Lenore drew breath, determined to keep her chin up. “Indeed, Your Grace. My father and brothers are most supportive.”
“They have been slack, Miss Lester.” Without warning, he caught her chin on the edge of one large hand, keeping her face turned up to his. The grey eyes once more roamed her features. Lenore could not breathe. His expression was stern, almost forbidding. “Your father and brothers have not done their duty by you. A woman of your intelligence and beauty is wasted outside marriage.”
“That is not my opinion, Your Grace.”
“I am aware of that, my dear. We shall have to see what can be done to change it.”
Paralysed, Lenore stared up at him. Startled conjecture vied with a strange, breathless, senseless yearning, a panoply of thoughts and sensations buffeting her brain. She could think of nothing to say.
The door opened.
“Oh! Excuse me, Miss Lenore, but I’ve come to do the menus.”
Twisting her chin from Eversleigh’s grasp, Lenore peeked around him and saw her housekeeper, Mrs. Hobbs, standing uncertainly in the doorway. “Er…yes. Lord Eversleigh and I were just examining the lock of this cupboard. It was stuck.” With a warning glance at Eversleigh, Lenore turned towards her desk.
“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Hobbs, ambling forward, a large bundle of old menus and receipts clutched to her ample bosom. “I’d better get John to take a look at it, then.”
“No, no. It’s working now.” Lenore cast a desperate glance at Eversleigh, praying he would behave himself and depart.
To her relief, he swept her a graceful bow. “I’m pleased to have been of assistance, my dear. If you have any other difficulties that are within the scope of my poor abilities to cure, pray feel free to call on my talents.”
Lenore’s eyes narrowed. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
Jason smiled, his wolf’s smile, and turned to the door. On the threshold, he paused, glancing back to see Lenore close her account book and lay it aside, then draw a pile of menus towards her.
“Miss Lester?”
Lenore looked up. “Yes, Your Grace?”
A long finger pointed at the corner of her desk. “Your spectacles, my dear.”
Swallowing a curse, Lenore grabbed the delicate frames and arranged them on her nose, then glanced up, but her tormentor had gone.
“Now. For lunch I’d thought to have…”
Stifling a wholly unexpected sigh, Lenore gave her attention to Mrs. Hobbs.
An hour later, she was staring out of the window, her account book open before her, the ink dry on her nib, when Amelia’s head appeared around the door.
“There you are! I’d despaired of finding you.”
Lenore returned her cousin’s bright smile, laying aside her pen as Amelia crossed the room to subside into the armchair before the desk in a froth of apricot muslin. “I take it last evening passed without incident?”
Amelia waved the question aside. “You were right. They’re a perfectly manageable lot. All except Eversleigh. I wouldn’t care to have to manage him. But His Grace had taken himself off somewhere. Truth to tell, I retired early myself.” She turned to look at Lenore. “I looked for you but couldn’t find you anywhere.”
Lenore shut her account book with a snap. “I was detained on the terrace.”
“Oh? By what?”
“A discussion of the relative merits of present and past civilisations, as I recall.”
Amelia grimaced. “One of your dry discussions, I take it?”
Calmly sorting her papers, Lenore did not respond.
“Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know I took care of one of your hostessly chores for you.”
“Oh?”