Timeless Passion: 10 Historical Romances To Savor (87 page)

Michael rolled his eyes in horror.

• • •

At bedtime, Katie dealt with the inevitable fight about who would get the best bed. The one by the window was deemed “preferred,” and Alfie expressed an immediate interest in it. The twins thought it looked big enough for them to share, even though there were enough beds for everybody to have one each, and Roy thought that he should have first dibs, being the oldest, the biggest, and the toughest.

Roy won, of course, no contest.

Alfie looked very put out. Katie couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him. “Don’t worry, little man, you won’t be up here much during the day. Not with the whole estate to explore — and look! This bed has a nice little bedside lamp.”

That seemed to mollify him, and Katie soon realized why. His suitcase, which was very small but weighed a ton, was almost entirely filled with books and magazines. He had only one other change of clothes, a very ragged pair of pajamas, and a moth-eaten teddy bear with one eye. Katie had a feeling he’d packed the case himself.

Katie concentrated on getting the little ones unpacked, sorting through their clothes to see if their mothers had packed everything they needed. Katie couldn’t understand why Bob didn’t have a suitcase. George had a case with all his clothes carefully marked G. Kilby. Surely Mrs. Kilby must have packed a similar suitcase for his brother, with clothes carefully labeled B. Kilby?

“Did you leave your suitcase on the train, Bob?”

“Dunno. Maybe.”

“But you did set out from London with one?”

“Not sure.”

“How can you not remember something like that?”

“Dunno. I can always wear George’s clothes, Miss. He won’t mind and we are the same size.”

“I suppose you’ll have to, for tomorrow at least. Though George doesn’t have that many clothes to lend you.”

Bob’s haircut was another mystery. It was awful. George had a conventional short back and sides like a little mini-adult. Bob’s hair looked like it had been chewed off with nail scissors. It was choppy and clumpy round the back. Katie began to wonder if favoritism existed in the twins’ family. Some parents singled out one child for special privileges, although she thought it was more unusual in the case of twins.

“I don’t know what we’ll send you to school in, come Monday. I’ll have to talk to his lordship about it. He might possibly agree to pay for a school uniform; I hope we can get something before clothing goes on ration.”

“There’s always the black market,” Roy said, sitting on the edge of his bed, trying out the springs.

Katie looked up sharply. She hadn’t expected a twelve-year-old to be quite so worldly wise.

“My mum had a couple of contacts, if you’re prepared to keep quiet about it,” Roy continued. “But it will cost you.”

“Thank you, Roy. I’m sure you are trying to be helpful, but I think we’ll stick to abiding by the law if we can,” said Katie, going over to the window to check that the blackout curtains were properly in place. “Speaking of which. I have a list of some basic dos and don’ts that his lordship wrote up for us. I think we’d all better have a good look at it. Especially as things didn’t go so well when we first arrived. You must be very careful of that suit of armor, for a start.”

“Charlie!” Roy snorted, despairingly.

“What did the old geezer call himself — Michael Melted Down Farringtale?”

“Farrenden,” Katie corrected. “Like Farrenden Market.”

“Fancy having a whole village named after you.”

Alfie chipped in. “More than one, Roy. There was a Great Farrenden and a Little Farrenden and a Farrenden Saint Mary — I saw them on a map.”

“Proper toff he is and no mistake,” Roy observed. “Never met one in a wheelchair before.”

“Toff on wheels.”

“Sounds like a good name for a comic strip,” said Alfie. “You any good at drawing?”

“Nah. I’m useless,” Roy said, groveling about in his rucksack. “Football. That’s what I’m good at.”

Roy pulled out a shabby, battered old soccer ball, with not quite sufficient air inside it, and before Katie could stop him he kicked it with great force at the wall and shouted, “Yes! Goal! He’s scored again for Tottenham!”

“Not in here, you don’t, young man.” Katie hurled herself forward and grabbed the ball before it rolled under one of the beds. “I’m confiscating this until tomorrow.”

“That’s mine, Miss. Give it back!”

Katie held it aloft, with the practiced skill of a person with a lot of younger brothers and sisters. “Tomorrow, Roy. Now get into that bed and start sleeping. Then tomorrow will come quick as a flash.”

“I ain’t sleepy, Miss.”

“I don’t imagine that you are, Roy, but it’s been a long day and I think you should all do some pretend sleeping until the morning. You never know. Real sleep might just creep up on you.”

It’s creeping up on me, she thought. She was dog tired. Even the concrete bed seemed like an inviting prospect just now. “Last one into bed is a rotten egg!” she called, and watched them scramble in.

“It’s Alfie. He’s a rotten egg!” Roy said, in triumph, and Alfie rolled his eyes.

Then Bob’s voice came from over in the corner. “There ain’t no ghost, not really, is there, miss?”

“No. I never allow any ghosts to get past me,” Katie promised. She turned out the light, and closed the door. She sent up a quick prayer to the saints. She’d need to become one to deal with this lot.

Chapter Four

To Katie’s surprise, Michael joined them at breakfast. Mrs. Jessop rolled his chair to the head of the table — looking very much as if she was acting against her better judgment — and Katie rushed around setting a place for him, wondering what on earth a huffy English lord would like for breakfast.

He buttered a piece of toast, very precisely, and said nothing. He pretended to read his newspaper while he ate. He was dressed, immaculately as ever, in a suit of clothes in Prince of Wales check. Inside the open collar of his shirt, he wore a silk cravat, knotted rather loosely, revealing the masculine lines of his neck. He cleared his throat and frowned at his newspaper as if something on the front page had offended him.

Katie told herself not to stare. She tried to concentrate on helping Bob and George with their boiled eggs and cutting up their bread into soldiers for them until she realized Michael was studying
her
.

Roy noticed too, and chirped up. “She looks like Rita Hayworth, don’t she?”

Michael looked at him sharply and opened his mouth, but he seemed a little lost for words.

“Don’t you think so, Mister?” said Roy. “Dead ringer for her if you ask me.”

Katie could have died of embarrassment. Rita Hayworth, indeed!

A pink tinge of color rose in Michael’s cheeks.

Alfie stepped in. “Maybe Mister Lord doesn’t know a lot about films.”

“He knows about Rita Hayworth,” Roy insisted. “He’s got a picture of her inside the lid of his shaving kit.”

Michael dropped his piece of toast, and mortified horror crossed his face. Alfie and the twins had a bit of a giggle, but the look on Michael’s face silenced them.

Katie didn’t know what to say, but she knew she had to salvage the situation, and fast.

She turned on Roy. “It’s very rude to touch other people’s things!” She turned to Michael and tried to placate him. “I’m so sorry sir, I didn’t realize. I had no idea he’d gone into your washroom — ”

“What the blazes were you doing with my shaving kit?” Michael said, cutting her off, leaning forward to speak to Roy.

Katie noticed that he didn’t deny ownership of the picture.

“I thought I needed a shave,” Roy announced, importantly.

“You needed a shave!” Michael exploded. “That’s absurd when your chin is as smooth as a baby’s bottom.”

Roy scowled. He did have the face of a surly cherub, without a whisker in sight. “I’m shaving twice a week, and that’s a fact,” he insisted.

“I may have to write to your Auntie Madge, Roy,” Katie began, knowing that tact was required with twelve-year-old boys, “to send you up a razor.”

Michael snorted, but Katie sent a pleading look in his direction.

“Sir, he probably
will
be needing one before long, wouldn’t you say?”

Michael glanced at Roy, and paused. Then he looked at Katie, and frowned.

Katie hoped she hadn’t overstepped the mark. It was so important that everything go smoothly this morning. If his lordship went into one of his sarcastic tirades, if Roy behaved like a little East End tough, if it scared the other children on their first day … who knew where it would lead?

“Well, possibly,” Michael conceded at last. “A blunt one, perhaps.”

Katie didn’t like the postscript, but Roy looked triumphant. He stuck his soft, chubby chin out in front of him, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and took a big, provocative bite out of his toast and marmalade.

Katie rewarded him with a wide smile of relief.

“See!” Roy said. “She
does
look like Rita Hayworth, when she smiles.”

Michael looked up and studied Katie’s face as if she was an exhibit in the British Museum. “I suppose she does.”

Then he returned to his newspaper and did not utter another word.

• • •

After breakfast, the children clattered into the hall to get their school satchels and Katie followed them, taking the opportunity on the way to explain to his lordship the problem with Bob’s missing suitcase.

“I don’t know if there’s any point in hoping that it will turn up,” she said.

“Probably not. It may have been stolen — people will do anything for clothing now that the shortages are starting to bite.”

“I wish they’d start proper rationing for clothing, to be honest, like they do with food. At least it would be fair. I was wondering if you had any old clothes of your own that you don’t use any more. I might be able to cut them down to make a pair of school shorts for Bob. My sewing isn’t up to a blazer, but I might manage a pair of pants.”

“There’s a stack of my old clothes upstairs in the Chinese Room. It used to be my room when I was … ” he obviously didn’t want to say something like
able-bodied
. “It was my room when I was at school. Take anything you want. There’s even an old dinner jacket in there somewhere that you can cut that up if you like.”

Katie was surprised. “That’s very generous of you, sir. But are you sure you won’t be needing it?”

He scowled. “Oddly enough, I haven’t felt the need to dress up much, stuck in this thing.”

Katie nearly commented that his lordship always looked “dressed up.” He seemed to have an endless array of elegant, stylishly tailored garments, and though none of them were new, it was all of the very best quality. He could have posed for society magazines. In fact, Katie realized with a slight shock, he probably had.

She turned to leave, but Michael called her back.

“There won’t be a repeat performance of yesterday’s bad behavior, will there? The children cannot be allowed to racket about in my house like bandits.” He waved his hand imperiously at the chairs on either side of the door that led to his rooms. “My mother spent hours making those needlepoint covers for the hall chairs, don’t you know?”

“No, I hadn’t realized. Maybe we could put those chairs in a safer place, sir, where they won’t come to any harm?”

“Perhaps the little ruffians could be taught to treat other people’s things with more respect. My parents would have a fit if they could see what’s going on in their house.”

For the first time, Katie wondered what had happened to Michael’s parents, but it didn’t seem the right moment to ask.

“I’ll do my level best, sir, to encourage the children to be more orderly and civilized.”

“Thank you.”

She thanked him again for his generosity with the clothing, and went to find her hat and coat. She had promised to walk down to the village with the children to show them where the school was, ready for Monday morning.

She hoped, desperately, that the children would behave themselves on their first day. She had a feeling that for Roy, at least, that might be a bit of a challenge.

Chapter Five

It was almost two weeks before Michael began to suspect what had happened. To understand the real reason Katie had walked back into his life. He sat in the bay window of his study watching her run around on the front lawn with the children. Her auburn hair kept escaping from her beret, curls bouncing as she moved. And he loved the way her slim skirt delineated her trim little figure. What a firecracker.

He picked up the receiver of the large black telephone that sat on his rosewood desk, and asked to speak to Mrs. Mallory.

“How did you manage to find her?” he wanted to know.

“Find who?”

Michael exhaled sharply. “Katie Rafferty, the Irish girl.”

“She was recommended to me by a friend of a friend.”

“Rubbish. She’s the girl I met in London. The one I told you about,” Michael insisted.

“Are you sure? There’s a coincidence!” Mrs. Mallory’s deep plummy voice didn’t lend itself well to feigning surprise.

“Don’t give me that nonsense, Marjory. I told you I’d helped a girl out in a bombing raid, and the next thing I know she turns up on my bloody doorstep.”

Mrs. Mallory must have realized she was caught out, so she gave in gracefully. “You did say you wished you knew what had happened to her, dear.”

“I didn’t say I wanted her living under my roof!”

“Do you have some complaint about the girl? Has she disappointed you in some way?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you must give her a chance. You helped her before. She needs your help now, she needs somewhere to live.”

“How did you trace her? I didn’t tell you her name — I didn’t know it myself.”

“Michael, dear, you told me the girl was in labor when the station was bombed. It was obvious that there must have been dozens of witnesses, and it didn’t take long to find somebody who knew where she was. You could have found her yourself if you’d put a little effort into it.”

“Very ingenious. Why go to all that trouble to find someone I only mentioned once, in passing?”