Tessa slammed the door shut. “Not again.” She stuttered several steps in one direction then in the other. Where had she been going? Oh yes, inside the room she shared with her employer. The room said employer was currently occupying with her paramour.
She should go outside. No, to the drawing room. No. To… to…heavens, she still needed to change her muddy shoes.
The door swung open, and Lady Chattaway scowled. “You’ve ruined it. Brawly couldn’t last long enough after that interruption to do athingfor me.”
“Oh… I do apologize.”
Lady Chattaway waved her hands like she was swatting away flies. “Don’t do that, girl. Come in. We must talk.”
Tessa peeked in before stepping over the threshold. Thankfully, Lord Brawly was fully dressed if a little wrinkled and red cheeked. The cheeks on his face. Thank heavens she could no longer see the other pair.
“What is it we must discuss?” Tessa asked carefully. “I swear I will not tell a soul what I saw. In fact, I saw nothing.”Not Lady Chattaway bent over the bed, not Lord Brawly’s bare backside. Certainly not those three moles. “I saw nothing the other times, too.” She’d certainly seen less the two other times she’d caught them in flagrante delicto.
“Of course you saw nothing. You’re a good girl, after all. That’s why I feel a bit bad for what I’m about to say.”
“Sit,” Brawly said as Lady Chattaway guided her to a nearby chair.
They stared at her as if she were about to die.
“If your news is so distressing,” Tessa said, curling her hands around the chair arms, “you should not say it.”
Brawly barked a laugh. “Amusing chit!”
Lady Chattaway ignored him. “I do not wish to speak of what you just saw. Well, I do. But in a different way. You see, Tessa dear, Brawly has proposed. And I have accepted.”
Oh no. She’d not thought this moment would come so soon. The baron had followed them around for the last six months, another in a long line of Lady Chattaway’s paramours. But he’d lasted longer than the others, and she’d begun to wonder if things might move in this direction.
“It seems rather… quick,” she said.
Lord Brawly held Lady Chattaway’s hand. “We’ve wasted too much time not being together that?—”
“We do not wish to waste anymore.”
They were finishing each other’s sentences. Adorable.
“There is more to tell you, though,” Lady Chattaway said as Brawly put an arm around her shoulders. “We’re going abroad again. For a year or two.”
“At least. And…” Brawly cleared his throat. “Alone. Just me and Meredith.”
“Oh.” The chair was opening up beneath her, and she was falling through. Was there an end? What would it be like? Jagged rock or raging sea? Certainly not a nice, cushionymattress.
Lady Chattaway’s face softened, became almost angelic. “We do not wish to leave you without options, Tessa, my dear. I have spoken with some acquaintances to see if we can procure a position for you elsewhere, but I was thinking, if you are amenable…”
“I’ve a nephew,” Brawly said. “Anunmarriednephew.”
“He’s quite handsome,” Lady Chattaway assured her. “Just like his uncle.”
Lord Brawly beamed. “And he’s a man of the cloth. We thought that might, ahem… appease your parents.”
She’d found the bottom of the hole. Jagged rocks before a tumble into a raging sea. Best of both torments.
“Listen carefully, girl,” Lady Chattaway said. “You are attractive, intelligent, and only six and twenty. Do not waste your youth. Mend old bridges. Marry. Have children. Live life.”
“You make it sound as if I’ve not been living it. I paint. I travel with you. I attend balls and parties, make new acquaintances!”
Lady Chattaway patted Tessa’s hand. It had become a claw on the chair arm, and her knuckles were sharp beneath her bloodless skin.
“Think on it,” Brawly said, guiding Lady Chattaway to the door. “We’ll introduce you to Eddie. You’re bound to meet him anyway. He’s here this week. I secured an invitation for him.”
