An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(34)

“Well done, Miss Henderson,” the duchess put in warmly from her end of the table.

The conversation moved on as Theo asked Rafe a question about a horse he had bought a few days before, and Megan relaxed, grateful that the attention had been taken off her.

Olivia St. Leger, who sat on one side of Megan, leaned in closer and murmured, “I hope we are not overwhelming you.”

“Oh, no!” Megan replied honestly.

While Rafe McIntyre and the fact that he and Kyria had lived in New York had raised a certain unease in her, she had otherwise thoroughly enjoyed the dinner conversation. The Moreland family was a trifle odd, but she found their eccentricities charming. None of them seemed to be snobbish in the slightest degree. Everyone, indeed, had gone out of his or her way to place Megan at ease.

She felt a flash of guilt at the way she was deceiving them all. She thought of how they would feel when she revealed the truth about what Theo had done, and she hated to think of how it would pain them. They would, she knew, despise her.

When the meal was over and Megan was leaving the dining room behind the twins, it was Theo who caught up to her and bent near her to ask a similar question. “Ready to pack it in after a night of the ‘mad Morelands’?”

“No, of course not,” Megan replied, firmly quelling the traitorous twist of warmth that ran through her abdomen at the touch of his breath against her ear. “Who would dare to call your family that?”

“Oh, a number of people,” Theo replied carelessly. “I fear that most of English society finds us distinctly odd.”

“There are some,” Megan responded, “who would say that they find all of English society distinctly odd.”

He chuckled. “And they would probably be right.” He paused, then went on, “Yet my mother says that you are interested in all things British.”

“What?” Megan glanced up at him, puzzled, before she remembered, with a start, the lie she had told the duchess to explain why she had come to work in England. “Oh! Oh, yes, I am, of course.”

She had spent hardly any time with him, and already he had caught her out in a lie! Megan reminded herself that she was going to have do much better than this or she would not last long enough here to find out the slightest thing about him or the secret of what had happened long ago with her brother.

“I have long been very fond of English poets,” she went on, hoping to cover her mistake. “I wanted to see firsthand where they lived.”

She all but winced at how syrupy her words sounded.

“Of course,” Theo murmured.

Megan glanced at him sharply. Had his voice been tinged with amusement? And did that mean that he suspected she was lying or that he merely thought her silly? She found that she intensely disliked the idea of either.

Megan looked around them. Everyone else had disappeared up the stairs or down the hall into one of the sitting rooms. “You should join your family,” she told him.

Moreland shrugged. “With everyone here, they will scarcely miss one.”

“I doubt that.” Theo, she thought, was not one who could be easily overlooked.

“If you are concerned, then let us join them.” Theo offered her his arm.

Megan stepped back, clasping her hands together. It startled her how much she would have liked to slide her hand into the crook of his elbow. “I—I cannot. I should go up to my room.”

“It is early yet,” he protested.

“I must do some work,” she replied. “I am unfamiliar with the texts the boys use, and I need to look them over. Plan my lessons.”

She thought for a moment that he would protest or try to persuade her to skip her work, but he said only, “If you insist.”

Perversely, Megan felt somewhat disappointed at his easy acquiescence.

“I will escort you to your room,” he continued, once again offering his arm.

A little laugh escaped her. “I think I can manage to stave off the dangers between here and my bedchamber.”

“Please, you must allow me to play the gentleman.”

“Play?” she repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Is it only pretense, then?”

She realized, with some horror, that she sounded as if she were flirting with him. Megan looked away quickly, then started toward the stairs.

Theo walked along beside her, though he made no attempt to take her arm. “You neatly managed to avoid saying what you think of our family.”

“Did I? I did not mean to. It is quite easy to say what I think of them—they are quite warm and kind, much more so than I would ever have expected. They have all been most generous and courteous to me.”

“Mmm. There are those who find their behavior scandalously lax.”

“I have never been attracted to snobbery, myself,” Megan retorted.

“Neither have I,” he agreed as they started up the wide marble-stepped staircase. “Perhaps that is why I have chosen to travel elsewhere.”

“Avoiding your countrymen?” Megan asked, looking doubtful.

“Not avoiding, exactly. But I always wondered what other people were like. It seemed to me that there must be some who were not so stuffy. Less concerned with their rank or the proper form of address.”

“And have you found them?”

He smiled. “Yes. And some of them have even been Englishmen.”