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Rees nodded.

“Leke won’t talk,” Helene said. “You’ll have to let anyone go whom you think might gossip.”

He shrugged. “We haven’t hardly any staff at the moment. There’s Rosy, Leke’s niece, a couple of footmen, and Cook.”

“How you can live in such a pigsty, I don’t know,” she said.

“I’ll tell Leke to expect you this evening then,” Rees said, controlling his voice so that not even a trickle of pleasure came through.

“No. I’ll arrive in a few days. What did you tell your singer?”

“The same thing I told you.” He pulled open the door and told the butler to fetch his greatcoat. “Her name is Lina McKenna, by the way.”

“What did Miss McKenna say of this scheme?” Helene demanded, dumbfounded to find that she was even considering such an action.

Rees shrugged. “Something about the two of you pouring over fashion plates together.” He left Helene staring at the door.

Sixteen

The Nature of My Sex

“What do you wish to do this morning?” Tom asked Meggin as they left the breakfast table. She didn’t seem to have eaten much, although who knew what a child this age should eat? And why didn’t he think to ask Mrs. Fishpole when her birthday was? He wasn’t even quite certain how old she was. He’d have to return to the inn. How did children amuse themselves?

Meggin just looked up at him and didn’t say anything.

“Would you like to have a bath?” he asked.

She didn’t reply. It was rather irritating. Or it would be irritating, he quickly corrected himself, if she wasn’t such a little girl. One couldn’t be annoyed by an innocent orphan. Could one?

“What would you like to do today?” he said, rather more loudly. They were climbing the stairs. Meggin wasn’t even pretending to pay attention. She was caressing the satiny finish of the stair rail as if it were a cat. What was needed here, obviously, was a female.

He paused. “Wait here,” he instructed her and then turned around. Meggin was nothing if not obedient. She sat down on the stair and began stroking the stair railings.

Tom clumped down the stairs feeling extremely irritable. He’d been thinking about this trip for over two years now. He had planned to arrive at Rees’s house, and—and there’s the rub. Talk to him. Tell him he missed him? Their father’s taunts rang in his ears just as loudly as they obviously still did in Rees’s: expressing such an emotion would be girlish. How could he tell Rees that he missed his big brother, that he missed talking to him, that he wished they were friends? From what he could see, the only friend Rees had was Simon Darby, and that all went back to the days when Rees would flee the house and disappear to the Darby household for days.

Tom sighed. “Leke!” he shouted.

“Here, sir.” The butler trotted through the green door, drying cloth in hand. “I’m just on my way to the employment agency, sir. I think we could use a few maids.”

“Undoubtedly,” Tom said, allowing faint irony to enter his tone. The corners of his room were festooned with cobwebs.

“Had I known of your arrival, sir,” Leke said majestically, “I would have had your room prepared.”

“Never mind that, where’s your niece? The one and only maid? I need someone to care for the child.”

“I’m afraid she has let us down,” Leke admitted. “She’s run back to her mum this morning. I’m sure my sister will send her back with a good ear-warming, but meanwhile, there isn’t a woman in the house barring Cook. And Cook is not the sort to do any child-minding. Takes her position very seriously. After all she cooked for the Prince of Wales once; his lordship pays her one hundred guineas a year just to stay in the household.”

“Bejesus,” Tom muttered. One hundred guineas was nearly what he made as vicar, and more than most of his parishioners made put together.

He started back up the stairs. Cook wasn’t the only woman in the house. Lina was a woman. Anyone except a blind man could see that. Halfway up the stairs, he passed Meggin and she got up without a word and started following him, for all the world like a curious kitten. At the top of the stairs he turned left and marched down to his mother’s room.

The door opened immediately. “Well hello, Reverend,” Lina said, smiling as wicked a smile as any self-respecting Whore of Babylon would give a bishop.

Tom felt that smile all the way down to his groin. No wonder his brother had thrown his wife out and moved Lina into the bedchamber next to his. God help him, he probably would have done the same. He gave himself a mental shake. She’s a fallen woman. Someone to pity and succor, not lust after as if he were a common ruffian.

She had changed into a tight costume made of green velvet that buttoned down the front and made a man’s hands itch to stroke it. A green velvet hat nestled on her glossy brown curls. All in all, she looked like an enchantingly naughty wood elf.

“I gather you like my walking costume?” she said, as he remained silent.