Read Reforming a Rake for Free Online

shoe during his puppy days, and she flinched. “Where is Mrs. Delacroix this morning?” Making a show of taking up her own toast, she pulled a small piece free with her fingers and placed it into her mouth.
    Rose attacked her meal with renewed vigor, giving no sign at all that she’d noticed her tutor’s subtle coaching. “Oh, she doesn’t usually have breakfast,” she said through a mouthful of food. “Rising early is too hard on her nerves. She hasn’t adjusted to London yet, I’m afraid.”
    Alexandra waited a moment, but Lord Kilcairn declined to return to the conversation from behind his newspaper. “How long have you been in London?” she urged.
    “We arrived from Dorsetshire ten days ago. Cousin Lucien is looking after us.”
    “That’s very good of h—”
    “ Miss Gallant is looking after you,” the earl interrupted, still behind his paper. “I am tolerating you.”
    The girl’s pretty blue eyes filled with tears. “Mama said you would be glad to have us here, since you have no one else.”
    The London Times smacked onto the table. Alexandra jumped, ready to come to her pupil’s defense, but at the angry expression on the earl’s face, she stifled her censure. There was clearly something going on beyond what had been said, and before she jumped into the middle she wanted to know what it was.
    “A new situation is never easy on anyone,” she said in her mildest voice, and sipped her tea.
    Kilcairn looked at her in silence for several long seconds, obviously weighing what he wanted to say against what politeness dictated he should say. “Quite right, Miss Gallant,” he finally muttered, and stood. “Excuse me, Miss Gallant, Cousin Rose.” With the butler on his heels, he slammed back out into the hallway.
    “Oh, thank goodness. I’m so glad he’s gone,” Rose breathed when the door had closed.
    “He does have rather…strong opinions,” Alexandra agreed absently, wondering what had set him off. Surely it hadn’t been Rose’s offhand comment about his being alone. Not after the rumors she’d heard about his endless evenings of drunken debauchery with friends and women of questionable morals.
    “He’s awful. I thought for certain you would leave, too.”
    Alexandra forced her attention back to her student. “Too?”
    “As soon as we arrived he dismissed my Miss Brookhollow, and she’d been with me for nearly a year. And the governesses he hired after we arrived were just dreadful.”
    “How were they dreadful?”
    “They were all old, wrinkly, and mean. But then they would say something Lucien didn’t like, and he would swear at them and they’d run off—so I suppose it doesn’t matter if I didn’t like them, anyway.”
    Alexandra sat for a moment, absorbing that convoluted bit of information. The incarnation of hell on earth seemed to have a much milder temper than her cousin. “It has been trying for you, no doubt. But that is over with, and things will get better from here.”
    “Does that mean you intend to stay?”
    That was a very good question. “I shall stay as long as I’m needed,” she said carefully, hoping the earl wasn’t eavesdropping. She had the feeling she might need the leverage of being able to quit.
    Rose’s slender shoulders slumped in a sigh. “Thank goodness.”
    “Well, then.” Alexandra swept her gaze along the frills of Rose’s hideous peacock gown again. “I’d like to meet your mother. And perhaps after breakfast we’d best get to work.”
    Lucien pulled the rapier free from the ebony walking cane that concealed it. Flexing the long, thin blade between his fingers, he eyed the weapon’s new owner.“This wouldn’t do much more than cause a few scratches, Daubner.”
    “Come, come, Kilcairn, it’s a work of art.”
    Stout, chubby fingers reached for the blade, but Lucien flicked it out of his companion’s reach. He might not be able to take his annoyance out on his houseguests, but his friends weren’t going to be so lucky.