The Tutor (House of Lords) Read Online Free

maid Ellen, one other upstairs maid and another girl who worked in the kitchens. Cynthia did not know any of them besides Ellen particularly well. Her father’s household was given to a fair amount of turnover in staff. But she had still managed to create a well-run and tidy household. It was another of the many skills Miss Cartwright had imparted, though perhaps not one on which her father placed much value.
    Mallory greeted her politely as she came in. “Is my father at home?” she asked as he took her mantle and bonnet.
    Mallory shook his head. “No, Miss.” Cynthia did not know the man well enough to be sure, but she thought she heard a note of relief in his voice. Mallory was their third butler since they had moved from Oxford to Cavendish Square almost four years ago. Her father was not an easy man to have as an employer, but Mallory had managed to stick it out for over a year, and Cynthia had high hopes that he would be able to withstand her father’s temper, at least for the foreseeable future. The last search for a new butler had taken far longer than Cynthia would have liked—indeed, she had begun to wonder if there was some sort of underground butler’s society where word had spread that Mr. Endersby of Cavendish Square was not the sort of employer one wanted. But she had tempted Mallory with some of Cook’s best sweets during the interview, which she thought might have swayed him, and he had, thankfully, stayed. Indeed, it seemed that Mallory’s middle grew a little rounder every time Cynthia’s father had one of his fits of temper. Cynthia often wondered whether Mallory used cakes and tarts to calm his nerves as some men used drink.
    She thanked her lucky stars daily that there was no way she could have inherited the temper that had driven away their last two butlers, for all that her copper-bright hair would have indicated otherwise. Cynthia had known for three years that there was no chance of her bearing any of the traits she so feared in her father.
    She was not, after all, his true daughter.
    Three years ago, not long after he had inherited his fortune and moved them to London, her father had called her into his study on the second floor and explained that Cynthia’s childhood and everything she had ever known about herself were all carefully crafted falsehoods.
    Roger Endersby was a genius. There was no question of that. He had read everything there was to read about natural law, about the evolution of human understanding, about the very purpose of society, and even written a few treatises of his own. And he had a naturally curious mind. He could not stand not knowing, not possessing knowledge. He had not said these things to Cynthia, but he had taught her to be an observer of human nature, and she had a keen mind. She saw how little he cared for other people, how much trouble he had seeing them as anything but obstacles to the knowledge he craved. So she had not really been surprised when he had told her that she had never actually had a mother, that he had never been married, that the woman he had almost never spoken of had not died in childbirth as he had given her to assume, but was still alive and well—he presumed—in a brothel in York. The only reason she was living in a gentleman’s house and not in that same brothel was because he had taken her from her whore of a mother when she was an infant and raised her as his own. He had done this so that he could conduct an experiment.
    That was all Cynthia was: an experiment, a grand exercise in free will. Her father had wanted to see if a female child could be raised up beyond the expectations society had for her sex. So he had taught her math and engineering and philosophy, forbade her fairies and magic and princesses, and punished her when she had shown interest in anything frivolous. He had done it for her own good. And here she was, now, his grand creation. His , he had said, as though she were no more than a piece of property. In truth,