Free Prelude for a Lord by Camille Elliot Page B

so I am hopeful there will be some gentlewoman in need of a new lady’s maid. I only wonder how I shall hear of any positions available since I am with Mrs. Ramsland and catering to her complaints all day.”
    Lucy had told Alethea about those complaints. Things like being quick to accuse Lucy of taking things that she herself had misplaced, and deliberately demanding hip baths late the night before she knew Lucy would need to rise early in order to do her duties before taking her half day off. “I shall keep my ears open,” Alethea said.
    “And Mrs. Ramsland at least allows me a half day off a week. Some employers conveniently forget.”
    As her sister rambled on about other employers she had heard about, Alethea walked beside her, her back straight as a fireplace poker and her head held high, while in her chest, her heart thundered.
    For the first time, she was glad Lord Dommick was calling this afternoon. The sooner she discovered who was after her violin and why, the sooner she could stop them, and stop the threat to her family.

    Bayard had a raging headache. Between the irritation of Mr. Morrish’s excessive solicitude toward Clare last night and the dread of his eminent meeting with a woman as prickly as a hedgehog, he felt as if a coach-and-four had run over him.
    Lord Ian found it all vastly entertaining.

    Ian leaned back against the squabs of the carriage and gave Bayard a wide grin that made his dimples stand out even through the dark gold shadow on his cheeks. “You look like you’re heading to a funeral, old man.”
    Bayard scowled at him. “I look nothing of the sort.”
    Ian shrugged, raised a hand to flip a lock of hair out of his eyes, and stared out the carriage. Still grinning.
    Bayard cleared his throat and said, “Last night, when you went to the ladies’ withdrawing room to find Clare, Morrish was waiting for her?”
    “When he saw me, Morrish looked as if he’d swallowed a fork,” Ian said gleefully. “He told me that I needn’t wait for Clare, that he’d knocked on the door and inquired of the maid, but Clare’s hem wasn’t finished yet.”
    Bayard frowned. “She could have sewn an entire dress in the time I was speaking to Lady Alethea.”
    “I said something along those lines—although with much more elegance and wit.”
    Bayard rolled his eyes.
    “I knocked on the door and spoke to the maid, and Clare was out in a trice. When I escorted her back to the ballroom, I must say, Bay, you needn’t have been rushing toward us as if she’d been abducted.”
    “Clare’s dowry is seventy-five thousand pounds,” Bayard said. “I dare you to walk calmly when that rackety fortune hunter had deliberately arranged to remove her from the room.”
    “Well, when you put it in those terms . . .”
    Bayard suddenly felt the damp coldness of the winter in his bones. He was in Bath for the sake of his mother and sister—he could not fail to protect them. Lord God, help me to protect them . He cleared his throat and studied the shine on his Hessian boots. “Thank you for going to her, Ian.”

    “Wouldn’t want the brat getting lost,” Ian answered casually, “not with her debut this spring.”
    At mention of Clare’s season, tension squeezed the back of Bayard’s neck and shoulders. He needed to repair his reputation after being ruined by his former betrothed, Miss Church-Pratton. While Lady Whittlesby’s concert would accomplish that, if he were to be seen associating too often with a woman who played the violin, would people think him an oddity and cast doubts on his sanity, fueled by the old rumours?
    Did he have a choice? Lady Whittlesby’s concert came with the price of interacting with the brash Lady Alethea Sutherton.
    “It’s a pity a woman so beautiful is so aggressive and unconventional,” Bayard said.
    Ian’s eyebrows completely disappeared behind that lock of hair over his forehead. “I take it we’re no longer speaking about Clare?”
    “What?”
    Ian gave him a