Page 14

Chapter

SEVEN

Lottie gave up trying to go back to sleep, kicked her eiderdown to the bottom of her bed, and stared at the dawn shadows on the unfamiliar ceiling.

She’d had a restless night because there was no doubt that she was now in a precarious position. Viscount Wennington hated her. He had made no secret of that for the rest of the dinner after she had ruined his clothes with all that tomato soup.

Last night he might have kept their first unpleasant encounter to himself, but he wasn’t over it. She had felt that in every brooding stare he’d sent her way. Each one making her skin prickle in the most disconcerting manner until she could barely stand it.

She supposed that would teach her to react without thinking.

In sticking up for his poor horse, she had insulted him—she might have even threatened him, she had been so angry—and now she was an unwelcome guest in his house.

Whether he had deserved the telling off she had given him or not—and he very much had—it was inevitable that if she put another foot wrong, he might very well send her packing.

Then what? No wages to send to her struggling family, that was what.

Family who were, ironically, fewer than ten miles from here.

She hadn’t believed her luck when Lady Frinton’s visit to Scotland had instead turned into a high-speed jaunt to her part of Kent.

At the time, it had felt serendipitous that she would have both the opportunity to provide her family some funds and to be able to deliver them in person.

Now, all that joy had turned into trepidation and suddenly she was walking on eggshells.

Lord Wennington had made her so uncomfortable with his nearly constant glaring that she had hardly said a word over dinner last night. Of course, as a companion, she was only supposed to speak when spoken to, so she hoped nobody had noticed.

She wasn’t sure what it was about him, but she had never been so aware of a man in her life.

He was big and surly and as much as she wanted to avoid his stormy, dark eyes, they seemed to draw hers like a magnet.

Which was as mortifying as it was annoying.

As was his overt and brooding attractiveness.

He was a rude, arrogant, and all-around horrid man, and yet all the more compelling for it.

The more she tried not to notice his strong jaw or broad shoulders or his impatient, blunt, tapping fingers, the more the wild and wayward part of her wanted to.

Which was ridiculous when there was absolutely nothing about him to like otherwise.

Especially when it had been clear that the viscount had been in a foul mood last night and that he only sat at the table out of sufferance.

He made no attempt to make any polite conversation, only answered questions specifically directed at him, and his responses were brief.

Clipped. However, although she suspected that her presence was responsible for a great deal of that, she had also sensed another undertone for his curt manner.

The presence of his aunt seemed to irritate him almost as much as Lottie’s did. Similarly, his upcoming birthday party caused him a great deal of consternation and any attempts by his mother to draw him into her plans for the event were met with exceedingly short shrift.

It was plain he didn’t want one, thought the whole thing a complete waste of his precious time, and only became animated when he stated that he had no intentions of feigning any enthusiasm for it while it happened either.

He also kept reiterating that there were only to be thirty guests as he mentioned that specific number at least four times before he made his abrupt excuse to leave the table the second the desserts were done.

They hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him afterward—but he had given Lottie one last glare before he stalked out.

One that told her in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t the sort to forgive and forget and that he wasn’t anywhere near done with her yet.

She presumed that meant that at some point today words would be had where he asserted his dominance, so she was already smarting at the unpalatable prospect of having to bite her tongue while he said them.

Here, she had to remember her place, and until she and Lady Frinton left Kent, it would probably be a good idea to apologize profusely, then keep her head down.

Try her hardest to suppress her wild streak and blend into the woodwork.

But Miss P was right about one thing. Blending in had never been her forte and she didn’t trust herself not to bite back if that arrogant wretch provoked her enough.

In which case, her only real hope was Lady Frinton, who despite being rather despotic and hard to please, wasn’t the sort to get rid of a member of her staff because they had displeased someone else.

People deferred to Lady Frinton; she was far too contrary to defer back.

Lady Frinton had also found the incident with the soup hilarious and hadn’t made any attempt to chastise her for it.

Lady Frinton also knew that she had a penchant for borrowing horses so the fact that she had once again been riding in Hyde Park wouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Therefore, Lottie sincerely hoped that if she dismissed her, it would be because of something Lottie had done or not done to displease her.

And her alone. Therefore, rather than be intimidated by her employer’s vexatious nephew, she should instead focus on working tirelessly to become the best lady’s companion that the pernickety old dragon had ever had.

The sort who anticipated all her employer’s needs and was completely indispensable.

No matter what tattletales her disapproving nephew might tell.

A quest she would start right this second if it wasn’t six o’clock in the morning.

She didn’t know much about her new mistress’s needs and peculiarities yet, today was only her second day after all, but Longbottom had warned her that the old dear did not rise before eleven.

She liked a good ten hours’ sleep and did not leave her bed without a soft-boiled egg, a slice of hot buttered toast, and at least two cups of tea inside her.

Tea that Lottie would deliver personally this morning to Lady Frinton’s exacting expectations.

Just like the perfect lady’s companion should.

In the meantime, she might as well use the empty hours productively. If she was going to become indispensable, she needed to know the lay of the land. This giant house was a baffling maze and she might as well learn where everything was, and who to procure things from.

Rather than trouble a maid, she washed in cold water and dressed in her plainest gown and even pinned her hair in a no-nonsense-I-am-part-of-the-wallpaper bun. Exactly like the hair of a dutiful companion should look.

Unsurprisingly, downstairs was already a hive of activity as the servants prepared for their masters to wake. As a companion, and therefore basically a servant herself, she was acknowledged with just a polite good morning as a footman hurried past going about his business.

“Have you seen Longbottom?” Lady Frinton’s butler was the key to her becoming indispensable, seeing as he was apparently indispensable enough himself to have been dragged here too.

He knew everything about the old bat and seemed the sort who might share his knowledge, given the right incentive.

And what better incentive than teaming up and sharing the heavy load of Lady Frinton?

A problem shared was a problem halved after all.

“I think he went to the henhouse, miss.” Because of course he had!

After fifteen years of service, Longbottom would know that only the right sort of soft-boiled egg would appease their fussy mistress, so it stood to reason that he would go and choose it himself.

He probably also stood over the pot staring at his pocket watch while it boiled too!

Lottie asked directions and headed out the back door.

The beauty of the morning slapped her in the face as she stepped outside, warming her heart.

Oh, how she had missed these misty Kent mornings!

The sun peeking over the gently rolling hills in the distance and bathing the wheat fields in front of them in diffused light, reminding her so much of her own home it brought a lump to her throat.

Even the perfume from the roses blooming in abundance over the wall of the servants’ yard smelled the same as those which twisted around her father’s porch.

Except the Travers family farm wasn’t anywhere near as grand as her current surroundings.

Wennington Hall appeared larger from the back than it had from the front.

She had been impressed by the classical symmetry of the whitewashed Palladian-style mansion as the carriage had pulled up to it early yesterday evening.

Yet she could see now that what had seemed to be a large, rectangular house was in fact a flattened horseshoe because two big wings jutted out like twin arms hugging the grounds.

It had to have at least twenty bedrooms and by the perfect, unbroken vista ahead, it came along with hundreds upon hundreds of acres.

Oh, how the other half lived!

She followed the gravel path to the left as she had been instructed, and would have also followed it past the stables had the stables not been enormous.

By the clean look of the pristine brickwork, they were also very new.

Beside them was an expansive exercise field surrounded by a sturdy wooden fence where a burly groom worked with an adolescent horse attached to a very long rope.