An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(33)
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.”
“But Rafe and I more recently resided in New York,” Kyria put in, smiling at Megan.
Megan’s heart sank, though she managed to keep a smile on her face. New York was a huge city, she reminded herself, and Lady Kyria would not have moved in the same circles as a lowly newspaper reporter. Even if, by some stretch of the imagination, the couple had read articles written by Megan Mulcahey in the newspaper, there was no reason to connect that woman with Megan Henderson, the tutor sitting in their dining room in England.
“It’s a lovely city, New York,” Lady Kyria went on.
“Yes, my lady, I have always thought so myself,” Megan replied somewhat stiffly.
Megan wished she had thought to pretend that she was from some city other than New York. It had seemed best at the time, one less thing she would have to lie about, but in retrospect, it struck her as foolish. What if by some strange chance one of the McIntyres had read her articles? What if the mere fact that they were talking about the city reminded Theo that it was where the man he had killed came from? What if Dennis had at some time mentioned his sister Megan?
She glanced over at Theo, who was sitting almost directly across the table from her. His eyes were on her already, their bright green color dark in the candlelight. She was aware, as she was every time their eyes met, of a sizzle along her nerves. Megan flushed and looked quickly back toward Kyria.
Kyria’s gaze went from Megan to Theo speculatively, but she said nothing.
Beside Kyria, Rafe asked casually, “How did you happen to apply for the position of tutor for the Terrible Two?”
“Rafe! We aren’t!” Con and Alex chorused in mock indignation, and Rafe grinned, sending the boys a wink.
“Well, I did not consider it at first, of course,” Megan replied, aware of McIntyre’s cool blue eyes studying her as she talked. “I assumed that no one would hire a woman as a tutor for two boys. But I had heard that the Duchess of Broughton was different, that she believed in the equality of the sexes, so I thought I would apply to her. I wanted to prove that I could handle the job as well as a man.”