As his butler’s expression was taut thanks to all the howling and goodness knew what else, Harry braced himself to hear the worst.
“That blasted mutt will be the death of me!” He used a dusting rag to punctuate each word, clearly at his wit’s end as he was still wearing his brown polishing apron, which he would never usually be seen dead in to open the door. “He’s been caterwauling outside the kitchen door nonstop for hours now!”
As Harry really couldn’t do anything to solve the problem that was Norbert, he ignored that. “How did our new governess cope with her first full day with the hellions?”
“They haven’t killed her. Or at least they hadn’t when I last saw her at luncheon. She could very well be dead by now, of course. I certainly wish I was.” With that optimistic report, Simpkins marched off, muttering old sea dog obscenities about Norbert as he disappeared back to his polishing.
Alone, Harry allowed himself a few seconds of calm before he steeled himself to enter the lion’s den and behold the havoc that been wreaked today. Despite knowing it had to be done, and the inevitable carnage he knew he would be confronted with aside, after his peculiar reaction to her yesterday, he would feel much happier avoiding Miss Rowe today. And forever for that matter too.
He considered knocking on the classroom door, and was about to, when the door opened and there she was.
“Good afternoon, Captain.” She stepped to one side and ushered him in with a regal sweep of her arm. “The children will not be long—they are just finishing their penmanship practice.”
Which miraculously—unless he actually was hallucinating thanks to his lack of food, sleep, and oat sowing—indeed they were.
To his great surprise, all three of Flora’s hellions were not only seated behind their desks, which he noted still defiantly faced the opposite direction to his clock, they at least all had pens in their grubby hands. They were also using them in the way pens were made to be used.
More shocking was that the rest of the classroom was as neat as a pin. Instead of the chaos he had expected, there was glorious order. Almost as if she had done the impossible and completely conquered the children’s rebellious, uncivilized natures in just one day.
He would have been seriously impressed if she had also looked as neat as her classroom. Instead, Miss Rowe was undeniably frayed around the edges. Wisps of her pretty copper hair shot out like sparksfrom her head and the rest of her hairstyle was lopsided. Although bizarrely, and much to his chagrin, it suited her. However, there was also a tightness around her fine eyes, and her plump mouth was a trifle pinched. He also could not help noticing a tear in her rumpled dark skirt that revealed two inches of the frothy white petticoat beneath it. While his woman-starved, overworked, and sleep-deprived mind did not need the further distraction of a glimpse of her underwear, all the clues were there to suggest she was a woman who had been through an ordeal. One who was clinging to the façade of effortless control and serenity by her fingernails.
Even so, Harry was still, begrudgingly, impressed.
He hadn’t managed coming anywhere close to serenity with the three lovable reprobates in the five days since they had arrived. Yet here they all were. Quiet, seated, and working. That was a bloody miracle of biblical proportions. As confounding and unimaginable as feeding five thousand with just five loaves and fishes.
He wanted to ask her how she had done it.
Take her hand and shake it.
But instead, he gave her a half smile of approval because something about the angelic scene before him seemed too inconceivable to be fully believed and raised his suspicious hackles.
Maybe even galled.
He was big enough to admit this ungracious, distrusting jealousy likely stemmed from the overwhelming feelings of inadequacy which suddenly swamped him because what she had achieved, in next to no time, was truly beyond him.
“Have you all had a productive day?” For some inexplicable reason, he was rocking on his heels, and because he had no earthly idea what to do with his hands, had clasped them behind his back like his grandfather the admiral used to do when he was inspecting the fleet.And maybe it was his imagination, but even Miss Rowe seemed to be standing to attention as if he were.
Which was progress indeed too!
“We have, Captain. Just look at their work.”
Shyly, Grace held up hers to show him lines and lines of smudged squiggles. “I have been learning to join myS’s.” Thankful for that explanation as it gave him a clue what to look for, he smiled.
“That I can see, poppet.” He couldn’t. “Well done.”
As the other two were now staring at him expecting similar praise, Harry took a few seconds to appreciate their work too. Felix wrote like the impatient boy he was. The hastily scratched prose and accompanying blots looked as if a nest of his beloved spiders had scurried through the ink and scrambled across the page. But Felix had written something at least, so he would be grateful for small mercies.
Marianne’s handwriting was exactly like her: all bold, artful, sloping strokes which reminded him a great deal of her mother’s handwriting. Flora’s letters were always a thing of beauty—to behold, at least—while the chaotic but chatty contents of them often made his hair stand on end.
The last one had described, in alarming detail, her short but eventful “adventure” with glassblowing. Although how she could find humor in setting her frock on fire and having to be sluiced with an emergency bucket of water before her hair went up in flames too was anybody’s guess. But that summed up his mad sister in a nutshell. Life was just one big lark for Flora. Any day, he expected to receive a cheery letter from the land of the pharaohs describing at length how she had been kidnapped by bandits while on a solo climb up the pyramids, or an essay on how she had accidentally found herself swimming with piranhas when the leaky boat she had decided to take rowing down the Nile, without oars, capsized.
His sister was as reckless as she was irresponsible—so was it any wonder her offspring were quite so… wild?
“Splendid work, everyone.” In his peripheral vision, he saw Miss Rowe’s stiff posture slump slightly in relief. The speed at which she corrected it once again suggested that something about the serene scene before him was off. Almost as if it had been choreographed. “Apart from handwriting, what else have you learned today?” Out of the corner of his suspicious eye, his new governess stiffened and that confirmed it.
“Well, we learned about this king who couldn’t cook,” said Grace with such excitement she almost fell off her chair, “but despite that he was still great.”
“We studied Alfred the Great in our history lesson.” Miss Rowe made a big show of glancing at the clock, doubtless as a ploy to get rid of him. “I am sure the children would be delighted to tell you all about him over supper.” With just a tilt of her delectable body and an authoritarian clap of her hands, she dismissed him and her class at the same time. “Clear away now, everyone. You do not want to be late for Mrs. Rigsby’s delicious repast tonight as I hear that treacle pudding is on the menu.”
