Madeline opened her mouth to tell him that this was ridiculous. However, there was no more time to respond. Malcolm had already knocked on the double doors. Three quick and sharp raps. Then, he pushed the door open. It must have been a signal between brothers.
“Your wife is here to see you, Kenneth. Please do not kill her with boredom before the midday meal,” he jested.
Madeline stepped into the Duke’s study, her eyes widening. The room was full of leather-bound books, filling almost every inch of two walls from floor to ceiling. The place had its own personality, with its scent of old parchment and choice tobacco.
Kenneth was already at work at his desk. He was dressed in a charcoal-gray coat that easily contrasted with her yellow muslin. His quill made quick, scratching noises over his ledger. His brows were furrowed. As his lips moved, she could also see that his lip was obviously injured by her bite.
“What happened to you?” Malcolm demanded.
“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror? Your face is far worse than mine,” Kenneth said dryly, making his younger brother frown in confusion. “Let me guess, your children found you sleeping somewhere you were not supposed to be sleeping again. As for me, my wife bit me last night.”
Madeline felt the blood rush to her face so quickly she thought she might faint.
Of all the things to tell his brother!
However, Malcolm seemed unaffected. Instead, he grinned. “Biting, nice. I thought choking was more your thing.”
“Oh, I would gladly choke him as he can be insufferable,” Madeline said, folding her arms across her chest.
“I do not think that you would be the one doing the choking, wife,” Kenneth murmured, something dark flashing in his eyes. “Now, what did you need?”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant, and when she did, the heat that flooded her face was immediate and merciless. Malcolm was chuckling, and Kenneth was watching her with that infuriating stillness of his, and she suddenly found that she could hardly breathe.
“I... I have just remembered something I must attend to for the... for the children,” she announced, already moving toward the door. “It is very urgent.”
Madeline changed all shades of red as she left the brothers in the study, their eyes following her all the way to the door.
Chapter 10
“Ido not think it is appropriate to call your aunt an old crow, Alexander,” Madeline said patiently. “For one thing, I am not nearly that old. For another, old crows are rather dignified creatures, and I am not certain you meant it as a compliment.”
Alexander considered this. “I did not.”
“I suspected as much.”
In fact, her head was throbbing. She had been in the nursery for precisely forty minutes and had already been called an old crow, witnessed a near collision between Alexander and Emily’s dollhouse, and been subjected to a dramatic reenactment of Malcolm’s drinking habits that was, she had to admit, alarmingly accurate.
She was wearing her light-orange dress, the one that always made her feel cheerful and capable. It was doing neither of those things at present.
The nursery itself was not helping. It was a large, faded room that seemed to have given up on itself, much like its wallpaper.The toys looked as though they had not been played with properly in years, the rocking horse staring at her with its glassy, mournful eyes, as if pleading for rescue. The Persian rug had seen better days and better liquids.
Why was she thinking this way?
No. She would not have it. Instead of thinking of the nursery as something cold and hollow, she should think of how easy it would be for the children to play all sorts of games there.
“Oh, I know,” she said, with her most encouraging smile. “What if we played a game? I was thinking we could act out some of the stories from your history books. Alexander, you could be a great general leading his troops into battle. And Emily could be a princess or a queen.”
Alexander’s dark curls bounced as he spun around to face her, suddenly very alert. For one hopeful moment, Madeline thought she had him.
“I have a better idea,” he said.
And then he began to stagger across the floor in what he clearly felt was a very convincing drunken gait, his arms swinging loosely at his sides, his eyes half closed. It would have been humorous if it were not an obvious mimicry of his own father. Madeline flinched when the boy nearly sent a globe spinning off its stand and onto the floor. She caught it just in time.
“S’all gone!” the boy slurred, accurately mimicking his father’s raspy voice after a night of drinking and whoring. The latter part Madeline had only found out about. It made her wonder if the brothers were both fond of such habits, remembering the comment about choking.
I should not be thinking about that.
It still made her blush.
