Page 133 of The Ladies Least Likely
“You’ll give her the boot when you go home tomorrow, won’t you?” Joseph asked. “After our fête tonight to celebrate Amaranthe rescuing souls and setting all things in order, per the usual.”
“Inez will need to stay on at the house should I decide to visit Favella,” Amaranthe said. She turned away to admire a porcelain vase, not sure she could control her expression.
Joseph had heard a very scrubbed story, long ago, to explain why she and Eyde showed up on his doorstep at Oxford six years before, begging his help to find lodgings for a homeless sister and her pregnant maid. Once he had seen the benefit of having women to put food on the table and see to his clothes and housekeeping, Joseph adjusted easily to the arrangement, as he had settled readily into London after graduation. Very often Amaranthe wondered why she, the younger and the female, so often felt in charge of her brother.
“So you’ve decided to run do her bidding, have you? She sends a letter, and you go?”
“This will be her first child, long-awaited,” Amaranthe answered. “She asked quite prettily that I be there with her, though I don’t know why she would want me.”
Perhaps it was a trick of Reuben’s to lure Amaranthe back under his roof. Did he have something revolting in mind? While she felt a certain polite fondness for Favella, the only real reason to return to Penwellen would be to find her manuscript. Demand that Reuben return her Book of Hours, and then never trouble her again.
“A free nursemaid and housekeeper,” Joseph remarked. “Of course she wants you.”
“I don’t intend to stay long, but it seems unkind to leave her all on her own. After all, this child will be a relation of ours. We have some duty to look after it and her.” Amaranthe moved to examine a display of intricate music boxes on a lacquered table. “Though I have a manuscript to deliver by next week, and I’ll need to secure a new commission if we’re to continue with a roof over our heads.”
“Won’t miss this roof?” Her brother pointed to the fresco on the ceiling, grinning. The scene of frolicking gods and cupids exposed a great deal of shapely human forms, both male and female.
“In truth? No,” Amaranthe answered. “It’s far too much for the likes of us. Please tell me Miss Pettigrew’s expectations are more modest.”
His face fell. “I won’t be able to offer Susannah a hut under a hedge. Thought I was plump in the pocket when you managed to make Grey pay my salary at last, but a new coat will set me back three times that, and I daren’t call on Susannah in the same old plowman’s jacket I’ve been wearing for years now.” Joseph looked moodily down at his dinner coat, which while tidy and smart enough to sport a small row of bronze buttons was in no way a rival to the beautifully embroidered coats and bright buttons that adorned Malden Grey.
As if conjured by her thoughts Grey walked through the door, and Amaranthe forgot everything in her head, including that shewas the source of funds for her brother’s stipend. Grey was the most splendid she’d ever seen him in a dinner coat of dark plum with an eye-popping diamond pattern and intricate embroidery at the sides and hem. A cream waistcoat displayed the same embroidery in contrasting colors, and the matching breeches buckled just below the knee led to white stockings showing an excellently shaped male leg. She stared at his shoes, heeled with gold buckles, and then dragged her gaze upward to his face.
Grey stared, his gaze moving from her hair to her waist to the exaggerated rump, then to the expanse of skin bared by her bodice and the little ruffle that flirted with the tops of her breasts. There his eyes lingered for long moments until, at last aware of her staring back, he looked in her face.
“You,” he began in a strangled voice, and went no further.
Amaranthe experienced a sensation she had never felt in her life: the satisfaction of vanity. The modesty of her upbringing had taught her to value character above all. But the opportunity to strike an intelligent and normally self-possessed man witless by a mere glimpse of her bosom was an opportunity that a modest life had denied her, and she found she quite enjoyed the power, so long as the man was Malden Grey.
“You,” he tried again. “You, ah, have finished with the household accounts?”
“Yes, all up to date,” Amaranthe answered, suppressing a flash of irritation that he could look upon her in this exquisite gown and ask for a progress report. But then she realized he was groping for his scattered wits, poor man, and she decided to forgive him. She opened her fan and swished it beneath her chin. Grey’s eyes tracked the movement like the pendulum of a clock, and she felt a surge of feminine triumph mingled with exasperation. Honestly, how had men contrived to rule the world when exposure to the mere shape of a female made them useless nodcocks?
Medieval monks had railed at length about the dangers posed by women; she’d copied many a tedious text instructing godly men to beware of female snares. Now she understood the frantic warnings. Unable to control their own responses, they chose instead to throttle and control women.
She quite liked stirring this reaction in him. Wise of the medieval clerics to put frail men on their guard. What woman, having such power, wouldn’t use it?
“And you mean to leave us tomorrow.” Faint desperation laced Grey’s tone.
“All is in order here. I’ll leave Mrs. Blackthorn to supervise the new cook, and Eyde can stay until Lady Camilla’s nursemaid returns in the next few days. The matron from the Benevolence Hospital found us a housekeeper who can begin next week, and so…”
She had run out of excuses to stay, to be near him. And now was not the moment to ask if she could take the manuscript Ned had found with her. It wasn’t for Grey to give permission, anyway; it was the property of the young duke.
“We don’t want you to leave.” Camilla’s plaintive voice floated from the doorway. Amaranthe dragged her gaze away from Grey to see that all three of the ducal children stood in their finery, wearing the same expressions of appeal as they had when they’d turned up on her doorstep a week prior.
“Shush, Millie!” Ned hissed. “Let Hugh say what he planned.”
Young Hunsdon bowed to Amaranthe, then held out his arm. He was a few inches shorter than she, but as the ranking male, it was his privilege to lead the first female into dinner. Amaranthe smiled at the observance of protocol. The boys had turned themselves out in formal suits, hair tucked beneath small white wigs.
“I would be loath to cast away my speech, for besides that it is excellently well penned, I have taken great pains to con it,” Hugh said with a mischievous smile.
Amaranthe laughed as she laid her hand lightly on his forearm. “Viola’s speech to Olivia.Twelfth Night,Act I.”
“Ah, I knew it was Shakespeare!” Joseph exclaimed, rising from his couch. “The scene where Viola is dressed as the page Cesario.”
“And the speech is to court Olivia on behalf of the Duke Orsino,” Grey said.
“Which goes horribly awry, since Olivia falls in love with Cesario, never guessing that another woman so well knows the way to a woman’s heart,” Amaranthe answered.
