“Lady Grace, young sirs.” Pevensey scanned the lot of them.
Grace felt as if she were suddenly six years old and caught stealing jam tarts. She gave an apologetic smile.
Unperturbed, Pevensey directed them to the back stairs. “I will have baths sent up the moment the maids are able. And, Master Bennet, I took the liberty of placing your toad in a bucket in the scullery,” the butler told the boy with tender solemnity. “It is, perhaps, a better home than a sugar bowl.” The elderly retainer’s eyes hid a twinkle.
“Toad?” Grace said, looking at Bennet.
“Poor Trevor!” he moaned. “I forgot all about him!”
“You what?” she queried, telling herself it couldn’t be all that bad. Helen had kept the parlor key on the ribbon around her neck. There was no way the boys could have made mischief.
“I put him there for safekeeping when he crawled out of my pocket.”
A growing sense of dread filled her. “Whichsugar bowl?”
“Boys!” came their father’s dooming command, reverberating from somewhere down the corridor. “Present yourselves. Immediately!”
Bennet cowered behind Ethan who huddled near Avery. It was Avery who alarmed Grace. He didn’t look nearly surprised enough for comfort.
She followed the trio to the east parlor.
Helen was gathered in Papa’s arms in the midst of the chamber she’d arranged so carefully. Broken china was being carried out on trays. Footmen tried to set fallen chairs upright. Flowers spilled from vases, like fallen soldiers after a battle.
Grace’s stomach hollowed out. “The door was locked,” she said more to herself than the other five Elliots. “I saw the key on a ribbon around Helen’s neck.”
“Tell your sister what happened,” Papa boomed.
Not that she needed much illumination. Between toads in sugar bowls, the carnage of china and the absence of guests, she could well imagine.
Ethan looked up at her, always first to confess. “It was Avery’s idea,” he blurted.
Avery jabbed his elbow into his brother’s ribs, but Ethan went on. “A maid left the window open to air the room and Avery boosted Bennet in.”
So Bennet had dragged himself, belly first over the windowsill, Grace thought. No wonder he’d smudged the front of his jacket.
Helen dissolved into tears at the boys’ confession.
Dismayed, Bennet ran over to Helen, flinging his muddy little arms around her and buried his face in her cream-colored skirts.
Obviously encouraged by the impact of his revelations, Ethan burst out, “And that’s not all. Avery threwmudat aviscount!”
Helen’s jaw dropped, her face paling. “Oh, no…”
Grace, feeling a stab of terror that Ethan would comment on her state of undress during the mud-pie altercation, broke in hastily. “Lord Everdene happened upon us at the lake and there was—was some confusion…” An image flashed into her mind, Lucien Harcourt’s body, his soaked shirt clinging to every muscle, a dusting of dark hair visible through the thin fabric,ending in a shadowy ribbon that arrowed down to the waistband of his riding breeches.
Grace hadn’t expected to feel such a visceral reaction to the sight, but she and Lucien Harcourt might as well have been naked on that lake shore, two thin layers of linen between them, her breasts unbound, nipples puckered tight from cold.
“Everdene?” her father’s voice jolted her from the memory, his face stricken.
Helen wailed. “You let them throw mud at the Earl of Ravenscroft’s son? How could you let this happen, Grace? I’ll be ruined for all society here! I must go to Everdene Hall.”
“No!” Grace exclaimed in horror. If Helen discovered that Lucien Harcourt had seen Grace in her chemise, it would be the stuff of nightmares. The new Lady Elliot would merrily turn Grace into one more crocodile bride snapping at the Elusive Viscount’s heels. “I’ll make it right myself. I promise.”
She pictured Lucien Harcourt, standing on shore, blood trickling from the small cut on his sharp cheekbone, the planes of his face so severe, even she had been a little bit afraid.
There was no help for it now. She would go to Lucien Harcourt herself. She would have to face the tiger in its den.
CHAPTER 4
