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“It most certainly does. Are you contradicting me, young lady?”
“No, miss.”
“No, Miss Perkins,” she corrected. “Now then, children. Coats, hats, boots.” She returned the dictionary to the shelf and clapped her hands together. “Well don’t stand there staring. Quickly now. We’re going for a walk.”
“Don’t want to go for a walk,” said Michel, glowering at her.
“I’ll buy you some boiled sweets.” She wasn’t above a bit of bribery, even if it meant depleting her small store of coins.
She’d hit upon a winning argument.
They scrambled for their coats, which were hanging on pegs by the wardrobe.
The outdoors was the best place for them. They had been curled in on themselves, just surviving, for so long.
What they required was fresh air and freedom.
Today she must be the Pied Piper. Lead them on an adventure.
“Follow me, children. Shipshape and Bristol fashion, if you please.”
Edgar hoped Miss Perkins was faring better today than Bonny Brindle, the prizefighter he’d wagered his money on.
Brindle was receiving a right drubbing, staggering about the sawdust-covered floor like a drunken sailor on a pitching boat.
“Flatten him!” shouted the Duke of Westbury, cheering for Brindle’s opponent, a hulking pugilist appropriately named Big Ben.
Edgar had reluctantly agreed to meet his childhood friend, whom everyone called West, at the Red Lion public house, because the duke had refused to meet anywhere else.
Attending illegal boxing matches was hardly a priority for Edgar, but he needed to convince West to allow the railway to run through the edge of his pleasure estate, Westbury Abbey, near Watford.
And so here he was. Not where he should be, at his foundry, working on the engine design. But here, in a crowd of bloodthirsty, inebriated men, with the scent of stale ale and sweat filling his nostrils.
There were so many other, less nauseating, odors.
Sweet lilac and warm woman, for example.
Mari-rhymes-with-starry.
What a whimsical way to describe oneself.
She may pretend to be strict, no-nonsense, and cut from the same cloth as Miss Dunkirk, but he imagined Miss Perkins had a wildly romantic streak.
There was something about the light flickering in her blue eyes—the glimmer of hope and optimism.
She probably memorized poetry while bathing. With rose petals bobbing in the bathwater.
He’d like to bob in her bathwater.
Good God. He kept having the most inappropriate thoughts about her.
Maybe it would be best for all concerned if the twins sent her running back to her agency.
Though it was unlikely they would wear down her resolve in only one day, but not out of the realm of possibility. They’d rid themselves of Governess Number Three in a matter of hours with some sort of homemade itching powder.
Actually, he’d been rather proud of their ingenuity on that occasion.
Had they put pepper in Miss Perkins’s tea? Pebbles in her boots? The toads and spiders wouldn’t work. She was hardly squeamish.
