She eyed him. “Oh?”

His jaw tightened. “Only with you. With everyone else, I’m very pleasant. Ask anyone.”

“The children think you the most horrid-tempered man.”

“They do not.”

“Shall we ask them?”

Anthony glanced inside the door to where the children sat doing their work. Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to get close to them. Or anyone, in fact. It was strange, but when he’d come to the Elliots, he’d lost something. Some facet of his personality. A pleasantness, perhaps.

The thought did not sit well, and he glowered. Elizabeth glanced up and caught his gaze. She flushed a bright red and hurriedly lowered her gaze back to her desk. Anthony frowned. Good God, did they actually fear him?

“Did you wish to ask the children or not?”

“I’m certain they believe me an ogre. They haven’t given me much chance to show them anything else.”

“True. But then they are children. You are not.”

“I am the head of my family, Thraxton. I do what I must.”

“Yes, you do. And from what I hear, you meet your responsibilities head on. I was just commenting on the fact that you could do it without growling quite so much. Look around you, Greyley. They are not pieces of bad pottery, but people.” She offered him a friendly smile as if she hadn’t just mortally offended him. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.” With a pleasant nod, she turned back to the room and took her place beside Richard and began helping the boy with his math.

Anthony stood where he was, flexing and unflexing his hands. She expected him to do something, he just knew it. Anna Thraxton was like that, meddling in other people’s affairs and trying to change things. But by God, he would have none of it. His life had been perfect before the children had arrived. They would conform to his expectations and so would Thraxton, no matter how saucy she’d become.

He turned on his heel and left, heading for his library and the waiting bottle of port. As he went, he caught sight of the new maid hired to replace the one the children had chased off. She was trotting down the hallway carrying a bucket, humming off-key. She skid to a halt on seeing Anthony, then glanced around her like a wild animal looking for somewhere to hide. Before he could say a word, she saw an open door and scuttled through it as if afraid for her life, the bucket sloshing against her leg as she went.

Anthony’s footsteps slowed to a stop. Good God, could Thraxton be right? Had he become so immersed in his own concerns that he was no longer aware of others? Had he become so grim and unapproachable that he was…an ogre?

The thought was as unpalatable as it was unwelcome. Still, Anthony prided himself on being fair. If he had begun to display a severe demeanor, he was certain he’d been provoked. First by the Elliots and now by his charges. Damn them all.