And despite her cruel jibe about Dorchester being better at kissing than him.
As if that pompous ass had the wherewithal to know or care how to please a woman. Or keep his flapping jaws shut long enough to even kiss one properly, for that matter. Venus had just meant to hurt him—and she had—but he would be gracious about that, too.
Because they were now neighbors.
And because that was the sort of man he was, goddamn it!
Gal held his breath as the twins reached his door. One of them pushed and he poised to pounce as the wood creaked open. The door and the shadows camouflaged him as the first boy entered carrying a large basket.
“Do I let ’em all go now, Tommy?” Sydney’s fingers hovered over the leather strap securing a large basket, and whatever was within it moved with such determination the whole thing wobbled in the boy’s grasp.
“Not yet, Syd. Not until I’ve sorted the windows.” The dominant twin marched into Gal’s attic as if he owned the place, wielding a hammer and jiggling the handful of nails necessary to do his own special renovations on the frames.
Gal let him get all the way to the first sash window before he lazily pushed the door shut.
“Mornin’, boys.”
As he expected, both tearaways screamed in alarm.
What he didn’t expect was Tommy throwing the hammer at his head like the Norse god Thor unleashing his thunder.
The heavy tool whizzed, spinning through the air at such speed that Gal only just managed to sidestep it before it cracked his skull open, but not fast enough for it to miss him entirely. Pain exploded white behind his eyes as the hammer landed on his bootless foot and he screamed, too.
Then screamed some more when something wild and angry and definitely squawking burst from the basket in a hail of feathers and flew at his head faster than the hammer. With such fury he had to throw up his arms to shield against the birds flying into his face. Something that might not have been so catastrophic if Gal had been standing on two feet. But as he was hopping on one while his instep throbbed as if it were about to explode, the motion threw him off balance.
Before his backside hit the ground, it hit the half-empty earthenware bowl that still held the remnants of his lackluster stew. With an ominous crack, the bowl immediately shattered beneath his weight, sending a shard of dense pottery into the flesh of his left ass cheek like a dagger.
As fresh pain gripped him, and while Vee’s terrible twins were attacked by what looked a lot like common street pigeons, the cold, congealed remnants of his dinner seeped into the seat of his breeches and made his dreadful first night in his new home complete.
Chapter Sixteen
I am not the only one convinced Diana and Giles were made for each other. Convincing my stubborn, cynical sister of that fact, however, is proving to be a challenge…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 18
“There has been an incident.” Mrs. Witherspoon met her at the door of the orphanage the moment Vee walked through it at eight. “Unsurprisingly, it involves the Claypoles.”
“Oh dear.” Tommy had been doing so well of late, too. “Another silly prank?” If it involved spiders again, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t strangle him.
“If you call breaking and entering and injuring a person silly.” The older woman’s expression was grave as she wrung her hands. “The reverend has had to summon the physician.”
“What!” Because the matron had quickened her pace, Vee did, too. “Is the injury that bad?”
“One of them is bad enough to need stitches.” Which rather suggested there were multiple injuries involved. “I pray the stitches are enough to stop an infection setting in.” Which rather suggested the wound needing stitches was big.
Mrs. Witherspoon gestured toward the office where both Tommyand Sydney stood shamefaced like two sentries outside. The dried blood of several small nicks and cuts marred their freckled faces, but even wounded she had little sympathy for them and wagged her finger at them in outright disgust. “I shall deal with you two later!” The twins withered some more at her outrage as she marched past to slam her palm against the office door.
“I’m not sure that you should go in there yet!”
Mrs. Witherspoon’s panicked warning came a second too late and Vee was confronted with the sight of Galahad Sinclair spread-eagled facedown over the reverend’s desk, his naked backside practically staring her in the face.
“Oh my goodness!” Her hands flew to her mouth too late to prevent the high-pitched sound that came out. While they were too late for that, they were in time to clutch her suddenly beetroot-red cheeks. That it never occurred to her palms to cover her staring eyes when she couldn’t find the strength to avert her gaze only made her face hotter. “Oh my goodness!”
The door swung shut behind her and still she stared. “What on earth has happened?”
Her wayward eyes were so fixed on the taut, firm bottom displayed to the world in all its glory, it took them at least half a minute to realize that the reverend and the physician were also in the room, and a goodly few seconds more to notice the inch-long wound on the exposed left buttock that the physician was in the midst of stitching.
After what must have been an eternity of gawping, Vee had to go into battle with her eyeballs to wrench them away from Galahad’s pert posterior to focus on his pinched face.
