Sally MacKenzie Bundle (91 page)

Charles Draysmith had been only a second son, had carried only a courtesy title—one he had never used, to her knowledge—but he had more charm in his little finger than his father and brother combined. People loved Charles—farm workers, shopkeepers, the village children. Little Emma Peterson.

He had let her be Maid Marian when they played Robin Hood. Or Guinevere, ignored by the Knights of the Round Table, true, but still a part of the game. The Duke of Alvord and the Earl of Westbrooke—then the Marquis of Walthingham and Viscount Manders—had tolerated her, but only because Charles did. Mostly they acted as if she were invisible, except when Robbie chose to squabble with her. Charles had stopped more than one of their arguments and had fished her out of the stream the time she’d “tripped” over Robbie’s foot.

“Here’s a good spot, wouldn’t you say, Lady Claire?” Charles put down the basket. Claire ran to the edge of the water.

“I don’t see any fish, Papa Charles.”

“Of course not! Fish are wily creatures. They don’t want to be caught, you know.”

“Because then they’ll be breakfast!” Claire clapped her hands and hop-skipped on her toes. “Can we eat fish for breakfast?”

“Perhaps—if we catch any.”

Prinny spotted a squirrel and started yapping madly.

“And if this dog doesn’t scare them all away. Miss Peterson, can you take charge of Prinny while I get the girls settled?”

Emma pulled Prinny a short distance away. He barked for a minute in protest and then found something interesting to smell by the base of a birch.

“Would you like me to bait your line for you, Isabelle?”

“Yes, please, Uncle Charles.”

Claire leaned against Charles, watching him work on Isabelle’s fishing line.

“Eww.” She wrinkled her nose. “A worm.”

“Want a closer look?” Charles quickly brought the wiggling creature up to Claire’s face. She squealed and danced back, giggling.

“No, Papa Charles. Worms are slimy.”

“So you don’t want to bait your own line? I’ll show you how.”

“You can show me, Uncle Charles,” Isabelle said. “I’m not a baby.”

“I’m not a baby, either.” Claire put her small fists on her hips and stuck out her tongue at her sister. “Show me, Papa Charles.”

“Lady Claire, a little more deportment, if you please!” Charles said, a note of laughter in his voice. “Whatever has your governess been teaching you?”

“Don’t blame Miss Peterson, Uncle Charles,” Isabelle said. “It is not her fault if Claire is bad.”

“I’m
not
bad.” Claire’s bottom lip trembled. “Mama Peterson, I’m not bad, am I? Mother used to say I was, but I’m
not.”

Emma dropped Prinny’s lead and came over to
hug the little girl. “Of course you aren’t, sweetheart. And I’m sure your mother didn’t mean you were, either. Sometimes adults just get a little snappish.”

“No, Miss Peterson.” Isabelle looked seriously back into Emma’s eyes. “Mother…well, she said…she wanted a boy, you see, so she wouldn’t have to have any more babies.”

Claire nodded. “If she’d had a boy, she’d have done her duty.”

“Papa needed an heir, Miss Peterson, and Claire and I can’t be an heir.”

Emma met Charles’s eyes over Claire’s head. He looked as stricken as she felt.

“Well, I’m your papa now, Isabelle,” he said. “And I like you exactly as you are.” He took Claire’s chin in his fingers, leaning next to Emma to look the little girl in the eye. “And you are not bad, Lady Claire. Of course not. But you must still learn to behave. Can you imagine what people would say if Miss Peterson stuck her tongue out at my aunt?”

Claire giggled. “Mama Peterson would never do that!”

“Exactly. So you must learn not to either, at least when you need your formal manners. But I only meant to tease you before—you don’t need fancy manners when you go fishing, do you?”

“No?” Claire’s eyes were huge in her small face.

“No. The fish don’t care. But no tantrums, mind! The fish don’t like tantrums—too noisy. You’d scare them all away.”

“No tantrums,” Claire agreed.

Charles dropped his hand and looked at Isabelle. “I think I had offered to show you two young ladies how to bait a fishing line before we got off on all this boring talk of manners.”

Isabelle smiled. “Yes, P—Uncle Charles.”

“You can call me Papa Charles if you want to, Isabelle.”

“No. No, thank you. I’m nine.”

“And I’m thirty, goose. Nine is not very old—certainly not too old to still want a papa.” Charles held out his hand. “It could be our secret.”

Isabelle put her hand in Charles’s, but she shook her head. “Show me how to bait the line, Uncle Charles.”

“And me,” Claire said, pushing closer. “Show me, too.” She glanced at Emma. “And what about Mama Peterson, Papa Charles? Are you going to teach her how to put the slimy worm on the hook?”

“Oh, I taught Miss Peterson years ago, when she was just a little older than you, Lady Claire.”

“Indeed,” Emma said, smiling. “And he is a very good teacher.”

“Are you going to fish, too, Miss Peterson?”

“No, Isabelle. I think I’ll go keep Prinny company.”

“Wait a moment and I’ll spread the blanket out for you.”

“That’s all right, my lord. I can do it.”

Emma took the blanket out of the basket and retreated to the birch tree. Prinny had expended enough energy that he was content to lie in the shade. She sat on the blanket and watched Charles with the children.

He would make a wonderful father, if he were only willing to stay at Knightsdale.

“Now don’t get your lines tangled up, girls,” he said. “I’m going to go sit with Miss Peterson and let you fish by yourselves.”

“All right, Papa Charles. We’ll catch lots of fish for breakfast.”

“Don’t catch so many I can’t fit them in the basket.”

“We’ll try not to.” Claire smiled and turned to stare at the water, as if she could will the fish onto her hook.

Charles took off his coat and sat down next to Emma. He looked at the girls.

“I guess my brother and his wife were not the best parents.”

Emma sighed. “I don’t know they were any different from most of the
ton,
but their daughters surely wanted more of them.”

“More might have been worse. God, I can’t believe Cecilia told the girls she wanted a son so she wouldn’t be required to have more children.”

“We don’t really know she said that, my lord. Children often misunderstand. They hear pieces and put the pieces together in a way that makes sense to them, but they have a very limited knowledge of the world.”

Not that Emma believed for a minute Cecilia hadn’t told the girls precisely what Isabelle had said. The woman had been exceedingly vain and self-centered. Completely insensitive.

Charles shrugged. “Whatever Cecilia said or didn’t say, it’s clear the girls need parents now.”

“Yes.” Emma hesitated. It wasn’t really her place, but she felt compelled to speak up. Surely now he would understand the need for him to stay at Knightsdale. “When you marry, my lord—”

“You mean when I marry you, Emma.” He turned and looked at her. “The girls like you. They—” He frowned. “Where did you get that hideous bonnet?”

So, he was just now noticing how she looked, was he? Such an attentive suitor.

“It’s not hideous. It’s a perfectly satisfactory
bonnet, especially for an early morning fishing expedition.”

“Only if you intend to use it to
catch
the fish. It might make a satisfactory net—well, bucket. You should get rid of it. In fact, I’ll be happy to dispose of it for you.” He reached for her bonnet strings. Emma put her hands over them and leaned away.

“You most certainly will not. Keep your hands to yourself, Lord Knightsdale.”

A distinctly wicked gleam appeared in his eyes. “But I did so enjoy not keeping them to myself last night.”

“Behave yourself, sir!”

“Must—”

“Papa Charles, Papa Charles, I catched a—”

The rest of the sentence was lost in a loud splash.

“Uncle Charles,” Isabelle shouted, “Claire has fallen into the water and she can’t swim.”

Emma lurched to her feet, but Charles was far faster than she. He was in the stream with Claire in his arms before Emma had untangled her skirts.

“Claire, sweetheart,” he said, “it’s the fish that come out of the water, not little girls that go in.”

Claire sputtered and coughed. “The fish got away, Papa Charles.”

“Well, you’ll catch another one, another day. And I will teach you—and Isabelle—to swim. Would you like that?”

“Yes!”

Emma finally made it to the edge of the stream. She stood next to Isabelle and looked at the two in the water. Claire could have been terrified, but she was grinning and hugging Charles tightly around the neck. He was soaked to the skin, his shirt and breeches plastered to his body.

He looked wonderful. More than wonderful. The lust of the night before surged back, and she considered joining them in the water. She needed some way to cool her heated blood.

Charles carried Claire piggyback to Knightsdale. She sat on his shoulders, chatting and laughing. She didn’t seem the worse for her dunking, but he vowed to teach her and Isabelle to swim at the first opportunity. With a lake on the property, it was much too dangerous for the girls not to know how. True, Claire was a little young, but she could learn enough to save herself if she were to fall in again. And Isabelle definitely should know. He had taught Emma when she was only six.

He glanced down at the woman walking next to him. He’d given her lessons after Robbie had tripped her and she, like Claire, had fallen into the stream. The other boys had laughed at first—she
had
looked funny with her skirts spread out in the water—but he’d seen the fear in her eyes.

She had shown no fear in their lessons. He smiled. She’d been determined not to let Robbie get the better of her again.

Did she remember how to swim? His smile widened. He’d be happy to re-evaluate her skills. This afternoon perhaps, in one of the more secluded sections of the lake. She could wear her shift.

“Papa Charles!”

Claire tugged sharply on his hair. He shifted her on his shoulders as he contemplated the vision of Emma in the water, clothed in her shift. Her wet shift. Her sheer, translucent, wet shift that outlined every one of her lovely curves and teased him with
a glimpse, a shadow, of the curls above her thighs. If it were chilly, her nipples would harden into little peaks under the wet cloth, beckoning…

“Ouch! That hair is attached to my head, Lady Claire.”

“Sorry, Papa Charles, but you weren’t ’tending.”

“Um.” He realized suddenly that his soaked breeches would reveal to anyone who cared to look exactly what thoughts he
had
been attending to. He forced his mind to consider topics that did not relate to Emma in any fashion. Estate management. Ah. That worked like a charm.

He glanced at Emma again. She was studying the ground. At least he assumed that was what she was doing—he couldn’t see her face. Her hideous headgear completely obscured her features. Perhaps a cooper rather than a milliner had fashioned the thing. It certainly did look more like a bucket than a bonnet.

He would just have to contrive some accident to rid the world of its insulting existence.

“Papa Charles, since we didn’t catch any fish, what can we eat for breakfast? I’m hungry.”

“Don’t worry, Lady Claire,” he said. “We’ll just stop in to see Cook. She’s sure to have something tasty.”

“We can’t bother Cook, Uncle Charles.”

“Why ever not, Isabelle? I used to bother Cook all the time when I was your age, didn’t I, Miss Peterson?”

“Yes.” Emma still didn’t look at him. “Well, you did by the time I met you. You were always hungry. I believe Cook called you an imp of Satan, but she gave you the best of whatever she had—the biggest pastry or the ripest fruit.”

“Were you jealous, Miss Peterson?”

Emma glanced at him quickly, then turned her eyes forward. “Of course not, my lord. I was in awe of your ability to consume limitless quantities of food.”

“Ah, but I was a growing boy.”

“I’m a growing girl, Papa Charles,” Claire said, bouncing on his shoulders. “What will Cook have to eat, do you think?”

“Perhaps gooseberry tarts. Mmm. Not exactly breakfast food, but Cook’s gooseberry tarts are splendid.” Cook might not be up to London standards when it came to preparing a dinner for the
ton,
but she certainly did some things well. He glanced down at Isabelle. She was too quiet again. “Have you ever had any of Cook’s gooseberry tarts, Isabelle?”

“No, Uncle Charles. Mother said we would get fat if we ate tarts, and it is very hard to catch a husband if you are fat.”

Charles felt his jaw drop. “Gammon! You are only nine years old, Isabelle. A few tarts will not land you on the matrimonial shelf.”

“Mother said it was never too early to think about the future. It’s not as if we can live at Knightsdale our whole lives.”

Charles stared at Isabelle, not sure whether to laugh or curse. Had Paul not known what his wife had been telling the girls?

“I’ve had a gooseberry tart, Papa Charles.”

“Claire!” Isabelle said. “Don’t lie.”

“I’m not! I sneaked into the kitchen once and took one. I didn’t like it. It burned my mouth.”

“Well, there’s no need for sneaking anywhere,” Charles said. “We shall walk into the kitchen, wish Cook a good morning, and see if she has anything for us to eat.”

“Are you certain we can, Uncle Charles?” Wrinkles
etched Isabelle’s forehead. “Mother said never to bother Cook.”

“Of course I’m certain, Isabelle.” He turned to Emma. Her head was up, her face tight with concern. “Miss Peterson, you are the governess. What do you say? Am I right that we can enter the kitchen with impunity?”

“Of course, my lord.” Emma smiled, but a line still creased her brow. He’d wager that she, too, would scream if she heard “Mother said” one more time. It was wrong to think ill of the dead, but, well, he did not miss Cecilia at the moment.

“See?” he said. “If a governess says so, it must be true. Governesses never want you to do anything fun, do they?”