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“Ah, but you’ve forgotten my aspect, I’m afraid. It’s in the natural order of things that a lovely wife will either stray or come to hate an ugly husband. A man as revolting as I would be an idiot to attach himself to a beautiful woman.” He smiled into her mesmerizingly lovely eyes. “And I am many things, Mrs. Halifax, but an idiot is not one of them.”
He bowed and turned to stride back into the castle, leaving Mrs. Halifax, a lonely, desperately tempting siren, behind him.
“WHEN WILL WE go home?” Jamie asked the next afternoon. He picked up a rock and threw it.
The rock didn’t go very far, but Abigail frowned, anyway. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not?” Jamie whined.
“Because you might hit someone. Or something.”
Jamie looked about the old stable yard, empty except for themselves and a few sparrows. “Who?”
“I don’t know!”
Abigail wanted to throw a rock herself, but ladies didn’t do such things. And besides, they were supposed to be beating an old rug. Mama’d made one of the footmen put up a line across a corner of the yard, and a row of rugs now hung from it, all waiting to be beaten. Abigail’s arms were sore, but she took a swing at the rug anyway with the broom she held. It felt almost good to hit the rug. A great cloud of dust flew out.
Jamie squatted to pick up another rock. “I want to go home.”
“You’ve already said that over and over again,” Abigail said irritably.
“But I do.” He stood and threw the rock. It hit the stable’s wall and clattered onto the gray stones that paved the stable yard. “We never had to beat rugs at our old house. And Miss Cummings took us to the park sometimes. There’s nothing to do here but work.”
“Well, we can’t go home,” Abigail shot back. “And I told you—”
“Oy!” The voice came from behind them.
Abigail looked over her shoulder, still holding the broom.
Mr. Wiggins was trundling toward them, his ginger hair waving in the breeze as his stumpy arms waved in the air. “Watcha doin’, throwin’ rocks about like that? Are you soft in the head?”
Abigail straightened. “He’s not soft—”
Mr. Wiggins snorted like a surprised horse. “If’n throwin’ rocks about that could hit anybody, includin’ me, isn’t soft in th’ head, I don’t know what is.”
“You don’t talk that way!” Jamie said. He’d stood and his hands were balled by his sides.
“Don’t tawk whot?” Mr. Wiggins mimicked their accent. “Whot’re yew, a soft-headed London ponce?”
“My father’s a duke!” Jamie shouted, red-faced.
Abigail froze, horrified.
But Mr. Wiggins merely threw back his head and laughed. “A duke, eh? Then what does that make you? A dukeling? Ha! Well, dukeling or not, don’t throw them stones.”
And he walked off, still chuckling.
She waited, holding her breath until he was out of sight; then she swung on her brother, whispering furiously, “Jamie! You know we weren’t to say anything about the duke.”
“He called me a ponce.” Jamie’s face was still red. “And the duke is our father.”
“But Mama said we mustn’t let anyone know that.”
“I hate it here!” Jamie put his head down like a bull and ran out of the stable yard.
Or at least he started to. At the corner of the castle, he stumbled headlong into Sir Alistair coming the other way.
“Whoa, there.” Sir Alistair caught Jamie easily in both hands.
