With a triumphant flounce of her blond curls, Matilda stole a biscuit from the tray and held it aloft like a confectionary trophy she’d awarded herself.
“I agree it doesn’t seem outrageous for the gentleman to pay a visit to another lord,” Diccan conceded. He looped his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers. “And it wouldn’t be. That is, if he’d been invited.”
Merry flared her eyes. Surely her brother wasn’t saying…
Matilda scrambled to the edge of her seat. “What did he do?” she demanded, her question conceding defeat to her twin.
With a sly half grin, Diccan added, “Apparently, a very inebriated Lord Luke entered his neighbor’s townhouse.” He continued over his sisters’ matching gasps. “He stumbled into their foyer and relieved himself in a plant stand that he’d mistaken for a chamber pot.”
A laugh exploded from Merry at the sheer outrageousness that image painted, even as it could not be true that Lord Luke would do anything so outrageous. She laughed until tears leaked from her eyes.
“It is true,” Diccan insisted defensively, through his sisters’ noisy amusement.
She laughed all the harder, until her sides ached from the force of her own amusement.
When their laughter had ebbed, Matilda curled onto her side and rested her cheek atop Merry’s lap, as she’d done so many times as a girl.
Merry stroked her sister’s curls.
“I’ve missed this,” Matilda said softly.
“I have, too,” Merry murmured. It had been three years since she’d left, and for all the tears she’d cried continually during her first three months gone, in time, she’d found joy in her studies and work. Only to find now just how very much she’d missed all of these moments.
A firm knock landed on the door, splitting the quiet.
They all three went motionless.
Their mother came flying out of the kitchens, her rounded cheeks pale but for the splotches of red from the heat of the fires she worked over.
“Whoever is that?” Matilda whispered when the echo from the hard rap’s wake had abated.
Frowning, Merry stole a glance at the clock.
Nine o’clock. Early on, she and her siblings had learned that only crises at the main household merited after-hours intrusions.
There came another heavy pounding.
Merry was across the room in several quick strides. She yanked the door open, letting in a blast of cold winter air and one unexpected noblewoman.
Oh, bloody hell.
The countess swept inside and gave a flick of her hand.
An unfamiliar-to-Merry-footman hovering on the stone porch hurriedly drew the door shut.
That click managed to spring the occupants of the cottage into motion. All the Reads scrambled to their feet and proceeded to drop belated curtsies or bows.
Lady Maldavers thumped her cane once. “I’ll not waste time with it,” the countess said in her slightly nasal, perfectly enunciated Queen’s English. “I’m here on a matter of importance.”
Merry and her siblings looked to one another and then their mother. As the former housekeeper rushed forward, her children began to wordlessly back from the room. “Yes, my lady. I’ll fetch my husband immediately.” Given the lady of the household hadn’t ever set foot inside the cottage, and her ladyship, not her husband, was seeing to business, the situation must be dire.
“Not him.” The countess stretched her other arm out and pointed at Merry. “You.”
Or it seemed that that perfectly manicured digit fell in Merry’s direction. Except… that hardly made sense. She was neither employed by the woman, nor, having arrived only that morn, had Merry seen the lady of the household. Even more to point, the countess had never sought Merry out—ever.
A log shifted in the hearth, the snap and hiss of the fire the only sound to meet the countess’ pronouncement.
“Yes, you,” the countess said impatiently. She thumped her cane twice, and Merry’s siblings instantly fell into a neat line and filed into the kitchens. Her mother, ever the consummate housekeeper, was the last to take her leave. She followed after the pair and then closed the door in her wake, leaving Merry and the countess alone.
At one time, Merry had been a girl at sea around her parents’ employer. Regal, austere, unsmiling, they’d been a cold family whom she’d spent far more time pitying than envying. For her time away, however, Merry had left the protected, countrified world of Leeds for the Continent. She’d explored some of the most magnificent artwork and households. She’d moved among the aristocracy. Therefore, she didn’t have quite the same terror she’d once had around the countess.
Folding her hands primly before her, Merry stood in the middle of the room, her back straight. “Should I have refreshments called for, my lady?”
“This isn’t a social call.” The other woman laid her ornate ivory cane against the back of the armchair Merry had previously occupied and tugged off her gloves. “I shall get to it, Miss Read. As we’re both aware, after the holiday season, you’ll be taking on the role of housekeeper in place of your mother.”
“I—”
“However, until then, I’d ask you to help ready the household for our guests.”
Merry started. She’d have wagered—and lost—her family’s cottage in Leeds that the Holman household had already been transformed. “My lady, I’m honored.”
Lady Maldavers waved her hand dismissively. “It’s less a matter of preference and more a matter of necessity. We’ve company scheduled to arrive.”
They always did. Lord and Lady Maldavers were an expert host and hostess, never long without other leading societal guests for company.
Of all the tasks Merry had been charged with—polishing the silver, inventorying the linens—the only one she’d ever truly looked forward to with any real joy was that of preparing for Christmastide. “I can begin immediately,” she promised, thrilling at the prospect of decorating the sprawling manor.
The older woman gathered her cane and gave it another thump. “Is this your conversation or mine to lead, Miss Read?”
“Forgive me.” Born to two servants, Merry had known since birth that servitude was the future that awaited her. Even knowing that as she did, she chafed at that treatment. She wanted more.
“Our company was due to arrive here. However, we’ve decided to move the gathering to London.”
That cut through her musings. “To London?” She’d been summoned back to England not to take on the role of housekeeper at the Mayfair residence, but for the role her mother was soon to retire from.
“It is essential our very important guests see that our affairs in London are as well taken care of as they are in Leeds.”
In other words, the scandal that followed her eldest son merited a display of the Holmans acting in their perfectly proper way.
Lord Luke’s antics also merited her leaving at the heart of the holiday season and saying her goodbyes to family she’d not seen for three years. And yet, neither could she decline, particularly given the countess was in no way presenting it as anything other than the demand it was. Merry compressed her lips and silently cursed Lord Luke for choosing this time of all times to act anything other than a gentleman.