Good lord, he was in trouble.
“We should present the crown to Bridget,” she said.
“Right.” Wes put the makeshift crown on his head, tilted it to a rakish angle, and folded his arms. “As the late, desperately unlamented ruler of this realm, I command it.”
Her face lit up and she laughed. Her nose wrinkled a bit when she did, and his heart gave an odd thump. “You’re taking your demise very well, my lord.”
“Given that I have no choice, I shall accept my fate gracefully, as befits a monarch.” He took the crown from his head. “Perhaps it will serve as a good example for the prince.” As hoped, Justin had been given the part of the prince, although Wes still had no idea what that role entailed. Not that he knew what his own role entailed.
“Lord Newton has made himself very agreeable.” Mrs. Cavendish closed the storage room door behind them as they headed back to the drawing room.
“He is improving,” Wes admitted. Justin had been in excellent spirits since they arrived. Perhaps Anne was wrong to keep him at home so much. Wes certainly hadn’t wanted to be at home when he was twenty. He’d gone to Egypt with two of his mates from university that year.
“He’s charming,” said Mrs. Cavendish diplomatically. “I daresay the young ladies are very pleased you brought him to Kingstag.”
Wes laughed. “At least I did something to redeem myself!”
“Oh no! You are most welcome, Lord Winterton!” She put her hand on his arm. Wes stopped in his tracks, as did she. He stared into her sea-green eyes, and again his heart took a strange leap.
Good lord, he was in trouble . . . and it was exhilarating.
With a muffled gasp she snatched her hand away, and without thinking Wes caught it. “Thank you,” he whispered, raising it to his lips for a kiss. “For I find myself very pleased that I came.”
Chapter 6
After the electric moment with the earl, when he caught her hand and looked at her as if he’d like to pull her back into the privacy of the storage cupboard and kiss her senseless, Viola tried to busy herself with dull tasks in the distant reaches of the castle. Not because she feared the earl actually would pull her aside and kiss her senseless, but because she was coming to hope he might.
Her hand had tingled for an hour where his lips brushed it. After she delivered the makeshift crown to Bridget, she fled the drawing room, even though it left Sophronia completely in charge. The earl had watched her go—Viola could swear his gaze made her feel warm and giddy from all the way across the room—but thankfully he didn’t follow. That was proper, she told herself; she was a servant and he was a gentleman of leisure.
So she ended up sitting in the small room off the duchess’s private parlor where she normally worked, staring out at the snow and wondering about the foreign lands Lord Winterton had been to. Had he seen the ancient pyramids in Egypt, which Stephen said were marvels of engineering? Had he been to India and seen elephants? Lord Newton had told the young ladies fantastical tales of his uncle’s journeys, and as much as Viola reminded herself it was not her place to know, she burned to ask him about all the places she had read of, but would never see herself.
It was true that everything and everyone she held dear was in England. Even more, the dearest person in the world to her, her brother Stephen, relied upon her being prosperously employed, and that was easiest to accomplish in England. She had neither means nor opportunity to go abroad, whether she wished to or not. Unlike the earl.
She sighed, brushing her fingertips over the knuckles he had kissed. Everything about her life was unlike the earl’s. She was an idiot to sit here thinking a kiss on the hand meant anything. He was being polite, or flirting, or even trying to persuade her to help him locate that atlas. Not that she didn’t understand his desire to have it. She’d made sure Stephen got their father’s astrolabe and sextant, and she’d kept her mother’s pearl necklace, which would have paid for a term at Cambridge.
But whether or not the duke would be willing to sell the atlas, if he even had it, Viola knew she ought to stay out of the matter. Her growing sympathy for and interest in Lord Winterton could only get her in trouble.
She was still torn when she went down to dinner. It was part of her duties to help oversee dinner and entertain the guests in the drawing room before and after the meal, but she was not expected to dine with the guests. When it was just family, she was often invited to join them, but during this party she receded to her proper place.
Naturally the first person she set eyes on when she reached the drawing room was Lord Winterton. No one else was in the room yet, so she felt safe enough returning his smile.
“How did the rehearsal progress?” she asked.
His eyes closed for a moment, as if in pain. “Apparently I die a very bloody death, though thankfully off stage.”
Viola giggled before she could stop herself. “I trust you’re quite regal and imposing before that.”
“Pompous and boring, I should say. ‘Let not my subjects make merry,’” he intoned. “‘There is too much frivolity in the kingdom, and I will have an end to it.’”
“Oh my.” Viola wondered what on earth Bridget was thinking. “To what end?”
“Solely to my end,” he replied dryly. “My role is to be pompous and boring, die savagely, then return as a ghost after the prince becomes a far more beloved king, to penitently pronounce that I
