Seven Minutes in Heaven(97)

She opened her reticule, took out a handkerchief, and dabbed her nose with it.

Lizzie and Otis entered the room before Ward could fashion an answer that didn’t include a threat of violence. Well, not violence, since she was an elderly woman and his own grandmother—but he would defend Eugenia and her choice to open Snowe’s Registry with his last breath.

He went to greet the children, which gave him time to rein in his temper. Lizzie was not wearing her veil, and Otis was not carrying Jarvis’s bag.

They were both dressed in black, of course, but Lizzie’s pale blond hair gleamed and her face appeared healthier than he remembered. To Ward’s eyes, the children looked shiny, well-mannered, and a trifle boring. Perfectly conventional, in other words.

“Miss Darcy and Lord Darcy,” their grandmother said, nodding. “It appears that Mrs. Snowe is a satisfactory governess; your bow was nearly graceful, Lord Darcy.”

“Mrs. Snowe is not a governess,” Lizzie said.

The duchess’s thin lips grew thinner.

“She is a lady,” Lizzie clarified.

“A lady acts as such,” their grandmother replied, with a sniff. “A governess teaches girls to curtsy, and a lady does not. Equally important, children do not speak until they are spoken to.”

“Mrs. Snowe was our guest,” Otis said, ignoring that rule.

“Indeed? How do you define guest? Would a guest teach you how to bow?”

Otis’s brows knit together. “It doesn’t matter what a lady does. She is still a lady.”

Ward grinned at that. Otis was right.

“I beg to differ,” Her Grace stated.

“Mrs. Snowe’s father is a marquis, and that means she’s a lady,” Otis said defiantly.

Wait.

The word rattled around in Ward’s head.

“Marquis?” he echoed.

“What’s more, she gave me a box for Jarvis to sleep in,” Otis said, “and governesses don’t give gifts.”

The dowager duchess looked at Ward. “I don’t blame you for your incredulity. One rarely finds peers plummeting down the social ladder in such a definitive fashion. Mrs. Snowe’s late husband would be aghast. And his father, the viscount? Turning in his grave, without a doubt.”

“I’ll show you the box!” Otis exclaimed. He turned toward the door, stopped, spun around, and bowed, before he dashed out.

“No governess can perform miracles in two weeks, but Mrs. Snowe must be competent,” Her Grace pronounced. “Perhaps if I offer her three times her customary salary, she would agree to join my household.”

Ward barely registered that Otis had left the room, because he was still trying to make sense of the conversation. Eugenia was the daughter of a marquis, and had been married to a viscount. Or the son of a viscount? Wouldn’t that make her Lady Snowe? Maybe not. Maybe she was just the Honorable Eugenia Snowe.

Damned if he knew. He’d never paid much attention to the governesses who tried to drill such things into his memory.

Besides, her title was irrelevant; clearly she chose not to use it, if she had one. More importantly, why in hell hadn’t she told him? It would have been a good opportunity when he’d told her that she wasn’t ladylike enough, for example.

He suddenly remembered Eugenia asking him if he knew she was a lady.

He’d said yes; what else could he possibly have said?

Bloody hell, why hadn’t he gone to a few soirees over the last seven years? He might have met Eugenia in the proper setting. He would have known her status, instead of making a fool of himself by assuming she had been a governess.

“I do not agree,” Lizzie said, in reply to something he’d completely missed.

He wrenched his attention back to the venomous old woman, who still had not invited his sister to take a seat. The woman was trying to intimidate Lizzie, but he had a shrewd idea that she would fail. Nothing frightened his sister.

Other than dead fish.

The duchess’s own characteristics had bred true, and Lizzie was more than a match for her grandmother.

“It is not your place to agree or disagree,” Her Grace stated. “You are a child, and as such, you ought to be quiet and obedient.” She raised her clasped hands and thumped her cane onto the ground.

Lizzie’s eyes narrowed. “I recognize you!”

“I should hope so,” her grandmother said acidly.

The little girl dropped into the chair opposite the duchess. Her slim figure went rigid and a glare settled on her face. Her hands extended before her, clasping the invisible brass knob on top of an invisible cane.

Before anyone could say a word, she rasped, in a fair approximation of the duchess’s aristocratic drawl, “Look like the innocent flower, my lord, but be the serpent under it.”