Trouble With Harry (9 page)

***

He found her locked in one of the gardening sheds, filthy, hungry, and absolutely furious.

“Harry!” she shrieked when he opened the door to the shed, and fell into his arms in a most gratifying manner, trembling and shaking with what he assumed was horror and shock.

Once again his wife showed her unexpected depths.

“Where are they?” she growled, pushing himself back from his chest. “Where are those little…little…”

“Devils?”

“Yes! Exactly! Devils! What a very good word that is. Apt, too. Very apt.”

She was magnificent in her fury, inky hair tumbling down from its once tidy braid, her eyes flashing with promised retribution, her cheeks pink with emotion. And she was all his, every last delectable morsel of her.

Morsels he was perilously close to losing unless he calmed her down and made her believe the children did not routinely lock people into garden sheds as pranks.

“They have been sent to the nursery without their suppers.”

“Good,” Plum snarled and pushed past him to freedom, trying to tidy herself as they walked through the overgrown garden back to the house. “They don't deserve the nice dinner I planned. They locked me in there, Harry, trapped me with all the spiders and beetles and slithery things.”

Harry tutted and murmured sympathetic noises as he slid his hand around her waist, ostensibly to help her walk, but really because he just liked touching her.

“McTavish, the very same McTavish that I had just given a kitten to, lured me into the shed, then escaped out through the narrow space in the corner as the others locked me in.”

“Ungrateful little monster.”

“They're all ungrateful. They spurned my overtures of friendship, positively spurned them!”

“They don't deserve you, they really don't,” Harry said soothingly, then could have bitten his tongue. The last thought he wanted to put in her mind was leaving him.

Plum froze for a moment at his words, then resumed her way to the house at a slower pace, one more given to deep thought. “Perhaps I was overhasty in my judgment. They're not bad children, not really.”

Harry thought it best not to comment on that since he was a fairly honest man.

“Truly, I believe they are more spirited than anything else,” Plum said thoughtfully, the fire in her lovely dark eyes dying down to a mere smolder. “Spirit in children is something to be hoped for.”

“As it is in a wife.”

Plum turned her big velvety eyes upon him. “Yeeees,” she said slowly, a faint frown between those glorious straight brows. She bit her lower lip, sending a flash of heat to Harry's groin as her small white teeth toyed with that delightful little pink lip. “I wouldn't want you to think I wasn't up to the task of mothering such high-spirited children. I am, I was just taken by surprise by their—”

“Nefarious plot to frighten you?” he suggested, having no false impression of just what were the children's true intentions.

“—cunning ability to create a detailed plot and see it through to its logical end,” Plum finished with a small smile of triumph as they approached the house.

Harry held open the one working French door that led from the terrace to the room he had turned over to his wife. “Cunning…well, yes, I suppose that's one way of describing them. Plum”—he grabbed her hand as she was about to sweep through the room. Her fingers tightened on his as he stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, musing idly that it had been a very long time indeed since he had been aroused simply by holding a woman's hand—“you need not protect them, you know. I have already informed them that they will wait supperless until you have named their punishment for this afternoon's activities.”

“Punishment?” Plum's frown increased as she worried her lip.

He nodded. “You can be assured that whatever discipline you desire for them will be carried out without regard to their entreaties for leniency or compassion.”

“Discipline? You wish for me to discipline them?” she asked, her voice a little on the squeaky side.

“Of course. You were the one they injured, thus you must mete out justice. I've found if you don't look them in the eye when you pronounce their punishment, it helps. None of them seem to have difficulty summoning up tears, and they can be quite effective when combined with quivering lips.”

“Tears,” Plum repeated, a throb in her voice.

Harry wanted more than ever to kiss her at the sound. Could there be a woman more perfect for him? He allowed himself to kiss the back of her hand twice before opening the door to the hall, escorting her to the bottom of the curved oak staircase. “Just don't allow yourself to be swayed when they throw themselves at your feet and beg for mercy.” Plum made an inarticulate noise in the back of her throat as he released her hand and started toward the dining room. “I will tell Juan to remove the children's places—”

“No!”

Harry stopped, startled by the vehemence in her objection. “No? Surely you do not wish to reward the little bu…devils by allowing them the honor of dining with us?”

Plum took a deep breath (an act he much appreciated considering the tight nature of her bodice) and clutched her hands together in mute appeal. “Please, Harry. I do so very much want us to be a family, and I thought when it was convenient, when no one is dining with us, the children could join us for dinner. My parents often let my sister and me have dinner with them, and I have many fond memories of those times. Please, please let the children join us.”

Harry frowned, about to tell her that she was mistress of the house, and as such she did not need his approval regarding who she wanted at dinner, but stopped when she came forward and took his hands in hers.

“I promise you they will be well-behaved and no trouble. I'm sure they are very sorry for their little joke on me, and I hate to see them castigated over something so silly. Please let them join us. They won't be any bother, you'll see.”

Harry disengaged a hand and ran his thumb over Plum's abused lower lip, every muscle in his body, every sinew, every iota of his being urging him to sweep her up in his arms and carry her off to his bed. He closed his eyes for a moment against the temptation she presented, fighting for control, one part of his mind amazed at how strongly he was reacting to her. It must be due to the accumulated loneliness (not to mention celibacy) of the past five years. There was no other reason he could be so violently attracted to a woman he'd met just a few days before.

Evidently Plum interpreted his silence not as a struggle of his mind against his body but as a disbelief in her abilities as a mother, for she clutched his hand between hers, squeezing it as she whispered, “Please.”

He smiled and kissed the worry right off her lips, just a short kiss, to be true, since he didn't trust himself with anything other than the most glancing contact with those delightful, seductive, berry-kissed lips, but still, it was a kiss, and his body (already aroused by the wonderfully wicked fantasies he was having about her) reacted as if he had given the signal to charge. Without further ado he marched his traitorous body to the dining room, saying over his shoulder, “As you like, Plum. If you want the children to dine with us—and I'm under no misapprehension that they will be the least bit repentant for their act, not to mention ill-behaved—then they will dine with us. I will await you in the dining room.” Seated, his bulging lap would be hidden by the lace tablecloth until such time as he regained control of himself, a time which, he mused as he paused long enough to watch her lift her skirt slightly and race up the stairs, would probably not occur for at least six years. Possibly eighteen. With luck, never.

“Thank you, Harry,” Plum called down to him as she reached the top. “It will be wonderful, you'll see!”

It would be a nightmare and he knew it, but he was willing to suffer anything to put that smile of joy on her face. Plum, he decided as he lunged painfully into the dining room, was the best thing that could possibly happen to his band of hellions. He just hoped they would learn to appreciate her before they drove her stark, staring mad.

“Is it wrong to think about torturing one's stepchildren?”

Edna the maid
eeped
and dumped the entire can of hot water on Plum's head, rather than dribbling it in a slow stream that would allow Plum to rinse the soap out of her hair. The maid stammered and backed away from the brass tub as Plum sputtered and frantically wiped soap from her eyes. Thom, quick thinking and not the least bit surprised by Plum's question, handed her a linen towel.

Plum thanked her and dabbed at her eyes, blinking away the sting of soap.

“I believe torture is frowned on these days, Aunt.”

Edna made her escape while Plum rinsed her hair in the water that Thom poured over her head. “I'm not actually contemplating torturing them, as you well know. I just want to know if it's wrong to
think
about it. With much relish and enjoyment. Is it wrong to dwell lovingly over the various torments one wishes to inflict on the children who are trying—with no little success, I might add—to ruin one's marriage and life, or is it a natural sequence of events given the evening just spent? Thank you, dear, I think it's rinsed now. Did Edna leave?”

“Yes, a few moments ago. I think you're going to have to look for a new maid—she doesn't seem to be up to serving you.”

Plum heard the smirk in Thom's voice rather than saw it. “Mmm.”

“As for your thoughts of torture, I think perhaps you're overreacting a bit. It wasn't really that bad.” Thom sat next to the small writing table, idly poking through Plum's journals and papers.

Plum turned in the tub to look back at her niece. “Overreacting? Not that bad? Have you lost your wits?”

“I don't believe so,” Thom answered, extracting a small red leather-bound volume from the depths of the writing desk. She looked up to smile at Plum. “Yes, the piglet was a bit much, but as there was a bull in the hall earlier in the day, you shouldn't be surprised to find a piglet in the dining room.”

“The only piglet I wish to see in the house is one that has been roasted with an apple in its mouth,” Plum said tartly and quickly finished her bath. She dried herself off before the cold fireplace, the heat of the day prohibiting a fire even for a bath. “The fact that they deliberately introduced a piglet into the house after I told them not to—” Plum paused long enough to bite back the harsh words she wanted to say. Ranting to Thom wasn't the answer to the problem. Plum slipped into her worn night rail, and sat by the opened window to dry her hair. “I just wish I knew what the answer was.”

“The answer to what?” Thom asked absently, absorbed in her book.

“To the question of how I am to reach the children. They don't mind me in the least, and Harry has made it quite clear that he expects me to take charge of them and turn them from the wild, heedless imps they are into polite ladies and gentlemen, a task that is seeming more and more monumental with each passing hour.”

“Oh, that.” Thom turned a page and hummed softly to herself.

“It's no insignificant situation, Thom. Dinner this evening was a perfect example of just how unsuited I am for the role of mother to Harry's children, and if he thinks I can't control the children he has now, he'll never give me children of my own.”

“Mmm,” Thom said, her eyebrows rising as she glanced at the next page.

Plum finished toweling her hair and began to comb the tangles out of the long black strands. Her hair was so thick, it was always a tedious job to comb it out after washing, but it was easier done damp than dry and full of snarls. “If the piglet in the room with all the children screaming and racing after it wasn't enough to convince him I am a poor mother, the situation later certainly was.”

“Yes, but Harry did say the wallpaper needed replacement.”

Plum thought back to the scene during dinner, giving a mental sigh. It was the mashed potatoes that had proved to be the children's undoing. After having ordered the removal of the piglet that had (“It just followed me in, honest!”) trotted in on Andrew's heels, Plum had managed to get everyone seated without too much ado. She saved the lecture she was aching to read them for later, when Harry's hazel eyes weren't watching her. She extracted the dead snake from McTavish's grip and seated him next to her on a chair with several pillows, allowing the other children to select their own seats. Thom sat on Harry's left hand, while Temple sat across from McTavish, on her right.

“Well, isn't this lovely?” Plum asked, smiling at them all, pleased to see that the children had some sort of training in table manners. It never once entered her head that having dined exclusively on nursery fare, they were stupefied into silence by the vast array of food she'd ordered for their first dinner as a family. “Here we are, all together, just one very large happy family.”

Harry, who had been giving his children gimlet glances, nodded without saying anything. Plum's heart fell a little at that wordless nod. Clearly his faith in her was still shaken by the garden shed incident. The dinner would show him how wrong he was to doubt her abilities as a mother. She kept her smile firmly in place as Juan and his footmen glided around the table in an efficient dance, offering dishes to her before moving down the table, assisting the children where needed.

“Digger, don't be a pig. Leave some for others,” India said as he scooped an entire quartered capon off the serving tray and deposited it onto his plate.

Plum, alert to possible signs of malcontent (and its more worrisome brother, outright trouble), saw Harry turn a frown to his son and quickly stepped in before he could say anything. “Such a healthy appetite, Digger!” she said as she waved on Ben, the capon-bearing footman. “I'm sure Cook will be gratified to know that you find dinner so appealing.”

“Huh,” India sniffed and took a dainty wing with a pointed look at Digger.

“Huh yourself,” Digger replied and stuffed a whole roll into his mouth. Harry, turned in the opposite direction to help himself to a portion of the remaining capon, missed the—somewhat amazing—event of Digger shoving a large dinner roll into his mouth, but the boy's bulging cheeks, not to mention the crumbs that sprayed the table before him as he chewed, could not be overlooked. Plum, racking her brain to think of something to distract Harry from the sight of Digger swallowing python-style large chunks of bread, helped herself to a spoon of mashed potatoes, and said—without thinking of possible repercussions of such a foolish statement—“Mashed potatoes! When I was a girl, my sister used to amuse me by making little sculptures out of her mashed potatoes. I can still remember the time she rendered Michelangelo's
David
into potato form.”

Eight pairs of eyes stared at her as she ladled gravy over her capon and potatoes. Five pairs of those eyes, alight with sudden speculation, turned to the footman offering the potatoes. There was a brief tussle over who would be served first, resolved when Harry barked, “Sit down, all of you!”

“Children, please,” Plum begged, worriedly noting that the frown on Harry's face had settled in and looked like it was going to be there for a while. She hurried to correct their behavior before he had an opportunity to comment on the fact that they were out of control. “Andrew, dear, a gentleman does not punch a lady in the arm, no matter if she does poke you with a fork. Anne, do not poke people with silverware, even if they are closer to the potatoes than you. Digger, why don't you wait until your father says grace before…oh, never mind. William, would you please bring more beets? It seems Lord Marston has a fondness for them.”

Harry cast a disbelieving glance at the huge mound of food on his son's plate. Beets topped the mountain of potatoes that dotted the landscape around the quartered capon set atop a field of French beans.

“Growing boys need lots of sustenance,” Plum told him with a weak smile, mentally thanking her stars that she had arranged for three more courses.

“So do pigs,” India muttered under her breath.

“I am not a pig!” Digger growled, shooting his sister a mean look. “You take that back.”

“Of course you're not a pig,” Plum soothed. “Young ladies do not eat as much as young men—”

“Are so! Piggy, piggy, piggy!” India said, narrowing her eyes at Digger.

Plum, one eye on Harry's deepening frown, cleared her throat. “Children, since this is our first night together—”

“Piggy, piggy, piggy,” the younger children started chanting. Digger, his face flushed and hot with anger, snarled an imprecation at his siblings that had Plum blinking in surprise.

“
What
did you say?” Harry asked, setting his napkin on the table and looking as if he was about to escort his son out to the woodshed to introduce him to his razor strop.

Plum, desperate now to just get through the meal without anyone being punished, pleaded with Harry. “I'm sure he didn't say what you thought he said. He probably said something similar, but not quite, if you know what I mean.”

“He said
merde
,” India said smugly as she formed her dollop of mashed potatoes into something that to Plum's eye vaguely resembled a church spire. “Only not in French. Mademoiselle said it was much worse to say it in English than in French, so you see, Digger really is a pig, because only a pig would have such a privy mouth.”

“ARGH!” responded Digger. With one deft flip of his wrist, he sent a forkful of mashed potatoes flying at his sister. India, with long practice, ducked the missile, which hit the wall behind her.

“Oh! You piggy, piggy, pig-pig!” She scooped up a spoonful of potatoes and, before Plum could stop her, fired it at her brother. The other children squealed their delight as Digger, intent on reloading his own weapon, was struck dead in the face. He roared a battle cry, and suddenly the air was full of flying potatoes. They seemed to come from everywhere, striking everyone and everything—the footmen, the walls, the children, even Thom was plastered before Harry, bellowing a warning so loud it made the windows rattle, stopped the starchy artillery attack.

“YOU WILL STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!” he yelled, and when the combatants, panting with the exertions of their recent warfare, stood in various positions of attack around the table, he looked at each one of them, snarling, “You are excused from the table until such time as you can eat like civilized human beings, not animals.”

“Piggy,” India muttered at Digger, a blob of potatoes clinging to the side of her head.

“Am not!” he hissed, wiping the potatoes from his chest.

“Not…one…more…word,” Harry roared. “Out! All of you! And I don't want to see any of you again tonight, do I make myself clear?”

Five subdued, potato-coated children nodded and trickled out of the room. Plum watched them leave with a heavy heart. Her initial reaction was to ask Harry just how his children had been raised to have such terrible manners, but she quickly provided herself with an answer—the little dears had no mother to guide them. She just prayed Harry wasn't so disappointed in her lack of parenting skills that he could not see how much better she could make all of their lives.

Harry sat back down, pulling his spectacles off to remove the blob of potatoes smeared across one lens. Plum stared at her plate as a sobbing Juan was led from the room by Ben, a variety of potent epithets and curses regarding devil-spawned children clearly audible in between the sobs.

Temple looked around the room, his distaste evident. Thom's face was placid, but Plum could see the merriment dancing in her eyes. Thom picked up her plate, and with a little bob to Harry, excused herself. “I think I'll have my dinner in the nursery this once, if you don't mind. I'm sure the children could do with someone keeping an eye on them.”

Harry flinched at her words. Plum, torn between the nearly overwhelming desire to cry and the urge to reassure Harry that he would not be subjected to another such scene (although she was at a loss as to how she was to guarantee any such thing), nodded at Thom and waved one of the footmen away from wiping potatoes from the window. “William, would you please ask Cook to send supper up to the nursery?”

“They don't deserve supper,” Harry said, still obviously a bit snappish about the children, which, considering he was wearing a boutonniere of mashed potatoes garnished with French beans, was understandable.

Plum waved her hand at the footman to do as she ordered, and turned back to apologize to Harry. “I'm sorry,” she said at the exact instance he looked up and said the same words to her.

“I believe I will finish my dinner in the servant's hall,” Temple said quietly and removed himself from the dining room.

The remaining footman followed Temple after receiving Harry's scowl. Plum's spirits sank as her husband threw his potato-riddled napkin down and rose to stalk down the length of the long table.

“Truly, Harry, the children were just—”

“Abominable, yes, I'm well aware of your assessment of their behavior. It is in complete harmony with mine. Um…you have a bit of potato in your hair. If you would allow me…”

Plum sat still while he dabbed at her head with her napkin. She was a mass of indecision, wanting to tell him the children's behavior at dinner was her fault, and yet admitting to herself that his label was more or less correct. The key, she decided after they spent the remainder of dinner in silence, was to show him not how badly behaved the children were, but how much she could do for them.

***

“Which brings me back to the problem at hand,” Plum said, shaking off the memories of the disastrous dinner as she combed her now potato-free hair before the soft, fragrant breeze of the open window. As thick as her hair was, it took forever to dry. She particularly wanted it dry soon, since the look Harry had given her after dinner boded very well for her plans to engage in many, many connubial calisthenics before the week was out, and everyone knew that damp hair had no place in the marriage bed.