Читать книгу The Regency Bestsellers Collection - Bronwyn Scott - Страница 20

“Lie back on the bed for me.”

From his seat on the edge of the mattress, Barrow regarded him. “That is not in the terms of my employment.”

“Just do it, will you?”

Barrow complied. “Mind, I am only doing this because it’s five o’clock, and I value being on time for dinner more than I value my pride.”

“No, no. Not like that. On your side, facing me. Prop yourself on one elbow and rest your head on your hand.”

“Are you going to draw me like one of your French girls?”

“And keep your boots off the mattress. It’s new. Finest quality a shameless rake can buy.”

Barrow rolled his eyes.

“Now.” Chase lifted a gilt-framed mirror and positioned it on the wall opposite the bed. “Tell me, can you see yourself?”

“Partly.”

“Which parts? The good parts?”

“That’s it.” Barrow rolled to a sitting position. “I’m done.”

“Come along, man. I can’t do this by myself.”

“Well, I can’t run the Belvoir estate by myself. You’re the one with power of attorney.” He sighed and gave in. “A few inches to the left. Now up. A bit more. No, no. That’s too much.”

Chase strained under the weight of the mirror. “Hurry up, would you?”

“Tilt it forward a smidgen . . . There.”

“Took you long enough.” Chase drew a nub of chalk from his pocket and marked off the corner. Then he set the mirror down with a groan of relief.

“Now,” Barrow said, “we need to discuss the land steward at Belvoir Manor. He might be a wizard with crop rotation, but he can’t write a report worth sheep dung. You need to pay him a visit yourself and sort matters.”

Chase checked his marks with a level, then hammered two hooks into the wall. “We have a hundred other matters needing attention. The planting’s done for the summer anyhow.”

“In point of fact, the planting was not yet done when I first raised the subject. In February. You’ve been avoiding the discussion for months.”

“I have not been avoiding the discussion.” He hefted the mirror again, hanging it on the hooks. “I’ve been avoiding my uncle.”

“The duke’s too ill. He won’t even know you’re there.”

“He’ll know I’m there,” Chase said softly. “He always knows I’m there.”

Eager to change the subject, he turned and propped his hands on his hips, surveying his handiwork. The Cave of Carnality was finally complete. Now it could start living up to its name.

“Very well,” he told Barrow. “I’ll make the journey to Belvoir soon.”

“Excellent. I will pin a date to that promise, I hope you realize.” Barrow rose from the bed, reached for his hat, and headed for the door. “But it will wait for tomorrow. I’m late getting home as it is.”

“Give Elinor a kiss for me.”

“The hell I will,” Barrow said, shutting the door behind him. “Find your own wife.”

That wouldn’t be happening. But a little matrimony had never stood between him and a kiss.

God, that stupid kiss. Days ago now, and he remembered the taste of Alexandra as clearly as he recalled his own name. Fresh and sweet. Like cool water straight from a mountain stream.

Enough.

He left the retreat through the kitchen, locking the door after him, and mounted the stairs to his bedchamber, intending to change for the evening.

He hadn’t even reached the first landing when a piercing cry pulled him to a halt midstep. It was followed by a blood-chilling scream. Not a girlish scream, but a womanly one—coming from the direction of the nursery.

Alexandra.

He jogged up the remaining flights of stairs, pausing on the third landing for breath. The silence was ominous.

Dear God, they’d killed her.

He took the last flight of stairs at a sprint, rushed down the corridor, and flung open the door to the nursery, steeling himself for the sight of her bloodless corpse splayed on the floor.

The scene that greeted him, however, was anything but lifeless.

“Ready the cannon.”

They took no notice of his entrance. Chase used the following moments to survey the nursery. At least, it had been a nursery. He wasn’t certain what it had become since Millicent’s funeral early that morning.

The girls’ beds had been pushed side by side, with a gap of merely a few feet between them. The curtains had been removed from the windows and strung from the bedposts. Standing amid it all, Daisy squinted into a spyglass fashioned from a discarded paper cone, and Rosamund brandished a crescent-shaped object that resembled nothing so much as a cutlass.

Millicent sat on the opposite bed, wearing a paper sailor’s hat and, as was her usual, an unsettling smile.

Rosamund slashed her blade through the air. “Fire.”

From behind them, Miss Mountbatten made a series of the most fantastic noises. A boom, then a whistled glissando, followed by a rumbling crash that she accompanied with a brisk shake of the bedpost.

The girls gave a rousing cheer.

“Dead-on hit to the broadside,” she declared. “Bring the ship about and ready the plank.”

Rosamund yanked on a curtain tie, and a white “sail” unfurled from the top of the bed frame. Meanwhile, Daisy reached for a board that looked to have been ripped from a crate and cobbled together with rope.

“Ready for boarding!”

She scrambled from one bed to the next and held the cutlass to Millicent’s throat. “Hand over the plunder!”

Chase had seen enough. “Ahem.”

All three of them froze. Four, if he counted Millicent. The room went silent, save for an audible gulp from Miss Mountbatten.

“What is going on here?” he demanded.

Daisy spoke first. “Millicent’s been wounded.” She drew the “blade” across the doll’s neck. “Kerchief, please. She’s losing a great deal of blood.”

Chase ignored the doll’s death throes and stalked across the room to have a word with his governess.

“I can explain,” she said.

“You had better.”

“The girls and I . . . Well, we’re playing a game, you see.”

“You weren’t hired to play games.”

“But this is an educational game.”

“An education in cutlasses?”

She bit her bottom lip. “Only partly.”

Her eyes flitted toward the slate, and he followed her gaze. “Piracy?” He read the word aloud with horror. “You’re instructing them in piracy.”

“It isn’t how you’re thinking. I—”

Chase caught her by the elbow and guided her to the far side of the room. He needed space to berate her properly. “You are meant to be teaching them to be proper young ladies.”

“They’re not ready to be young ladies. They’re girls. They need to play, and they’ve forgotten how.”

“They need to learn their lessons. Letters, numbers, stitching samplers with misshapen flowers and dire Bible verses.”

“They are learning.” She directed his attention to the world map on the wall, where a series of pins guided a string from England to the West Indies. “We’ve plotted a course to Tortuga. There’s geography.” From there, she walked to the slate and pointed to a stack of figures. “Calculated the length of the journey, how many days it will take. How many rations we’ll need aboard. That’s arithmetic. I’ve even taught them a bit of French.”

Chase read aloud from the board. “‘Donnez-nous le butin, ou nous vous ferons jeter par-dessus bord.’ What does that mean?”

She hedged. “Hand over the booty, or you’ll walk the plank.”

“Millicent’s dead,” announced Daisy. “It will have to be a burial at sea.”

Chase rubbed his temples. “Right. This little game of yours stops. At once.”

“If I’m the governess, I must be allowed my own methods.”

“I’m your employer. You’ll do as I instruct.”

“Or what? You’ll hire another of the candidates queuing up for the post?” She made an exasperated gesture. “I’m succeeding where all the others have failed. How many is it you’ve been through again?”

“Fifteen,” he replied. “But I can always find the sixteenth. London is rife with women who’ll happily submit to my wishes.”

“No doubt it is. I’m not one of them.”

They stood locked in a stalemate. Dangerously close together. Perhaps it wasn’t that he was unwilling to step aside. Maybe he didn’t want her to get away.

Maybe he wanted her closer.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he got his wish. He felt a tight cinch about his rib cage. She made a startled cry.

In the space of a moment, they’d grown very close indeed. Indecently close. Chest-to-chest close. And if not for a few layers of fabric . . . the kind of closeness that meant skin on skin.

God.

Baffled, he attempted a self-protective step in retreat. A force resisted. “What the devil?”

His hellion wards collapsed on the bed with laughter.

He looked down. They’d been tied together with a length of rope. Tied and knotted, it would seem. Apparently while he’d been lost in her fiery eyes, the girls had managed to loop a rope about the two of them—and then cinch it tight.

“Oh, dear.”

“You little . . .” Chase wriggled, attempting to turn and chastise them. He succeeded only in craning his neck. “Come back here at once.”

“Daisy, do you think there’s cake in the kitchen?”

“I heard there’s jam, as well.”

The girls linked hands and skipped toward the door.

“Don’t you dare.” Chase hopped in their direction, dragging Miss Mountbatten with him. “Get back here, or I’ll—”

Or he’d what? Shut them up in the nursery? Send them to bed without their tea? He’d tried all those punishments, to no avail. His well of threats had run dry.

“Rosamund!” he bellowed.

“Oh, I answer to Sam now.”

“Sam? Where did this come from?”

“It’s right there in my name. Ro-SAM-und.”

“You can’t answer to Sam. That’s absurd.”

“It’s not absurd at all. Ask Miss Mountbatten. Her friends call her Alex. I want to be called Sam.” She beckoned to Daisy. “Come along. The kitchen is just waiting to be plundered. Maybe there’s custard.”

They disappeared, shutting the door behind them.