A Portrait of Love (The Academy of Love #3) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,134

moved from Lady Elinor to her newest footman and back again.

“What is going out here, Elinor?”

The girl scowled. “I have just asked our new footman to run away with me, Mama.”

Iain’s jaw dropped.

Lady Yarmouth’s lips thinned until they were pale pink lines. She raked the younger woman with a look designed to leave her quaking in her slippers. Her daughter glared back, un-quaked.

“Come back inside this instant, Elinor.” The older woman turned and retreated into the room without waiting to see if her daughter obeyed.

Lady Elinor gave an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes at her mother’s back before limping toward the open doorway. She stopped and turned back to Iain before entering the room.

“You’ll catch flies if you don’t close your mouth.” She slammed the door in his face.

Bloody hell.

***

Iain yawned. It was almost three in the morning and the festivities showed no sign of abating. Other than his encounter with Lady Elinor earlier, the evening had been quiet. Disappointingly quiet not only for his first ball, but also his first day as footman.

The only other entertainment had been watching an overdressed dandy cast up his accounts on his dancing slippers while trying, and failing, to make it to the men’s necessary.

Iain adjusted the lacy cuffs of his fancy new shirt and examined the stranger who looked back at him in the ornate mirror. The black livery made him appear taller than his six feet and the well-tailored coat spanned his shoulders in a way that made him look lean and dangerous rather than scrawny and puppyish. His wiry red hair had been cropped to barely a stubble and was now concealed by a white powdered wig that gave him dignity. Of course his freckles were still there, but there was nothing he could do to hide them—unlike his age.

“You don’t look five-and-ten, Iain,” his Uncle Lonnie had said upon seeing Iain in his new clothes earlier today. He’d then grinned and squeezed Iain’s shoulder. “Go ahead and give us yer story one last time, lad.”

The story was one his uncle had concocted when Iain first came to work in Viscount Yarmouth’s household three months ago: Iain was nineteen and had spent six years in Mr. Ewan Kennedy’s household, two as a scrub boy, two as a boot boy, and two as a footman, even though he was unusually young for that last position. Uncle Lonnie also told Lord Yarmouth that Iain had come to London seeking employment after Mr. Kennedy died and there weren’t any other suitable positions in the tiny town of Dannen, Scotland.

That last part was the only true part of the whole story. Dannen was more a collection of shacks than a real village and there’d never been any Mr. Kennedy, nor any work as scrub boy or footman. Iain had written the letter from “Mr. Kennedy” himself, under his uncle’s direction.

“Admiring your pretty face?”

Iain yelped and jumped a good six inches. Female laughter echoed down the mahogany-paneled corridor. He turned to find Lady Elinor behind him, her small, almost boyish, frame propped against the wall in a very unladylike manner. Her white gown looked limp and tired, as if it were ready to go to bed. Her hair, a nondescript brown, had come loose from its moorings and fine tendrils wafted about her thin, pale face. Only her large gray eyes held any animation.

Iain drew himself up to his full height and glared over her shoulder at nothing. “How may I be of service, my lady?”

“Oh, stuff! You’re angry with me, aren’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m sorry for being beastly earlier. I was wrong. Pax?” She held out her hand and limped forward. Iain stared, not because of her limp—he already knew she was lame—but because of the gesture. Surely a footman wasn’t permitted to shake a lady’s hand?

Besides, he hadn’t forgiven her. His mother and uncle both accused him of being too grudging and slow to forgive. He looked down at her little hand and chewed his lip. Maybe they were right; perhaps it might be advisable to appear to forgive her. He’d just decided to say ‘pax’ when Lady Elinor grabbed his hand.

“Don’t be angry with me. I apologized.”

“I’m not angry,” he lied, tugging not so subtly on his hand to free it from her grasp. He suspected it would not do to get caught holding the hand of the daughter of the house at three in the morning, or at any other time of the day or