Rexanne Becnel (5 page)

Continuing to walk back and forth, Phoebe smiled at Lord Farley’s amazed expression.

“What did you do?”

“My niece was a fussy baby, but she always felt better when I held her like this. Leya’s stomach is probably upset and the pressure of my arm eases the pain. What has she been eating?”

He stood and began to walk beside her. “I don’t know. Some sort of gruel. Mashed vegetables. But mostly milk.”

“Cow’s milk?”

“I assume so. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to give them—I mean if they don’t have a mother to…ah…to tend to those things?”

She looked up at him, amused by his embarrassment to be discussing “those things.”

He had extended his hand to Leya and the child now held fast to his finger. At once a quiver of heat shot through Phoebe, unexpected and unnerving. He was too close. That was the inane thought that went through her head. He was too close, and though this was his baby and he had every right to be touching her, it felt as if he had somehow touched her too.

Wholly undone, she stopped and handed Leya to him. “Here, you try it.”

In the transfer his hand grazed hers, and again she felt that startling frisson of awareness. Sucking in a sharp breath, she stepped back, averting her eyes from him to his child.

For a moment the baby looked ready to cry again, but once Lord Farley had her positioned just right, she instead let out a little sigh. As if Leya knew the source of her relief, she stared straight at Phoebe, her baby eyes wide and unblinking. And just that fast, Phoebe fell in love with her. She was so perfectly, exotically beautiful with her blue-gray eyes, golden skin, and shining ebony hair.

Leya’s gaze was so trusting, so accepting. So content. Life had not yet tarnished her soul and, God willing, it never would.

“Once again I find myself in your debt, Mrs. Churchill,” Lord Farley said, drawing her attention back to him. His smile, overlaid so sincerely upon his weary, rough-hewn features, disoriented Phoebe. For a moment she could only stare at him. Against the stubble of his unshaven face his teeth gleamed too white. The chest hair that curled up at the loosened throat of his shirt made him look elementally masculine. Indeed, his disheveled appearance made her feel strange, in a way she’d never experienced—small and feminine and vulnerable, though that made no sense.

Then an echo of her mother’s strident voice came to her, reminding her that under no circumstance should a woman ever allow herself to be alone with a man dressed only in his shirt sleeves. Not even if it
was
perfectly innocent.

Phoebe knew she must state her business, then be gone from here.

So, pulling herself together, she crossed her arms and frowned. “You are hardly in my debt, Lord Farley. However, I did come here today on an urgent matter. It seems Izzy has struck again.”

“What?”

“She stole my milking stool—at least I assume it was she.”

His expression fell from gratitude to frustration. “Bloody hell,” he muttered.

Needing to find some flaw in him, Phoebe latched at once onto that. “If you curse in the presence of your children, you cannot fault them when they echo your words back to you. I believe Izzy’s language is foul enough already.”

Even to her own ears she sounded stiff and prissy. Stifling a groan, she realized that it was worse than that. She sounded just like her own stern, fault-finding mother.

To his credit Lord Farley didn’t respond to her criticism. Instead he began again to walk. After a moment, she followed.

“I don’t know what to do with that girl. She hates me and all the staff too. No matter what we ask of her, she does the opposite. She curses, she refuses to bathe. She screams and breaks things. She runs away and—as you know—she steals anything that isn’t tied down.”

Despite her wariness of the viscount and the awkward circumstances, Phoebe’s tension eased a bit. At least he was trying to do right by his children.

She tucked her chin in and took a steadying breath. “At the risk of appearing too bold, could I ask how long you’ve had your daughters with you?”

He glanced at her, then away. “I’ve had Leya several months. But Clarissa…six weeks or so.”

“I see. Might I inquire further about their mothers?”

He smoothed his hand over Leya’s hair, then kissed the dark crown of her head. “Leya’s mother died when she was two months old. Clarissa’s—” His jaw stiffened. “Clarissa’s mother is a—” He broke off. “She lives a life unsuited to raising children.” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “She used Clarissa to…to run errands, shall we say. To tend her needs and mind her other children.”

“I see,” Phoebe murmured, though she didn’t. Not entirely. But whatever those “errands” were, they must not have been appropriate for a girl only ten years old. “So…So Izzy has other siblings?”

“Yes. And Izzy is her old name, from her old life. I want her to be called Clarissa now.”

Phoebe sighed and wove her fingers together. “What you’re doing for them seems commendable, Lord Farley. But I wonder if you might be trying to accomplish too much too fast with the girl.”

“What I’m trying to do is save her from the wretched sort of life her mother chose.”

“Yes, and that’s most commendable. But can’t you see how frightened she is?”

He snorted. “Frightened? I’ve yet to see that child frightened of anything. Even the threat of a good switching doesn’t faze her.”

She gave him a sharp look. “You said you’d never laid a hand on her.”

“I haven’t.” He stopped and turned to face her. “I’m not generally inclined to beat children, Mrs. Churchill. But so far nothing else has worked—and now you tell me she’s stolen yet again.”

They stood at the far end of the clipped lawn, where the gravel walkway gave onto a mowed walking strip through the rougher meadow. Though the man managed to rattle her with just the force of his eyes, Phoebe tried to ignore that. How could she be frightened of a man who held a happy, babbling baby in his arms?

But there was more to him than merely the struggling father, she reminded herself. He might be trying to do right by his daughters, but he’d not behaved so nobly with their mothers. The very thought of what he’d obviously done with each of them turned her mood black. But then, hadn’t her mother warned her incessantly about just such self-indulgent male behavior?

Determined not to dwell on him or his wild past, she plucked a long stalk of grass, waved it in front of Leya, and steered her thoughts back to the matter at hand. “I’ve been trying to figure out why Izzy would steal from me again, when she knows I would guess she’d done it. I’m beginning to think—” She shook her head. “It will sound perverse, I know. But I wonder if she
wanted
me to come back here and accuse her.”

“Why would she want that?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps because I’m the first person who has called her Izzy? After all, that’s the name she knows herself as. Try to put yourself in her place. She’s lost every aspect of her old life. As bad as it may have been, it nonetheless was all she knew. Is it asking too much to allow her to keep the name she wants?”

He frowned, but he didn’t argue.

“Also,” Phoebe went on, “I think it may have confused her a bit when I tried to befriend her by inviting her to my farm. And intrigued her. Actually, I was quite disappointed that she didn’t come.”

“You think she wanted to come?”

“Perhaps.”

He heaved a sigh. “Perhaps. One thing I’ve learned: the child is smart as a whip despite having no education to speak of. You’re right. She knew you’d come charging over here when your milking stool went missing. The question is, why did she want you to come?” Again he sighed. “As you can tell, I’ve reached the limits of my patience with Clarissa. With Izzy,” he amended, a wry twist on his lips. He jiggled the baby who seemed content on his hip. “You seem to have solved Leya’s problem. Maybe you’re right about Izzy too.”

He smiled at her then, a half-smile, really. But there was a warmth in his clear blue eyes that touched her.

At once Phoebe averted her gaze. Just that easily he made her far too aware of him, too aware of the physical nearness of him. It was unsettling and confusing and she didn’t like it one bit. She was grateful when he started back toward the house.

“Let’s find Izzy,” he said, “and see what she has to say for herself.”

It was only then that Phoebe remembered that she’d left Helen and Bruno beside the fountain in the forecourt. And only when she discovered them gone, did she realize what a dreadful mistake that had been.

Phoebe’s brow creased in worry as she scanned the empty forecourt. “It’s not like Helen to wander off alone.”

“Izzy,” Lord Farley muttered. “Damn that child.”

Phoebe didn’t bother to rebuke him for the oath this time. She felt like echoing him herself. This was Izzy’s doing. Still, she couldn’t believe that Izzy would go so far as to harm Helen. “Maybe Bruno ran off and Helen followed him.”

“Or maybe Izzy took him again.”

Still holding the baby, he strode to the front door, shoved it open, and bellowed for someone named Benson. Within seconds a stocky man arrived, pulling on his coat as he shuffled up. “Here. Take Leya,” Lord Farley ordered. “Like this.” He positioned the baby as Phoebe had showed him in the man’s reluctant grasp. “Alert the staff that Izzy and Mrs. Churchill’s daughter, Helen—”

“She’s not my—”

“—have gone missing. Also, a puppy named Bruno. And whoever you give Leya to, have them hold her just this way.” Then, still in his shirt sleeves, he strode toward the far side of the house and the myriad outbuildings beyond.

After only a moment’s hesitation, Phoebe went after him, holding up her skirts as she ran to keep pace with his long, angry strides.

“She likes the stables. And also the ice-house,” he muttered. “Don’t ask me why.”

“I’m beginning to think she might be trying to furnish a little hideaway of her own, somewhere in the woods near my house.”

“I don’t understand that girl.”

“Nor I. But as you are her father, you must learn to,” Phoebe said as they entered the stable.

He shot her a sharp look, causing her to turn away from those disturbingly direct eyes. It reminded her, though, of something she
needed
to be reminded of: that he was a viscount and she a mere farmer’s daughter. She didn’t need her exacting mother here to tell her that she had no business instructing him about what he should or should not do.

The problem was that she had no actual experience dealing with the nobility. Despite her mother’s endless lectures on the proper way to behave in polite society, she’d had very few opportunities to put those lessons to the test.

On the other hand, it was
his
daughter causing all the trouble, not Helen—whom he still thought was
her
daughter. Eventually she would have to disabuse him of that notion.

In the main section of the stable they found no evidence of the children. While he checked the several stalls and the tack room, Phoebe scurried up the ladder to the hayloft. Again she found no children, but there were signs of Izzy’s presence in the past. An empty cup. A sheet. A doll and a doll bed.

“Look at this,” she called down to Lord Farley.

In a moment he was beside her in the dusty, low-ceilinged portion of the loft. He picked up the doll with her cracked face and faded gingham dress. “If I remember correctly this is one of Sarah’s dolls.”

“Sarah?”

“My youngest sister.”

Phoebe recalled from Mrs. Leake’s remarks that Lord Farley had two sisters. Half-sisters. Just as Izzy had a half sister in Leya, and other half siblings through her mother in London.

“Poor Izzy,” she said, taking the nearly hairless doll from him. “She must be very lonely. I’m guessing she misses her family, even if they aren’t ideal. You know, I’m beginning to think she’s trying to create something of her own here, a family she can feel safe with.” She looked up at him. “That could be why she took this doll, and it’s probably why she tried to take our puppy.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “If she wants a puppy she has only to ask me for one.”

“But don’t you see? To her,
you’re
the one who stole her life from her.
You’re
the one she’s trying to defy.”

His eyes held with hers, and even in the dim light of the loft, she saw the anguish that shadowed them. “I can’t return her to that god-awful life,” he growled. “I won’t.”

“Of course not. But the two of you can’t go on like this. It’s up to you to find some common ground with her.”

Phoebe stooped to replace the doll in its toy bed. When she stood, he was nearer than before, staring intently at her. “Will you help me?” he asked. “I need a governess. Will you take the position?”

A nervous flutter started in Phoebe’s stomach. “I…um…I don’t know.”

“I suppose you have to discuss this with your husband. But I can make it well worth your while.” He stepped nearer still. “And if you like, you can bring your daughter with you.”

“She’s not my daughter,” Phoebe said as the flutter increased. Then abruptly she turned and started down the ladder. “We’ll never find them if we don’t look.”

“She’s not your daughter?”

When they reached the stable floor, it was she who strode ahead and he who followed in her wake. “Helen is my niece, my sister’s child whom I have raised.”

“I see. Have you other children of your own?”

“I am not wed, my lord.” Why did her stomach tighten in a knot to tell him that? “Could we please concentrate on the task before us?”

But he was not to be put off. “You’re not wed? So…that means you’re available for the position as governess to Izzy and Leya.”

She sighed. She was very available and she should be ecstatic at the opportunity offered her. Indeed, she ought to agree this very moment before he could change his mind. Here was the answer to her overdue taxes, a way to keep the house and farm, meager though they were.

But something inside Phoebe, some unfamiliar little buzz of alarm, centered deep in the nether reaches of her belly, warned her away from this man. Somehow she knew this would be no simple position in a large household. Not if Lord Farley were involved.

“I…I shall have to think about that. Let’s find Izzy and Helen first, though, shall we?” For a moment Phoebe expected him to argue further. But though his expression remained sharp, with a little nod he conceded the point.

She had forestalled him, but not for long. In truth, she feared that Lord Farley had only begun to pursue the subject of a governess for his two difficult children.

As they approached the ice-house, they heard Bruno’s high-pitched barking. Just beyond the squat, thatch-roofed building, Izzy stood holding the puppy, keeping him away while a weeping Helen tried futilely to take him back.

“He’s mine,” Helen wailed. “Give him to me.”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Izzy swore.

“You’re hurting him now!”

“I am not! If you would just stop acting like a baby.”

“I’m not a baby!”

“Izzy!” Lord Farley bellowed as they strode up.

Without thinking, Phoebe laid a cautioning hand on his arm. “Gently, my lord. Gently.”

At once Izzy jerked around to face them. But whatever alarm the girl felt, she swiftly hid beneath a sneering expression and a pugnaciously tilted chin. She didn’t put down the dog, nor did she retreat.

Beneath her hand, Phoebe felt the muscles of the viscount’s forearm tense. Then, as if by an act of supreme will, he relaxed. She promptly pulled her hand away, but it didn’t help. There had been an odd intimacy to their little exchange, her hand on his arm. She’d sensed his emotions and counseled him, a man—a viscount!—with whom she was barely acquainted. And he’d listened to that counsel.

It was a wholly unsettling experience.

“Izzy,” he began again. “You must return Helen’s dog to her.”

Upon spying the two adults, Helen ran crying to them and buried her face in Phoebe’s skirts.

“I wasn’t hurting him!” Izzy shouted at her father.

“I didn’t say you were. But you can’t go around taking things that don’t belong to you. And now Mrs. Churchill—Miss Churchill tells me that you’ve taken—”

Again Phoebe stopped him with a hand on his muscular forearm. “I missed you, the day before yesterday, Izzy. I was so hoping you’d come up to visit us at Plummy Head.”

Izzy’s scowling eyes darted from her father to Phoebe. “That’s a stupid name, Plummy Head. I didn’t see any plums there.”

“That’s because plums don’t ripen until the fall. But that’s not why it’s called Plummy Head.”

The child wanted to ask why. Phoebe could see it on her face, and it gave her renewed hope for finding her own common ground with her. She turned to the viscount, only then realizing her hand still rested on his arm. She snatched it back, but the look in his vivid blue eyes told him he’d noticed the familiarity.

Thank God the viscount couldn’t tell how profoundly that simple touch affected her. At least she hoped he couldn’t tell. Her heart’s pace had trebled, her mind had gone blank as a white canvas, and her mouth felt as dry as chalk.

Thankfully she managed somehow to find her voice. “If it pleases you, my…my lord, perhaps Izzy might like to accompany Helen and me back to Plummy Head.”

“No,” Helen cried, lifting a wet face and horrified gaze up to Phoebe. “I don’t
like
her.”

“An’ I don’t like you either, you big blubber baby,” Izzy spat right back. “How old are you anyway? Two?”

With renewed weeping Helen buried her face once more in Phoebe’s lap, and for a moment Phoebe was torn. Were two children ever more different?

Lord Farley cleared his throat. “Perhaps Izzy and I could
both
accompany you home.”

Him? In her simple four-room cottage?

Phoebe’s heart renewed its painful thudding against the wall of her chest. How had things spiraled so utterly out of control? This was hardly what she’d had in mind when she’d set off so angrily for Farley Park. All she’d wanted then was her milking stool returned, along with the rest of her purloined goods. But here she was, grabbing a viscount by the arm, forcing unsolicited advice upon him, and becoming entirely too discombobulated by his presence. And now he wanted to come calling at her humble little cottage.

“Um…I don’t believe that’s necessary,” she stammered.

“But I’d like to,” he insisted. One of his brows arched, as if to say, surely she would not turn him down.

And of course, she could not. “Oh. Well. I suppose, then. That is…if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” When he finally turned that dark probing gaze on Izzy, Phoebe took a long overdue breath. “So, Izzy,” he went on. “What do you say? Shall we escort them home?”

The child shoved a tangled lock of fair hair back from her brow, studying him with a suspicious scowl on her face. “Whyn’t you calling me Clarissa anymore?” She sneered the hated name out.

He shrugged. “I know now that I shouldn’t have done that. If you wish to be called Izzy, then Izzy it is. So,” he continued. “Are we off to Plummy Head?”

She hefted the complacent puppy in her arms. “Can we take the pony cart?”

“The pony cart?”

“I saw it in the stable. Can we ride in it? Can I drive?”

Phoebe slanted a look at the viscount.
Say yes,
she silently willed him.
She’s throwing you a little twig of the olive branch, so say yes.

“Do you know how to guide a horse?”

This time it was Izzy who shrugged, a gesture so similar to her father’s that it made Phoebe smile.

“’Course. How hard can it be?”

“It’s not hard at all,” he said, strolling up to her. “But a good driver knows how to guide his animal without hurting it. Horses have sensitive mouths, you see.” He scratched Bruno behind the ears. “Come on, then. Let’s have a look at that cart and harness one of the horses.”

Izzy put Bruno down and at once the puppy started off, nose to the ground. Only then did Helen break away from Phoebe to follow him. But all the while she shot black frowns at Izzy.

Lord Farley started for the stables, and after a moment Izzy followed. But at the corner of the ice-house he slowed and looked back. “Do you want to help us, Helen?”

Helen ducked her head and shook it no. But Phoebe had other ideas. “We’ll both help. Come along, Helen. Come on, Bruno.”

Izzy scowled. “Why does
she
have to help? She’s probably scared of horses.”

“Am not!”

“Hunh.” Izzy broke into a trot. “Then I want to bring Leya too,” she demanded. “She hates it here as much as I do.”

They made an incongruous group. The viscount, as casual as a farmer with his wide shoulders encased only in his shirtsleeves; Phoebe with her everyday apron still pinned over her plain worsted wool dress. Dirty, uncombed Izzy drove the horse while Helen, looking like an affronted angel, held tight to the squirming puppy. Leya, bright-eyed and gurgling, perched on Phoebe’s lap, leaning forward with her stomach pressed comfortingly against Phoebe’s arm, chuckling with delight every time the cart lurched through a hole or over a rock.

Phoebe was relieved when they did not encounter anyone on the road that wound around the hill and through a short stretch of woods. The last thing she needed was the people of Swansford gossiping about her and the viscount, especially given her sister’s wanton reputation.

On the other hand, it occurred to her that anyone not knowing who they were might have thought them merely a regular little family out for a ride—father, mother, and their children.

Gnawing the inside of one cheek, she turned away from the far too virile viscount and stared off to the east, to where the restless sea lay beyond the last of the green, treeless hills. It gave her a peculiar feeling to think about Lord Farley that way. A peculiar, churning feeling centered low in her stomach.

It was on account of the children, she told herself. She loved children—babies like Leya, angels like Helen. Even difficult little devils like Izzy were lovable if you were patient enough to see beneath their hard-edged exteriors.

Her tumultuous feelings about Lord Farley and his children were perfectly normal for a woman of her age, she told herself, for one day she hoped to have children of her own.

But first you need a husband.

A husband. Mr. Blackstock would certainly agree with that. However, she was no more enamored by the prospects in Swansford than her mother had been, albeit for different reasons. Her eyes darted to Lord Farley, then away. Her mother would certainly have approved of a viscount for one of her girls. But Phoebe dismissed the idea before it could form. Her mother had always had unrealistic expectations for her daughters. But Phoebe knew that a wealthy viscount was beyond the realms of possibility for a country girl like her, even if her mother’s estranged uncle had been a baron.