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Hercules returned, panting, and handed the ball over, covered in slobber. Eustace didn’t seem to mind. He threw it again. Averil thought that Hercules was going to sleep very well tonight.
“I had a nanny,” Eustace said after a moment. He wasn’t looking at her but there was something in his voice that made her watch him more closely. “Her name was Mrs. Slater. She used to pinch me if I did anything wrong, and then call me a crybaby if I cried. And she didn’t give me any food some nights, just took it for
herself. She’d eat it in front of me, and I felt really, really hungry.”
Averil tried to be calm. She clenched her hands in her lap and sat still, when what she really wanted to do was to pull Eustace into her arms and hug him tight. But she didn’t think he would like that. He’d be embarrassed.
“She sounds like a horrible person,” she said bluntly. Was this why Eustace was in London with his father? Was this why he hadn’t been sent away to school like the other young sons of the quality?
Eustace looked up at her quickly. “She was. Horrible.” He seemed relieved to have her agreement, and Averil realized he’d been worried she’d tell him he was a crybaby, too.
“What happened to Mrs. Slater?” Averil said curiously.
“Uncle James noticed the bruises and told Papa, and Papa sent her away. I’d never seen them so angry.”
“I’m glad,” Averil said. “What a terrible thing to happen to you, Eustace. But I do think you were unlucky with Mrs. Slater. Most nannies are nice and love children. You’d have to be very unlucky to meet anyone like that again. And if you did, then you’d know to tell your father, wouldn’t you?”
Eustace agreed that he would. He seemed to brighten up at the thought that the Mrs. Slaters of this world were few and far between, and if he did encounter one then he knew what to do.
Averil watched him throw the ball again, laughing as Hercules leapt over a bush, but inside her blood was boiling. How could anyone be so cruel to a child? She would never understand it. No wonder Lord Southbrook kept his son close to him. She was growing to like the earl more and more.
“I’m sorry, Papa.”
The note from James had been waiting for Rufus when he got home and at first he’d been furious that, after promising not to, his son had run off again. But when he reached Averil’s house and found them all cozy together in the parlor, that wretched dog taking up most of the floor space, he couldn’t continue to be angry. He’d always found it difficult to be angry with his son.
“I wanted to see Hercules again,” Eustace continued with his apology, looking up at Rufus with wide, innocent eyes. “And Averil said she didn’t mind. She said it was good for Beth’s nerves to have Hercules running about, to tire him out, you see.”
Rufus gave him a hard look. “Lady Averil,” he reminded him sternly.
“Oh, we’ve put all of that aside,” Averil said, her smile further eroding his angry father stance. “Eustace and I are friends.”
Eustace nodded, smiling at her. “Did you know, Papa, that Averil rescued Hercules from a man who was beating him? And he was so thin and sick, but she nursed him back to health.”
Rufus eyed the dog. “Doesn’t look as if it’s starving now,” he offered, and gave Averil a smile of his own. “But I’m not surprised Lady Averil would do something so kind.”
She was pouring tea for him, but he could see he’d made her blush.
“Actually, I was thinking about you,” he said, lowering his voice.
Startled, she looked up. For a moment he could only stare at her, as if he were under a spell, until James said something to Miss Harmon, and snapped him out of it. Averil turned back to the tea things and handed him his cup.
“Why were you thinking about me?” she asked him softly. “I’m sure you have more interesting things to think about, Lord Southbrook.”
He wondered if that were true. There were his debts and the future, but he didn’t want to think about them. There was James and Eustace, and all the other people dependent upon him. But he didn’t want to think about that, either. Thinking of Averil seemed a very good way to pass the time.
He cleared his throat. “I have a large house on my estate at Southbrook Castle. The dower house. It was where we used to put all the old poverty-stricken relatives, out of the way of the main house, but it’s been empty for years now. It needs some work on it, of course, but I was thinking it would be an ideal place for some of your Distressed Women. Certainly it’s isolated enough to keep them from straying.”
She looked surprised. “What a good idea! Of course, transporting them to Lincolnshire might be difficult. And I’d have to ask Gareth—after all, this is his project. I am only supposed to be helping him.”
Rufus sipped his tea. The hem of her dress was raised enough for him to see her lemon-yellow shoes, and her ankles, which were very neat in their white stockings. He wondered what it would be like to sit with her in the evenings at Southbrook Castle, with those little feet on his lap, and stroke her ankles. Yes, he’d start at her ankles and move upward, slowly, very slowly . . .
Rufus cleared his throat again. “Well, think about it. The offer is there.”
As long as he didn’t have to sell the castle and the land and everything else, he thought, his mood slipping into gloom. Perhaps he shouldn’t have mentioned the house but the idea had come to him and he hadn’t really thought it out in any detail. But now he’d mentioned it he felt rather proud of himself, and pleased with the glow in Averil’s gray eyes.
No matter how ill-judged that glow was. Because if she really knew what was in his mind she would be throwing her cup at his head and setting Hercules onto him.
Miss Harmon was suggesting that she and James take Eustace and Hercules out into the garden again. “One last play before you leave,” she said. A glance passed between her and Averil, and Rufus tried not to smile. He could guess what that meant. The companion was leaving her charge in the same room as the wicked earl, alone, and she was warning her to take extreme care not to be ravished.
