Oh for heaven’s sake,Matilda thought. Christian—glowering, stern-faced Christian—had a pet name for his baby sister?
It was untenable. It was impossibly charming. She refused to admit that she’d heard it.
He turned his body then, angling toward her to draw her into the conversation. “Did you get my note? I’d like to introduce Lady Matilda.”
Bea turned, and blinked, thick curly lashes fluttering over hazel eyes. And then the unguarded expression dropped straight off her face, and her body went stiff and wooden.
Matilda tried to put a warm, unthreatening expression on her face. “Good evening,” she said. “I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”
Bea didn’t say anything back, merely looked at her.
“Bea,” Christian said, “this is your painting tutor for the next few months, Lady Matilda Halifax. Lady Matilda, may I present my sister, Lady Beatrice de Bord?”
Matilda tried to make a curtsy, but her arms were still full of feline, and she stumbled a little. She felt her cheeks grow hot. “Lady Beatrice. Your brother has asked me to make you a present of this delightful animal.”
She did not turn to see how Christian had received that appalling falsehood. Instead she deposited the cat carefully on the ground. The cat stalked over to Bea and sniffed delicately at her skirts. Bea, meanwhile, stood frozen, her hand at her throat as her gaze flickered from Christian to Matilda to the cat and back again.
Matilda licked her lips and tried not to feel too discomfited.Shy,she reminded herself.Christian said that she was shy.“I have not named her,” she said. “I thought you might like to do so. But perhaps we can come up with something together—”
“I’ve heard of you,” Bea said.
Matilda stopped talking and then, slightly belatedly, closed her mouth. The silence stretched and stretched, and she felt her face grow hotter and hotter.
Bea had heard of her. Rumors of the Halifax Hellions had reached even this far.
Not for the first time, Matilda cursed her past self, the scandal she’d courted, the absurd tales she’d let the scandal sheets print.
Sometimes they had even encouraged it. When another young woman did something a bitoutré—grew silly with wine at a dinner party or accidentally insulted an important dowager—she and Margo would pass coin to a reporter or two and go on a rampage of their own. By the next day, the gossip rags would forget the sheepish debutante in their frenzy to print pictures of the Halifax Hellions persuading some young lord to pose shirtless for their watercolors. In the middle of Hyde Park. At noon.
But for all they’d tried to do some good, they’d blackened their reputations so thoroughly that they could not escape from the rumors. Not even here.
Christian was the first to speak. “Lady Matilda is a—a talented artist.”
Matilda looked up at him in surprise. He meant to…defendher?
She felt tears suddenly sting her eyes. She did not want him to have to speak up for her. She didn’t want her reputation to come between Christian and his sister. He was still talking, but she laid her hand on his arm.
Bea’s eyes snapped to the point of connection, and Christian went stiff as a column of marble.
Oh, she thought.Oh.She had embarrassed him. She yanked her hand back to her side.
She licked her lips and forced herself to focus on Bea, to keep her voice calm. “I have heard of you as well,” she said, “from your brother. He speaks so highly of you. I am looking forward to getting to know you better.”
Bea’s lips pressed together into a long line. She nodded, wordless, and then turned and fled into the dining room.
Truly,Matilda thought as she crossed into the drawing room the next morning,is every room in this house hideous?
The dining room had been terrifying. Though they had dineden famille—Matilda delighted to discover tureens of white soup and roasted potatoes shining with butter, plates full of soft rolls and fresh butter—they had been far enough apart that she could scarcely hear Bea’s occasional whispered remark. On the walls, tapestries of bloodthirsty hunting scenes alternated with mounted medieval weaponry, all pointing straight down at their heads.
Her bedchamber was no better. Mrs. Perkins had led her there the previous night, up a twisting flight of stairs and through a hallway that was poorly lit by candles. Shadows danced eerily at the edges of the room when Mrs. Perkins had opened the door, and even the capable housekeeper had looked slightly chagrined at the sight. The room was crowded with immense furniture. Heavy velvet draperies—slightly moth-eaten—covered the windows. Leaning against the wall in one corner stood what appeared to be a large painting of Judith holding the gory head of Holofernes.
“Ah,” said Matilda, “a friend.”
Mrs. Perkins had offered to cover the monstrosity with a bedsheet, but Matilda had declined.
The drawing room too was ominous. There was a suit of armor in the corner and what appeared to be a taxidermied boar alongside it. The walls were covered in a fabric roughly the color of dried blood.
Bea awaited her. She had attempted to dress more tidily that morning, but her hair was already slipping out from her coiffure in little wisps. At some point, she’d shoved a stick of chalk into her pocket—Matilda could see the pale blue smear at the seam of her lace-trimmed dress.
