had had the main charge of Anne and Lizzy since their mother died soon after Lizzy’s birth, an arrangement that seemed to be rapidly breaking down.
Alec opened the bedchamber door and stepped inside. For some reason, Frances pushed the panels closed practically on his heels. He discovered his sixteen-year-old sister Anne lying in her bed, still pale but no longer so frighteningly listless. In fact, there was a bit of the old sparkle in her green eyes. He had brought his whole household up to town this spring because of Anne, who had coughed her way into increasing weakness through the winter. Nothing seemed to help, and he had finally bundled her into a carriage filled with blankets and furs and hot bricks to consult an eminent Harley Street physician. Just yesterday they had gotten the very good news that it was not consumption, a dread that had been hovering over them all for weeks. He suspected that relief was partly behind this latest ruckus, whatever it was. “Where is…?”
Lizzy popped up from behind the bed. “I got her to cheer Anne up,” she declared self-righteously.
“I’m all right, Alec,” Anne said at the same time.
With the ease of long practice, Alec went to the heart of the matter. “Her?”
From beneath the bed came a sound remarkably like a growl. Alec looked at Lizzy. It was a bittersweet irony that his thirteen-year-old sister so closely resembled their mother, as her birth had caused Lady Wylde’s final illness. Alec, Anne, and their brother Richard took after their tall, lean father, with wheat-colored hair and green eyes. Lizzy was shorter, already rounder, with their mother’s brunette coloring and deep blue eyes. He suspected she was going to be breathtakingly lovely when she got her full growth, and the thought of her eventual entry into society—when he dared think of it—terrified him.
There was no putting it off any longer. Alec knelt and peered under the bed. At first, he saw nothing. Then he became aware of a pair of yellow eyes glowing in the farthest, darkest corner. A gamy smell reached his nostrils. Gradually, the shape in the shadows revealed itself as a cat, a large cat. A sinking sensation, based on more than a decade’s experience, settled over him. “Where did you find it?”
“In the back garden, near the gate,” replied Lizzy.
An alley cat. Alec could not imagine how his sister had gotten this animal into the house and up the stairs. No doubt the crashes he’d heard were involved. He checked her for bites and scratches, and saw none.
“We have no pets at all here in town,” Lizzy pointed out. “Anne misses them so much.”
Alec looked at Anne. She was trying not to smile, well aware of her big brother’s descent into Lizzy’s toils. “Does Anne indeed?” Of course it was Lizzy who missed them. “Animals belong in the country.”
“Lots of people have dogs in town. I’ve seen them. Fashionable people.”
They had small fluffy lapdogs, Alec thought; yappy, annoying, but not creatures spawned in the gutter. “If Anne would like a kitten…” It sounded weak, and he knew it. But Anne’s smiles were so rare these days.
“But she has no home. She’s hungry; you can feel all her ribs!”
A pleasure Alec hoped never to experience. “Lizzy, it’s a practically wild animal. Who knows what sort of…?”
“I know she smells a bit,” Lizzy interrupted. “Well, who wouldn’t, being out in the street like that? I’m going to give her a bath.”
“You most certainly are not! She’ll tear you to pieces.”
“No, she won’t. Here, look.” Lizzy disappeared behind the bed. Alec stood and watched her, kneeling, hold out a hand and make a soft, low sound. There was a pause, and then the cat half emerged from under the counterpane. It was a calico, dirty, skinny, with a torn ear, but it pushed its head under his little sister’s hand for stroking. “See?” Lizzy gave him the angelic smile that all too often got her her way.
Alec took a step toward them. The cat drew back and growled like some much larger creature.
“She just has to get used to you. Don’t you, Callie? I’ve named her Callie, for calico, you see.”
Anne laughed—at the name or perhaps at Alec’s looming defeat. It hardly mattered; it had been far too long since he’d heard her laugh. Alec stepped back and wondered which of the two footmen could be recruited to help Lizzy bathe a feral feline. It would have to be Ethan. Ethan had time and