“Fine,” Reynaud snapped. “I’m fine.”
Her gray eyes looked troubled. “Perhaps if I talk to Uncle Reggie, he’d be willing to lend you some of his money for new clothes and such.”
“My money,” Reynaud growled.
She was throwing him a bone, and they both knew it. Damn her uncle to hell. He parted the curtain to peer out. Three stories below, a carriage lurked in front of the town house. Probably one of St. Aubyn’s political allies come to call.
“Yes, well, your money or Uncle Reggie’s money, the fact remains that he is the one in control of it,” Miss Corning observed. “It wouldn’t hurt your case to be more civil to him, especially since you’re staying in his house.”
“My house. I have every right to live in my house, and I’ll be damned before I crawl to that man.” Reynaud let the curtain drop.
Miss Corning rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say crawl, I said be more—”
“Civil, I know.” He stalked toward her. She was looking remarkably pretty this morning in a green frock that offset the pale rose of her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle like diamonds. “The only one I’m interested in being ‘civil’ to is you.”
She paused, her tea dish halfway to her lips, and eyed him warily. Good. She took him far too much for granted as it was. They were in a room alone, for God’s sake, and he’d spent the last seven years in a society where the relations between a man and a woman were much more fundamental. In fact—
But his thoughts were interrupted by a footman appearing at the door. “You have a visitor, my lord.”
And the man stepped aside to reveal a vision. An elderly lady stood there, her back ramrod straight, her snowy white hair pulled into a severe knot at the crown of her head, her piercing blue eyes already narrowed in disapproval. Reynaud hadn’t seen her in seven years, and for a moment he feared he would lose his self-possession. He knew tears—awful unmanly tears—were near the surface.
Then she spoke. “Tiens! Such an ’orrible growth of ’air upon your face, nephew! I am quite repulsed. Is this, then, what gentlemen in the Colonies wear? I do not believe it; no, I do not!”
He went to her and took her hands, kissing her tenderly on the cheek despite her mutter of disgust. “I am glad to see you, Tante Cristelle.”
“Tcha! I do not think you can see at all with this ’air.” She reached a blue-veined hand to brush the hair falling into his face. Her touch, unlike her words, was gentle. Then her hand dropped. “And who is this child here? Have you lost so much of civilization that you closet yourself alone with a female in a respectable house?”
Reynaud turned, amused, to see that Miss Corning had jumped up from her chair and was eyeing Tante Cristelle warily. “This is a cousin of mine, Miss Beatrice Corning. Miss Corning, my aunt, Miss Cristelle Molyneux.”
Miss Corning curtsied as Tante Cristelle employed her looking glass and said, “I do not remember a cousin called Corning in my sister’s family.”
“I’m Lord Blanchard’s niece,” Miss Corning said.
Tante Cristelle’s eyes darkened. “C’est ridicule! My nephew doesn’t have a niece, only a nephew, and he not yet ten years of age.”
Reynaud cleared his throat, feeling like laughing for the first time since he’d set foot on English soil. “She means the present Earl of Blanchard, Tante.”
The old lady sniffed. “The pretender to the title. I see.”
Miss Corning looked cautious. “Um… perhaps I can bring up some tea?”
Reynaud would’ve preferred coffee or brandy, but since Miss Corning seemed to be fixated on tea, he merely nodded. She glided from the room, and he watched her go.
“That one is very pretty,” Tante Cristelle observed. “Not beautiful, but she ’as an air of grace about her.”
“Indeed.” Reynaud looked at his aunt. “You mentioned my sister. Is she well?”
“You don’t know?” Her brows snapped together in disapproval. “Did you not ask?”
“I have asked,” Reynaud replied as he ushered her to a chair. “But no one knows her as well as you do, Tante.”
“Humph,” said Tante Cristelle as she primly lowered herself to a chair. “Then I will tell you. You know your sister was widowed shortly after your… disappearance.”
Reynaud nodded. “So Miss Corning has told me.” He’d gone to look out the window again. London hadn’t changed much since his absence, but everything else had.
Everything.
“Bon,” Tante Cristelle said. “Then last year she married a rustic, a man from the Colony of New England. His name is Samuel Hartley.”