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“No,” Emily said decisively. She was stripping the bed, but she turned around. “You’ll need to assert yourself in the household today, my lady. Mrs. Flitwick is nice enough, but she’s used to having her own way. Last night, she told me that I should choose a French name, as a true lady’s maid to a viscountess had to be Frenchified.” She snorted. “I told her that Emily was good enough for my mother, and good enough for you too.”

“Perhaps just—”

“No,” Emily said, shaking her head. “I know how you feel about your paintings, but you’re the viscountess now.”

Torie sighed.

“Of course, you will spend time with Master Valentine and his sister.”

“I plan to fire Nanny Bracknell,” Torie remembered.

“Excellent,” Emily said. “Assert yourself!”

Picturing Nanny Bracknell’s sour face made Torie want to crawl back into bed, but Emily was bundling up sheets stained with blood.

“These will stop anyone in the household thinking there’ll be a six-month baby,” she said with satisfaction. “Not that Mr. Flitwick would countenance an ill word amongst us, but he did have to fire a footman who was selling information to one of the gossip columns! News gets around, as we know.”

“His lordship does not have an Italian mistress,” Torie said. “I know everyone is chattering about it, but it’s not true.”

“We know the truth of it,” Emily told her. “Last night Mr. Flitwick said that he doesn’t condone evil gossip, particularly about the family, but he felt it behooved him to clarify that issue. Isn’t behoove a lovely word? He meant that he felt obliged to tell us the truth. Lord Kelbourne dropped that Italian woman long ago. Months ago.”

“How on earth did Mr. Flitwick know that?” Torie asked.

“The household knows everything, my lady. You’ll have to remember that. Not that you’ll be behaving like that countess with a swinging door.”

Torie digested that in silence. “I suppose they all know that I can’t read, then.”

“Indeed they do, because his lordship told them himself, the afternoon before the wedding. He said that if anyone made you feel ashamed, they’d be dismissed without their last week’s wages.” Emily chortled. “Nicer than Sir William, I must say.”

When Torie didn’t answer, she added hastily, “Though Sir William was sometimes befuddled by drink and didn’t know what he was saying. Would you like to see Nanny Bracknell before Mrs. Flitwick?”

“Yes,” Torie decided. “Give me five minutes to get my thoughts in order, and then send her to my sitting room.”

“No one in the household likes the way she slaps the children, but his lordship didn’t want to cut the twins’ last tie to their parents. Mrs. Flitwick is looking forward to going over the linens and preserves with you. Apparently, the viscount can’t get enough preserved lemons, but she has none on hand.”

What was Torie supposed to do about that?

“I shall take the twins out of the house in the afternoon,” she told Emily. “One of the footmen should be ready to accompany us with a purse.”

Dismissing Nanny Bracknell took more than a few minutes, as the lady was determined to argue. Supposedly she had been trained for a royal household and had lowered herself to work for Lady Dorney, and then for Viscount Kelbourne. What’s more, she felt very ill-used by the twins, as their conversation was unseemly and impertinent.

Torie was initially sympathetic—the children were certainly eccentric—but when the nanny declared that they weren’t “normal,” Torie stood up and gave the woman three hours to pack her trunk and leave.

“How dare you!” Nanny Bracknell snapped, looking as if she’d like to explode like a firework and burn the house down around her.

“You are unkind and ill-tempered. You shall leave without a reference,” Torie stated, asserting herself with a vengeance.

“As if I’d associate my good name with the Dorney household!” With that, the nanny stalked out of the room. Torie followed her, finding Flitwick in the entry.

“May I be of assistance, my lady?” he asked.

“Nanny Bracknell is leaving us. I have given her three hours to pack her trunk, so I would be grateful if a footman could bring it down from the attic.”

Flitwick bowed. “Certainly, my lady. Would you like me to ask an agency to send three new candidates to the house?”

“Yes,” Torie said. “You might specify that we would like a young and energetic nanny who is not easily horrified.”

“Very good, my lady.”