A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle (106 page)

Miss Matthews exhaled an audible sigh
of relief. “Precisely what I was thinking, Cousin
Henrietta.”

Precisely, indeed. What on earth had
Eldredge done to inspire such obvious aversion in her that she
would be relieved at that answer, and that she would give him the
cut direct in public?

And, even more perplexing, why was he
so damned pleased with that result, when he desired to see her
married off sooner rather than later?

He must have growled out loud, because
every eye in the room turned to face him.

“
Oh, Peter,” Mama said.
“How long have you been standing there? Come in, come in. Take a
seat here beside me, if you please.”

The side of the love seat she had
indicated would place him next to Miss Matthews. He felt the desire
to groan again rather too keenly, but few options remained.
“Ladies.” He inclined his head to the room in general. “I trust you
are enjoying yourselves this afternoon.” Peter directed his
statement toward the Marlborough sisters in an effort to avoid
looking Miss Matthews in the eye.

His mother chose to answer for them
all. “Why, yes. We’re having a lovely discussion on the necessity
of marriage. You had wonderful timing, son. I was hoping to learn
which lovely young lady has caught your eye enough that you paid
her a call today.”

“
Er...well, truth be told,
I met with my solicitor this morning.” Why could she not have given
him a bit more time to come up with a better response?—one where
she would not discover that he’d neglected to tell her everything
accurately earlier.

“
Oh,” she said,
disappointment ringing in the single syllable. “Well, you’ll simply
have to pay calls to two young ladies tomorrow afternoon then,
since it’s nearly time to dress for the evening. We mustn’t be late
for Lady Kearsey’s entertainment, you know.”

Peter dragged a hand through his hair.
“Mama, I promised you I would do my best to find a bride this
Season. I am doing so. I won’t stand for you ordering me about in
my own home in front of guests, however.”

She gave him an imperious look. “As
long as you are my son, I’ll order you about on any matter which I
feel to be in your best interest, and that is all there is to say
on the subject. I daresay the Marlborough sisters have heard me
give the lot of you far more blistering set-downs than that
was.”

Well, that was the truth. That didn’t
make it any better, though. He was the deuced Duke of Somerton, and
his mother was treating him like a simpleton. Damn, if he wasn’t
going to allow it, too.

Mama stood and placed her embroidery
down on the table next to her, then turned to the Marlborough
sisters. “I do apologize, ladies. My son has proven himself
tactless, and I’m unwilling to listen to any more of his excuses.
Will we be seeing you two tonight, Miss Marlborough?”

The elder sister nodded. “Yes, Your
Grace. Mother will be there with us.”

“
Excellent. If you’ll
excuse me, please.” And then she swept through the open doorway and
out of sight.

Blast it. He’d have to pay
calls to
three
ladies tomorrow just to make it up to Mama for that one. The
thought of just a single visit was enough to sour his stomach at
the moment…but three? His mood turned dark, black. He wanted to
plant his fist through a wall, or better yet, through Eldredge’s
face.

Not that Peter could blame the
viscount for his current temper. Well, not entirely. Good Lord, he
never lost his temper. That seemed to have changed drastically
since the arrival of Miss Matthews.

Miss Marlborough stood, her face a
full blush as she stared at him. “Theodora, we truly must be on our
way now. Why, look at the time! Mother will be wondering what’s
taken us so long. Come along.”

The tension in the room had grown so
heavy it would take three burly men to lift it.

Miss Theodora frowned up at her older
sister, seemingly oblivious to the tension bursting at the seams of
the room. “But she won’t expect us for at least another twenty
minutes, Patience. Charlotte and I have yet to talk
alone.”

“
You’ll simply have to wait
until tomorrow.” Miss Marlborough gathered her reticule and hastily
put her gloves back on her hands. “We must be on our way. I’m truly
sorry ladies. Your Grace.” She executed a brief and clumsy curtsy,
and half-dragged her younger sister behind her out the
door.

Peter couldn’t very well blame the
chit for wanting out of his presence. In his current state of mind,
he would much prefer not to be left in a room with himself, were
such a feat possible.

His sisters and Miss Matthews said
their goodbyes to the Marlboroughs, and then took their leave of
him as well. “We really must dress for the evening, ladies,” Sophie
said. “And Char, do try not to sulk over the brief visit with
Theodora. You see her nearly every day. It leaves you seeming
rather petulant and missish when you pout like that.”

“
I’m not pouting. It isn’t
my fault that
he
,”
Charlotte said with a huff and a head-jerk in his direction, “is in
such a foul mood to the point that we could barely speak with each
other at all.”

Peter bit his tongue. The last thing
he needed now was to have his sisters band together against him.
Was it not enough to have his mother scold him a troublesome child
in front of people outside the immediate family?

“
Nevertheless,” Sophie
said, “we should all be on our way.” She shooed Charlotte into the
hall with Miss Matthews following behind a bit more
leisurely.

“
Miss Matthews, I require a
word with you.”

Damnation. Stopping her had certainly
not been his plan, but the words were out of his mouth before he
could stop himself.

She slowed and faced him. “Your
Grace?” He couldn’t decide if apprehension or aversion was the more
dominant feature on her countenance. Either way, she
stopped.

Sophie sent him an accusing glance
over her shoulder before slipping up the stairs and out of
sight.

And now—now he needed to determine
what on earth to say to the woman whose cat was rubbing
figure-eights between her legs and pushing its head against the
inside hem of her dress.

“
You...you were quite brave
to face a charging horse to save that girl today.”

“
Thank you.” Her eyes
squinted and flashed as she stared up at him and her hands fidgeted
before her, clutching and shifting a fan back and forth between
them.

Her nerves were enough to
drive him to distraction. He wanted to take the fan from her and
entwine his hands with hers. And
that
only left him annoyed with
himself for experiencing such a bothersome reaction to such a
thoroughly inappropriate lady.

“
You will refrain from
acting in such a stupid manner in the future,” he snapped before he
could think better of it. “Allow someone with more experience
handling horses to see to them. You might have been
hurt.”

Oh, blast. Now he had proved himself a
fool.

“
Stupid
, Your Grace?” She glared at him with a stare that would melt
steel. “You dare to call me stupid? I’ll have you know that while
my parents were unable to afford to pay for my education, I was
nevertheless educated as well as any daughter of any
peer.”

Never mind the fact that she’d called
him asinine only hours previously. She had clearly forgotten as
much.

Before he could retract her
statement, she advanced upon him. Within mere seconds, she stood
toe-to-toe with him, pushing a finger into his chest to punctuate
her words. “No one—not even a
bloody
duke
—calls me stupid, Your
Grace.”

“
I did not—”

“
You most certainly
did
call me stupid.” She
poked his chest again, causing him to take a step back toward the
hearth. “And if it ever happens again, you’ll be quite sorry. I’ll
be certain of it.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You dare to
threaten me?”

“
Oh, you’d better believe
I’m threatening you. I am
not
intimidated by you, no matter how hard you
try.”

Good God, her brown eyes had darkened
so much he thought them fully black. What a bewilderingly sultry
sight. The urge to kiss her again consumed him, deeper, harder than
the first time. He settled for grasping her hand that was, yet
again, poking him in the chest to stop her assault.

“
You,” he said, his voice
low, menacing, “will do as you’re told. Which means you will leave
the heroics to someone better qualified for the task than yourself
from this point forward.”

The need to argue with him made itself
clear in the fire blazing in her eyes, but she said nothing else
when he squeezed tighter against her arm. Perhaps too tight. Devil
take it. A single tear pooled in her eye but neglected to spill
over.

At least she kept it from falling. He
could handle virtually any situation, but a woman’s tears almost
always proved to be his undoing.

He loosened his grip but didn’t
release her. Not yet. He couldn’t make himself break off that
limited contact, no matter how inappropriate it was of him. “Have I
made myself perfectly clear, Miss Matthews?”

“
Yes,
Your Grace
,” she ground out through
clenched teeth.

“
Good. You may
go.”

She tugged against him, but he still
held her tight enough that she couldn’t remove herself from his
grip. “Kindly unhand me, and I’ll be glad to do just
that.”

The look in her eyes nearly brought
him to his knees—something between disgust and hatred, but not
squarely on either end of the spectrum. He jerked his hand away
from her.

She spun on her heels and fled from
the room, racing up the stairs like her life depended upon
it.

Christ above, he was everything she’d
called him and worse. Never in his life had he been such a bumbling
idiot. “Miss Matthews?” he called after her.

While she neither faced him nor
responded, she did at least stop her progress, one hand clenching
the stair rail so tightly that her knuckles turned
white.

“
I look forward to seeing
you this evening.”

A single, curt nod of her head was the
last thing he saw before she disappeared up the stairs and around a
corner.

~ * ~

Drawers stood no chance against Jane’s
mood. She pulled them open with such force that one of them pulled
completely free and fell clanging to the floor, spilling its
contents as it went. Well, that was certainly one way of removing
her belongings. Of course, there was the entire dressing room full
of things which would need to be pulled free and packed.

Perhaps she should do more of the
same. It had felt rather good, after all.

Moving to an armoire in her closet,
she threw the door open and reveled in the noise as it banged
against the wall. It was a good sound. Loud and violent, and just a
touch jarring. Suited her at the moment quite well.

“
Miss, is there something I
can help you find?” asked Meg, who had just rushed into the
dressing room with wide eyes. “I am certain that if you only ask,
I’ll know precisely where to find it, ma’am.” The young maid
scurried about behind her, putting pieces of furniture back to
their rightful positions and refolding articles of clothing she had
strewn about willy-nilly in her tirade.

Ha! If only the maid could
find where Jane had misplaced her mind when she’d agreed to her
mother’s idea of sending her to Town for the Season. Then, perhaps,
Jane might find a use for having a personal servant at her beck and
call. Instead, now as ever, poor Meg was merely a nuisance. An
aggravation. One more symbol of the
inferiority
of Jane’s birth, or at
least the inferiority a certain duke-who-shall-remain-nameless
insisted to be in existence.

And he, of course, was perfect.
High-in-the-instep. Superior.

A perfectly superior pain in the arse
might be a better fit.

Meg placed a stack of
neatly folded clothes back into the drawer Jane had just
painstakingly unpacked. All right.
Fine
. She could concede that there
had been nothing painstaking about the process. But she
had
just removed the
dratted articles in the first place, and if she wanted them in the
drawer, she would have left them there in the first
place.

Calm down. Breathe.
Meg was simply attempting to do her job. She did
not deserve the blistering retort Jane had so nearly
delivered.

That retort belonged to no one but
Meg’s employer.

“
Meg, do be a dear and
leave things as I have them, please.”

“
Leave them, miss? I don’t
understand.” She continued to fold and stack the clothes into
perfect, neat little stacks.