“Agreed.” Portia nodded with a wicked smile. “A marvelous memory to recall on one’s deathbed.”
That was the last straw, and Georgie forgot to whisper. “Are you both so shallow that all it takes is a handsome face to seduce you?”
“It’s notjusthis mouth or his face. Or even his shoulders, although those are incentive enough.” An unrepentant Lottie turned to stare again, and when that earned her a jab in the arm, shrugged. “If one ignores his many attractive physical attributes, he also seems to have a nice way with the children.”
“He is their uncle! Their only uncle—so he has to be nice to them.”
“Do you see any other lone uncles in there, or even fathers forthat matter, laughing over a mountain of ice cream with three children?” Lottie’s eyes wandered back to Captain Kincaid in blatant appreciation. “Didyounot hear what I told you about the perceptiveness of children and animals? If the dog loves him and those children plainly worship the ground he walks on, then he cannot be all bad, Georgie. It’s simply not possible.”
“Maybe he’s been such a stickler toward you because he genuinely does care deeply about their welfare exactly as Lottie said. Have you considered that?” Clearly, Portia was now so enamored of his good looks that she had clean forgotten that she was a cynic who rarely gave anyone the benefit of the doubt until they had proved themselves worthy with deeds and not words. Instead, she smiled soppily as she gestured his way, needing neither deeds nor words when apparently, shoulders were quite enough. “And that is why they adore him so.”
Of course they adored him! He was a man who excelled at everything, after all, so of course he would also excel at being an uncle too! The overachieving wretch.
“Anyone can bribe a child for an hour or so with ice cream.” Although for some reason, he seemed to have bought the children the entire shop. “Stuffing them full of dessert does not make him redeemable. In fact, it suggests quite the opposite. That he is so irredeemable that the only way he can make them like him is to bribe them with treats.” Even as she said it, Georgie didn’t fully believe it. The children had loved him before the presence of ice cream. The way they spoke of him and the frequency in which he appeared in their conversations were proof that, for all his many, many,manyfaults, there was something intrinsically decent about him, even if she had no firsthand experience of it.
Felix had called him a good egg, when he forgot to be hard-boiled, and there was no sign of that hardness today. The egg who sat inside Gunther’s this afternoon was as soft as soft could be.
Against her will, she was compelled to glance at him again, and managed to catch him gently wiping little Grace’s ice cream–covered chin with his napkin, watching him smile as he did so and his besotted niece smile back.
Drat him.
Portia was right. He adored those children too.
And a soft-boiled Captain Kincaid was not a version of him she ever wanted to be forced to contemplate.
ChapterTEN
Harry shook the worst of the water from his hair before he used his key to open the front door. He never expected poor Simpkins to wait up for him past eleven, and at almost two in the morning, his trusty retainer would have been in bed for hours. He had left the lamp burning low in the hallway though, and, as was customary when his master ran out of hours in the day at the Admiralty to do what they expected of him, he had left a fresh candle lying on the side to light his way to bed. Or to the kitchen where another solitary supper of bread, cheese, and cold cuts would be awaiting him.
Sadly, it was a routine which had become all too familiar in the last two years. The more supposedly impossible things he managed to get done, the more convoluted complications the top brass sent his way to test him. All problems that apparently nobody else in His Majesty’s entire navy had the wherewithal to solve, and he resented it. They were relentless. The work, never-ending. Tonight, worn down and worn out and so sick and tired of the constant battles he had to fight on the navy’s behalf, Harry felt as though he were drowning init all, which was ironic as the rain outside was so torrential, it was a wonder he hadn’t drowned on the miserable, lonely ride home.
That the sudden storm had materialized out of nowhere exactly three minutes after he had set off seemed indicative of his current bad luck, where everything that possibly could go wrong did. The bloodyBoadicea, the constant stream of problems sent his way by the Admiralty, Flora’s unexpected trip to Egypt, the unwelcome responsibility of the children. Mad Norbert. His troubling governess and his more troubling and unwelcome reaction to her, and now he could also add the collective merchants of Portsmouth into the mix. The latter had ensured that the lazier Sunday he had promised himself and willed his life away all week for was ruined before it had even started. All things completely out of his control, all conspiring together to take advantage and to put what felt like the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Being soaked to the skin with a good inch of water squishing inside his boots seemed like the least of his worries and a fitting end to one of the worst weeks of his life. To make his utter misery complete, if he couldn’t sort out the Portsmouth problem from his desk in Whitehall fast enough, he had orders to go there with all haste to fix it at the source because, clearly, the Admiralty thought he hadn’t suffered enough.
Not having the energy to eat, or even to shrug out of his sodden coat, he used the lamp to light his candle and squished wearily up the stairs. He let his coat fall in a heap on his bedchamber floor, tossed his soaking waistcoat and ruined cravat on top of it, then sat on his mattress to summon the last of his strength to toe off his boots. While he did so he wondered what, precisely, he was suffering all the Admiralty’s nonsense for when none of it seemed to bring him any joy.
He was in the process of peeling off his cold, damp shirt whenthe shadows dancing in the dim room were obliterated by a shard of lightning that was immediately followed by clap of thunder which boomed so loud and so close to his house that the window rattled.
A split second later, there was a bloodcurdling scream.
One which made him sprint out of the door and up the stairs to the floor above in a blind panic and start Norbert howling as if his life—or someone else’s—depended on it.
An equally stunned Felix met him head-on as he reached the landing, his faithful hound in tow. “It’s Grace! She’s terrified of thunder!”
As Harry could now hear her crying hysterically, he did not doubt his nephew’s assessment for a moment. “It’s all right, poppet.” He burst into the girls’ bedchamber as another flash of lightning briefly banished the darkness, and his little niece screamed again. The sight of her pale, petrified face as she hugged her knees to her chest tore at his heart and made him want to slay dragons.
“It’s just a storm, sweetheart.” She cowered at the answering thunder, looking so small in the middle of the big bed, so afraid, her hands covering her ears before he could scoop her into his arms. “Shhhhh… I’ve got you. It’s just a storm. It won’t hurt you.”
As more lightning followed, she clung to him, her heart hammering so hard it beat like a drum against his ribs. Trying to help, Norbert pressed his forehead into the small of her back, sandwiching her tight between them while he growled at the next rumble of thunder as if that alone would make it stop.
It did nothing to calm his terrified niece, who was now screaming at the top of her lungs.
Harry carried her toward the landing, reasoning that the dimmed lamplight would be more comforting than the jarring flashes of bright light which were now coming thick and fast as the storm raged directly overheard. The moment he stepped into it, he almost bumped into Miss Rowe.
“What’s happened?” Wild-eyed and even wilder-haired, she hadn’t bothered grabbing a shawl or a robe in her haste to get to them. Two small bare feet poked out beneath the hem of her voluminous nightdress, which wasn’t fastened by the ribbons at the neck so hung slightly askew, exposing more of her creamy left shoulder than he was comfortable seeing.
“Grace is afraid of the thunder,” said Felix as he stroked his baby sister’s arm.
