Reforming a Rake (4 page)

Alexandra narrowed her eyes, a flush creeping up her cheeks. “I am afraid I have made a bad impression, my lord. No doubt you will wish to dismiss me now.”

He shook his head. “As I told you, I don’t relish having another flock of prissy hens in my house looking for employment,” he said, a drawl of humor touching his deep voice.

So she was a prissy hen, was she
? “I am pleased you think so highly of my services, my lord.”

“At the moment I think more highly of your bare feet,” he murmured, then gestured at Shakespeare. “Your dog has completed his task.”

Reconciling the two statements took a moment. Alexandra blinked. “Yes. Thank you,” she muttered. “Come along, Shakes.”

Lord Kilcairn kept pace beside her as she returned to the house, his bootheels clicking in rhythm with the padding of her feet. In the foyer he slid his hands along her shoulders and gently lifted his coat free. As he hung it in the alcove, Alexandra shivered again, though by now she felt decidedly warm. Men did not touch her in such a familiar manner; she wasn’t used to it, and she didn’t like it—which didn’t explain why she had the sudden strong urge to lean back against his broad chest and feel his arms around her.

“Shall I continue removing garments?” his low voice came from behind her. “ ’Twould be my pleasure.” She felt him move still closer, his breath touching the nape of her neck. “And yours, I think.”

Wondering where her sense of propriety had vanished
to, Alexandra started for the stairs, not daring to turn around and acknowledge his scandalous words. “Good night, my lord.”

He made no move to follow her. “Good night, Miss Gallant.”

When she reached her room, she closed her door and stood there, listening. The stair landing creaked with the weight of his approach, and Alexandra slipped the bolt shut on her door, locking it. His quiet tread passed without pause down the hallway, and a moment later a door shut softly.

In taking the position at Balfour House, she’d obviously made a very large mistake. After the intolerable annoyance of being pursued by fat, smelly Lord Welkins, she’d meant never to enter a household again containing any male between twelve and seventy.

Lord Kilcairn was in prime condition and astoundingly compelling and attractive, and he’d made his interest quite clear. Apparently she’d gone completely mad.

Alexandra bent down and freed Shakespeare from his leash. However much she needed employment, and no matter how intriguing he might be, she was not going to become anyone’s mistress. Ever.

Lucien finished wiping shaving soap from his chin, tossed the cloth at Bartlett, and exited his private chambers—and nearly ran into Alexandra Gallant. Her presence surprised him and started that damned rush of blood in his veins, but he only checked his forward progress enough to nod at her. “Good morning. Where’s Shakespeare?”

“One of your grooms came to collect him this morning,” she said stoutly, “as you well know, I’m sure. And
I am perfectly capable of caring for my own dog.”

“You have a more pressing task at hand,” he returned, starting down the stairs. “One which will be considerably more difficult than taking your dog for his constitutional.”

“I enjoy an early morning stroll myself, my lord.”

He heard her descend the stairs after him. “I doubt you’ll have time for one.”

“If I might ask, is there some pressing reason you wish Miss Delacroix’s education to be completed so swiftly?”

“Yes, there is. I will be marrying soon myself, and I want her taken off my hands prior to that.”

“I…see.”

She paused, but he resisted the temptation to turn around and view her expression. Miss Gallant, he’d immediately discovered, tended to let him know precisely what she might be thinking.

“Lord Kilcairn,” she began.

That had taken all of five seconds. “Yes, Miss Gallant?”

“I do not wish—”

“Good morning, cousin Lucien.”

Lucien turned his attention to the petite figure waiting outside the breakfast room. “Oh, good God,” he muttered, his good humor flagging. “Today she’s a damned peacock.”

Rose Delacroix straightened from her curtsy, the curled ends of three blue-dyed ostrich feathers forming a canopy over her blond head. With her dress of a lighter blue covered by a green pelisse, she lacked only a beak to complete the image. He opened his mouth to tell her so.

“Good morning,” Alexandra said warmly from behind
him. “You must be Miss Delacroix. I am Miss Gallant.”

“Your new governess,” Lucien explained, moving to one side so Alexandra could pass him. “Behave this time.”

His cousin’s pert, hopeful expression collapsed. “But—”

Miss Gallant spun to face him. “My lord, chastising someone for an imagined future ill deed that may never even come to pass is hardly correct. Or fair.”

He met the martial light in her turquoise eyes. “That,” he said flatly, pointing at his cousin, “is your charge. I am not.”

“I have found that the more positive examples there are present, the easier a behavior is to learn,” she said firmly.

Obviously the woman didn’t have a fearful bone in her body. “Do not presume to include me in this nonsense.”

She lifted her chin. “If you don’t agree with my methods of instruction, perhaps I should leave.”

“Oh, not again,” Rose whimpered, a tear running down one cheek.

Ignoring his cousin, Lucien descended the remainder of the steps. “You are not escaping that easily, Miss Gallant. Come in to breakfast. You can start by teaching her to use utensils.” He stopped and faced her again. “Unless you’re afraid of failure.”

“I am not afraid of anything, my lord,” she said, squaring her shoulders and stalking past him, Rose in tow.

“Good.”

S
o he intended to marry soon. Alexandra glanced at his broad back as he spoke to one of his footmen. Unless his temperament and manners improved in his wife-to-be’s presence, she pitied the poor girl. It would take Attila the Hun’s daughter to stand up to Lucien Balfour. And if he was marrying, why was he promising—threatening—to kiss females with whom he was barely acquainted?

Alexandra made a point of sitting next to Rose Delacroix at the breakfast table. She couldn’t abandon the poor girl to Kilcairn’s tyranny—though preying on her sympathy might very well have been the earl’s plan. Ignoring the freshly ironed edition of the
London Times
at his elbow, Kilcairn buttered his bread and then sat back, eyeing her with the same expectant expression Rose wore.

Wishing that the aggravating master of the house had made himself scarce for this critical first meeting between student and governess, Alexandra turned her attention to her new charge. Though her face was lovely,
her garish gown drew one’s gaze the way a carriage accident would. And from Kilcairn’s reaction, this was not Rose’s first dress disaster. Her wardrobe would have to be seen to immediately.

Alexandra smiled encouragingly. “Tell me, Miss Delacroix, what you like best about yourself.”

“Oh, my,” the young lady said, blushing. “Well, Mama says my looks are my finest asset.”

“She might have been more specific,” Kilcairn countered, lifting a fine eyebrow. “Your looks are your onl—”

“And you are just seventeen?” Alexandra cut in, wishing the earl would devote his mouth to eating.

He glanced sideways at her, then lifted the newspaper and snapped it open. She took it as a sign that he would attempt to behave himself, and a thrill of success ran through her as he conceded the point.

“I will be eighteen in five weeks.” With a nervous glance at the flimsy newspaper shield protecting her from Kilcairn, Rose returned to her breakfast. Lifting a pinkie delicately in the air, she crunched into her toasted bread and yanked the remaining piece free from her teeth.

It reminded Alexandra of Shakespeare attacking a shoe during his puppy days, and she flinched. “Where is Mrs. Delacroix this morning?” Making a show of taking up her own toast, she pulled a small piece free with her fingers and placed it into her mouth.

Rose attacked her meal with renewed vigor, giving no sign at all that she’d noticed her tutor’s subtle coaching. “Oh, she doesn’t usually have breakfast,” she said through a mouthful of food. “Rising early is too hard on her nerves. She hasn’t adjusted to London yet, I’m afraid.”

Alexandra waited a moment, but Lord Kilcairn declined to return to the conversation from behind his newspaper. “How long have you been in London?” she urged.

“We arrived from Dorsetshire ten days ago. Cousin Lucien is looking after us.”

“That’s very good of h—”

“
Miss Gallant
is looking after you,” the earl interrupted, still behind his paper. “I am tolerating you.”

The girl’s pretty blue eyes filled with tears. “Mama said you would be glad to have us here, since you have no one else.”

The
London Times
smacked onto the table. Alexandra jumped, ready to come to her pupil’s defense, but at the angry expression on the earl’s face, she stifled her censure. There was clearly something going on beyond what had been said, and before she jumped into the middle she wanted to know what it was.

“A new situation is never easy on anyone,” she said in her mildest voice, and sipped her tea.

Kilcairn looked at her in silence for several long seconds, obviously weighing what he wanted to say against what politeness dictated he should say. “Quite right, Miss Gallant,” he finally muttered, and stood. “Excuse me, Miss Gallant, Cousin Rose.” With the butler on his heels, he slammed back out into the hallway.

“Oh, thank goodness. I’m so glad he’s gone,” Rose breathed when the door had closed.

“He does have rather…strong opinions,” Alexandra agreed absently, wondering what had set him off. Surely it hadn’t been Rose’s offhand comment about his being alone. Not after the rumors she’d heard about his endless evenings of drunken debauchery with friends and women of questionable morals.

“He’s awful. I thought for certain you would leave, too.”

Alexandra forced her attention back to her student. “Too?”

“As soon as we arrived he dismissed my Miss Brookhollow, and she’d been with me for nearly a year. And the governesses he hired after we arrived were just dreadful.”

“How were they dreadful?”

“They were all old, wrinkly, and mean. But then they would say something Lucien didn’t like, and he would swear at them and they’d run off—so I suppose it doesn’t matter if I didn’t like them, anyway.”

Alexandra sat for a moment, absorbing that convoluted bit of information. The incarnation of hell on earth seemed to have a much milder temper than her cousin. “It has been trying for you, no doubt. But that is over with, and things will get better from here.”

“Does that mean you intend to stay?”

That was a very good question. “I shall stay as long as I’m needed,” she said carefully, hoping the earl wasn’t eavesdropping. She had the feeling she might need the leverage of being able to quit.

Rose’s slender shoulders slumped in a sigh. “Thank goodness.”

“Well, then.” Alexandra swept her gaze along the frills of Rose’s hideous peacock gown again. “I’d like to meet your mother. And perhaps after breakfast we’d best get to work.”

Lucien pulled the rapier free from the ebony walking cane that concealed it. Flexing the long, thin blade between his fingers, he eyed the weapon’s new owner.
“This wouldn’t do much more than cause a few scratches, Daubner.”

“Come, come, Kilcairn, it’s a work of art.”

Stout, chubby fingers reached for the blade, but Lucien flicked it out of his companion’s reach. He might not be able to take his annoyance out on his houseguests, but his friends weren’t going to be so lucky. “Artworks have on occasion nearly bored me to death, but I don’t think they’re truly lethal,” he said dryly. “Get yourself something stouter.”

“A man needs a stout staff for emergencies,” a third voice said from the shop’s entry.

Lucien looked up. “Robert,” he acknowledged, hoping the rest of his cronies weren’t going to appear, as well. He was too damned distracted this morning for the wolf pack—the main reason he’d settled for conversing with slow-witted William Jeffries, Lord Daubner. “Some of us are naturally equipped with stout staffs.”

With a jaunty grin, Robert Ellis, the Viscount of Belton, descended the steps and joined them in the blade shop. “So why are you purchasing such a flimsy one?”

“It’s not for me,” Kilcairn returned, and flicked the blade in Daubner’s direction. “Our count feels the need to enhance his apparatus.”

Lord Daubner chuckled uneasily, his slightly protruding eyes on the rapier. “As Belton said, it’s just for emergencies. And Wallace gave me a good price, didn’t you, Wallace?”

“Aye, my lord.”

From the corner of his eye Lucien noted the shopkeeper backing into the storeroom to avoid being drawn further into the conversation. Lucien stifled a dark smile. Wallace could give Miss Gallant a lesson in avoiding
trouble. “You might as well walk down the street clutching a spoon as this sad thing.”

“It’s not the weapon, Lucien.” Robert lifted another rapier down from the wall. “It’s how you wield it.”

“Oh, goodness gracious,” Wallace muttered from the storeroom doorway.

“Gadzooks,” Daubner blustered, waddling at full speed for the corner.

Robert lifted his blade and swung it across at Lucien.

Shifting his weight, the earl blocked the move and in the same fluid motion flattened the viscount’s rapier against the display table. “So it is. Point taken.”

With a frown, Robert released his grip on the weapon, leaving it on the counter. “Don’t want to play today, eh? You might have said so.” He rubbed his knuckles where they’d collided with the hard wood.

Lucien returned the rapier to its ebony scabbard and tossed it to Daubner. “You didn’t ask.”

The viscount eyed him for a moment, then swiped a lock of wheat-colored hair back from his forehead. “Lost another governess, did you?”

Immediately an image of the turquoise-eyed goddess who kept the devil spawn company in his breakfast room banished everything else from Lucien’s mind. “Found another one,” he said brusquely. “Accompany me to Boodle’s for luncheon.”

Daubner cleared his throat.

“You, too, Daubner.”

“Ah. Splendid.”

Belton fell into step beside him as they left Wallace’s shop, while Daubner brought up the rear. Pall Mall was still fairly uncrowded, as were the clubs lining the way, but none of Mayfair would remain that way for much longer. Once the Season began in earnest, getting a good
table and competent service would become a contest of wealth and skill. It was a contest he generally won.

“Are you still going to Calvert’s tonight?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Robert looked at him, brown eyes quizzical. “What happened to ‘anything to escape that damned harpies’ nest’?”

Miss Gallant had happened—though Lucien wasn’t about to reveal that. Certainly he lusted after her; spending an evening away would hardly affect that one way or the other. But at the moment she held more interest for him than Calvert’s overexplored debaucheries. “Afraid they won’t let a pup like you in without me?”

“You are my calling card to the dregs of London,” the viscount agreed with a faint smile. “Are you going, Daubner?”

“Lady Daubner would have my head if I made an appearance at Calvert’s,” the stout man said grimly.

“
If
she found out,” Lucien supplied. “Don’t tell her.”

Daubner jabbed a finger into Lucien’s shoulder blade. “Easy to tell you ain’t married, Kilcairn. You don’t need to tell the ladies; they just know.”

The earl shrugged, annoyed at the abuse to his shoulder and to his dark blue morning coat. “What does that matter?”

“What does what—”

“When are you going to unveil them?” Belton interrupted, as Lucien narrowed his eyes.

“Unveil whom?” he asked, lengthening his stride. Let Daubner work for his meal; it would do the sot good, anyway. The day he let a female dictate how he lived his life would be the last day he took a breath, because he’d throw himself off the Tower Bridge if it ever happened.

“Unveil Mrs. and Miss Delacroix. Not that you’ve spoken of them beyond hurling a few curses, but over the past few days you’ve seemed even more annoyed than previously.”

“When I’m annoyed,” Lucien said, looking sideways at his companion, “you’ll know it.”

“You can’t deny, though, that everyone’s going to want to set eyes on Kilcairn’s cousin. Lucifer’s only living relation and all that.”

Before Rose Delacroix saw the light of Mayfair’s chandeliers, Miss Gallant would instill manners, grace, and style in her. He had no intention of displaying his pink-flamingo cousin to the peerage now. After he did, though, and once the brat was married off, he could go about his own search—and hopefully produce an heir of his own before he expired from the hellish strain of marriage.

Lucien suppressed a shudder. “Learn to live with disappointment,” he suggested, starting up the shallow steps to Boodles. “I’ll unveil her when I’m ready to do so.”

“Selfish bastard,” the viscount muttered.

“Compliments will get you nowhere.”

Alexandra sat straight-backed in one of Lord Kilcairn’s comfortable morning room chairs and wondered whether the smile pasted on her face looked as stiff as it had begun to feel. Draped on the chaise longue across from her, a froth of blankets and pillows practically smothering her and making her look like a huge orange-haired ball of fluff, Mrs. Fiona Delacroix launched into the second half hour of her diatribe on the state of modern society.

“The nobility in particular has failed to live up to ex
pectations,” Fiona sighed. “Even in my own family, I’m forced to confess.”

“Surely not,” Alexandra offered, sipping tea to give her cheek muscles a moment to relax.

“Oh, yes indeed. When Lucien’s cousin James died in the war last year, we sent our condolences to Lucien, and I even offered to sit as matron of Balfour House during high mourning.”

“How generous.” She tried to imagine Fiona Delacroix managing a huge, ancient London household draped in formal, deep mourning. After less than an hour’s acquaintance, she couldn’t conjure anything more than yards and yards of black bombazine covering everything. Overdressing seemed to be a defining Delacroix trait.

“Yes, it was exceedingly generous of me to offer, with the way I hate to travel. But do you know Lucien’s response? He sent me a letter. I have it memorized. In fact, I don’t think I shall ever be able to forget his cruelty.” Mrs. Delacroix fluffed a pillow to bring herself more upright. “It said, ‘Madame, I would sooner join James in hell than have you join me here.’ Can you imagine? And when dear Oscar died, he waited nearly seven months before bringing us to London.”

“And that was only because dear Oscar’s—and my father’s—wills demanded it.” Lord Kilcairn stepped into the morning room doorway.

“You see? He doesn’t even deny it!”

The earl leaned against the door, his gaze on Alexandra. It was a full moment before she realized he held Shakespeare’s leash in one hand, and that her dog sat beside one gleaming Hessian boot.

“It’s the truth, Aunt Fiona. I see no reason to deny it.”

“Bah!”

“The same to you, Aunt. You and Rose will have to excuse Miss Gallant for a short time. No doubt she needs a moment to reconsider the terms of her employment.”

“Oh, please stay!” Rose cried. She’d been silent since her mother’s recital began, and Alexandra had nearly forgotten her presence.

Alexandra sipped her tea again. “You jest, my lord,” she said easily. “Mrs. Delacroix was just catching me up on some Balfour family history.”

He glanced from her to his aunt, and she abruptly sensed that he wasn’t pleased. “How pleasant. I require a word with you, Miss Gallant. Now.”

“Of course, my lord.” Clenching her jaw at the order, she set aside her teacup and stood. “Mrs. Delacroix, Miss Delacroix, if you’ll excuse me.”