The Butler Did It (9 page)

“If you mean that harridan who tried to attack me, then at last we agree on something, Thornley.” Morgan looked at the man closely, remembering the beauty who was waiting for him in his drawing room. “Tell me about the remainder of these…guests.”

Thornley nodded, more than happy to be of service. “As I may have mentioned, there is the Clifford family. Mrs. Clifford the elder, Mrs. Clifford the younger, her son, Mr. Clifford, and her daughter, Miss Emma Clifford.”

Emma. So now he had a name to put with that face, those eyes. Emma Clifford.

“And the rest?”

“Sir Edgar Marmington, my lord, and the aforementioned Mrs. Norbert. Sir Edgar is very quiet, keeps to himself mostly, and Mrs. Norbert is a seamstress from here in London who recently came into some funds and wished a Season in Mayfair.”

“Good for her. Everyone should have a Season in Mayfair. In fact, I'm sure anyone who knows me would say, yes, the marquis has often said that everyone should have a Season in Mayfair,” Morgan said mildly. And just to prove that, indeed, the marquis had mastered his temper during his self-imposed exile, his voice raised only half an octave when he ended:
“Are you out of your mind?”

“I'll…I'll gather the others and we'll be leaving, my lord,” Thornley said, bowing stiffly. “I know what I've done is reprehensible as well as inexcusable, and I can only offer my heartfelt and most humble apologies.”

“Right, right,” Morgan said, his mind more fully occupied with a pair of penetrating gray eyes, and lips nearly the color of ripe cherries. All right, not quite ripe cherries, that was too fanciful, and would make her a devotee of paint pots, because nobody save heroines in marble-backed novels had lips as red as ripe cherries. Or eyes as gray as a stormy ocean in December.

Except perhaps Miss Emma Clifford.

He really needed her gone. He was becoming fanciful. Why, the girl was little more than a common housebreaker, even if she had paid her way through the doors.

“No,” he said, coming to his senses. “Thornley, I'm not going to let you off so easily.”

The butler squared his shoulders. “I shall gather the others and report to the nearest guardhouse, my lord? Only I think Claramae and Mrs. Timon would not survive being transported across the seas—Mrs. Timon's bunions, you understand, in particular—and Riley is probably already halfway to his sister's cottage just outside Wimbledon. So, if I may, sir, I will take the blame, and the punishment, firmly and entirely on my shoulders.”

“Oh, cut line, Thornley,” Morgan said, brushing past him, “I'm not an ogre. Nobody's going to the guardhouse. But, as I'm also not a saint, the four of you will be working here for the next year without wages. Now, for my first orders to you and your cohorts in iniquity, pack up these people and get them gone. I'm off downstairs, to inform them that they are no longer welcome in my house.”

 

“W
E'RE NOT LEAVING
, you know,” Emma Clifford announced with some heat as the doors to the drawing room opened and the Marquis of Westham strolled in. And it was a good thing she had gotten those words out before she really looked at him, because if he had been imposing half-dressed and sporting a morning beard, he was twice as intimidating now. Suddenly all the air went out of the huge room. “And…and you can't make us,” she added less certainly.

Then she belatedly dropped into a curtsy.

“Where did everyone scamper off to, Miss Clifford?” Morgan asked, looking about the empty room. “Surely you are not here in the role of champion for all of them?”

She'd shooed everyone else away (or they had deserted her; she wasn't quite sure which), and after recovering the receipt Thornley had written out for them—and fixing her hair, making sure she looked her best—she had stationed herself here, to make very clear that she had every right to the use of this mansion until the King's Birthday in June.

Emma took a deep breath and began her prepared remarks…which had sounded far more declarative, and her voice less wobbly, when she'd practiced those remarks in her rooms. “I am here representing my family, my lord, and Sir Edgar and Mrs. Norbert as well. You can speak to me, although it will do you no good. As I have already stated, we are not leaving. We have
paid.
”

“My goodness me,” Morgan said, advancing across the room, not stopping until he was no more than three feet away from Emma. Beautiful she was, and no doubt, but she was also the most infuriating, contrary woman he'd ever met. “Please perceive me as veritably quavering in my boots, Miss Clifford, at the vehemence of what I fear you must, in your delusion, believe is your very reasonable argument. Now, that said, would you care to leave under your own power, Miss Clifford, or shall I simply toss you over my shoulder and carry you out?”

Emma backed up a pace, held up the receipt like a shield, and stumbled into her prepared speech, any eloquence she might have hoped for becoming lost somewhere in Morgan's angrily flashing blue eyes. “Here, look. We did, we paid. And Sir Edgar and Mrs. Norbert also have receipts. We
paid
to be here. Room
and
board, plus the use of the mansion's servants so that we didn't have to bring our own. See?”

Morgan grabbed the scrap of paper—bearing his crest, he noticed; Thornley had much to answer for—and read it. He chuckled ruefully. “For the four of you, you say? And this paltry sum is for the entire Season? Not just, oh, three hours spent nibbling cakes here in the drawing room and the chance to tell all your friends that you broke bread in the Marquis of Westham's domicile? Madam, you're standing in one of the grandest mansions in all of Mayfair. Do you have even the faintest notion of what it takes to maintain this pile? This amount is insulting.”

“I agree that we all felt the price was rather a bargain,” Emma said, grabbing the receipt back before he could toss it in the fire, which would be just like him, because he had to be the
nastiest
man she'd ever met. “But that's neither here nor there,” she said, having gathered back some of her earlier courage, which had gone sadly missing as she realized how
big
the marquis was, how imposing. How very handsome…or he would be, if he'd stop scowling at her. “It is the amount we were asked to pay.”

“And you never questioned it? You, your mother, your grandmother and your brother—four of you, for this miserly sum? How deeply have you all been buried in the country, Miss Clifford? A backward child would know this amount is ludicrous.”

How she longed to box his ears. “There's no need to be insulting, my lord.”

“You're right. My apologies, Miss Clifford. In truth, there's no need to be conversing with you at all. Where's your brother? I should be speaking with him.”

“Cliff? Why, I sent him to his rooms, of course.”

“
You
sent
him
—did you say Cliff?” Morgan grinned in real amusement. “That's his name? Cliff Clifford, Clifford Clifford?”

Emma bristled, because she might see how sorry a choice her brother's name had been, but she didn't need his so-supercilious lordship to point it out to her. “Yes, we call him Cliff, as that's his name. Is there something else we should call him, my lord?”

“James or Henry would be two suggestions,” he said, then dismissed his words with a wave of his hand. “Well, never mind, that explains it. Cliff Clifford. Poor sot. Namby-pamby milksop ruled by three women. I almost pity him, and would,” he ended, his smile fading, “except that he's in my house.”

He leaned down, going nose-to-nose with Emma. She might be beautiful and spirited, but she was an interloper, and he would be out of his mind to think she could re
main under his roof another moment. “And do you know something else, Miss Clifford? I don't want him in my house. I don't want any of you in my house. Because it is
my
house.”

“There is no reason to shout, my lord,” Emma told him with as much calm as she could muster. How he angered her. She had to ball her hands into fists, to keep from slapping his arrogant face.

“I'm not shouting!” Morgan said, then lowered his voice and repeated, “I'm not shouting.”

“And if you could step back a few paces? You may think you are intimidating, but you are merely being unmannered and rude.”

Morgan blinked. “Oh, that's above everything wonderful, Miss Clifford. You are illegally encamped in my house without my leave, and
I
am unmannered? And, I believe, insulting. Isn't that what you said?”

What an insufferable man! Did he think he was amusing? “Yes, I did say just that. And rude, definitely rude. I also said that, my lord. Although I congratulate you on realizing that you are also insulting. And now I will point out that you're still yelling, although not quite so loudly.” She waved the back of her hand toward him. “Please?” she said and, wonder of wonders, if he didn't step back two paces.

“Satisfied now, Miss Clifford?”

“Marginally, yes.” This wasn't so bad. All she needed was to be firm, and calm-headed. After all, she had Right
on her side. Right, and Honor, and Justice. She tamped down a wince, knowing that she was now, horror of horrors, thinking like her mother.

Morgan gave her credit for bravery, but brave and beautiful, it didn't matter. His temper was roiling—
something
inside him was roiling—and he needed to regain his composure, that calm he had fought so long to achieve. He could not have survived Wycliff, only to fail when faced with this small, gray-eyed witch. He was stronger than that.

So he stepped forward again and leaned toward her once more. “You look a sensible puss, Miss Clifford. How can you stand here and tell me that I am in the wrong?”

“Because you are, my lord. Well, not really wrong, not…technically. But we are not at fault here, either. We are all unfortunate victims of a…a misunderstanding. Still, we have nowhere else to go, and you, a gentleman—and I employ that term charitably, my lord—cannot in good conscience insist that we leave,” Emma said, pushing her face even closer to his. If she could stare down the village butcher when he was reluctant to advance them more credit until the end of the quarter, she could stare down this…this marquis.

Oh, Lord, he was a
marquis
. And who was she? She was a
nobody.
Was she out of her mind?

“What if I have no conscience, Miss Clifford?” he asked, standing his ground as a small part of him got lost in the depths of those unique gray eyes.

Emma forced herself to continue staring at him. If he was a marquis, why couldn't she use that fact against him! “I will remind you that you are a marquis, my lord. You have your honor to consider.”

Morgan blinked first. He hated himself for it, but he blinked first.

“This is ridiculous. Of course I can make you leave.
Honorably.
” How would he do that? He might have threatened it, but he was a gentleman, damn it. He couldn't actually pick the dratted woman up by the waist and walk her out, toss her into the street. Maddening! “I could call the watch, have you bodily removed.”

“Yes, do that, my lord,” Emma said, because she'd had a good thirty minutes to prepare her arguments, although she'd dismissed most of them as unworkable. But now, she realized as she'd stared into this man's bluer-than-blue eyes, she had nothing to lose. If she did nothing but keep doggedly repeating that he couldn't make them leave, they would all be out on the pavement in mere minutes. She had to do more, even as she hated having to draw out what she'd considered those previously rejected big guns. So she took a deep breath and said, “But first, could you please direct me to Fleet Street?”

“Fleet—why would you go there? There's nothing there but print shops and newspaper offices and—” He narrowed those bluer-than-blue eyes. “You wouldn't dare.”

“Yes, I would dare, my lord,” Emma said, dipping her knees so that she could then turn and sneak past him, to
sit down on one of the couches, carefully arranging her skirts about her. Her hands were trembling, but she clasped them together in her lap and smiled at him. She held the upper hand now, and she knew it. Playing fair had gotten her nowhere, so now she would play as her grandmother would, and not feel ashamed until later. Much later. “Your turn, my lord, I do believe.”

Morgan attempted to push his rising temper down to where he'd found it possible for it to live, and for him to survive without doing anything too foolhardy. It sat uncomfortably, halfway down his throat, and he would worry that he might choke on it, except that he was otherwise occupied in not grabbing Miss Clifford by her throat and throttling her. “No. You wouldn't do that, Miss Clifford. Your mother and grandmother would never allow such a thing. Your reputation would sustain a larger blot than mine, I assure you.”

“Perhaps. But I think not. After all, imagine the story as it would appear. Miss C-dash-dash-dash-etcetera was rudely and forcibly removed from the Marquis of W-dash-dash-dash-etcetera's Grosvenor Square mansion and tossed, homeless, into the gutter, along with her mother, brother and aged, infirm grandmother, because the marquis, having been thoroughly gulled by his staff during his absence from Mayfair, learned that this staff had been taking in boarders for the Season. At least, this is the story we are to believe. Could it be that the marquis is strapped for funds? It
would go something like that, I believe. Yes, I could see where such a sad tale could hurt me. If anyone even knew who I am.
You,
on the other hand, my lord—?”

She smiled up at him and shrugged. There was something to be said for being daring, like her grandmother; doing whatever came into your head, and the devil take the hindmost. She was feeling stronger by the moment.