His gaze rose to her face. “Lips just as soft, I’d warrant. And the rest of you too.”
She struggled to keep her disgust in check, so as not to goad him. If he made any attempt to do more . . . She gripped the poker hard, ready to swing it.
“Phillip.”
The male voice startled Minerva, and the young man too. He dropped her hand and stepped back.
Minerva looked over his shoulder to see Chase Radnor right inside the door. Chase’s glare bored into the other man’s back.
“The family is gathering.” Chase’s conversational tone did not match the furious expression that Minerva could see. “You should join them.”
Phillip turned to face Chase. “I wondered where everyone was. I thought we were meeting here.”
“No. The drawing room.”
“I will go there forthwith.” He marched away, like a busy man with much to do.
Chase waited for the door to close. Then he strode over to Minerva and reached around her body. “I apologize for my rash, young cousin.” He gently extricated the poker from her fingers. “He had no idea whom he importuned. If you had used this, you might have killed him.”
Her body betrayed her, limb by limb, bit by bit, until her core shook. Waves of revulsion and fear inundated her.
She tried to reach down for the basket, but wobbled. Two firm hands set her upright, holding her shoulders. Deep blue eyes examined her face. She tried to appear normal and calm, but her body still wanted to shiver from an inner cold.
His gaze locked on her eyes. Both curiosity and concern peered into her.
“Sit here.” He turned her, his hands still on her shoulders, and directed her to a divan.
“I should return to—”
“Sit.” He pressed her shoulders until she obeyed.
He dropped to one knee in front of her, watching her closely. “Did more occur before I arrived?”
She shook her head. “You must think me very frail for being disconcerted by such a small advance.” She glanced down at the hand Phillip had held. The pleasant memory of Chase’s gentle pressure had now been ruined.
“I think you sensed a bigger danger than you had to confront, fortunately. I’m sure he would not have . . . Still, you are too vulnerable here. You should not return tomorrow.” He spoke it like a command. She had calmed enough to dislike that, but not enough to argue.
“If not me, one of the others. He is that kind of man,” she murmured. “Trust me on this.”
“Then let it be one of the others,” he snapped. Then he inhaled deeply. “I will tell the housekeeper to warn all the women. You, however—”
“I will never be far from a poker or other weapon.”
“That is one hell of an answer. Stay home. You will learn nothing here.”
His manner raised her pique, and her spirits. “I assure you that I have already learned plenty. I appreciate your stopping your cousin, but do not think to command me.”
He ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation. He stood. “I must join the others. The fires there are built already, so your work is done.” He held out his hand to help her up.
She accepted it, using the hand violated by Phillip. The texture of Chase’s warm skin salved the insult more than she expected.
“Go down to the kitchen now.” He herded her to the door, and parted near the stairs to the cellar.
She did not descend those steps. Instead she took the servant stairs up one level, to the service passageway that ran alongside the big drawing room. She found a door and cracked it ajar, so she might watch.
* * *
“The choice is simple,” Nicholas said loudly, his voice crashing through the arguments filling the drawing room. Those other conversations dwindled in the face of his annoyance until silence faced him.
Chase hoped Nicholas would not rush to continue, because the interval of peace felt delicious. He surveyed the large chamber while the last of the voices died out. A panel on one wall that hid an access to the servants’ corridor stood ajar. He strolled over and shut it.
“Choice one. The bequests are challenged by someone. Anyone. And nothing gets disbursed until Chancery rules. That means no one gets anything until that time. Except me, because the entailments are a separate indenture, as are the servants’ pensions which are in trusts funded by the ducal holdings.”
“At least we might get a respectable sum eventually,” Dolores said before a disdainful sniff.
“Choice two. We listen to what the solicitor says tomorrow afternoon regarding the accounting done thus far. There is the possibility that at least something can be paid out soon, even if the final figures are not secure yet. I have asked him to consider if half the estimated remaining funds can be divided among us.”
“It will be half a pittance then,” Phillip muttered. “It is tempting to go for more.”
“Easy for you to say, Phillip,” Agnes said. “You are such a pup that you might still be alive when it is all finished. However, I doubt your creditors will like to wait that long.”
Phillip colored until his ears were red. At twenty-two, and the youngest cousin by five years, he did not like being called a pup. He also would not care to have his aunt mention the precarious nature of his debts. He had shown no mercy to the tradesmen of London in abusing his credit, all on unfounded expectations. Once word of this will’s provisions got out, Phillip would probably be dodging bailiffs.
At the moment Chase hoped Phillip landed in debtors’ prison. His youngest cousin had little to recommend him. There were a dozen reasons why Phillip had grown into a man without good character, but even a hundred reasons would not excuse his behavior with Minerva today.
“Yet if we accept even half a pittance, we have accepted the bequests as written,” Kevin said. “Anyone who takes the money has given up the first choice. How good of Uncle to include a bribe in his will. For most of you it should hold appeal, since he owed you nothing.”
“He owed you nothing too,” Nicholas said, kindly.
Kevin’s tight expression revealed his reaction to that.
“I say we take what we can get while we are still young enough to enjoy it.” Claudine, wife of Cousin Douglas, spoke with emotional emphasis. “We have expenses now, and I don’t think it will be a pittance at all, so not half a pittance soon. He was rich as Croesus, from the talk of it. I say we hear what the solicitor has determined about the potential amount left to us when all is said and done, and convince him to release as much as possible.”
Douglas nodded obediently. Douglas never spoke much. Even as a boy he had been an observer of the world, not a true participant. As he had married a woman who talked a lot, the expectations placed on him for good conversation had decreased overnight. Chase guessed Claudine led the way in other things too, but Douglas did not seem to mind.
Over in a corner the eldest of the cousins, Douglas’s older brother, Walter, bided his time while he helped himself to some brandy from a decanter set on a table against another of those panels, one that also rested ajar. Chase mused at how they all managed to remain predictable in this least predictable situation. Walter had always thought his position as the eldest gave him more authority than Nicholas, even though Nicholas was the son of the second oldest uncle, and thus heir presumptive to the title. Even when they were all boys, Walter would try to issue commands and make decisions that no one paid attention to.