I am officially noting, for the record, that my second season was more disappointing than my first. I am increasingly convinced that balls are not the best place to find my soulmate and I should also like it notedagainthat Ihatemy stupid name. I swear it does nothing but give libidinous men ideas…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 20
“Line up in an orderly fashion or you will be left behind!” For some reason, the Reverend Smythe was bellowing on the street below, so loudly that even the thick pillow over Gal’s head did little to drown out the sound.
With Mr. Evans and his boys constantly hammering away downstairs, and sleep being a necessity he couldn’t live without, he had trained himself to sleep through all sorts of morning noise in the last few weeks. But there was noise and then there wasnoise, and there was no blocking out what was going on outside his window this morning. Especially as he had spent most of last night’s designated hours of sleep pondering Venus and what he was going to do about her after Muldoon had put an unwelcome flea in his ear.
An annoying, nipping, persistent little critter that had forced him to stop and think exactly where the path he had stuck to so diligentlywas actually going. And more important, whether he wanted to continue on it alone.
“Tommy Claypole! I am warning you…” As the reverend’s anger rose in volume, Gal gave up trying to either sleep through it or make any sense of his conflicting feelings regarding Venus, shrugged on his discarded shirt, and padded barefoot to the window to see what the hell all the hullabaloo was about.
In the midst of a crowd of children in varying stages of maturity were the reverend and his wife. Lined up behind them were at least six hackneys, one already holding a fraught Mrs. Witherspoon and a coach full of the littlest orphans. Standing in the road waving another carriage down with her latest silly little reticule was Venus.
As if she sensed him watching she went from waving at the coachman to waving at him before she scurried his way, flapping her hands to encourage him to slide up his window.
“Can you skate?”
As that was the absolute last thing he expected to hear after the odd way things had ended between them last night, he frowned. “Skate? As inice-skate?” She beamed nodding and suddenly he did not mind in the slightest being so rudely awoken. “I haven’t done it in years.”
“But youcanskate?”
“In the loosest possible sense, yes…”
“Good. We could do with another adult. Get dressed and I’ll wait for you.” Before he could argue, she spun around to help the vicar and his wife wrangle the children.
Ten minutes later, and still not entirely sure which way was up, he reported for duty. “I thought the British stopped press-ganging unwitting recruits after Napoleon.”
She scoffed at that while still loading the second-from-last hackney with excited orphans. “You have to take the shilling to be officially press-ganged, Galahad, and you’re doing this gratis, out of the goodness of your heart.”
“I am?”
“Of course you are.” She grabbed his arm and yanked him toward the carriage and all the expectant faces inside, one of whose was Billy’s. “Because it is Christmas Eve, a time for goodwill to all, and because for the first time in what feels like months the sun is finally shining and the Serpentine is frozen. Because that makes it the perfect day to go skating.” With one subtle flick of her finger, all six of the tightly packed occupants inside shuffled over and Venus pushed all six feet of him into that six-inch space then slammed the door shut. “And because you clearly had nothing else pressing going on this morning.” She slapped the side of the conveyance, and off he went.
For all of thirty seconds, every child except Billy eyed him in silent appraisal, then—after assessing him correctly as someone who was out of his depth and doubtless smelling his fear—they all began to misbehave.
It started with just one boy, who licked his index finger thoroughly before shoving it into the ear of the girl next to him.
Obviously, and he really couldn’t blame her, that violated little girl took umbrage and thumped the boy. While Gal attempted to calm her down and chastise the owner of the offending spittle-covered digit, two of the other boys squashed beside him began to wrestle.
He tried to tell them off, wagging his finger with calm authority exactly as Venus had done so effectively. But where her pointed finger held the magical power to make children comply, his didn’t.
One of the girls, the one without the wet ear, decided to ignore his finger to join in the wrestling, and from the outset she fought dirty, using her teeth as well as her nails to give the boys what for.
“Stop that now!” Gal tried to prise the knot of wrestlers apart. “If you don’t stop this instant, I’m going to have this carriage turn around and take you all back to the orphanage!”
As if they all knew that this was the empty threat of a man who’d never had to deal with a child in his life, the wrestling continued unhindered. Worse, the biter stepped up her game, sinking her teeth into one of the boys’ arms until she drew blood. The kid screamed and kicked her to free it, then managed to kick Gal in the shin, too.
He was on the cusp of hollering at them all red-faced, like the good reverend, or throwing himself out onto the road to escape them like a coward when the hitherto silent Billy produced a pack of cards and held it out.
“Can you teach me that fancy shuffle that you do, Mr. Sinclair?”
Gal gave him his best death glare as he tried to separate the wrestlers again. “Now’sreallynot the time, Billy.”
The boy grabbed his hand and slapped the cards into them. “Trust me, Mr. Sinclair, now is the perfect time.” He gave him the look. The look that told him in no uncertain terms that with nothing else in his arsenal to control these little monsters, that fancy shuffle was likely all he had to prevent anarchy. His gaze flicked toward the original miscreant, who was again slathering his index finger in spit with his tongue ready to poke uninvited into another orifice. “Only Miss Merriwell always says that the devil always finds work for idle hands…”
Panicked, Gal cut the cards one-handed, his eyes focused on Billy—who was, bizarrely, the only child in here that hecouldtrust—and prayed that the scamp was right. “Shall we start with the basics to begin with, Billy Boy?” Although as he knew already nothing basic would work with this tough crowd, he began to perform every complicated trick he knew with all the exaggerated flair of a street entertainer.
Within moments—and to his complete but grateful surprise—one by one the children stopped attacking one another and focused on the flying cards, mesmerized. So entranced, he never heard another squeak out of them beyond shockedoohsandahsuntil they pulled up in Hyde Park.
