To her horror, Betts, who was obviously still in the grip of the spirits he’d consumed, muttered something about coming to get her and pushed himself to his feet. Stains covered the shirt he slept in, but it covered him to his knees.Thank God.
As soon as he took two lurching steps, the smell of his unwashed body gagged her, and she backed toward the door. He took one more step, swayed to one side, and collapsed on the floor, muttering something incomprehensible.
The fool is senseless with drink!She spun on her heels and fled the room, slamming the door behind her. Three maids stared at the door with rounded eyes.
“Oh, miss, we ran to warn you, but we were too late. We ain’t cleaning that room with that man in there. We jist pray the viscount don’t sack us.”
Mia opened her mouth, but no words of reassurance came out. “I’ll be outside,” she said, starting for the door, mortified by the way her voice cracked.
“But, miss, it be pouring rain,” Maisie, the youngest tweeny, said.
A glance at the entrance sidelights confirmed that unpleasant fact. Mia fled upstairs.
Selina! She might stumble over Betts if she wanders into the library.Eager to warn her cousin, she tapped lightly on Selina’s door but got no response. She peeked in to find her bed empty and Selina’s maid, Kerr—ostensibly Mia’s servant as well, though both Selina and the maid tended to forget it—tidying up. “She’s gone,” the woman snapped.
“Gone? So early?”
Kerr gave an insolent shrug, one she wouldn’t dare try on Selina or the viscount. She had made it clear soon after Mia arrived at Selwyn Court where her primary loyalty lay. There would be no point in questioning her.
Selina must be down at breakfast. She never uses the library anyway, Mia decided.Besides, she thought,Uncle Ludlow probably wouldn’t demand that loose screw Betts marry her if she did. On the other hand, he would likely demand marriage to that worm in my case, just to get me off his hands.She locked herself in her room and dug through her pile of books for one worth rereading.
It was late morning when the viscount awoke and almost noon when he came down. Mia could tell the former from the traffic back and forth to his suite and the latter from the uproar that ensued when he entered the library.
Mia started down and met a footman half dragging Betts up the stairs. She flattened herself against the wall to let them pass, covering her nose with a handkerchief. Betts blinked when he passed, as if trying to remember something.
Above stairs, she heard Eustace. “What the hell, Betts? Sounds like the old man is in a rage.”
Rage indeed. Uncle Ludlow bellowed at staff who scurried in all directions. Footmen carried out a stained rug, the housekeeper—scowling deeply—picked up clothing for the laundry, and Maisie came from the kitchen, dragging a bucket of water. Mia took a relieved breath when one of the footmen carrying a second bucket took it from the tiny tweeny, leaving Maisie to carry soap and rags.
“Mia! I hope you stayed well away this morning,” the viscount roared.
“I was in my room all morning, Uncle,” she said truthfully enough.
“I trust Selina did the same.” Very little trust, if his worried expression meant anything.
“I—” Mia paused to choose her words carefully.
“You what, girl? Spit it out,” he demanded.
“I checked on her earlier, and she was gone.”
“Gone? Where?” he shouted.
“I don’t know, and neither did Kerr. Just gone.”
When summoned, Kerr curtseyed to the viscount and answered obsequiously, “Miss Selina didn’t confide in me, my lord. I warned her the rain would ruin her gown, but she was determined. ‘I need to do it now,’ she said.”
“Do what?” Uncle Ludlow demanded.
“She didn’t say, my lord,” Kerr said, attempting to project a meekness Mia knew to be false.
“When was this?” he asked.
“Soon after the sun rose. Very unusual for my miss, I must say,” Kerr answered.
That was true enough. Something in Kerr’s demeanor made Mia think she knew more, but Mia had no way to shake it out of her. “What was my cousin wearing?” she asked sweetly.
Kerr shot her a hateful glower out of Uncle Ludlow’s sight. “Her green silk.”
