Page 37

And yet…the unyielding contours of his visage suggested otherwise.

“I…” she cleared her throat and swallowed the panic fluttering around her ribs. “I beg your pardon?”

Again, that sardonic smile twisted his lordship’s mouth, but no humor lit his eyes.

“I believe you heard me perfectly, Miss Feathers.” He placed the quill in its brass holder. “I’ve heard from two reliable sources.” He raised two fingers from the desktop. “That you were, in fact, the lieutenant’s mistress in addition to the girls’ governess.”

Mercy couldn’t find her tongue to respond this time.

Two people?

Two?

Who? Why?

Mercy might not have much, but she had her dignity and her pride.

Pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

Well, this was one fall she was fully prepared to endure. No one, by all the divine powers, no one would cast such a vulgar slur upon her reputation and not feel the full extent of her indignant and wholly justified fury.

Drawing herself upright, she slowly stood, every muscle an inexorable lump of tension and suppressed ire. Heart pounding with a thunderous vengeance, she leveled him with a glance intended to smite him to ashes. Never in her life had anyone brought her to the verge of losing her temper so swiftly. Yet this man—nay, this knave—had her seething almost from the moment she’d laid eyes upon him.

His expression guarded, Lord Ronan eyed her as he leaned into the back of the chair. All indolent and arrogant masculinity, he was so bloody sure of himself.

Mercy despised the dastard for his confidence.

“You have no response?” he drawled, his baritone vibrating with droll derision.

Oh, how she wanted to hit him.

Did he expect her to quail under his scowl?

Burst into tears?

Beg for forgiveness?

Mercy would not. She had more mettle than that, by heaven.

Ronan pinched the bridge of his nose as if his head ached.

Good.

Mercy hoped skull-cracking pain crossed his eyes.

“Honestly, Miss Feathers, I expected you’d ring me a peal and vehemently deny the relationship.”

His tone was bland, his expression inscrutable.

“I shan’t even honor that repulsive suggestion with an answer.” Lifting her chin, Mercy said in a voice not quite steady, and she inwardly cursed him for it, “I shall have the girls’ possessions packed and mine as well by morning, day after tomorrow. Until that time, I think it best we avoid one another, my lord.”

She pointed to a thick burgundy leather volume beside the unopened stack of correspondences.

He briefly took in the ledger before returning his attention to her, one eyebrow quirked archly. In the study’s muted afternoon light, the scar slashing his face gave him a sinister appearance. Or perhaps it was the almost sneer curling his lip that caused the illusion, and she barely resisted the impulse to retreat several paces.

“In that ledger, your lordship”—she fairly spat the honorific for it had become grossly apparent, this man had no honor—“I have recorded a detailed account of each expenditure I spent my personal savings on in order to sustain this household these past two months while we waited for you to put in an appearance.”

That irritating dark eyebrow rose another inch at her calculated jab.