features transformed into stark disappointment. “You asked her to be your mistress?” And then she was suddenly upon him, hitting him wherever her hands could reach while William shielded himself as best as he was able. “How could you? How could you suggest such a thing when she deserves so much more? How could you mistreat her so? How—”
“Athena.” Mama’s voice broke through her daughter’s angry tirade. “You’re not helping.”
Athena brushed a stray lock from her forehead and took a step back. “I ought to call you out, William.”
His mother almost choked on her own voice. “There will be none of that. Good grief. As if the situation isn’t bad enough without my youngest daughter challenging her brother to a duel.”
“What’s that?” Roxley stood in the doorway, his soothing gaze sweeping across each person.
A sigh of exhaustion left William’s mother, then she quickly explained the situation while Roxley patiently listened. Once she was done, he looked straight at William. “How do you feel about her?”
“What?” William asked. His father’s calm voice, coming on the heels of Athena’s abuse, was startling.
