Georgie held her hand out, smiling. “Come on, Grace.” Sensingthat the child wouldn’t want to be too far behind the others, the second Grace warily took it, she pulled her into a run, quietly enjoying the sound of the little girl’s relieved and excited giggle as they dashed down the perfectly manicured lawn so fast that the neat hedge encompassing it blurred.
ChapterSIX
“I do not care if the ladybird we found had five spots.” Marianne slapped her brother’s meddlesome fingers away from the red collage insect she was decorating with black buttons. “I want my ladybird’s wings to be symmetrical.”
Georgie smiled as she gently wagged her finger at the more pedantic Felix, who was adamant that his sisters record nature accurately or not at all, pleased that Marianne had just relieved her of the need to teach the pair of them symmetry. “You leave Marianne to her ladybird and concentrate on the finishing touches to your shield bug.”
Not that Georgie was entirely sure what a shield bug was. But the boy had known the name of every other creepy-crawly they had spied in the garden, so she had no reason to doubt that the green, iridescent shield-shaped insect they had discovered on the hawthorn bush was indeed a hawthorn shield bug exactly as he’d claimed. That there were apparently several different species of shield bug was also news to her, but even teachers learned something new every day. It was one of the most rewarding aspects of the job.
More enlightening, however, was Felix’s talent for drawing. The meticulousness of the details he was currently recording on his perfectly proportioned and cleverly colored sketch suggested he had potential as an artist. “Will you be illustrating yourInsecta Britannicawhen you get around to writing it, Felix? Only I really think you should. That drawing is magnificent.”
His chest swelled with pride. “Of course I shall be, Miss Rowe. I fear thatIwill have to as I do not trust anyoneelseto do it correctly.” He used that as an excuse to jab Marianne with his elbow. “A less diligent illustrator might take artistic liberties and that wouldn’t be scientific at all. Some people aren’t interested in science or truth and prefer to indulge in pointless pastimes as they areall showandnosubstance.”
“Substance, like science, is boring,” was the unbothered middle sister’s imperious retort. “Much like Felix and his pointless obsession with stupid insects.” A comment that earned her a glare from her brother, and which made little Grace’s eyes roll subtly as they locked with Georgie’s in a Lord-give-me-strength kind of way before she selected the final chalk to complete her much more interesting picture of a bumblebee.
“Ballet isn’t going to change the world, Marianne! But science is.”
“The world would be a dull place indeed without ballet. Almost—but not quite—as dull as you, big brother.”
That was another thing she had learned about the children this afternoon. Felix and Marianne bickered constantly, mostly about nonsense which came in a steady stream of jibes and insults, so she knew to ignore it exactly like little Grace did. Running interference would be as pointless as trying to turn back the tide. It was obvious that they had niggled one other all their lives and likely would until their dying day. No amount of her nagging would ever change that.
Over the years, when she had been invited to spend her holidays with Lottie at her family’s farm, she had watched her friend spar constantly with her four brothers. It hadn’t been because they didn’t love one another, because they clearly did in a way that had made Georgie yearn all the more for a family of her own. More that it was the way the bond of love between them all manifested itself. “I choose to interfere only when there is blood involved,” was their father’s sage advice when she had initially been so shocked by all the fighting, and that sage advice seemed prudent here. Especially when, to an untrained eye, it looked as if Felix was the main antagonist when Marianne quietly did everything in her power to rub him up the wrong way first.
The ladybird’s spots were a case in point, as Marianne had originally counted out five buttons until a quick glance at her brother had prompted her to grab another. She had made it six purely to vex him and, being oblivious of that, Felix had happily complied. Now, he was wound tighter than a spring at her lack of respect for the truth while she was silently enjoying his outrage.
But then girls were always much cleverer than boys at manipulating a situation to serve their own ends, and Georgie already suspected that Marianne enjoyed getting her big brother into trouble almost as much as she delighted in riling him. There had been an incident earlier when she had used all her acting skills to fall over and had loudly proclaimed that Felix had pushed her.
Georgie had ignored that, too, because Felix had quietly taunted her with a slimy snail beforehand, so he was no innocent in the proceedings either. Rather than get sucked into the futility of mediating their never-ending but harmless war, she pretended she hadn’t seen or heard either indiscretion. Instead, she had distracted them by suddenly decreeing that the first Pendleton who could race to the end ofthe garden before the others would be the one who chose tonight’s story.
Thankfully, as she had anticipated, it was their furry brother Master Norbert Pendleton who won, making the decision moot and thus avoiding another altercation or any accusations of cheating. However, it had not gone unnoticed that the pair of them had resorted to all sorts of unsportsmanlike tactics in that short, mad dash up the lawn to sabotage the other. But in the reassuring absence of any blood, she had pretended to ignore all those, too, as she cheered them on. As Shakespeare had the victor of the Battle of Agincourt, Henry IV, say, discretion was always the better part of valor.
Wise words to live by—even if they did purport to come from a military man. Especially for a governess. And especially this close to supper time.
“I cannot believe what a good job the three of you have done with these sketches.” Georgie beamed at them all in turn in awe and wonder. “We must display them. Where shall we hang them?”
“What about under the clock?” Marianne turned to the empty wall behind them where the blackboard had been.
“A splendid idea. But how do we hang them up without putting pinholes in your uncle’s pristine wall?” Georgie looked to Felix for the answer to include him in the decision and thus deftly avoid another bickering session between the eldest two siblings.
He pondered the problem for a moment, then grinned, all previous irritation with his sister forgotten. “If we string the pictures together, we could hang them from the clock.”
“Once we’ve all tidied up, why don’t you three do that, then we can hang up the first acquisitions for our new gallery together before supper, which is…?” For the first time Georgie glanced at the imposing clock and realized that it was already five minutes to five. The tidying could wait until the children were eating. “Better still, ratherthan be late for Mrs. Rigsby, hurry up and find where the string lives in those boxes and we’ll hang your masterpieces now.”
The moment the children rose, so did Norbert, and as they pulled down box after box to riffle through them, he assisted while Felix and Marianne bickered. Or at least the dog thought he was assisting by burrowing his nose in all the contents as they jostled one another, his big tail wagging as he got completely in the way. The moment Felix’s hand shot in the air in triumph, clutching the ball of string, the dog grabbed it, then, assuming it had been produced so that he could play a spirited game of ball, decided to run around in circles with it while the children chased him.
Within seconds, the ball was no more and the string was tangled around everything, including the legs of the blackboard. It wobbled ominously for a moment. Georgie managed to lunge sideways to prop it up before it fell, but not before all her new sticks of chalk flew hither and thither until they shattered on the floor. A moment later, Norbert ran straight over them and ground several nubs into powder beneath his big paws, and suddenly there were paw prints everywhere too. Enormous white smudges on the once-polished parquet that she would also now have to tidy up along with everything else.
“What the blazes has happened here?” Still clutching the blackboard, Georgie jumped at the sound of the captain’s unimpressed voice. Then winced at the thoroughly appalled sight of him filling the doorway.
Harry blinked at the carnage in disbelief as anger bubbled.
All his carefully considered order was gone. Willfully and purposefully destroyed.
In its entirety.
The three desks and chairs no longer sat in a neat row facingthe blackboard because the blackboard had been shoved in a corner. Nothing had been written on it, apart from the blatantly ignored schedule he had put there the night before. The desks now rested in a haphazard arc around the periphery. To make way, no doubt, for the huge mess on the floor which was littered with so much chalk, string, paper, and other stuff he could only imagine the children—or their clearly useless governess—had opened up all the boxes and tossed the contents about like confetti.
To add insult to injury, the mad dog chose that precise moment to deposit the remnants of what once had been a ball of string on the toes of his boots before he sat, tail wagging and eyes expectant as if he was waiting for Harry to throw it for him, smearing the glossy leather of his favorite pair of hessians in a slimy coating of drool in the process.
