“Enchantée, mademoiselle Rowe.” And of course, because she lived to test him, today Marianne was going to be a divaà la française—purely to vex him. “Comment allez-vous?”
“Très bien, merci!” The breathtaking beam stretched wider as Miss Rowe’s beguiling eyes twinkled, and she clapped before she shook his niece’s regally proffered hand. “And I must saybravo, Miss Marianne! A sublime performance and such impeccable French. What an accomplished young lady you are.”
“I can sing too. Shall I demonstrate?”
As Marianne’s skinny rib cage began to inflate, ready to blast out one of her awful, out-of-tune arias, Harry caught her shoulders, spun her around, and sent her back to the others with a decisive shove. “You can delight Miss Rowe another time with your unique musical stylings, young lady.”
Before the diva argued, he offered little Grace his most reassuring smile, praying that the half an hour he had spent with her this morning practicing walking, rather than sprinting, was still fresh enough in her mind that she wouldn’t explode forward like a whirling dervish and injure herself on the furniture again. “Last, but by no means least, may I present to you Miss Grace Pendleton, who is working hard to grow into that name.” It seemed only fair to both his five-year-old niece and Miss Rowe not to set the bar too high. Miss Rowe would discover soon enough that poor Grace possessed no gracewhatsoever and went everywhere at a gallop, no matter what. Never mind that the sensitive baby of the family would also burst into tears if she thought she had disappointed someone in any way. What the child lacked in decorum, she more than made up with heart.
To her credit, his niece tried her best to be sedate and used two hands to pick up the edges of her frilly little skirt before she stomped slowly and methodically forward as if every single step was a challenge, her big blue eyes flicking to his as she sought reassurance for her efforts. While the new governess wasn’t looking, he winked at the child and gave her a subtle raised thumb before he hid it in his folded arms.
“How do you do, Miss Grace?” Miss Rowe knelt to shake the little and doubtless sticky hand. There had been some toffees involved in the walking practice too this morning, seeing as the task proved to be such a challenge and frustrated tears had been imminent.
“My tooth is wiggling, see?” Grace opened her mouth widely and close to Miss Rowe’s face, then pushed her tongue against the tiny incisor to prove that was so. “Once it falls out, I’m going to give it to Felix for his collection. He’s already got all of Marianne’s and his own, and once he gets all mine, he’s going to string them onto a necklace to give to Mama for Christmas. He’s very good at making jewelry. Last Christmas he made her a bracelet out of beetles. They were all dead, of course, first.”
It took all of Harry’s strength not to allow his mouth to hang slack, because of all the sentences he had hoped little Grace would say, it certainly wasn’t that one.
He was about to apologize for it when Miss Rowe smiled. “I am glad to hear it, for it strikes me that a bracelet made of live beetles would be a trifle itchy. But still fun, though. Especially in church.” Then she laughed.
It was unrestrained and earthy and outrageously seductive.
Seductive enough that it thoroughly scrambled his wits, and his jaw did gape momentarily until he hoisted it up like a mainsail before she turned to him with a genuine smile. “Your nieces and nephew are quite delightful, Captain Kincaid. I believe we shall all get on famously.”
“Excellent.” Now that they had all conspired to lull her into a false sense of security, it seemed a prudent time for him to leave before all hell broke loose and she changed her mind. “I shall pass you to the capable hands of Mrs. Rigsby so that you can unpack and prepare before your lessons commence after luncheon, which will give you…” He snapped open one of his pocket watches. “… almost six hours to steel yourself for the ordeal before you have to sip from the cup of destruction.”
“You considerGenghis Khana military giant whose shoulders you want to stand on?”
He shrugged, impressed that she had recognized that misquote too and more impressed that she had the confidence to call him on it. Maybe she had some steel in her spine after all. “As you clearly like to read, too, Miss Rowe, I daresay you will agree that while he was undeniably a ruthless, bloodthirsty, and power-hungry maniac with few pleasant qualities to recommend him, old Genghis knew how to fight a battle.” He hoped, for her sake, that she did too. “If you will just follow me.”
As her smile melted and she sailed past him again, he hung back to give the manipulative children a wink for upholding their bargain, then stiffened.
“Norbert!” Simpkins’s panicked voice came from afar, signaling that all hell was indeed about to break loose.
“NORBERT!” Something crashed in the vicinity of the kitchen.
“NORBERT! Those sausages are not meant for you, you scabrous bag of fleas!”
There was a scuffle. One which clearly included Mrs. Rigsby as his two most senior servants loudly wrestled for the stolen sausages, then another, bigger, crash.
If that wasn’t enough to raise all of Harry’s hackles as he dashed into the hallway to intercede, Simpkins resorted to salty sailor insults, a sure sign that he was at his wit’s end with a situation far beyond even his meticulous control. “Get back here this second, you useless, bilge-sucking, horn-swaggling, DERANGED, SCURVY DOG!”
Clearly unfettered and in a hurry to escape, Norbert’s enormous paws thundered down the hallway as he barreled toward them, the string of pilfered sausages dangling from his mouth.
He dropped them the moment he spotted Miss Rowe and sped up, eager to greet the latest human to grace his pack in his own inimitable way. Before he could warn her to take cover, Norbert launched like a racehorse jumping a gate. Time slowed as Harry lunged, too late to use his body to make any significant impact on Norbert’s determined trajectory. Instead, Harry’s head met the opposite wall with such a thud that he saw stars, while a blur of excited gray whizzed past him.
Norbert hit Miss Rowe with some force. Enough that Harry heard all the air exit her lungs in one big whoosh. Green eyes wide, she shrieked as she flew backward beneath the animal’s immense weight. Then lay motionless and winded beneath him as the giant devil-dog licked her startled face as if his troublesome, grossly untrained canine life depended upon it.
After the most dubious of starts, which thanks to the pompous captain had lived up to all her lowest expectations, Georgie’s first day had improved rapidly.
To be fair, the only way was up after Norbert had knocked herdown so spectacularly. But after dreading crossing Captain Kincaid’s threshold, then having all her worst fears about him confirmed with his regimented and soulless attempt at creating a classroom, he had redeemed himself slightly by trying to save her.
That had been noble, despite his failure.
He had been so mortified by Norbert’s exuberant welcome that he had apologized profusely for a full half an hour before she had managed to convince him no real harm had been done and that he could go about his day. The same could not be said for him, though, as Captain Kincaid had crashed headlong into the wall with such force a nasty bump had erupted on his forehead. Enough of one that the butler had insisted he might be too concussed to ride his horse to Whitehall. After a short argument, which the butler won, Simpkins issued him with a cold compress to use in the carriage. Despite all the captain’s protestations that the wound wasn’t bad enough for all that fuss, Georgie had still witnessed him press it to his temple and wince when he finally left.
Since then, with the children mysteriously missing, she hadn’t done much of anything beyond unpack, take a tour of the house, and drink tea with Mrs. Rigsby. The cook had been a wealth of information about her new employer and was such a shameless gossip that Georgie hadn’t even needed to ask about him.
Now she knew that Captain Kincaid had turned thirty at Christmas. That he excelled at everything he turned his hand to and that was why he had risen in the ranks of the navy so fast. That he had gone from being a boy first class on board his first ship to captain at just five and twenty, which Mrs. Rigsby believed made him the youngest ever. That he was working at the Admiralty for the foreseeable, and had been for the last two years, because it was the quickest route to promotion and because he had a talent for getting troublesome thingsdone fast. While that talent would also doubtless ensure the captain became the youngest admiral the navy had ever seen too—as was his destiny—it was, according to the cook, also a double-edged sword. His superiors now constantly took advantage of his good nature—which Georgie would believe he actually possessed when she saw it—because they kept him so busy he barely had time to sleep.
