AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It is exactly as yours is, you cheeky thing.” Garben gestured to the children who had gathered around them. “These are Tarben, Bernadette, and Ursella.” Bernadette gave her best version of a curtsy and wobbled; Tarben chose not to bow and commenced hopping up and down on one leg.
The littlest of the three reached out a finger to touch Beatrice’s wedding ring and then leaned against her leg, small fingers bunching the apron and skirt.
“Oh, there now, Ursella’s seal of approval.” Charlotte beamed down at her daughter. “She’s a shy little bit, doesn’t take to many.”
“Is she fond of the chill of winter, then?” Charlotte gaped at the duke, and little Bernadette outright gasped. So. She was not alone in finding Osborn rough around the edges and prone to impulsive speech.
Beatrice ignored him and turned to his family. “I am sorry to have greeted you in such disorder and with no preparation.” Even to her ears this did not sound apologetic, but rather like she blamed her guests for their presence. The child’s fist burned like a brand. “I fear we…the nursery…is not… We have only wrestled one suite into usefulness. It will be a crush for your…your family.”
“We are well used to close quarters,” Ben said. “It is typical of our kind when the children are this age.”
“Then allow me to make you as comfortable as I may.” She gently worked her apron out of the little girl’s clutches and fled.
***
Arthur turned to his beaming brother and sighed at the look on his sister-in-law’s face.
“Charlie.”
“Artie. Felicitations upon your marriage.” Only Charlotte could infuse an anodyne tribute with grave censure. The things the woman could convey with a look and a pair of crossed arms. He was surrounded by diminutive women who wielded their gestures like swords.
“I’d no choice in the matter and no way to contact you,” he said. He crossed his own arms, which served to intimidate Charlotte not one jot. “And yet here you are, as if my efforts to supply news could ever exceed your ability to gain it.”
“How poorly you spoke in front of your wife.” That chin! It was like cannon on the fields of Waterloo. “Mannerless clod.”
He bent down so she may more easily clout him on the ear. The children shrieked with glee, the two eldest capering about their mother.
“Where did my auntie go?” Bernadette demanded.
“She’s my auntie as well!” Tarben was never one to be left out.
“Wherever aunties go when they are sorting out beds for their nieces and nephews,” said Ben.
Tarben fidgeted. “Will we sleep in these beds for long? Maybe?”
His brother’s family turned to Arthur, hope in the children’s eyes and wariness in the adults’. Was there a heart so like a stone to say them nay? Their worldly belongings were lashed on the cart, and while they were clean and pressed, there was an air about Ben’s family—hisfamily—that spoke of weary rootlessness. What could he offer them that another’s roof could not? His roof was little more than a series of loosely joined holes! The place was in rag order, never mind how much Madam had accomplished in so little time. And yet a familiar roof, his brother’s childhood home, a sieve as it may be, must serve to provide better shelter than a strange place…
“In you get, and see what you’re asking for,” he said.
In his rush to the forecourt, he had failed to notice that the foyer was blessedly free of arachnid industry. Its black-and-white-tiled floor shone, the windows were well scrubbed, and the wooden paneling, depicting bears in every posture of hunt and play, gleamed like new.
Tarben eyed the banister, and Bernadette hung her bonnet from a hook on the freshly polished tallboy. Morag stood, hands on hips, in the corridor, and Arthur was surprised she’d not made more of the unexpected visitors. “Take the cubs to the kitchen for spoiling,” he directed her. Tarben cheered, Bernadette curtsied at him again, and Ursella… “Where is Ursella?”
She was crouched behind the open door, looking closely at a detail on one of the panels, of two bears fighting. Or at least he hoped they were fighting and not mating. “Up you get, petal,” Arthur said, “and off you go.”
“She’s forever going astray,” Charlotte said.
“You won’t thank me for ruining their supper,” said Arthur, as though it would make them think twice about staying.
“That’s what uncles are for.” Ben clapped him on the shoulder. “It will be second nature once the sleuth establishes again.”
“We are not—” Arthur began and chivvied them into the reception room. The door was still leaning against the wall, and the footstool remained the lone occupant, but the wood of the floor was newly polished to a shine. There were two sofas up in the attics that would look well in here, as would the large mirror Madam had nearly pulled down on herself.
“Have you taken against furnishings?” Charlotte asked.
“There’s any number of chairs and such, er…” Ben trailed off.
Arthur bared his teeth. “Was it you, then, stuffing the attics full of the old things?”
