The Butler Did It by Kasey Michaels Page B

answer now. We have the whole Season in front of us, don’t we?”
    â€œNot sharing this house, we don’t,” Morgan told her, aware that he was beginning to sound, of all things, desperate.
    Fanny ignored this. He might as well be talking to the wall. “Cliff, the idiot, is here to see how much trouble he can get himself into—we think he became a man theother night, and about time, too. I’d begun to wonder about him, frankly. All that lace, and those red heels, you understand. In my time, the gentlemen wore satins with élan, but Cliff, for one, is too much the raw youth to carry it off.”
    Morgan looked up at the ceiling. Maybe this was all a dream, a nightmare. He couldn’t really be awake, and this outrageous old woman couldn’t really be saying all these things to him.
    She was still talking. “Discussing Mrs. Norbert is a waste of breath, as I’m sure you’ve already deduced, as you at least look bright, but she goes nowhere, so that’s all right, and you won’t budge her, not without a nasty fight. Sir Edgar? Something’s going on there. I don’t know what, not yet, but I’ll find out. Still, he’s old, and relatively harmless. Not at all like me.”
    â€œYou’re not harmless?” Morgan asked, suppressing a grin in spite of himself. “I’m shocked, madam.”
    â€œHa! As my late husband might say, ain’t you the card. Didn’t protest that I’m not dead old, did you. But the thing is, I’m the one what’s going to snare a good match for Emma. Would you like to know how?”
    Morgan stood up. “Madam, I could not imagine any subject about which I would care less. You have fifty minutes before you are thrown out of my house.”
    â€œI only need five,” Fanny said, unruffled. “Have you heard about Harriette Wilson, my lord, stuck out in the country the way you’ve been?”
    Harriette Wilson? He’d heard. Oh, yes, he’d heard. One of his mother’s friends had written to her last year, to say that the famed courtesan was threatening to pen her memoirs, naming names, ruining reputations, although an offer of money would conveniently erase her memory of the individuals who paid for that lapse. His mother’s friend had been convinced the late marquis’s name would come up somewhere between the covers. His mother had retired to her bed for two weeks, until he could convince her that no communications had arrived bearing Miss Wilson’s demands.
    â€œGo on,” he said, refilling his wineglass.
    â€œYou disappoint me, my lord. Do I really have to go explain this, as I would to a backward child? Oh, very well, if I must. Miss Wilson and her sister were common sorts even in their heyday, not at all upper drawer. But a lady of some quality—that would be me, son—who lets it be known to certain persons that she is anonymously penning her memoirs, also allowing it to be known that the application of a plea to not publish, followed by the promise of an introduction to grandsons, nephews, eligible, well-set-up young gentlemen in general, amends my memory quite nicely?”
    â€œBlackmail? You’re talking about blackmail.”
    â€œAn interesting idea, yes? In fact, the letters, complete with small hints meant to refresh faded memories, are already winging their way across Mayfair. I believe there must be a dozen breakfast tables that have suddenly gonevery quiet this morning. This should be a very busy place quite soon, my lord, with eager suitors underfoot.”
    â€œI still don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”
    Except he did.
    â€œYes, you do. Would you like to know how your papa first came by the name Mad Harry?”
    All right, so he could no longer pretend he didn’t know what Mrs. Clifford had in mind. He knew a threat when he heard one. Wellington may have been rumored to have told Mrs. Wilson to