Page 38 of Too Scot to Handle
Mr. Montague consulted his pocket watch. “What’s Tuesday next?”
“The regular board meeting,” Anwen said. “And you are now the chair.”
Montague snapped his watch closed. “’Fraid that won’t do. I have a standing obligation on Tuesday afternoons, and until I can rearrange my schedule, Lord Colin will have to chair the meetings.”
Colin shoved Anwen’s bonnet at her when she would have reminded Mr. Montague that without him present, they’d not have a quorum, and thus no business could be transacted.
She snatched the bonnet from his lordship. “If you can spare me a few minutes, Lord Colin, I’d like to look in on the boys before I leave.”
“I’ll be on my way.” Mr. Montague sketched a bow and sauntered out the door, gold-handled walking stick propped against his shoulder.
“I can’t close the door,” Colin said, very softly, “though if you curse quietly, nobody will hear you.”
“I can curse in Welsh,” Anwen said. “But foul language won’t change a thing. That prancing bufflehead can’t be bothered to miss a card game for the sake of these children.”
“Is bufflehead the worst appellation you can think of?”
“Imbecile, buffoon, dandiprat.” She lapsed into Welsh, a fine, expressive language for describing what anatomical impossibilities a man might perform with his infernal consequence.
“I caught most of that,” Colin said. “Gaelic and Welsh being kissing cousins. Let’s take a look at the ledgers Hitchings left for us in the chairman’s office.”
Oh, dear. “You can understand Welsh?”
“When you speak it,” he said, leading the way down the corridor, “about as well as you can understand my Gaelic, I’m guessing. I’ll ask my man of business to take a look at these ledgers when he and I meet this afternoon.”
All over again, Anwen was furious. “Won’t approving such a review take a resolution by the board, discussion, a motion, a second, half the afternoon wasted debating a commonsense suggestion that will cost the institution not one penny?”
She’d seen the board pull that maneuver any number of times, only to table the motion because somebody was late for an appointment with his bootmaker.
“You raise an interesting point,” Colin said, pausing outside the office door. “If the board can’t gather a quorum, we can only have informational meetings, and as acting chair, we’ll do pretty much what I say we’ll do.”
“Oh.” Anwen’s anger evaporated into a pressing need to wrap her arms around Colin and hug him for sheer glee. She lifted the latch and pushed the door open, for the chairman’s office would afford them some privacy,
She stopped short on the threshold.
Four boys were gathered about the table, one of them—Dickie—wielding a tool that looked like a chisel with the narrow end flattened.
“That’s the strongbox,” Anwen said. “John, Dick, Thomas, Joseph, what are you doing with the strongbox?”
Lord Colin snatched the tool from Dickie’s hand. “They were breaking into the strongbox, and judging from the wear on these fittings, it’s not the first time they’ve stolen from the very hand that’s trying to keep them fed, clothed, housed, and out of jail.”
* * *
Esther, Duchess of Moreland liked to go barefoot.
Percival had learned that about his wife before they’d even wed. She also liked to have her feet massaged—no tickling allowed, unless a husband wanted to lose his foot-massaging privileges for at least a fortnight. Why those thoughts should occur to him as he peeked in on his wife at midafternoon, he could not have said.
She looked up from addressing invitations, a niece arranged on either side of her at the library table. Percival silently blew her a kiss rather than disturb her, and drew the door closed.
“Thomas,” he said to the footman on duty at the end of the corridor, “please send a tray of bread and cheese to the ladies, and include a bottle of hock with my compliments.”
“Of course, Your Grace. Some lemon biscuits too?”
They were Esther’s favorites. “Good thought, and a few forget-me-nots if we have any on hand.” Esther said they were the same blue as Percival’s eyes.
Thomas bowed. “Very good, sir.”
A commotion in the foyer below signaled the arrival of the duke’s oldest son, Devlin St. Just, Earl of Rosecroft. Percival’s view from the floor above meant he could see that his son’s dark hair was still thick even at the very top of his head.
