bad tactics to let her see he was concerned. If she was the sort of woman who saw opposition as a challenge, she might attempt to attach the lad’s interest simply as a game. And William was far too young to be breaking his heart over an older woman Nick decided, conveniently forgetting his own initiation into the arts of love at the age of seventeen by a beautiful, sophisticated lady more than ten years his senior.
The door was opened by a diminutive maid with a snub nose, freckles, an apron too large for her and an expression of alarm. ‘Oh, sir! Miss Grey? Oh, yes, sir! I’ll tell her you’re here, sir, if you’ll just wait in the front parlour, sir.’
She flung open the door to let him in, appeared to realise she should have asked his name to announce him, gave a scared squeak and shut the door again behind him. Nick found himself in a cosy, slightly shabby room with an indefinable air of comfort and femininity. The latter quality was enhanced by the presence on the sofa of an enchantingly pretty girl with large blue eyes and a mass of blonde curls. Tumbled in a pile by her side were undergarments of a most frivolous, intimate and dainty variety.
She bundled the lingerie under a cushion with what struck Nick as admirable quick-wittedness and got to her feet, placing a thimble and needle on the table beside her. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ she said, a faint blush colouring her cheeks. ‘Annie is not yet trained as a downstairs maid and I am afraid she does not always remember to announce callers.’
‘Nicholas Stangate. I called to see Miss Grey. May I presume to guess I am addressing Miss Amelie LeNoir? I apologise for disturbing you.’ It would not be the slightest hardship to disturb Miss LeNoir, he reflected, watching the artless pleasure at his recognition, the lovely figure in a surprisingly modest afternoon dress, the parted lips and soft curves. No hardship at all.
‘Oh, how did you guess? Your lordship,’ she added hastily, bobbing a curtsy.
‘You were described to me,’ Nick said simply, enjoying the deepening of the flush of pleasure, the flutter of the long lashes. For a man who had always favoured dark-haired women, his life suddenly appeared to be full of blondes. It made an agreeable change.
‘I … I had better go and find Tal … Miss Grey, my lord. One simply cannot rely on Annie. Will you not sit down?’ She gestured at the sofa, recalled her mending, hastily whisked it from under the cushion to under her arm and hurried out.
Nick grinned. The enchantingly fresh young woman who had just fluttered out was either an exceptional actress or that contradiction in terms, a chaste opera dancer, just as Talitha Grey had said. Instead of taking the proffered seat, he began to prowl around the room. It was a rare glimpse for a man into a feminine world that was not arranged for display or entertaining, but simply for a group of women to pass their daily lives in.
A neat stack of account books next to a spike impaling tradesmen’s bills. A basket of laces, ribbons and artificial flowers by a sewing box and a large velvet pincushion studded with glass-headed pins. A pile of novels and some copies of fashion journals upon a shelf. A chessboard set out for the start of a game. He moved a pawn in an opening gambit and continued to look around. A quill stained with red ink lay beside an open exercise book.
Nick paused and flicked open a page of the lexicon next to the exercise book. Greek! The door behind him opened to reveal not Miss Grey, but her governess friend. ‘Miss Scott, good afternoon. You have surprised me reading what I imagine must be your Greek lexicon.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ She stood there, regarding him from under level dark brows. He expected disapproval; instead, he found himself unable to interpret the assessing look in her eyes. ‘I teach both Latin and Greek, besides the modern languages.’
‘I had not realised you teach boys,’ he remarked, more to make conversation than anything, and was surprised by the flash of irritation in her steady gaze.
‘I do not. These days I teach only girls. Perhaps your lordship does not consider the female mind has the capacity for the ancient languages?’
‘I had never given it any consideration,’ he admitted. ‘But I can see no useful purpose in it for a woman.’
‘Beside the intellectual discipline, the improved understanding of modern tongues and of history and art?’ she enquired frostily.
‘Well, there is that, of course, but if a girl is to marry …’
‘Not all of us do,’ Miss Scott informed him. ‘I see no reason why an unmarried lady should have her intellectual range diminished because of that. Nor why a married woman may not be educated.’ Her expression softened slightly. ‘No doubt you consider that a married woman has no need to use her intelligence on more than the ordering of the household? Not that housekeeping is as simple a task as most men appear to think it.’
Nick thought of his mother, smiling gently whenever any problem arose. ‘Your papa will know what to do’ was her inevitable response, and more recently, ‘Whatever you say, Nicholas dear.’ And his aunt, undoubtedly intelligent, vibrant, energetic—but quite content to place her business affairs entirely in his hands.
‘There is no need for a lady to concern herself with difficult matters—’ he began.
‘But not all of us chose to be helpless pawns,’ said another voice gently. Miss Grey walked into the room behind her friend. ‘I believe you wish to see me, my lord?’
Nick took a step forward, found his foot entangled, glanced down and saw he was standing on a piece of fabric. He stooped to pick it up and found himself holding a garment he had no difficulty in recognising as a chemise. Neither young lady appeared prepared to help him out of his difficulty so he folded it neatly and placed it on the side-table. Keeping his face entirely bland, he looked up and found he had met his match in coolness in Miss Scott, whose expression showed not the slightest recognition that he had been handling a piece of intimate apparel. Miss Grey, on the other hand, appeared ready to give way to laughter. Her green eyes sparkled with amusement at his predicament and her lower lip was caught firmly between white teeth.
The thought of nipping that fullness between his own teeth struck him with a bolt of erotic heat. A flare of it must have shown in his eyes for instantly hers sobered, widened, and he wondered if she had read correctly the nature of his thoughts and was in tune with them. Then the moment of mutual awareness was gone and she was waving him towards the sofa.
‘Will you take tea, my lord?’
‘No, thank you. I have called simply with a message from Lady Parry.’
Talitha Grey answered the queries with a directness that reinforced his knowledge of her previously straitened circumstances. ‘Trunks? Why, just the one, my lord, and a valise.’
‘And several new bandboxes,’ the governess added drily.
‘Oh, yes. I was forgetting.’ She turned to him, smiling slightly. ‘I have been succumbing to the lure of shopping.’
‘Indeed? In that case I am surprised you have had the time to attend to your new business venture.’ He watched not Talitha but her friend and saw the look of surprise and speculation she directed at him. But to his disappointment the governess did not speak.
‘Ventures, in the plural. Yes, when one has been accustomed to working for one’s living, my lord, one can find plenty of time in the day for business. Shopping is hardly time-consuming.’
‘I suspect you may modify your opinion on that after a short experience of my aunt’s approach to the subject.’
