business affairs every hour of the day, and reading is a solitary pleasure, suited to my nature.”
“If you say so.”
That was a governess’s version of casting a lure. Even so, Ethan took the bait. “What?”
“You don’t live alone here, Mr. Grey.”
“Of course not. I dwell with my sons, and the servants and staff in my employ, and now—heaven be praised—with your very useful self.”
“Have you seen your sons since the coach pulled up here today?” she asked in the same peculiarly quiet voice.
“I did, actually.” He was pleased with himself to be able to say it. “Out the window, as they dragged you around the rose gardens. A charming tableau, made blessedly quiet by the distance involved. Better you than me, Miss Portman.”
“They miss you,” she said flatly. “Though God knows why, Mr. Grey, as the concept leaves me quite at a loss. Now, if you will excuse me, I find I am intolerably fatigued, and though the meal has been appreciated, I must seek my bed.”
She pushed back from the table and left the room before Ethan was halfway to his feet. He sat back down, his meal lying uneasily in his gut, and thought over the conversation.
He’d said something to push her past her limit, something… not funny. Cruel, perhaps, from her perspective. Well, there was no decoding the whims and fancies of females, bluestocking or otherwise. He eyed the table, intent on helping himself to more food, then changed his mind.
He’d been sitting too long, and this made for dyspepsia, so he took himself through the house, his wineglass in his hand, and headed for the back gardens. A man needed to stretch his legs from time to time if he was to have a prayer of remaining civilized.
Except his sons had been stuck in the coach for two days, and they had needed to stretch their legs. Alice Portman had reasoned that out; Ethan had not, and he wanted to smash the damned wineglass on the flagstones as a result. Because he was an adult, and civilized, he did not give in to the urge but wandered around in the moonlight until the shadows and breezes and pretty scents had soothed him past his anger.
Three floors above him, on her balcony, Alice watched the dark figure moving along the gravel paths. Moonlight suited him, though in daylight, he was deceptively golden. His hair was more burnished than Nick’s wheat blond, and his features more austere. Still, he gave the impression of light, with his blue, blue eyes, light hair, and quiet movement.
He wasn’t light, Alice concluded as she took down her hair. He was dark, inside, in his heart and soul. It still surprised her after she’d had days to observe him, but he looked so much like Nick, she still expected him to laugh like Nick, smile like Nick, flirt like Nick.
She missed Nick, and because it wasn’t any kind of sexual longing, she could admit it. She desperately, pitifully missed Priscilla, and worried for how the child was going on.
In years of governessing, Alice had dealt with enough overly tired, cranky, distraught, fractious children to know if she didn’t get herself to bed, posthaste, she was going to treat herself to an undignified, unproductive, useless crying spell. She was already hungry again, exhausted, in need of a bath, and facing a situation she should have examined more carefully before leaping into it.
“You’re just discouraged,” she told herself. “Braid your hair, get to bed. Things will look better in the morning.”
But in the morning, things didn’t look at all better.
In the morning, things looked much, much worse.
“You will leave in the morning, Hart, and you will not come back in my lifetime.” The Baroness Collins had never taken that tone with her son before. Not when he was a child, not when he’d been a young man, and not now, when inchoate middle age and a dissolute lifestyle were making him look like an old child, an aging boy becoming less and less attractive with the passing years.
Predictably, Hart bristled. “I’ll damned well come and go from my own property as I please, madam. You would do well to recall upon whose charity you survive.” He tossed back another glass of brandy, adding to the amazing amount that had disappeared in the course of the conversation already.
“You are not safe here.”
Somewhere in the depths of her maternal heart, the baroness could not allow her son to knowingly court danger, regardless that it was danger of his own making. “Your scheming and violence, your disregard for proper behavior, your disrespect of every woman you meet will be the end of you if you stay here in the North. I am not asking you to leave, Hart, I am insisting.”
He paused before putting his empty glass down on the harpsichord. That harpsichord had belonged to the baroness’s grandfather, and yet, she did not rise and remove the glass—not while Hart was in such a mood.
“You are insisting? How will you insist, dear Mama, when I cut off your allowance?”
Perhaps it was the French disease or the drink, but Hart’s memory was growing faulty. “You cut off my allowance years ago, Hart. I manage on my portion.” Which, thank her sainted papa’s shrewdness, no venal, grasping son could touch.
He turned his back on her, making the bald spot on the back of his head apparent. He’d hate that, if he knew she could see it. Hart Collins was so vain, so unhealthy, that he’d see even the normal impact of time as victimization.
She did not wish her son were dead. In the manner he went on, he’d meet his end soon enough.
“I’ll need money.”
Of course he would. The old baron’s solicitors were a pack of jackals well up to dealing with Hart’s tantrums and bullying. Not one penny of estate money would get into Hart’s hands until the very day it was due him.
“I have a few jewels.” Those had belonged to her grandmother. “You will leave in the morning, Hart, and I’ll write to some people I know in the South, who would welcome you to their house parties.”
He was no longer welcome in Rome, and neither was he safe in Paris or Marseilles. His duns in London had already found him at the family seat in Cumbria and were becoming impatient.
The baroness unfastened the pearl necklace her grandmother had given her upon her come out and held it out to her son. In the flickering candlelight of the once-elegant parlor, the jewels looked like a noose.
Perhaps the English countryside would shelter him for a time. It was just a thought, not a wish, not even a prayer.
Ethan slept badly, but got up early and heeded the impulse to get out of the house. Confinement never improved his mood, so he made for the stables after a quick breakfast. Miss Portman and her charges were not in evidence at breakfast, which suited him splendidly.
As he took his second-favorite mount out for a bracing hack in the cool of the earliest morning, Ethan forced himself to consider he might owe Miss Portman an apology. On general principles, it irked him to apologize to anyone, particularly when he wasn’t quite sure where he’d transgressed.
One thing he’d realized as he surveyed the remains of supper: there had been nothing to drink except wine, and Miss Portman did not enjoy wine. He should have seen to it she was offered something else. Had she not been so provoking, he might have been a better host.
He let his gelding come down to the trot after they’d cleared every stile and fence between the house and the home farm. Maybe Miss Portman was peeved at him because he’d teased her for her degree of education.
But that explanation didn’t feel quite right.
The horse halted without Ethan cuing him, as the realization sank in that Miss Alice Portman did not care one bean—a vegetable, mind you—how much Ethan teased her. She minded bitterly the way Ethan disregarded his children.
He did not know what they ate.
He did not know what they learned.
He did not know how they passed their days.
He had not known his youngest had been harshly beaten, or why.
As the horse started walking forward, Ethan knew in his bones he was facing an opportunity—a challenge. He
