Anna blinked. “Wait! As much as I wish it otherwise, I am honor-bound to fulfill my duties to Lord Allencott.”

“Stop fretting. I’ve already taken care of the matter.”

Foreboding filled her. “I beg your pardon?”

His self-satisfied expression was dangerously near being a smirk. “I ran into Allencott yesterday and I told him you would not be accepting his offer.”

“You…you didn’t.” Anna closed her eyes and pressed her fingers over them. “Please tell me you are teasing.”

“Of course I’m not teasing. I went looking for him after the Dandridges’ soirée. I told him you would be taking employment at Greyley House.”

“You—you—” Anna’s temples throbbed wildly and she was assailed with an almost uncontrollable urge to hurl a vase at Greyley’s thick head.

“Allencott was most understanding. After all, my situation is much more urgent than his. He has two children, I have five.” He looked blessedly pleased with himself, full of masculine logic and stubborn pride.

“Lord Greyley, if you run roughshod over your charges the way you have been attempting to run over me, then it is no wonder they are in an uproar.”

“Roughshod?” Greyley’s brows lowered. “I was assisting you. It was a damnable nuisance having to track down Allencott. Then I had to sit and talk to him for almost half an hour, and the man is an unbearable bore. I can think of at least twenty other things I would have rather been doing.” Greyley’s dark gaze ran over her once again. “Make that twenty-one.”

“Oh, just stop it,” Anna snapped, though her body heated in instant response. She supposed she didn’t have any choice—thanks to the purchase of that silly gown, she was horribly short on funds, and by now Allencott would have found another governess. Anna closed her lips over the irate comment she would like to make and silently conjugated four Latin verbs, a trick she’d learned when dealing with especially recalcitrant children. She was in the middle of conjugating amo when her breathing returned to normal and she was able to say with some equanimity, “Greyley, let us understand one another. If I accept this position, there are certain rules that must be followed.”

“Such as?”

“Never again will you speak for me. I should have been the one to contact Lord Allencott, not you. I have a professional reputation to maintain.”

“It’s not as if he was upset. Besides, he knows he cannot compete with me.”

“Neither can the sun, yet still does it shine.”

The earl’s face darkened. “It isn’t a matter of vanity; it is a matter of necessity. As much as I hate to admit it, Miss Thraxton, I am a desperate man. You are the best governess in London. I want you and no one else.”

He stood, tall and broad-shouldered, filling the tiny parlor until it looked like a closet. And Anna had to admit that it was mollifying to hear the words “the best” coming from such discriminating lips.

Actually, now that Anna looked, the earl possessed a very attractive mouth—it was firm and masculine. And she already knew how those lips felt against hers. The memory sent a hot tingle through her.