Page 17 of The Heir
“No need to be snippy, my lord.” Anna quirked an eyebrow at him. “We can feed you off a wooden trencher if that’s your preference.”
“My apologies.” The earl shot her a fulminating look as he collected the silverware and waited for Anna to spread the underlinen. “I am out of sorts today for having missed my morning ride.”
He was once again arranging his silverware a precise distance from the edge of the table while Anna watched. He would have made an excellent footman, she concluded. He was careful, conscientious, and incapable of smiling.
“In this heat, I did not want to tax my horse,” the earl said, rummaging in the basket for salt and the pepper. He found them and eyed the table speculatively.
“Here.” Anna set a small bowl of daisies and violets on the table. “Maybe that will give you some ideas.”
“A table for one can so easily become asymmetric.”
“Dreadful effect on the palate.” Anna rolled her eyes. “And where, I ask you, will we hide his lordship’s marzipan?”
“Careful, Mrs. Seaton. If he should come out here and overhear your disrespect, I wouldn’t give two pence for your position.”
“If he is so humorless and intolerant as all that,” Anna said, “then he can find somebody else to feed him sweets on the terrace of a summer’s day.”
The earl’s gaze cooled at that retort, and Anna wondered at her recent penchant for overstepping. He’d been annoying her all morning, though, from the moment she’d been dragooned into the library. It was no mystery to her why Tolliver would rather be dealing with a sick child than his lordship.
“Am I really so bad as all that?” the earl asked, his expression distracted. He set aside the pepper but hefted the salt in one hand.
“You are…” Anna glanced up from folding the linen napkin she’d retrieved from her basket.
The earl met her gaze and waited.
“Troubled, I think,” she said finally. “It comes out as imperiousness.”
“Troubled,” the earl said with a snort. “Well, that covers a world of possibilities.” He reached into the basket and withdrew a large glazed plate, positioning it exactly in the center of his place setting. “I tried to compose a letter to my father this morning, while you beavered away on mymundanebusiness, and somehow, Mrs. Seaton, I could not come up with words to adequately convey to my father the extent to which I want him to justleave me the hellalone.”
He finished that statement through clenched teeth, alarming Anna with the animosity in his tone, but he wasn’t finished.
“I have come to the point,” the earl went on, “where I comprehend why my older brothers would consider the Peninsular War preferable to the daily idiocy that comes with being Percival Windham’s heir. I honestly believe that could he but figure a way to pull it off, my father would lock me naked in a room with the woman of his choice, there to remain until I got her pregnant with twin boys. And I am not just frustrated”—the earl’s tone took on a sharper edge—“I am ready to do him an injury, because I don’t think anything less will make an impression. Two unwilling people are going to wed and have a child because my father got up to tricks.”
“Your father did not force those two people into one another’s company all unawares and blameless, my lord, but why not appeal to your mother? By reputation, she is the one who can control him.”
The earl shook his head. “Her Grace is much diminished by the loss of my brother Victor. I do not want to importune her, and she will believe His Grace only meant well.”
Anna smiled ruefully. “And she wants grandchildren, too, of course.”
“Why, of course.” The earl gestured impatiently. “She had eight children and still has six. There will be grandchildren, and if for some reason the six of us are completely remiss, I have two half siblings, whose children she will graciously spoil, as well.”
“Good heavens,” Anna murmured. “So your father has sired ten children, and yet he plagues you?”
“He does. Except for the one daughter of Victor’s, none of us have seen fit to reproduce. There was a rumor Bart had left us something to remember him by, but he likely started the rumor himself just to aggravate my father.”
“So find a wife,” Anna suggested. “Or at least a fiancée, and back your dear papa off. The right lady will cry off when you ask it of her, particularly if you are honest with your scheme from the start.”
“See?” The earl raised his voice, though just a bit. “Honest with myscheme? Do you know how like my father that makes me sound?”
“And is this all that plagues you, my lord? Your father has no doubt been a nuisance for as long as you’ve been his heir, if not longer.”
The earl glanced sharply at his housekeeper, then his lips quirked, turned back down, and then slowly curved back up.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked, his smiles being as rare as hen’s teeth.
“I found your little parlor maid in the hay loft,” the earl said, setting out his water glass and wine glass precisely one inch from the plate. “She discovered our mouser’s new litter, and she was enthralled with the cat’s purr. She could feel it, I think, and understood it meant the cat was happy.”
“She would,” Anna said, wondering how this topic was related to providing the duke his heirs. “She loves animals, but here in Town, she has little truck with them.”
