“You’re so uncouth I am surprised you spare your mother’s carpet,” John growled. He stood in the pool of light from the billiard room.
Cecil staggered toward him.
“All high and mighty now you’re heir. Did you poison your cousin to get it?” Cecil sneered, leaning on the wall for support.
“You have a fixation with sickening people one way or another, Hartwell.” John glanced at the degenerates in the billiard room. “I heard your parents sent you to some patch of land in Scotland to rusticate. Looks like they let you back too soon.”
“’S my home, Ridgemont. Leave if you don’t like it.”
I wouldn’t have come if I knew you were here.
“You threatened Miss Westcott.” It was a flat statement.
“What if I did? She deserves it. ’S ’er fault I’ve been dying of boredom for a year or more. Been a snitch since she earned me a birching from our grandfather. Grew up an unfeminine bluestocking bitch.”
John had Cecil’s cravat in a punishing grip before he could blink. The reprobate gagged and flailed his hands about in an attempt to loosen the suffocating hold. John threw him against the wall, and Cecil bent double gasping for air, his attacker looming over him.
“You threatened an innocent?—”
“Bel ain’t no innocent miss. She gives as good as she gets,” Cecil, bent over, rasped between breaths.
“And you attached my name to your vile insults.”
“You mean the Menace business? You came up with it. Damn good name,” Cecil muttered, coming upright. “Thought she oughta know,” he sneered.
John loomed closer. “Miss Westcott received my apologies graciously enough. I regret every moment I spent with you and your band of foulmouthed sycophants that year.”
“Now you’re heir you’re better than us? Watch you don’t blot your copybook with the patronesses and dragons. A word or two and?—
Cecil’s feet left the floor when John dragged him up by his filthy cravat. “Show your face in London during the Season, and whatever Aldridge threatened will be nothing compared to what I will do to you.”
Cecil fell to the floor gulping for air.
“Perhaps I will have a quiet word with your father and tell him so.”
Bel sweptthe curtains in her room aside as dawn broke, spreading golden light across the snow. Looking forward to the day and the promised walk, she was anxious to get breakfast on its way. She picked up one of the plain grey gowns she preferred for the kitchen and dropped it. Not today.
Not long after, she entered the kitchen in a printed muslin day dress, light brown covered in tiny rosettes. She had tucked an unbleached lace fichu at her neck on impulse at the last moment.
“You look extra fine this morning, Miss,” Annie exclaimed. “Have you done something new with your hair?”
“Not really. I was just tired of the bun in back.” Without Susan she couldn’t create a fashionable do, but she had brushed her brown curls into an upsweep held up with a band around her head. “Let’s try Chelsea buns this morning, shall we?” She asked, blushing and covering her dress with an apron.
Soon, dough lay rising, currents plumped in brandy, and the tweeny entered with the morning’s eggs while Bel cooked kippers and Annie prepared filling for the buns.
“I knew you would be up early!” At the sound of John’s voice Bel’s entire body came alert. “Let’s have that walk now before the eyes and ears awaken,” he continued.
John snatched a pinch of currents from the bowl, laughing when Bel smacked his hand.
“My grandmother’s cook always did the same,” he said. “Shall we go? It looks like you have things well underway.”
“You go, Miss. I can handle breakfast, truly,” Annie said, smiling back and forth between Bel and John.
Bel hesitated.
“Do you want a maid to follow us?” he asked.
Thoughtful and kind.She brushed his suggestion aside. She was beyond needing a chaperone. Besides, as he said, they were up before snooping eyes and ears. “Nonsense. I’m not some dewy-eyed young miss. Annie, please take over while I take a brief walk with Lord Ridgemont.”
