An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(27)

The place was far larger and more elegant than Megan’s own room at home and certainly was not what she had expected of a room given to a tutor of the family’s children. An avid reader of the Bront? sisters and their successors, she had envisioned a cramped, dark room, sparsely furnished, among the servants’ quarters or perhaps off the nursery.

“But I—this is my room?” Megan asked.

The housekeeper smiled. “Well, the boys’ tutors usually stayed in a room off the nursery, but that wouldn’t be proper, now, would it, what with you being a young lady and all. So her grace directed me to put you in here. In general, you see, she doesn’t believe in separating the youngsters from the family.” She shrugged, indicating the closest thing to disapproval that Megan had seen in her. “All the others’ rooms have always been on this floor, and their governesses, too, when they were young.”

“I—I see.” A little dazed, Megan walked about the room, looking out the window at the view of the wide thoroughfare below and running a hand along the heavy bedspread. “It’s beautiful.”

“I’m glad you like it,” a masculine voice said from the doorway.

Megan started, her heart leaping into her throat. She recognized the voice even before she turned to look at Theo.

He lounged in the doorway, one shoulder propped against the frame, his arms crossed, grinning at her. He was, she realized, every bit as handsome as she remembered him. She had been telling herself that her memory had endowed him with a more appealing face than he really had, but obviously that was not true.

“Mr.—I mean, Lord Raine. How do you do?”

“I’m doing quite well—now,” he replied, uncrossing his arms and coming forward into the room. “I am pleased to see that we did not scare you off.”

“I assure you, it would take more than what I saw the other day to scare me off,” Megan replied tartly, annoyed by the fact that she even noticed how handsome the man was.

The acerbity of her statement seemed to bother Moreland not at all. His grin only grew. “Ah. Plucky to the end, I see. I always like that.” He turned his attention to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Bee, you’re looking as lovely as ever this morning.”

“Get on with you, now,” the housekeeper replied, but she blushed a little with pleasure and smiled as she said it, clearly not immune to Moreland’s charm. “I can always tell when you’re wanting something from me.”

“Mrs. Bee! You wound me,” he replied, laying a hand on his heart in a mock-dramatic manner.

“Same as when you and Master Reed were little and coming around trying to sweet-talk me out of a cookie.”

“And here I was about to offer to take a task off your hands,” Theo retorted. “I was going to show Miss Henderson up to the nursery for you.”

“Were you now?” Mrs. Brannigan said, shooting him a speculative look. “Well, then, I’ll take you up on that offer. It’ll save a bit of wear and tear on these old joints, and that’s a fact.” She turned toward Megan. “The footmen will bring your trunk up later, miss. If you need anything else, just let me know.”

With a bob of the head toward Moreland, she turned and walked out of the room. Megan, left standing alone with Theo Moreland in the middle of her bedroom, felt suddenly ill at ease. She could not remember when, if ever, there had been a man other than her father or brothers in her bedroom. It seemed far too intimate a setting.

“I, uh, thank you, but I feel sure that there is no need for you to escort me to the nursery,” she told Moreland stiffly. “I can doubtless find it on my own.”

“Doubtless you can,” he admitted easily. “But it would scarcely be gentlemanly of me.”

“Certainly I cannot be responsible for that,” Megan retorted dryly.

He extended his arm courteously to her as he had the other day, and Megan could think of no way not to take it without being rude. But she could not help but wonder why Theo Moreland was doing this. Employers did not customarily offer their arm to an employee any more than they put themselves out to show that employee to their workplace—certainly not when there was another employee around who could do it just as well.

She did not think that she was being conceited in thinking that Moreland was expressing an interest in her. But why? Megan could not help but feel that same breathless fear that somehow Theo Moreland was onto her, that he knew who she was and was looking for some opportunity to trip her up.

Megan told herself that she was being foolish. An employer flirting with someone who was not much more than a servant usually did so for the obvious reasons. Megan was not unaccustomed to men flirting with her—or even making quite unwarranted and improper advances. She knew that the plain businesslike shirtwaist and dark skirt she wore could not completely conceal her curvaceous figure, and her face, while not classically beautiful, was lively and appealing. And there was something about a woman on her own that seemed to all too often call forth the basest desires in men.

In all likelihood, she reminded herself, it was merely that sort of desire that impelled Theo Moreland to seek her out. He was undoubtedly the loathsome sort who used his position of power to impose his desires upon the women who were unfortunate enough to work for him. It was a little surprising, perhaps, that he would do so right under his own mother’s nose, but, then, she thought with a mental sniff, why would she expect even that much gentlemanly reticence from the man who had killed her brother?