He swiped his hand across his nose and checked it for blood. Seeing none, he turned his gaze onto Lydia.
She looked back up at him. Or—sort of at him. Her gaze seemed to be arrested somewhere at the level of his nipples.
He absolutely refused to think about nipples in her presence.
“What,” he said, trying to make his voice even, “are you doing here?”
Her mouth opened and then closed again. She turned redder than ever—it made a startling contrast with her orange hair—and addressed his shirtfront. “This is—ah—my chamber? Mr. Palmer told me to sleep in here?”
Bertie. He was going tokillBertie.
He’d thought the revelation of Davis’s misdeeds had extinguished Bertie’s machinations involving a future Lady Strathrannoch and a half dozen tiny Strathrannoch heirs, but it seemed the man had only been temporarily put off. He had been, evidently, lying in wait for Arthur’s moment of vulnerability.
Bertie had installed Lydia in thecountess’sbedchamber. The room currently reserved for Arthur’s nonexistentwife.
It was a bloody miracle that Bertie had not shackled them together to Arthur’s headboard until their wills gave out.
That was another highly vivid image he was not prepared to entertain, and it was all Bertie’s fault.
Arthur locked his hand around her elbow and prepared to drag her down the hall. The castle had a dozen bedchambers, and he meant to relocate Miss Hope-Wallace and the innumerabletemptations of her person as far from his own as was possible. But before he made it half a dozen steps, Bertie himself came round the corner, followed closely behind by Huw, whose damp white beard suggested he’d bathed since fetching up the zebras.
Bertie’s bright brown eyes saw everything, up to and including Arthur’s fingers clutching the soft right angle of Lydia’s arm.
Arthur let go as though her elbow had sprung red-hot from his forge.
“Ah,” Bertie said, “I see you’ve settled in, Miss Hope-Wallace. I trust Strathrannoch has welcomed you to the castle to the best of his abilities?”
Arthur pinned Bertie with a glare, which Bertie did not acknowledge.
Lydia looked doubtfully between them. “Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing at all, my dear,” Bertie said warmly. He flicked a slightly cooler glance at Arthur. “Do you see aught amiss, Strathrannoch?”
The message was clear. Arthur was not meant to insult Miss Hope-Wallace by implying that she was unwelcome.
Which he wouldn’t have done in any case, for God’s sake. He was not entirely insensitive.
He rubbed at the back of his neck and then promptly dropped his hand. His shirt had a hole beneath the arm, which he normally did not worry about when he was in his own blasted wing of the castle.Alone.
“No,” he declared. “Everything’s grand. Cozy, really. Snug.” He peered around Lydia into the countess’s bedchamber. “Have you even got any furniture in there?”
“I turned over the mattress,” said Huw helpfully.
Arthur sent him a baleful look. “You’re part of this conspiracy?”
“What conspiracy?” Lydia was looking between the three of them rather more vigorously.
“It’s easier on Fern,” Bertie said, as though this were a rational explanation. “She needn’t walk so far between rooms to do her cleaning.”
Arthur ground his teeth together. “Aye, to be sure. This is all forFern.” He turned back to Lydia. “You have furniture, then? You have whatever you need?”
She appeared to give up on the mystery of their conversation. “Yes, it’s all perfectly well, except…” She trailed off, her cheeks going pink. “There’s a small creature in the wardrobe. It appears to have made itself a little burrow of stockings and shredded correspondence.”
“Ah,” Huw said happily, “that would be the degu. I had no idea she had nested in the countess’s chamber!”
“Of course,” Lydia repeated. “The degu. In the countess’s chamber.”
Arthur felt as though he was beginning to lose his grip on sanity. “The creature’s part of the menagerie,” he said. “The one I told you about. With the zebras.”
