Ethan: Lord of Scandals

be proud or horrified.

“I suppose we’ll have to get you proper hunting attire, then. Cubbing starts in September.”

He turned Argus without another word, feeling his sons staring agape at his back.

“We’re to ride to hounds?” Joshua’s tone suggested he could not believe such a thing.

“Cubbing.” Jeremiah said, nudging his pony forward. “It’s not quite the same, but it counts.”

“But, gentlemen,” Ethan called over his shoulder then stopped Argus and turned him to face the ponies. “Tearing off that way in company is considered the height of bad form, though I know between the two of you, it’s great fun to startle your brother’s horse. When we ride in company, though, there’ll be none of that, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Correct, sir.”

“And now we will walk our horses out, for they’ve exerted themselves mightily, but I see we’re on the wrong side of the fence, aren’t we?”

Joshua and Jeremiah were exchanging one of those puzzled, fraternal looks when Ethan surreptitiously nudged at Argus’s side with his spur, sending the gelding back toward the stile at a brisk trot. The ponies fell in behind without benefit of direction from their riders, and they cleared the same obstacle, one, two, three, at a more dignified pace but with the same excellent form.

When they gained the stable yard, the boys were grinning, and whacking their ponies with appreciative pats on the neck, and betting each other their ponies could clear anything old Argus could.

“Let’s not put it to the test,” Ethan interrupted them. “And if I ever learn you were foolish enough to attempt an obstacle without me or a groom to supervise, I will forbid you to ride for a considerable while, not that I think either of my sons would be so foolish.”

His sons surely would, but Miss Portman’s favorite gentlemen might not.

* * *

“Outside?” Joshua and Jeremiah grinned at each other. “Now?”

“I suggest you stop up in the playroom to mass your troops,” Mr. Grey said, sounding very stern indeed. “Get a shovel from the garden shed and ask Tolliver where you might find some shade and a patch of earth to memorialize British military heroism. You will be expected back upstairs, with clean hands and faces, by teatime.”

“That’s five bongs of the clock,” Joshua said. “Let’s go, Jeremiah.”

“And thus the Corsican monster meets his deserved fate,” Alice said from her place on the bed. The boys bounced away from her sides, leaving her in blessed quiet—and quite at sea—with their father.

Mr. Grey—or Ethan, since they were in private—lowered himself to sit on the bed at her hip. He was inspecting her, not in any way trespassing against propriety.

“Thus my sons are given an excuse to be loud, get muddy, and plague the gardener.”

“You would have made a tolerable governess, you know.” Alice smiled at him, even knowing he was assessing her complexion, her eyes, and any other aspect of her person that might provide insight. “Disguising mud as British military heroism is ingenious.”

“I suspect a fair amount of mud was involved at Waterloo, if the stories are true. You look better.”

“Which is not saying much.” Alice smoothed a hand over her quilt, not sure how to deal with an Ethan Grey who could outwit his sons and play nursemaid to a governess. “I was in wretched shape this morning, and you have my thanks for your kindness.”

He sat there at her hip, regarding her out of solemn blue eyes. He wore riding attire very well, and a faint odor of horse clung to the edges of his usual cedar scent. That she could enjoy any scent when blended with horse was a puzzlement.

“What will you do with your afternoon, Alice Portman?”

“I have many letters to write. I slept most of the morning. Perhaps I will tend to correspondence.”

“A letter or two only.” He frowned and tucked a strand of hair over her ear. The touch was not proper, but cowering in bed while bleating like a trapped sheep rather trumped all comers in the impropriety department.

“The headache and nervousness are slipping away, creeping back down into my vitals from whence they sprang.”

“That’s how it feels, isn’t it?” He rose, making the mattress shift. “Where is Clara?”

“I sent her downstairs.” Alice settled against the pillows, relieved to have the bed to herself though curious as to how Ethan Grey knew the exact contours of a bout of panic. “She is a dear, but twittery, and recovery from a spell like this morning’s is facilitated by calm.”

He said nothing, but stood at her window, where the curtains were drawn back halfway. While Alice cast around for something innocuous to say, he spoke over his shoulder.

“Why are the boys so concerned with death? As we rode in this morning, Joshua asked me if you were going to die. From a simple headache, such as I might suffer any day of the week—I told them you suffered only that— they leapt to making your final arrangements.” Then he did turn, though he stayed across the room, leaning his hips back against the windowsill and crossing his ankles. “Or do I perhaps misperceive my children?”

Not a question she’d anticipated, but a sound one, and they could discuss it with a whole room between them. “I don’t think you do. They know your father just died, and of course their mother died, which leaves them with only you.”

“Only me.” Even frowning, Mr. Grey was a handsome man. A handsome, largish man who looked perfectly comfortable to be visiting her in her boudoir. That came as a lowering realization since, despite his buss to her cheek earlier, it implied he could not conceive of improprieties transpiring here. “I haven’t said anything to them about the old earl passing on, and they never met him.”

“They know anyway. Leah explained to the little boys that you and Nick had the same father, and thus the boys’ grandfather had died.”

“Good of her.” Ethan’s—Mr. Grey’s—Ethan’s—frown intensified. “Barbara died in August. The night of the nineteenth.”

This was not a confidence. Any governess learned these bits of family history sooner or later. “How did she die?”

“Typhoid.” He turned back around to stare out the window. “It is neither a tidy death nor quick.”

“Were the boys here?”

“Of course. As was I. I wasn’t going to let her die alone, regardless of the state of our marriage. She was ill for a good month, and sometimes the fever even seemed to abate, but then it spiked again. She was lucid from time to time and asked to see the boys when she was.”

“And you allowed it?”

“I did. She was dying. I tried to keep them from touching her, but they did visit the sickroom on good days. Joshua was still in nappies. I can’t think he remembers much.”

While the boys’ father probably forgot little.

“He might not have much recollection, but Jeremiah has no doubt talked with him at length about their mother, so Joshua thinks he recalls everything his brother does. It must have been very difficult.”

“It was… hot.”

Likely stifling in a sick room, stinking horrendously, humiliating for the patient and trying for the family. And this had gone on for weeks. Of course the children had a recollection of it.

With his back to her, Ethan went on speaking. “She… apologized. In one of her lucid intervals, she apologized for her…” Alice was sure he hadn’t meant to say that, but to her surprise, he finished his thought softly. “For her betrayals.”

Gracious heavens. Betrayals—plural. That could not be good.

“May I offer you the library?” he asked, facing her, his expression once again that of a solicitous host. “It will be cooler, and you’ll have everything you need to tend to your letters. I’ve done most of my writing for the day, which leaves me the accounting, for which I do not need the desk.”

The change in topic was a relief, probably for them both. “Cooler sounds lovely. I’ve been in this bed long enough, but I hardly think it will serve to have me in my nightgown below stairs in broad daylight.”

He pushed away from the window. “This is my house, and if I permit it, then nobody will say anything to it. I am not an earl, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Mr. Grey was more arrogant than any earl. Alice had met a few and was in fact related to one. “The gossips