His lips lifted in disgust. “Of course not. My perfect brother. The gossipmongers are right…you are evil.”
“Well, with parents such as ours, what do you expect?” I placed the pitcher back on the stand. Outside, the wind howled, battering against the glass. It would most likely snow tonight. “Mother has arrived.”
My brother fell back on his pillows and groaned. “No.”
The two maids screeched again, this time in fear rather than surprise, and jumped from the bed, naked as the day they were born. As they scrambled around the room, dressing, I sauntered to the sideboard and poured my brother a glass of gin. “And you know how she feels about dallying with the servants.”
“How the hell did she know I’d returned already?”
“Spies,” I said. “Who knows?”
I set his glass on the side table. He pulled the covers over his head and burrowed into the bed like a child afraid of the dark, instead of the broad-shouldered twenty-three-year-old he was. “Tell her I’m not here.”
The sound of the front door shutting thundered through the house. An ominous cacophony. Harbinger of evil. Mother had entered, bringing with hellfire and damnation. I’d been preparing to go out for the evening when I’d seen her carriage up the lane.
Dressed, the maids dashed from the room.
“Tell her that my ship sank in a storm on the way home,” Chris’ voice came out muffled. “Tell her I drowned.”
“Too late. She knows you’re here.” I started toward the door. “Get dressed and be downstairs in the library immediately.”
I left the room and made my way down the wide, sweeping steps to the foyer. Lord, I was tired of being a nanny to my brother. “Alfred?”
The gray-haired man had been in our family for decades. I couldn’t remember a time when he’d been young. When I was a child, I’d assumed he’d been born old. Now as an adult, I was sure. Unmoving as a statue, shoulders thrown back on his narrow frame, he stared at the wall across the foyer until he was needed. I still wasn’t quite sure if he was completely human.
“She’s in the library, my lord.”
I didn’t bother to stop and prepare myself, there was no preparing for the witch. Instead, I swept into the room with a bored insolence that I knew would annoy her. “Mother. What a pleasant surprise.”
She merely lifted a brow at my droll tone. Seated near the fireplace, her back ramrod straight, she was the epitome of English perfection. Only a splattering of gray marred her fine blonde hair, and her face was barely lined with age.
I’d heard more than one rumor claim that she’d made a pact with the devil to keep her youth. I settled in the chair across from her. Another claimed she sacrificed a virginal maid once a week to keep that glow. Alas, no, we lost maids so often because Christopher couldn’t keep his cock in his trousers. Part of the reason why he’d been sent abroad.
“As much as I appreciate your surprise visit, I do wonder if there is a reason?”
“There’s always a reason.”
How amusing that I was once afraid of her. How silly that most of the ton still feared this petite she-devil. When Uncle had died, leaving his title to my father, my parents had taken their sudden good fortune quite seriously. While my father had looked for ways to invest his newfound wealth, Mother had clawed her way up into society by ruining more than one debutante with just a flick of her fan. She took delight in finding her next mark. Her vindictive nature gave her life and power.
“Of course. You wouldn’t want to visit merely to be near your children.”
She folded her gloved hands primly in her lap. She had not left her fur-lined cloak with the footman. Good sign. It meant she wouldn’t stay long. “Gabriel, darling, do not pretend you wish me here, or I just might call your bluff and stay.”
I settled back in my chair, all ease. “The horror.”
A maid carried a tray of tea into the room. One of the maids who had been in Christopher’s chamber only moments ago. No doubt the cook had given her a good tongue lashing. Her pretty face was flushed, her cap askew. I drummed my fingers against the arm of my chair and sighed, waiting for my mother to notice. Hell, the girl looked like she’d just come from a good tumble.
She poured the tea with hands that trembled and placed the cups upon the small