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Chapter 4
Robert was quickly shown up to his room and spent the next little while getting himself comfortable in his new accommodations. His allotted room was on the second floor in the east wing of the house, and while it was not very grand, it was far more comfortable than the room that he had been ‘assigned’ at home.
There was a large four-poster bed that had a stunningly intricate quilt atop it on one side of the room, and on the other, there was an enormous, ornate fireplace. Two paintings hung on the walls; one was of two young boys sitting with their backs to the painter looking over a field of grass blowing gently in the wind, and the other was a seasonal bouquet of flowers in a decorative vase.
Robert was just putting what few clothes he had brought with him into the closet when he thought he heard someone open the door. He turned around and looked at the entryway, but there was no one there. He shrugged and returned to his folding and hanging, but then he heard someone’s footsteps, and so he whirled around quite quickly. So quickly, in fact, that he made the young woman who was standing in his room yelp out of surprise, which, in turn, made Robert jump.
“Gracious, I am so sorry!” the young woman said, clutching her chest and looking at him, wide-eyed. “I had not realized that anyone would be in this room; it is typically an empty guest bedroom. I came in here to hide from the children; I did not mean to startle you. I will leave you alone at once.”
The young woman turned on her heel, and Robert was still in such shock that he very nearly let her get away. Thankfully, however, his mouth began functioning before his brain did, and so he managed to spit out, “Hide... from the children?”
The young woman stopped with her hand poised to open the door and exit. She then turned back around and faced Robert. The moment she did, Robert’s heart jumped into his throat. The woman was quite beautiful in an elegant, refined way. The first thing that he noticed about her was that she was extraordinarily tall. He knew that she wasn’t quite his height, which was about six feet, one inch tall, but he guessed that she had to be taller than his brother. George was on the shorter side of things for a man, standing at only about five feet eight inches. This young woman seemed to be right in between the two brothers’ heights.
The next thing he noticed about her was her hair. She had soft red hair that complemented her complexion so perfectly that for a moment she didn’t even look real. She possessed a petite, heart-shaped face with the most magnificent green eyes Robert had ever seen. Her lips came together in a perfect bow when they were pursed, as they were right now, and her cheeks had a pleasant rosiness to them. She was dressed in quite a plain yet obviously very practical gown in a pretty shade of navy blue.
When she heard Robert’s comment, her lips curled upwards into a smile, and Robert thought he might faint because of how much her happy look charmed him. But upon realizing she was smiling, she pressed her fingers to her lips, as though embarrassed by her amusement.
“I apologize once again; I was not delighting in your confusion – I was laughing at myself for having used such a strange sentence without context. I am hiding from the children because we are playing a game, and they have endeavoured to find me. They’re surprisingly skilled for such young people, and so I thought I would be sneaky and come in here through the secret passageway,” the young woman explained, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
Robert’s brow furrowed, and he put his hands on his hips. “Forgive me, did you say secret passageway?”
The young woman nodded. “Would you like to see it?”
Unsure of what else to do, Robert agreed, and the young woman took off towards the fireplace. Then, she stopped abruptly, turned around once more, and faced Robert. “My third apology in the short time that we have been together comes right now: I’m sorry for not introducing myself. I’m Anne Watkins, the governess.”
“I’m …” Robert was about to introduce himself in return, but then he realized he couldn’t say his real name, or else he might give himself away. “I am Fredrick Austen, but you may call me Freddie. I’m the new property manager.”
Anne’s eyes widened. “What a pleasure it is to meet you, Freddie. I did not realize that there was to be a new property manager, but it seems that I was not informed of quite a few developments in this household. Never mind that, though. Come with me; we only have a few seconds until the children come searching for me!”
Anne took off in the direction of a small cupboard that Robert hadn’t noticed when he’d taken his initial perusal of the room, and when she opened it, she walked right inside and disappeared. Robert followed hesitantly behind her, and when he got in front of the cupboard opening, he saw that Ann had slid the back to the side. She was now standing in the room on the other side of the wall, waving at him.
“See? I just slipped through here, because even if the children saw me go in here, I would be …”
“WE FOUND YOU!” came a gleeful child’s cry from the other room. Anne suddenly disappeared from Robert’s view, but he could still hear her talking.
“Oh, you did, you did, you rotten scoundrels!” Anne called, and then Robert heard laughter.
He knew that the voices belonged to his nieces and nephew, and he thought that perhaps because they had not seen him, he would not have to see them right now. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to; he simply had not had time to prepare for seeing them.
Right away, however, a little boy’s voice said, “Who were you talking to? Is there someone in the cupboard, or are you speaking with the cat again?”
Robert chuckled to himself, but he must have done so a little too loudly because a moment later, a small, freckle-faced girl appeared in front of the opening to the cupboard.
“Annie, why is there a man in the cupboard?” the little girl asked with her head tilted to the side.
Robert did his best to hide the overwhelming feelings he experienced upon seeing his youngest niece, Amelie. Although the last time he had seen her, she was a newborn, he recognized her immediately. She had been born with pitch-black hair, whereas Andre and Margaret both had their father’s curly brown hair. As she stood in front of her uncle now, she wore an adorable red dress, and her hair was loose but quite well kept, especially because she was a four-year-old.
“Well, you see,” Robert began, hoping that the gentleness in his voice would carry so that she wouldn’t be frightened of this ‘stranger’, “Miss Watkins was telling me that she needed an excellent hiding spot. She mentioned that she had three youngsters searching for her, and they had managed to find her every time she’d hidden so far. I was just in the middle of telling her of the very best hiding spot in the whole house when you stumbled upon us.”
As Robert explained himself, he walked towards his niece, who looked surprisingly unafraid of him, even though she didn’t know who he was. When he reached the other room, he saw that it was almost an identical room to the one he was staying in, and when he looked over to Anne, he saw his other niece and nephew, Margaret and Andre, were standing by the door.
The last time he saw the pair was when they were quite young, as Lord Graham did not care for children and only allowed the family to visit once with one child each time they were first-born. From then on, the duke kept in contact with his grandchildren through stiff, abrupt letters, and yet he was somehow consistently dissatisfied with the short responses that he received from them. Lord Graham never understood that when one does not put in the work on one side of a relationship, it is typically not reciprocated on the other side.
He was so pleased to see that they had grown into such strong, healthy young children and that none of them had inherited their father’s struggle with childhood illnesses. Andre was quite tall for his age, with his head almost reaching the top of Anne’s shoulder.
He looked a great deal like his father, but his crystal blue eyes were undoubtedly his mother’s. Margaret, on the other hand, was hardly taller than her younger sisterand looked just like Eponine. She had her pretty brown curls half swept up and half cascading down her shoulders.
“The best hiding spot in the whole house?” Amelie cried, and Robert turned his attention back to her. “Where is that?”
