Page 3 of Captivating the Countess
Overhead, a door slammed. Rain did ten arm lifts and began swinging the weights in circles. Good solid oak doors shouldn’t slam in nonexistent drafts, especially if the footman was doing his job and keeping them shut. One of Teddy’s women must finally be leaving. She had a mighty heft if she could slam one of those—
A second and third door slammed. What the...?
His study door opened, and Franklin, his normally imperturbable butler, stuck in his balding head. “The duke, sir, he’s taken a spell and needs you.”
“Tell him about the boy who called wolf, will you? I’ve toted the figures in that book three times now and have come up with three different answers. I’ll never finish if I have to keep running upstairs.”
Another door slammed.
The butler looked distraught. “He thinks the ghosts have returned.”
Ghosts. Lowering the weights, Rain shook his head to see if it might rattle. “Where is Miss Rutledge? Couldn’t she see what he wants?”
His intended bride spent a great deal of time anywhere else except helping him. To be fair, she was young, and his older, married sisters held sway over the household. She couldn’t very well be expected to take over the role of marchioness until they married. But a little help with his family wouldn’t be amiss.
“I believe she was taking baskets to the Widow Walter and her children. She left early this morning. Her mother is a trifle worried, so I’ve sent a groom to see if she needs assistance.”
“Well, at least she’s being useful. The widow could talk the ear off an elephant.” Putting down the weights, Rain shrugged into his coat again.
Another door crashed above. His aunt’s infernal parrot screeched holy hell in retaliation. That meant the monkeys would be shrieking shortly and flinging whatever objects were left unbroken in the room they currently inhabited.
If he had a temper to lose, he’d be insane by now. Instead, his defense against chaos was to retreat behind an icy barrier. “Will you shoot whoever is slamming those doors? I’ll fetch Alicia and send her to the duke.” That should kill two birds with one stone. The piano racket was louder now that his study door was open.
The duke didn’t want to see his daughters. He wanted to berate Rain. But enough was enough.
Not bothering to button his coat or straighten his cravat, he started down the lengthy corridor to the music room. A footman ran after him from the front of the house.
“My lord, visitors.” He held out a salver bearing cards. “They say they have come about the steward’s position?”
Rain considered himself a confident man of rational authority, but he briefly wondered what would happen if he bellowed like a wounded beast. The roof would fall in, no doubt. “We have no steward’s position to be filled.”
He would have added that applicants should go to the rear door and see his estate agent, but after a glance at the card, he held his tongue. One didn’t send countesses to a rear door. Countesses did not apply for non-existent steward’s positions.
Had the entire world gone mad?
The doors abruptly stopped slamming. The carol crashed to a halt. Teddy’s inamorata quit screaming. The parrot calmed down. Blessed silence descended. Rain absorbed the abrupt peace with incredulity.
He’d met Lady Craigmore at a wedding. She was a Malcolm, he knew, possessed of unknown witchy gifts and quiet, mousy demeanor. Had she just cast a spell on the entire household? Rain hoped so. He’d hire her on the spot as circus master.
Yanking his cravat back in place, he followed the footman to the formal drawing room. A large, older woman in ancient bombazine and an old-fashioned bonnet blocked his view of the other chair by the fire. Bonnet-woman wasn’t the countess.
Buttoning his coat and maintaining the cool demeanor with which he managed a vast array of estates and people, Rain entered the parlor.
Ah, there was the odd little wren he remembered from her sister’s wedding to one of Rain’s best friends. The newly-styled countess wore a fashionable traveling outfit in a forest green that left her looking more pale than he recalled. Anemic, probably, following one of those foolish food fads ladies sometimes indulged in.
“Ladies, to what do I owe the honor?”
The wren jumped. That’s what he remembered about her—her tendency to startle and swoon without cause.
The countess blinked long lashes and gazed at him as if he were a ghost, then smoothly recovered to introduce her companion. “Lord Rainford, you remember Mrs. Winifred Malcolm? The two of you met in Edinburgh last autumn?”
“Of course, my lady.” He took the older woman’s hand. “You were instrumental in saving your nephew and his friends after their little escapade with villains.”
The lady’s healing powers, while not great, had been superior to his. He’d simply used scientific medical practices, which couldn’t always mend as well as one liked.
Mrs. Malcolm complacently crossed her gloved hands in her ample lap. “We are all grateful that you were there to sew up the young fools. Which is why I was eager to accompany my nephew’s sister-in-law here. Young people these days think they can fly about like magpies, but it would do no one good if the countess came to harm on her way to help you.”
“To helpme?” Rainford suffered a frisson of alarm.
