Rexanne Becnel (3 page)

But their puppy was going to provide something just as important, Phoebe decided. Protection and companionship.

“What shall we name him?” Helen asked as they made their slow way home through the advancing afternoon chill.

“Whatever you like. Here, don’t pull on the string so hard, sweetheart. Let’s untie him and teach him to follow us. That way he’ll learn the way home should he ever wander off.”

They decided to call him Bruno, after rejecting Laddie, Brownie, Spot, and Mister. When Bruno’s little legs would carry him no farther, Helen did. And when her arms grew tired, Phoebe took over the task. As they rounded the last craggy outcropping before their cottage, however, she put him down, and she and Helen ran the last slope of the stony path, with the little fellow trailing gamely behind.

“You’re home now,” Helen said, falling to her knees beside the front stoop, waiting for Bruno to reach her. “And you’ll keep those mean old robbers away from us, won’t you?”

It couldn’t happen too soon, Phoebe decided. For to her dismay, she could see that someone had been there while they were gone. A small muddy footstep outside the kitchen door, a broken stick, and a scratch on the shutter at the side of the house verified that someone had tried to pry the shutter open.

But she didn’t reveal any of that to Helen. At least it was only children, she consoled herself. The footstep was too small to be anything else. If she stayed close to home for the next few days, perhaps the little hooligans would give up and go bother someone else with their not so amusing pranks.

Three days later, however, the pranksters went too far. For when Phoebe finished washing Helen’s hair and went outside to brush it in the first sunshine they’d had after two days of drizzle, she discovered that the thieves had struck again. And this time they’d stolen the watchdog meant to protect the household. They’d taken Bruno.

Phoebe had to swallow a very unladylike oath. Helen started crying, but Phoebe shushed her as she examined the scene. Sure enough, a trail of small footprints led across the muddy yard to the field, and probably the woods beyond.

“You’ve gone too far this time,” she muttered. “Too far.” She didn’t pause to fetch a shawl or even lock the door. “Come on, Helen. They can’t be that far ahead of us. If we have to, we’ll capture these nasty little thieves ourselves.”

For once Helen conquered her timidity. She dashed her tears and followed Phoebe without complaint as they tracked the line of footprints in the damp ground and across the crushed grasses in the meadow. It was more difficult to follow the trail through the forest. But Phoebe had grown up traipsing through these woods and she remembered every dip and hollow that had attracted her as a girl. Slowly they crept beneath the arch of the oak trees, following a narrow deer path until she heard something and froze.

For a moment there was nothing but the sough of the breeze in the newly greened trees, and the everyday rustle of birds and beetles and burrowing spring creatures. A nervous Helen crowded up behind her.

“Shh,” she cautioned the child.

Then it came again, the high-pitched yip of a puppy. As one, Phoebe and Helen hurried on, following the yapping until they heard also the voice of a child.

“Are you hungry, then? Don’t worry, Georgie. I’ll swipe you a nice joint of mutton from the kitchen. You’ll like that, won’t you, my Georgie boy?”

The only answer was the puppy’s enthusiastic barking. Was it just the one child? “Stay here.” Phoebe mouthed the words to Helen. “Don’t come out till I summon you.” Then slow step by slow step she inched forward, past prickly holly and unfurling ferns.

“Fetch,” she heard the child order the puppy. “Fetch.”

But of course, the fat, stubby-legged little dog hadn’t yet mastered that trick.

Around the trunk of a massive oak tree Phoebe finally saw the child. To her surprise it was a girl, a very dirty girl in what looked like a well-made coat but which had a torn pocket, and a dangling hem, with a pair of ruined stockings sticking out beneath. Even more surprising than her appearance, however, was that Phoebe didn’t recognize the child. With her pale complexion and sandy-colored hair, she was definitely not a Gypsy. Nor was she from Swansford or any of the surrounding farms or cottages.

That was neither here nor there, however. The little thief’s identity could be determined later. Right now Phoebe just wanted to nab the light-fingered hooligan before she could get away.

“If you won’t fetch, what
will
you do?”

Phoebe watched as the girl sat down cross-legged in front of the panting puppy, then lifted it gently into her lap. “Are you tired, poor baby? Is it time for your nap?”

This was her chance, and Phoebe took it. She sprang from behind the tree and latched onto the girl’s arm with the same strength she used to hold the occasional recalcitrant goat.

The little girl was stronger than she looked, though, and even wilder. The puppy went flying as the child twisted away. But Phoebe lunged forward, tackling her in a patch of newly budded wild blueberries. It took all her weight to trap the struggling child and pin her to the ground. Nothing, however, could halt the stream of filthy curses that spewed from the little girl’s mouth.

“Let me go, you bloody arse! You stinkin’ cunt! You stupid bitch!”

Phoebe could scarcely believe her ears. “You’d better hush that sort of talk right now!” she hissed.

“I’ll cut out your bloody heart!” the girl screeched, trying to buck Phoebe off. “Just see if I don’t, you whore!”

“And I’ll wash your mouth out with soap. Where’s my bucket and my bench?”

“Go to bloody hell!”

Had she not heard the words, Phoebe would never believe a child could speak so horridly. And a girl at that. She was sorely tempted to slap the nasty-mouthed creature, if only to silence her. But she’d been slapped often enough as a child to know such punishment only bred a fiercer sort of resentment. She’d never once hit Helen, and she wouldn’t allow this poorly raised wretch to start her doing such things now.

“Where we’re going,” she muttered as she dragged the child upright, “is to the magistrate’s office. Then we’ll see how brave you are, my tart-tongued little friend.”

“Rot in hell!”

“It’ll be you who’ll rot in gaol if you don’t change your ways,” Phoebe snapped back, manacling the girl’s wrist with one hand while with the other she tried to smooth out her own skirts. And what a skinny wrist it was, she realized. She peered at the child, trying to see past the tangled mat of hair that fell over her face. “Who are you?”

“Bugger off!”

Phoebe’s nostrils flared with distaste. As angry as her own parents had made her, she’d never said the sort of things this girl did, nor thought them either. It took every bit of her forbearance to remember that for all her bravado, the little girl was probably terrified.

“Tell me who you are, and perhaps we can settle this with your parents instead of the authorities.”

At that the girl looked up. Slowly her angry glare shifted into a smug sort of cunning. “Do whatever you want. My father
is
the authority around here. He’s the most important person in these parts, and
you’re
the one as will end up in the gaol. Just see if you don’t!”

Two things registered in Phoebe’s mind. First, that the girl must be from London, for no one around here spoke with that peculiar sort of tough, clipped manner. Second, since Phoebe knew the child didn’t belong to the magistrate, and since only one other person in these parts outranked a magistrate, that meant her father must be…Lord Farley?

But no. That couldn’t be right. Lord Farley had no children. He wasn’t even married, for she would have heard if he was. The entire district would have been abuzz with the news. And anyway, this child appeared to be a little older than Helen.

Then again, as she well knew, some children were born on the wrong side of the sheets. The fact was, the stealing had only begun after Lord Farley’s arrival, and the child was heading toward Farley Park. The viscount could have brought his natural-born child to live at Farley Park. That would explain the fine quality of her clothes, if not the condition.

But the idea of so privileged a child stealing! That infuriated Phoebe more than anything. “What right has a girl like you to steal from poor folks like us?”

In short order they were marching through the woods, Phoebe dragging the nasty little beggar while Helen struggled to keep up with Bruno in her arms.

“Wait, Phoebe,” Helen pleaded.

“Phoebe, the evil one,” the other girl taunted. “Phoebe, the seedy. Phoebe, the frumpy, frightful-looking fool.”

It was all Phoebe could do not to snap at either of the children. By the time they traversed the forest and the long hill that was the shortcut to Farley Park, Helen was crying and Phoebe was cursing under her breath. At least the wretched little thief she’d caught was huffing too hard to cast any more invective at them.

Just when Phoebe thought she’d have to tell Helen to sit and wait for her, she spied the chimney pots of Farley Park rising beyond the hill. And no sooner did she see the chimney pots than a horseman charged over that very same hill.

Upon sighting them, the rider drew up, then changing direction, spurred straight for Phoebe and the bedraggled pair of girls.

“You can sit down now, Helen,” she said over her shoulder. “As for you,” she said, holding tight when her captive tried once more to wriggle free. “You’d better hold still.”

Then pushing back the tangled mess her hair had become, she straightened to her most imposing height and waited for the rider. Though mounted on a magnificent hunter, the man looked more like a reckless highwayman than a peer of the realm, and Phoebe felt a distressing shiver of fear. He wore neither coat nor hat, and his golden hair fell in disarray over his brow.

But she had no doubt he was Viscount Farley, for there was an arrogant, lordly bearing about him. He rode his elegant steed with that easy carelessness that bespoke privilege and education and a worldliness foreign to these parts.

But lord or not, Phoebe fixed the much-gossiped-about viscount with a censorious gaze. If he thought he could foist his unruly London ways on the good people of Swansford, well, she was just the one to set him straight.

As he pulled his animal to a plunging halt right before them, she took a steadying breath and tilted her chin up to an arrogant angle. She kept a close grip on his thieving little girl as she glared at him. “Could it be that this is
your
child?”

James flung himself off his horse before it came to a complete halt. “Clarissa! Thank God. Where have you been?”

“Skulking around my farm is where,” the woman holding the girl’s arm retorted when Clarissa remained mute. “Trying her very best to steal me blind.”

James’s gaze went to the woman, a somewhat disheveled, obviously angry woman with a little girl of her own peering from around her skirts. Bloody hell. It wasn’t enough that Clarissa wreaked havoc on one household. Now she’d started in on another.

“I assure you, madam, that I will compensate you fully for whatever trouble my daughter may have caused you. Come here, Clarissa.”

Clarissa shot the woman a smug, taunting smile, then yanked her arm free. But the look she sent James was even more unpleasant. “I told you to call me Izzy.”

“And I told you to come here,” he snapped. He’d reached the end of his patience with her three days ago, not that it had done any good. If anything, Izzy’s—
Clarissa’s
behavior had gone from bad to awful to unbearable. Everyone seemed to have different advice: threaten her with punishment; bribe her with presents; shower her with attention; ignore her when she misbehaves; spank her; lock her in her bedroom; send her to boarding school.

Return her to her mother in the Seven Dials district, one of London’s seediest quarters.

That last one he’d refused to consider, for Seven Dials guaranteed only one sort of future for a child: a sordid, lifelong mire of thievery, drunkenness, drug use, and prostitution. No matter the hell Clarissa put him through, he’d never let her anywhere near that place or her mother again.

But the suggestion about a boarding school, that one was beginning to sound like his only remaining choice. Especially now when the girl pointedly ignored his command and instead went over to pet his horse.

Bloody hell!

He thrust both hands through his hair, anything to prevent him from landing a firm swat on his aggravating firstborn’s rear end. An impatient “Ahem” drew his attention back to his aggrieved neighbor.

“Yes, madam. I haven’t forgotten about you. Tell me what Clarissa has done and I’ll see that you’re compensated for your trouble.”

“She stole my well bucket, my lord. Also, a market basket, a blanket—admittedly an old, oft-mended one—and my garden bench. What she could want with that I cannot hazard to guess. Then today—today she stole our dog!” She drew the blond-haired child who was holding the puppy in front of her. “It nearly broke Helen’s heart when we discovered him gone.”

“A bucket, a blanket, and a bench. I believe one pound should cover the cost. Or perhaps a guinea?” Guineas were not often used in the country, and he’d learned long ago that it carried a certain cachet for someone to possess one.

But the woman seemed little impressed. “You’re forgetting the basket. My grandmother wove that basket herself, my lord.
Her
great-grandmother,” she added, indicating the silent child leaning against her legs.

James gave her a narrow-eyed gaze. Was she trying to squeeze him for a larger sum? Because if she was, her timing couldn’t be worse. He’d thought his last week in London god-awful, what with the messy dissolution of his marriage contract, the painful death of his political aspirations, and the gossips having a field day with both. But this first week in the countryside had been holy hell. Not enough sleep, impossible children, contrary servants. Now his daughter, whom he’d saved from the vilest sort of future in Seven Dials, thanked him by proving herself to be a foul-mouthed brat, an unrepentant liar, and a common thief.

Not that he should have expected anything else given that her mother had drunk every penny of the generous allowance he’d sent her the past ten years. Still, he hadn’t expected the child to hate him.

“I’m sorry,” he said to his neighbor, too annoyed by the situation to inject any real apology into his tone. “It seems I’ve forgotten my manners. You’ve obviously deduced my identity. Might I inquire to whom I am speaking?”

She lifted her chin to a pugnacious angle. “Phoebe Churchill,” she answered with no less asperity than he. Even her curtsy managed to convey her disdain.

For a simple country woman with her hair awry, her skirt streaked with mud, and bits of leaves and grass clinging to her bodice, she had an awfully haughty bearing. Half the grand dames of London would envy her.

But it was not his intention to bandy words with the chit. “Thank you, Mrs. Churchill, for returning Clarissa to me—”

“Izzy!” the child shouted.

He ignored his mouthy street urchin of a daughter, and dug into his purse. “Here’s a guinea. If we can’t locate your basket for you, I’ll send my man with another coin. Where do you reside?”

She gave him a long, even stare. It gave him the uncomfortable sensation of being weighed, measured, and somehow found wanting. “Plummy Head,” she answered. Then without taking his coin, she turned to Clarissa, summarily dismissing him. He frowned at her audacity, then waited with smug knowledge of what was to come when she approached his feral child.

“I would like my things returned,” she said to the child. “Tomorrow would be a good day. When shall I expect you?”

For once Clarissa was speechless.

“Well?” the woman prompted. “What time? I’ll be baking in the morning, so you may wish to come after the apple tarts are done.”

Though the girl’s only answer was a scowl, it could not entirely disguise the fact that Mrs. Churchill’s invitation had Clarissa completely flummoxed.

Having had the last word, the woman took her little girl by the hand. “We’ll be home all day, Izzy, whatever time you choose to come. I believe you know the way.” To James she only gave a curt nod.

She and her daughter started back across the fallow field until Clarissa cried out, “Wait!”

They all turned to the girl. “You’re not leaving me here with him, are you?” the dirty-faced child exclaimed.

The woman’s arching brows knit together and she shot a suspicious glance at James. “Shouldn’t I? He is your father.”

“Because…” The child met James’s baffled expression with a hateful glare. “Because he beats me.”

“I do no such thing! I’ve never once laid a hand on her,” James swore to Mrs. Churchill. “Though I’ve been sorely tempted to,” he added, advancing on Clarissa.

But his neighbor stepped directly between him and his devious offspring. Shooting him a suspicious look she said to Clarissa, “What do you mean by ‘he beats me’?”

“I don’t beat her!” James bit out.

“He does! He does!” Like a chameleon Clarissa changed from accused thief to pitiful victim—and right along with her Mrs. Churchill turned from irate neighbor to protective mother.

She crouched in front of Clarissa. “Has he hurt you?”

“I have not hurt her!” James protested.

Mrs. Churchill stood and rounded fiercely on him. “Be quiet, Lord Farley. Just be quiet and let me handle this.” Then once more she turned her back on him.

James almost choked on his rage. By damn, but he was sorely tempted to throttle the gullible, interfering wench!

“Now Izzy,” she said, as if he weren’t even there. “Tell me exactly what occurred.”

James could not believe this was happening. His guttersnipe child, whom he’d saved from a wretched fate, was accusing him of treating her badly. Clutching her puppy, the other little girl stared wide-eyed at him, as if he were a demon complete with horns, a tail, and cloven feet.

“He hit me with a strap,” Clarissa lied, sending him a resentful glare. “An’ he wouldn’t give me any supper. Nor any breakfast neither.”

“You certainly are thin,” the woman commiserated with her.

“She has a kitchen full of food,” James said with barely controlled temper. “Anything she might want.”

Mrs. Churchill held up a hand to silence him, but her gaze remained on the child. “I’ll bet that strap must have hurt.”

The child nodded, the very picture of desolation. “It was terrible; just terrible. I cried and cried, and begged him to stop. Only he wouldn’t.”

“I never—” James began.

“The bruises must be awful,” Mrs. Churchill went on.

“Yes, and they hurt something fierce—” The girl broke off in mid-lie. In the same moment James realized where Mrs. Churchill’s line of questioning was headed.

He studied the woman with grudging respect as she smoothed a hand over the child’s head. “Let me see those bruises, will you?”

Frowning now, the girl shrugged her off. “I don’t want to.”

“Why not?” Mrs. Churchill stared steadily at the now scowling child. “Could it be that perhaps you’re making this up?”

Judging by the mulish expression on her face, James was sure Clarissa would maintain her lie. But she was nothing if not unpredictable. Without warning she spat, “Bugger off!” and started running up the hill toward Farley Park.

For a moment he just stared after her. At least she was running toward her home and not away. But the confrontation depressed him anew as he recognized the magnitude of the task he’d set himself. Clarissa hated him. She fought him at every turn, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

Beside him Mrs. Churchill cleared her throat. “We’ll be off then,” she said when he looked over at her. “I meant what I said when I invited her to visit me. I hope you’ll let her come.”

He nodded. “Of course. And thank you.” He hesitated, then went on. “I want you to know that I’ve never laid a harsh hand on her. Never.”

She gave a faint smile, just enough to make him study her more closely. “I know.” Then her smile faded. “The fact remains, however, that she doesn’t seem to like you very much. Not at all, in fact, and I have to wonder why.”

Then not allowing him time to explain the situation, she turned, took her daughter’s hand, and left.

James stared after her, noticing almost too late the details he’d not seen before. Her straight, slender back as she marched down the hill. The curve of her hips and the hidden length of her legs wading through last year’s knee-high meadow grass. Her hair was a rich brown hue, streaked red by the strengthening midday sun.

Her eyes had been, what? An amber-brown, flashing with temper, he recalled. Not a beautiful woman, but striking all the same. And memorable. Especially when she smiled.

Only the reminder that she was married with a child of her own made him look away from her departing form. But even that took an act of strong self-will. It was dallying with too many women that had landed him in his current situation; he couldn’t afford to resume that sort of activity here, especially with the entire countryside watching his every move.

Then again, if he didn’t find some sort of outlet for the frustrations besetting him, God only knew when and where he would explode.

Meanwhile, there was his hooligan daughter to deal with.

Muffling a curse, and feeling far older than his thirty-four years, he collected his grazing animal, heaved himself into the saddle, and started after his child.

“Was that Himself?” Helen asked when they were halfway down the hill.

Lost in her own thoughts, Phoebe was slow to respond. “Yes. But his proper name is James Lindford, Viscount Farley. If he should ever address you, you must curtsy to him and say ‘my lord,’ and use your very best manners.”

Helen digested that as they wended their way down the hill. Ahead of them crickets, gnats, and other buzzing creatures sprang up in an insect cloud, while the dried stalks of last year’s grass swished against their skirts. “His girl, that Izzy girl, she doesn’t use very good manners. And she’s a liar, too, isn’t she?”

“I’m afraid so. But I think she only acts that way because she hasn’t been taught any better.”

“Does that mean her father isn’t a very good father?”

It would seem not. But all Phoebe said was, “I’m not sure what the situation is between them.” She was curious enough, however, to want to find out.

“I wonder where her mother is.”

Her mother, who was
not
Lord Farley’s wife. So far as anyone knew, the viscount was still a bachelor. And yet he freely claimed Izzy as his daughter. That meant Phoebe’s first guess was right: the girl must be natural born.

Like Helen.

Phoebe’s sympathy for the unhappy little girl immediately increased. Given her wild appearance and appalling behavior, could it be that the child had not been a part of Lord Farley’s home until recently?

To Helen she said, “Judging by her accent, the girl and her mother probably lived in London.”

“In London? Oh, maybe she knows
my
mother!”

Phoebe reached down and gave Helen a hug. Her niece’s ever-present longing for her absent mother was a constant source of pain for them both, and it fomented a simmering resentment in Phoebe’s chest. She would never understand Louise’s utter neglect of her daughter. Never. “I’m afraid it’s not likely they know one another, sweetheart. London is a huge place, you see, as big as a hundred Swansfords. Maybe even a thousand.”

“A thousand?”

Phoebe nodded. “Say, how about a piggyback ride down the hill?” Anything to distract Helen from the subject of London and a mother who never came to visit.

Izzy didn’t come for apple tarts the next day, much to Phoebe’s disappointment.

“I’m glad she didn’t come,” Helen said as she licked the sweet residue of a tart from her fingers. “She’s mean and I don’t like her.”

“What she
did
was mean. But I’m guessing she’s not always mean. It’s probably just that she doesn’t have any friends around here.”

“I don’t have any friends and I’m not mean.”

“You have me.”

Helen giggled. “That’s different. You’re my aunt.” Then her face puckered in a thoughtful frown. “I wonder if
she
has an aunt like you.”

Phoebe shrugged as she finished off her own tart. “Izzy seems like a very lonely little girl. Maybe all she needs is a friend or two.”

Helen wrinkled her nose. “Not me, though.”

Phoebe let the matter drop, but the idea did not go away. Izzy and Helen were alike in more ways than one. Both natural born and likely to suffer for it at the hands of other children. Though the children of Swansford only repeated the words they heard from their parents, they were words with the power to hurt a sensitive child like Helen, and to continue hurting her long after they were said. That’s why Helen hated going to school in Swansford, and why Phoebe had taken over educating her.