History might not be her specialty, but she did know Shakespeare.
The small man’s face brightened, and he quoted back, “‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.’”
Her bit of knowledge, apparently, was all it took to win over the twins’ great-uncle, for he took her on a guided tour around his workroom, identifying all the battles and explaining the layouts to her. It was unfortunate, he told her with regret, that his favorite piece, the pièce de résistance of his collection, the Battle of Waterloo, was at home at Broughton Park, with the other more modern battles.
The old man did not seem to question her presence in his family’s house—or, indeed, even ask her name. When at last she took her leave of him, she made a point of telling him that she was the twins’ new tutor, just in case he might wonder later to whom he had been showing his collection.
He seemed only faintly interested in her words, saying merely, “Ah. How interesting. A woman. I see Emmeline’s hand in that.” He smiled at her. “Welcome to the house, Miss Anderson. If you need any help…”
Megan smiled, not bothering to correct her name. The old gentleman was a bit odd, but she could not help but like him. It was clear that questions of propriety or rank—or even identity—did not signify to him in the least. Scholarship, she suspected, was the only thing that mattered to the sweet old man.
She made her way through more of the house, peering into empty rooms and cautiously opening closed doors. Bedchambers predominated, although there were also various drawing rooms, sitting rooms, studies and a library, as well as a large and ornate ballroom. She encountered a few servants, and a time or two she saw a member of the family in the distance, but each time she quickly ducked back around a corner or into an empty room to avoid being seen.
She was most intrigued by the locked room that she found on the second floor next to the library. The door from it into the hallway was locked, and when she entered the library, she found a door in the middle of one wood-paneled wall that she felt must surely lead into the room next door, as well. When she tried it, she found that it was locked, too. Her curiosity was well up by then. A locked room in this open, friendly household was an unusual thing. It must contain something valuable, she reasoned, and it would therefore be the place where she was likeliest to find whatever rare and/or expensive item Theo Moreland might have taken from her brother.
Megan strolled back up to the nursery, where she took high tea with Con and Alex. The boys had returned from their science class with smudges of various sorts on their hands and faces, and smelling faintly of sulfur. They chattered animatedly about the chemical experiment, which had gone, according to them, “almost perfectly.” Megan decided it was best not to inquire as to exactly what had not been perfect about it.
“Once you clean up a bit,” she said, “I thought we might go down to the library and look for some books you might like to read.”
When they were in the library, she thought, she could easily work around to trying the locked door, and then no doubt the voluble twins would tell her what lay behind it. However, her plans were dashed when Con and Alex shook their heads.
“Oh, no, miss, we have to clean up and go down to dinner. That’s why our high tea is so small. We eat early, usually,” Alex explained.
“You mean you take your evening meal with the family?” Megan asked, amazed. She had always understood that in wealthy families children ate early and alone with their governess or tutor, while the adults dined late, without the distraction of children.
“Unless there are guests and it’s going to be boring. But with Reed and Anna home, I imagine the whole family will be here tonight,” Con explained.
Alex swallowed the bite of cake he had just taken and added, “You will be there, too, miss.”
“I will?”
Con and Alex nodded, and Con added, “Our tutors are always invited to eat with the family when we do. It wouldn’t be polite otherwise, would it?”
“No. I—I suppose not.” Megan thought about the wardrobe she had brought. She had nothing elegant enough for supper at a duke’s table. Of course, no one would expect a tutor to look elegant. But still…she hated the thought of looking dowdy tonight in front of the entire Moreland clan. In front of Theo Moreland.
With a grimace, she suppressed the thought. What did it matter what she looked like to Theo Moreland? It was sheer vanity, and vanity was not going to help her discover what he had done to her brother.
Still, when she made her way down to supper with the twins later, Megan was wearing the least severe of her dresses, and she had added a softening bit of lace at the throat and cuffs, as well as putting on her best gold ear bobs. After all, she reasoned, not looking her best wasn’t going to help her catch her brother’s killer.
Supper at the Moreland household, she found, was a large and noisy affair. The long table was filled with people, and everyone seemed to talk at once, cutting across people and conversations. It reminded her, Megan realized with some surprise, of the evening meal in her own household growing up—lots of people and lively conversation ranging on all sorts of topics. It was enjoyable, and Megan could not help but join in, but it was not the sort of thing she had expected to find in an aristocratic British home.
Two more Moreland siblings were present this evening—a tall redheaded beauty named Kyria and a small, much quieter woman, Olivia, with soft brown hair and large, lambent brown eyes. They were accompanied by their husbands. Olivia was married to the handsome, dark-haired Lord St. Leger, who greeted Megan politely and with a sympathetic look. The other man, Kyria’s spouse, was wickedly good-looking, possessed of compelling blue eyes, sunstreaked light brown hair and a flashing grin that Megan was sure could charm the birds out of the trees. His name was Rafe McIntyre, she was told, and, the duchess added with a pleased smile, as if she were handing Megan a real treat, he was an American.
Megan froze, her eyes flying to the man’s piercing blue gaze, and her heart set up a galloping beat. She had not counted on meeting another American.
“Where are you from, Mr. McIntyre?” she asked, hoping that her trepidation did not show. It wasn’t likely, she told herself, that he would know anything about the schools or made-up people whom she had given in her credentials to the duchess. But she could not help feeling that an American was more likely to trip her up in her lies.
“The West, Miss Henderson,” McIntyre said, the warmth of his smile not quite reaching his cool blue eyes. “Before that, Virginia.”