An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(29)

“Oh, yes,” Alex agreed emphatically. “We told Anna what you did. It was just what she would have done, wasn’t it, Anna?”

“Exactly,” Anna said, and smiled at Megan. “I think it is time that we let you get down to work with your charges, don’t you? We haven’t even visited with the duchess yet. We came straight up here when we arrived.”

“We knew these two would be the only ones in the family already up,” Reed added. His hand slipped around his wife’s waist, and he smiled down at her as he went on, “Come along, love. Mother will be very put out if she is the last to hear.”

Reed and Anna nodded goodbye to Megan and started toward the door. Reed paused, glancing back at his brother. “Coming, Theo?”

“Yes, of course.” Theo turned back to Megan. “I must take my leave, Miss Henderson.” His mouth quirked up in a smile, and Megan felt an odd warmth rush through her.

She stiffened unconsciously and straightened her shoulders. “Goodbye, Lord Raine. Thank you for showing me to the nursery. I trust in the future I will be able to find my own way.”

“No doubt you will.” His green eyes danced, and Megan was aware of a sudden traitorous urge to smile at him.

He bowed slightly toward her before he turned and followed his brother and sister-in-law out the door.

Megan watched him go, then realized what she was doing and turned quickly back to the twins. She looked at the two lads, who were gazing back at her with interest.

Panic gripped her for a moment, and she was suddenly sure that the boys would realize in only moments that she was not really a teacher.

“Well…” Megan forced a smile. “I guess it is time for us to get down to work.”

“All right. What do you want us to do?” Con asked. She was almost sure it was Con, anyway.

“What do you usually do?” Megan stalled.

The twins looked at her a little oddly, then Alex said, “Well, you know, our lessons. Which one we do first just depends on the tutor.”

“What’s your favorite subject?” Megan went on.

“Science,” Alex replied promptly. “That’s easy. It’s the interesting stuff.”

“Math, too,” Con added.

“What’s your least favorite?”

There was no doubt in that regard, apparently, for the boys chorused, “Greek and Latin.”

“Ah.” Megan nodded and smiled. “I never much liked them myself.” The truth was, she had never so much as seen a word of Greek, but she had hated laboring over the Latin texts at the convent school, and Greek sounded even worse. “Then which shall we tackle first? The best or the worst?”

The boys gaped at her.

“You mean—you’re asking us? Which lesson to do first?”

“Why not? You are, after all, the ones doing them. Personally, I like to take the hardest thing first and get it over with, then end the day with what I like best. That makes it easier to get through, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Con agreed.

“Then why don’t we all sit down and draw up our schedule?” Megan suggested. It seemed to her the most rational way to go about the matter, though she felt sure that the nuns who had taught her would probably be horrified at the idea of the students choosing any part of their studies, even the order in which they did them.

Alex and Con grinned at each other.

“Wizard!” Alex exclaimed. “I knew you were going to be the best tutor.”

“Good. And I expect that you will be the best pupils,” Megan tossed back with a grin, and started toward the desks.

The boys quickly followed her, and they settled down to the task of mapping out their days.



*

REED MORELAND TURNED to his wife as they walked away from the nursery and down the stairs. “You saw something when you looked at her, didn’t you?”

Anna shot him a look. “No. I did not see anything.”

“I was watching you,” Reed retorted. “There was something about the way you looked…”

“Miss Henderson, you mean?” Theo asked, frowning and turning to look at Anna. “What are you talking about? Anna, did you have one of your visions?”

Like all the Morelands, Theo knew about the horrifying events that had occurred at Winterset, Reed’s home in Gloucestershire, a few months earlier, before Reed and Anna were married. There had been a series of grisly murders in the area, and Anna had experienced eerie, terrifying moments during which she had envisioned the murders that had just taken place. The twins and Kyria, along with her husband, Rafe, had been visiting Reed at the time and had been there for part of the ordeal. But even they did not know the full extent of the shattering visions Anna had seen, visions that had made her doubt her very sanity. Reed had confided the whole story only to his older brother and closest confidant.

“No,” Anna told Theo now, grimacing. “Really, you two are as bad as the twins. You would think I went about seeing things every time I met a person. I did not have a vision. I didn’t ‘see’ anything about Miss Henderson.”

“But…” her husband said encouragingly.

“But I felt something,” Anna admitted, frowning a little. “I—it was very vague. But I—I felt a little fear.”