* * *

“Outside?” Joshua and Jeremiah grinned at each other. “Now?”

“I suggest you stop up in the playroom to mass your troops,” Mr. Grey said, sounding very stern indeed. “Get a shovel from the garden shed and ask Tolliver where you might find some shade and a patch of earth to memorialize British military heroism. You will be expected back upstairs, with clean hands and faces, by teatime.”

“That’s five bongs of the clock,” Joshua said. “Let’s go, Jeremiah.”

“And thus the Corsican monster meets his deserved fate,” Alice said from her place on the bed. The boys bounced away from her sides, leaving her in blessed quiet—and quite at sea—with their father.

Mr. Grey—or Ethan, since they were in private—lowered himself to sit on the bed at her hip. He was inspecting her, not in any way trespassing against propriety.

“Thus my sons are given an excuse to be loud, get muddy, and plague the gardener.”

“You would have made a tolerable governess, you know.” Alice smiled at him, even knowing he was assessing her complexion, her eyes, and any other aspect of her person that might provide insight. “Disguising mud as British military heroism is ingenious.”

“I suspect a fair amount of mud was involved at Waterloo, if the stories are true. You look better.”

“Which is not saying much.” Alice smoothed a hand over her quilt, not sure how to deal with an Ethan Grey who could outwit his sons and play nursemaid to a governess. “I was in wretched shape this morning, and you have my thanks for your kindness.”

He sat there at her hip, regarding her out of solemn blue eyes. He wore riding attire very well, and a faint odor of horse clung to the edges of his usual cedar scent. That she could enjoy any scent when blended with horse was a puzzlement.

“What will you do with your afternoon, Alice Portman?”

“I have many letters to write. I slept most of the morning. Perhaps I will tend to correspondence.”

“A letter or two only.” He frowned and tucked a strand of hair over her ear. The touch was not proper, but cowering in bed while bleating like a trapped sheep rather trumped all comers in the impropriety department.

“The headache and nervousness are slipping away, creeping back down into my vitals from whence they sprang.”

“That’s how it feels, isn’t it?” He rose, making the mattress shift. “Where is Clara?”

“I sent her downstairs.” Alice settled against the pillows, relieved to have the bed to herself though curious as to how Ethan Grey knew the exact contours of a bout of panic. “She is a dear, but twittery, and recovery from a spell like this morning’s is facilitated by calm.”

He said nothing, but stood at her window, where the curtains were drawn back halfway. While Alice cast around for something innocuous to say, he spoke over his shoulder.

“Why are the boys so concerned with death? As we rode in this morning, Joshua asked me if you were going to die. From a simple headache, such as I might suffer any day of the week—I told them you suffered only that—they leapt to making your final arrangements.” Then he did turn, though he stayed across the room, leaning his hips back against the windowsill and crossing his ankles. “Or do I perhaps misperceive my children?”

Not a question she’d anticipated, but a sound one, and they could discuss it with a whole room between them. “I don’t think you do. They know your father just died, and of course their mother died, which leaves them with only you.”

“Only me.” Even frowning, Mr. Grey was a handsome man. A handsome, largish man who looked perfectly comfortable to be visiting her in her boudoir. That came as a lowering realization since, despite his buss to her cheek earlier, it implied he could not conceive of improprieties transpiring here. “I haven’t said anything to them about the old earl passing on, and they never met him.”

“They know anyway. Leah explained to the little boys that you and Nick had the same father, and thus the boys’ grandfather had died.”

“Good of her.” Ethan’s—Mr. Grey’s—Ethan’s—frown intensified. “Barbara died in August. The night of the nineteenth.”

This was not a confidence. Any governess learned these bits of family history sooner or later. “How did she die?”

“Typhoid.” He turned back around to stare out the window. “It is neither a tidy death nor quick.”

“Were the boys here?”

“Of course. As was I. I wasn’t going to let her die alone, regardless of the state of our marriage. She was ill for a good month, and sometimes the fever even seemed to abate, but then it spiked again. She was lucid from time to time and asked to see the boys when she was.”

“And you allowed it?”

“I did. She was dying. I tried to keep them from touching her, but they did visit the sickroom on good days. Joshua was still in nappies. I can’t think he remembers much.”

While the boys’ father probably forgot little.

“He might not have much recollection, but Jeremiah has no doubt talked with him at length about their mother, so Joshua thinks he recalls everything his brother does. It must have been very difficult.”

“It was… hot.”

Likely stifling in a sick room, stinking horrendously, humiliating for the patient and trying for the family. And this had gone on for weeks. Of course the children had a recollection of it.

With his back to her, Ethan went on speaking. “She… apologized. In one of her lucid intervals, she apologized for her…” Alice was sure he hadn’t meant to say that, but to her surprise, he finished his thought softly. “For her betrayals.”

Gracious heavens. Betrayals—plural. That could not be good.

“May I offer you the library?” he asked, facing her, his expression once again that of a solicitous host. “It will be cooler, and you’ll have everything you need to tend to your letters. I’ve done most of my writing for the day, which leaves me the accounting, for which I do not need the desk.”

The change in topic was a relief, probably for them both. “Cooler sounds lovely. I’ve been in this bed long enough, but I hardly think it will serve to have me in my nightgown below stairs in broad daylight.”

He pushed away from the window. “This is my house, and if I permit it, then nobody will say anything to it. I am not an earl, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Mr. Grey was more arrogant than any earl. Alice had met a few and was in fact related to one. “The gossips will say whatever they please,” she retorted, “though not to your face, and maybe not to mine. If you’d give me a few minutes, I’ll be right along.”

“As you wish.” He turned to go then rounded on her. “You are not to pin your hair up in some frightful concoction designed to aggravate a lingering headache.”

She accepted this edict, because Clara had tidied her braid very nicely, and because Mr. Grey liked to have the last word. Alice regarded his retreat, noting that he walked like the lions she’d seen in the Royal Menagerie, slinky, silent, and graceful, but somehow menacing in their very elegance. She did not doubt Ethan Grey was capable of sending an enemy to his final reward, and as big as he was, it would be quickly done.

And what kind of thoughts were those? Alice eased from the bed and crossed to her wardrobe. Maybe the boys weren’t the only ones preoccupied with death, but as to that, it was good to know the anniversary of their mother’s death was approaching.

A capable governess kept her eye on such things, for they caused havoc when ignored. She slipped into the most comfortable of her old summer dresses, a short-sleeved, high-waisted muslin faded with age, and put her feet into a pair of comfortable house slippers.

Alice made her way to the library, composing a letter to her sister Avis in her head. She was halfway to the desk when she realized she wasn’t alone. Ethan Grey sat on the couch, his papers and an abacus spread out on the low table.

Five

Alice stopped abruptly and felt her balance weave. “I did not know we would be sharing the room.”

“It’s a large room.” His lips were moving soundlessly as he ran his finger down a column on a page. “A moment, if you please.” He scratched something on the page then got to his feet.

“Ciphering appeals to me,” he said with a slight smile. “There is one right answer, and when things balance out, one has a sense of satisfaction about one’s work. The pen, ink, and paper are in here.” He opened a drawer on the desk, coming near enough that Alice got a whiff of cedar. “The sand is in here, and wax and seal are here. I’ve rung for tea, but with lemon and honey, because you’re probably ready for a change from the mint.”

“Thank you. That was considerate of you.”

“It was not.” He set a penknife on the desk. “I was thirsty, but I am not intentionally rude.”

Her smile widened to a grin.

“Well, not all the time,” he amended, his lips quirking up. “I’ll leave you to your correspondence.” He was back at his figuring, while Alice mused that he was intentionally rude, frequently, but acts of consideration and kindness, those he seemed to produce only with a struggle.

But produce them, he did. Alice settled at the desk and bent to her task, but she recalled the sensation of Mr. Grey’s large hand on her nape, his body supporting hers while he rearranged the pillows, his voice low and soothing as he did what was needed to ease Alice’s discomfort. He wasn’t a flirt like Nick—thank God—but he knew his way around a female body, and for the first time, Alice wondered what sort of man he’d be in intimate circumstances.