To Love a Lord (6 page)

“Of course, my lord. But there is something else I’d speak to you about.”

They turned at the end of the corridor and continued walking down the long hall. “What is it?” The hint of light or sound exacerbated his sister’s suffering, so he’d not visit her when she descended into one of her megrims, but he often set himself up outside her chambers in the event she called for him. According to Chloe, only the dark and absolute still of silence brought her any semblance of comfort. Except she never called. The chore of that was too great.

“It is Mrs. Munroe.”

Bitterness lanced his heart. Nor should Chloe call for him. Why would he be the brother whose support she sought? It was little wonder she preferred Alex and detested him. No, he did not begrudge any of his siblings their resentment. Then the servant’s words registered and he cast a sideways glance at Joseph without breaking his stride. “Mrs. Munroe is not my concern. I’ve sent her letter and sent her on her way. Her position with Mrs. Belden is secure and my obligations to that woman are concluded.”

The muscles of the man’s throat bobbed up and down and he drew to an abrupt halt. He stole a frantic look at the breakfast room. “My lord, as I mentioned, there was an additional matter of concern I’d speak to you on.” Worry creased the man’s face.

Gabriel cast a backward glance at the frowning butler, who tended to shuffle back and forth when distraught and then looked to the end of the hall. He released a long sigh and started back toward Joseph. “I take it the young woman was displeased.” He recalled the icy cold of her words as she’d fought for a post in his household.

“Er…” Joseph shot a pained glance over Gabriel’s shoulder. “She—”

Impatient, Gabriel pressed him. “She what?” He had Chloe to attend to and didn’t care to think on the young woman sent him by Mrs. Belden whom he’d promptly sent back. Then an unexpected guilt pricked at him for his callous disregard for Mrs. Munroe. The lady’s faults were not her own, nor did he wish her ill. He merely wished his sister properly cared for. Impatient with Joseph’s silence, he turned on his heel.

“She is here,” Joseph blurted.

A frown formed on Gabriel’s lips. Seventy if he was a day, Joseph’s vision had begun failing him two decades ago. Now it would seem the man’s mind was to follow. Gabriel cast a glance about. “Who is here?”

Joseph tugged at his cravat. His wide eyes bulged in his face. “Mrs. Munroe,” he said on a whisper that was not at all a whisper. He jabbed a finger toward the breakfast room.

Gabriel followed that frantic movement and then with a narrow-eyed gaze on the entrance of that room, strode forward. He stepped into the room and froze at the threshold of the door. Sure enough, Mrs. Munroe, as bold as the lady of the house herself, buttered a crusty piece of bread. He eyed her plate heaped with cold ham, eggs, kippers, and bread.

Then, as though she’d not heard every loudly damning word he’d uttered in the hall, she looked up from her plate. “Oh, hello, my lord.” The less rumpled, bespectacled lady climbed to her feet and dropped a curtsy. Without awaiting permission, she reclaimed her seat and resumed her buttering efforts.

He opened and closed his mouth several times and then cast a perplexed gaze about. Joseph had wisely fled, leaving Gabriel the unenviable task of dealing with the obstinate woman. “Mrs. Munroe?”

She paused and looked up. “Yes, my lord?”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

A wide smile wreathed her lips. “I believe it should be fairly obvious, I’m breaking my fast.”

He started at the unexpected discovery that, for the severity of her coiffure and the paleness of her cheeks, the lady really was quite stunning when she smiled. Then her words registered. “I see that,” he snapped and her smile dipped. She made to take a bite out of her now well-buttered bread. “Why are you here?”

Mrs. Munroe froze, her lips slightly parted, Cook’s flaky bread but a hairsbreadth from her mouth. “Would you have me take my meal someplace else, my lord?”

He’d have her take it wherever she blasted well pleased—but not his home. “I’d have had you break your fast and left several hours ago,” he said, glowering at the insolent miss. By God, what game did she play here?

Then she bit into that damned bread. Her lips closed over it and had she been any woman other than this displeased, oft-frowning instructor from Mrs. Belden, he’d have believed the innocently erotic gesture, deliberate. He groaned.

Mrs. Munroe leaned forward in her chair. “Is there something wrong, my lord?”

“My chair.”

She cocked her head. “Beg pardon?”

“It is my chair.”

Four little creases indicated the lady’s confusion as she glanced about. “Where is your chair, my lord?”

Oh, blast and bloody hell. Tired of Mrs. Munroe and her delayed departure and furious with his sister’s debilitating condition, he strode over and towered over the young woman until she was forced to crane her neck back. He expected fear to light those expressive eyes. Instead, an eager glint lit their blue depths. By God, the insolent slip was enjoying herself. She’d orchestrated this entire exchange.

“Yes, my lord?” She arched a golden eyebrow.

“What are you still doing here, Mrs. Munroe?” he snapped.

“Break—”

“And do not say breaking your fast.” She closed her lips and then reached for her cup of coffee. Silence marched, punctuated by the slow draw of her sipping from the contents of her glass. Now she’d gone silent? He closed his eyes and prayed for patience. “Mrs. Munroe?”

“Yes?”

He’d long prided himself on his unflinching control. “Do you have nothing to say?” Did that harsh growl belong to him? All that control had been shattered by this slip of a woman more than a foot smaller than him and so narrow-waisted a faint wind would likely take her down.

Mrs. Munroe lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “You advised me against mentioning that I was breaking my fast and so I did not.” Then with long, slender fingers, she held up her partially filled glass for his inspection. “Now I am drinking.” To prove that very point, she took a small sip of her coffee.

Gabriel took in her bow-shaped lips pressed to the rim of the porcelain and a sudden need to take her mouth under his sucked all logical thought from his head. He blinked rapidly. What in blazes? He gave his head a firm shake, dislodging his desirous musings. Yesterday, when he’d first met the quiet, stammering, wide-eyed companion he’d immediately dismissed her as unsuitable for his spirited, unconventional sister. Chloe required a companion who’d not be dragged along on his sister’s madcap schemes, with the steely resolve to convince her of the rightness in making a match with a good, honorable gentleman. This more colorful, more insolent, and vastly more infuriating version of Mrs. Munroe, however, would not do for any number of different reasons. He’d go mad with one such as she in his home.

He steeled his jaw. “Explain your presence in my home now, Mrs. Munroe.”

*

For all Jane’s false bravado, her heart thumped hard enough that she marveled His Lordship could not see the frantically pounding organ against the wall of her chest. The forced smile on her lips threatened to shatter her cheeks. She’d have to be deaf as a dowager to fail to hear the thin thread of rage underscoring the marquess’ question. She’d wager a powerful, commanding lord such as he was unaccustomed to having his orders gainsaid. Yet for all her unease, she clung to the furious annoyance of the dismissive words he’d uttered in the hall. The fact that he cared not at all for her security, post, or in any regard beyond those should come as little surprise. All the noblemen she’d had the displeasure of knowing had seen her as a lesser person there to serve, there to see to their pleasures, or, in some instances as in the case of her father, see her not at all.

“Mrs. Munroe?” he snapped.

Jane started and hurriedly set down her tepid coffee. She placed her hands on her lap, out of his vision, shielding the faint tremble that would demonstrate how unnerved she was by his massive, towering form standing above her. Marquesses had no right to look the way this man did. A muscle-hewn frame and sun-bronzed skin, he might as well have been any honorable man who worked with his hands in the Kent countryside that she and her mother had called home.

In an attempt to demonstrate some mastery over the tenuous situation, Jane dusted her palms together. He followed that movement and then looked at her through dark, impenetrable slits. “You see, my lord, you unfairly dismissed me. You judged my suitability by a brief conversation and nothing more.” Which in fairness was his right. In a world where she was powerless, subject to the whims and desires of her employers, she chafed at the total lack of control over her circumstances. “You believed your sister and I would not suit.”

He leaned down and shrunk the space between them. “I believed you would not suit,” he said with a bluntness that deepened her frown.

Oh, the lout. “Precisely,” she said with a vigorous nod.

Only, that slight movement brought him down further, so mere inches separated their faces. The slight cleft in his square jaw ticked in a telltale indication of his annoyance. Fury emanated from his eyes. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Munroe.” And God help her, she really shouldn’t note anything beyond his high-handedness and easy disregard for her future, she’d have to be blind to fail to appreciate the chiseled planes of his face that may as well have been carved of stone.

“You believed I would not suit your sister, but you can’t know that. Not truly.” He pierced her with his intense stare and she rushed on before her courage fled and her feet followed suit. “If your sister is as spirited as you proclaim—”

“She is,” he bit out.

“Then surely the lady should have some input as to my suitability.” Which was the desperate plan she’d crafted somewhere between the glorious, hot, soothing bath last evening and the hours of being unable to sleep. It was a sorry day indeed when a woman hung her hopes upon a post she’d hoped to steal and the benevolence of a spirited noblewoman.

The marquess straightened. “You would have me allow my sister to decide as to whether you will suit as a companion?”

Jane gave a terse nod. She braced for the mocking insolence she’d come to expect of men such as he who saw women as weak-willed and robbed them of a voice in all matters. Instead, a mocking smile turned his lips upward. The first indication that the brilliantly hatched scheme concocted in his guest chambers had proven a faulty one.

“Very well, Mrs. Munroe. I shall allow my sister to decide on your suitability as her companion.”

She eyed him warily. “You will?” The lords whose homes she’d resided in had made decisions for their wives and daughters. Those same men had only and always acted with their desires placed before anyone else’s. There had to be more at play where the marquess was concerned.

He ran a fierce stare over her. “I will, and when,” not if but rather when, “my sister decides you will not do as her companion, I expect you to take your leave immediately.”

Jane balled her hands into fists. “
When
I meet her and
if
she decides we do not suit,” his eyes narrowed all the more until nothing more than the blacks of his irises were visible. “Then I will leave.” Not before then. Being turned out by Lady Chloe Edgerton was not an option.

The marquess straightened and, with one final hard look, started for the door.

A cowardly surge of relief coursed through her and she hopped to her feet. “My lord,” she called out. He froze at the threshold of the door and spun back to face her. He eyed her in stony silence. “When can I expect to meet Lady Chloe?”

He flexed his jaw. “My sister is now indisposed.”

“Indisposed?” she repeated.

For a long moment he said nothing and she expected he intended to allow that question to go unanswered. After all, it was not her right to put questions to him. Then, she’d never done what was expected of her where Society was concerned. Her lips twisted in a dry smile. That strong-willed aspect of her character had inevitably found her in this now impossible position with the Marquess of Waverly.

He spoke at last. “She suffers megrims, Mrs. Munroe.”

A twinge of guilt struck her. “I am sorry,” she said automatically.

The marquess gave a terse nod and then took his leave. Jane’s shoulders sagged and she gripped the back of the shell chair, borrowing support from the mahogany wood. Each day she was permitted to remain closeted away here, the closer she was to the freedom provided by the trust settled upon her by the duke. She would have claim to that money entitled her and then never again would she rely upon the Duke of Ravenscourt connections, the benevolence of strangers, or the whim of a nobleman. She would be free. Free when her mother had been reliant upon her protector’s generosity.

After days of the dark gloom of rain, an unexpected ray of sun filtered through the crack in the gold brocade curtains. The light danced off the crystal candelabras and threw a rainbow of color about the room. She stilled. As a girl, her mother had filled Jane’s ears with tales of legends and fables and fairytales. The first time Jane had ever seen one of those elusive rainbows, she’d been a girl of six. Her mother had told the tale of all great fortunes found at the end of that colorful masterpiece. All one had to do was battle the devilish leprechaun for those riches.