your leave, I will go see about luncheon. Would you like to be served on the terrace, my lord, and will Lord Valentine be joining you?”
“I would like to eat on the terrace,” the earl said, “and I doubt my brother will tear himself away from the piano, when he just sat down to his finger exercises. Send in a tray to him when you hear him shift from drills to etudes and repertoire.”
“Yes, my lord.” Anna bobbed a curtsy, but his lordship was already nose down into the correspondence, his brow knit in his characteristic frown.
“Oh, Mrs. Seaton?” The earl did not look up.
“My lord?”
“What does a child suffering chicken pox need for her comfort and recuperation?”
“Ice,” Anna said, going on to name a litany of comfort nursing accoutrements.
“You can see to that?” he asked, looking up and eyeing his gardens. “The ice and so forth? Have it sent ’round to Tolliver’s?”
“I can,” Anna replied, cocking her head to consider her employer. “Regularly, until the child recovers.”
“How long will that take?”
“The first few days are the worst, but by the fifth day, the fever has often abated. The itching can take longer, though. In this heat, I do not envy the child or her parents.”
“A miserable thought,” the earl agreed, “in comparison to which, dealing with my paltry letters is hardly any hardship at all, hmm? There will be more marzipan at lunch?”
“If your brother hasn’t plundered our stores,” Anna said, taking her leave.
She didn’t see the earl smile at the door nor see that the smile didn’t fade until he forced himself to resume perusing her drafts of correspondence. She wrote well, he thought, putting his ideas into words with far more graciousness and subtlety than old Tolliver could command. And so the chore of tending to correspondence, which had threatened to consume his entire day, was already behind him, leaving him free to… Wonder what gave him pleasure.
“I’d put John to setting the table,” Cook said, “but he went off to get us some more ice from the warehouse, and Morgan has gone to fetch the eggs, since his lordship didn’t take his ride this morning, and McCutcheon hasn’t seen to the hens yet.”
So I, Anna thought, will spend the next half hour setting up a table where his lordship will likely sit for all of twenty minutes, dining in solitary splendor on food he doesn’t even taste, because he must finish reading
His crabby mood had rubbed off on her, she thought as she spread a linen cloth over a wrought-iron table. Well, that wouldn’t do. Mentally, she began making her list of things to send over to Tolliver’s for the little girl, Sue-Sue.
“You look utterly lost in thought,” the earl pronounced, causing Anna to jump and almost drop the basket of cutlery she was holding.
“I was,” she said, blushing for no earthly reason. “I have yet to see to your request to send some supplies around to Tolliver and was considering the particulars.”
“How is it you know how to care for a case of chicken pox?” The earl grabbed the opposite ends of the tablecloth and drew them exactly straight.
“It’s a common childhood illness,” Anna said, setting the basket of cutlery on the table. “I came down with it myself when I was six.” The earl reached into the basket and fished out the makings of a place setting. Anna watched in consternation as he arranged his cutlery on the table, setting each piece of silverware precisely one inch from the edge of the table.
“Don’t you want a linen for your place setting?” Anna asked, unfolding one from the basket and passing it to him.
“Well, of course. Food always tastes better when eaten off a plate that sits on both a linen and a tablecloth.”
“No need to be snippy, my lord.” Anna quirked an eyebrow at him. “We can feed you off a wooden trencher if that’s your preference.”
“My apologies.” The earl shot her a fulminating look as he collected the silverware and waited for Anna to spread the underlinen. “I am out of sorts today for having missed my morning ride.”
He was once again arranging his silverware a precise distance from the edge of the table while Anna watched. He would have made an excellent footman, she concluded. He was careful, conscientious, and incapable of smiling.
“In this heat, I did not want to tax my horse,” the earl said, rummaging in the basket for salt and the pepper. He found them and eyed the table speculatively.
“Here.” Anna set a small bowl of daisies and violets on the table. “Maybe that will give you some ideas.”
“A table for one can so easily become asymmetric.”
“Dreadful effect on the palate.” Anna rolled her eyes. “And where, I ask you, will we hide his lordship’s marzipan?”
“Careful, Mrs. Seaton. If he should come out here and overhear your disrespect, I wouldn’t give two pence for your position.”
“If he is so humorless and intolerant as all that,” Anna said, “then he can find somebody else to feed him sweets on the terrace of a summer’s day.”
The earl’s gaze cooled at that retort, and Anna wondered at her recent penchant for overstepping. He’d been annoying her all morning, though, from the moment she’d been dragooned into the library. It was no mystery to her why Tolliver would rather be dealing with a sick child than his lordship.
“Am I really so bad as all that?” the earl asked, his expression distracted. He set aside the pepper but hefted the salt in one hand.
“You are…” Anna glanced up from folding the linen napkin she’d retrieved from her basket.
The earl met her gaze and waited.
“Troubled, I think,” she said finally. “It comes out as imperiousness.”
“Troubled,” the earl said with a snort. “Well, that covers a world of possibilities.” He reached into the basket and withdrew a large glazed plate, positioning it exactly in the center of his place setting. “I tried to compose a letter to my father this morning, while you beavered away on my
He finished that statement through clenched teeth, alarming Anna with the animosity in his tone, but he wasn’t finished.
“I have come to the point,” the earl went on, “where I comprehend why my older brothers would consider the Peninsular War preferable to the daily idiocy that comes with being Percival Windham’s heir. I honestly believe that could he but figure a way to pull it off, my father would lock me naked in a room with the woman of his choice, there to remain until I got her pregnant with twin boys. And I am not just frustrated”—the earl’s tone took on a sharper edge—“I am ready to do him an injury, because I don’t think anything less will make an impression. Two unwilling people are going to wed and have a child because my father got up to tricks.”
“Your father did not force those two people into one another’s company all unawares and blameless, my lord, but why not appeal to your mother? By reputation, she is the one who can control him.”
The earl shook his head. “Her Grace is much diminished by the loss of my brother Victor. I do not want to importune her, and she will believe His Grace only meant well.”
Anna smiled ruefully. “And she wants grandchildren, too, of course.”
“Why, of course.” The earl gestured impatiently. “She had eight children and still has six. There will be grandchildren, and if for some reason the six of us are completely remiss, I have two half siblings, whose children she will graciously spoil, as well.”
“Good heavens,” Anna murmured. “So your father has sired ten children, and yet he plagues you?”
“He does. Except for the one daughter of Victor’s, none of us have seen fit to reproduce. There was a rumor Bart had left us something to remember him by, but he likely started the rumor himself just to aggravate my father.”
