The attic of Furness Hall was a huge peaked space, topping the entire length of the building. Sunlight streamed through round windows at the gable ends, but the illumination barely reached the middle. Jean carried an oil lamp to guard against her engrained hatred of dark spaces.
Her stated purpose was to search for old games and toys that Geoffrey might like. In fact, she was hiding. Since her humiliating outburst about Geoffrey’s pony, her lordly housemates looked at her sidelong, with wariness or sympathy. She didn’t try to figure out which. It was too annoying.
In the last five years, Jean had become herself—a sociable, reliable person whom hostesses were glad to see and companions were happy to include in any outing. She did not cause discomfort or awkwardness, much less enact scenes from Cheltenham tragedies. As far as anyone knew, would ever know, she had no reason to do so. That carefully nurtured persona would not break down now. She simply wouldn’t let it. A little time, some stern self-control, and all would be as before. And so, though she didn’t care for solitude in poorly lit spaces, she’d withdrawn to this large, silent attic to regroup.
Under the slanting rafters, dust motes drifted on dim brown air. Rough floorboards stretched away, littered with discarded bits of furniture, boxes, and trunks. Jean walked among them, holding up her lamp.
As she passed, she bent to open any container that looked interesting. She found tattered books, frayed linens, periodicals from the last century. Boring. Not enough to make her forget her lapse, until she raised the lid of a wooden case and confronted a garishly painted face screwed up into a wild grimace. Jean dropped the lid and jumped back, only just managing not to shriek.
The lamp wavered dangerously in her hand, making the shadows dance. Jean put it down on a small, battered table, making certain the top didn’t wobble before letting go. Then she waited for her heart to stop pounding. “Idiot,” she said. She opened the case again and looked more closely. The menacing face was a carved mask. Red, yellow, and black paint outlined a ferocious frown. A tuft of tattered feathers stood in for hair at the top. Lord Furness’s father had been interested in North American tribes, she remembered. No doubt this was an artifact he’d collected.
When she’d proved to herself that she wasn’t afraid of the thing, she retrieved the lamp and moved on.
Toward the far end of the attic, Jean came upon a row of leather trunks bound in brass. Resettling her lamp securely, she opened the first. The scent of camphor wafted out at her. Pushing aside a layer of tissue paper, she unearthed a swath of satin brocade in an exquisite shade of peach.
Jean pulled the cloth out. It proved to be a sumptuous gown with a square bodice, elbow-length sleeves trimmed with ribbons and rows of lace, and a skirt as broad as a tent. Exquisite embroidery adorned the neckline, glinting with tiny jewels. Although the fashion of another era, it was one of the loveliest gowns she’d ever seen.
Under more layers of tissue, she found other, similar garments. A second trunk contained still more. A third held gentlemen’s clothing from the same epoch—long full coats in bright hues and laced with gold—and a fourth had a variety of other clothes. Jean examined them all with admiration. Wealthy people had strutted about like peacocks fifty years ago.
She was drawn back to the first dress, running her fingers over the gorgeous brocade. It was so lovely. There was no one around, and she was so tired of the few outfits she had with her. She couldn’t resist. She slipped off her much plainer gown, placing it out of the dust on a sheet of tissue, and slithered her way into the peach creation.
The dress was a bit large on her. Fortunately, it laced up the side so she could reach to pull it tighter, but the shoulders still threatened to slip off. Her shift and stays showed above the low neckline, and without the elaborate underpinnings such a garment required, the skirt sagged around her in heavy folds. Even so, she felt very grand.
There was a broken cheval glass farther down the huge room. Jean held up the dragging skirts and went over to stand before it. Though her image was fragmented by two long cracks in the mirror, she wielded an imaginary fan as she thought a lady at the court of Louis XV might have done.
“Very elegant,” said an appreciative male voice.
Jean whirled and nearly lost the dress. She frowned at Lord Furness, who stood near the head of the attic stair, as she pushed the shoulders back into place. “What are you doing here?”
“This is my house.”
“Yes, but you went riding.”
“And I returned.” Benjamin strolled toward his disheveled houseguest. In his ancestress’s gown, Miss Saunders was an unsettling combination of little girl playing dress-up and lush courtesan, with her clothes falling off and her curling hair making a determined break for freedom.
She gathered the heavy skirts and retreated to a rank of trunks a little distance away. “I was just… I’ll put on my own gown.”
Benjamin walked a bit closer.
“If you will go away.”
“But I came up to help you look for toys for Geoffrey.” It was an increasing delight to tease her. There was something so charming about the look she got, which said she knew precisely what he was up to and refused to stoop to acknowledge it. And yet she couldn’t help but react.
“I haven’t found any.”
“Only a hoard of finery.” Benjamin walked along the row of trunks and glanced inside them. He rummaged through one at the end and pulled out a child’s tunic and breeches in deep-blue velvet. “What about this?”
“Just like a chocolate box,” said Miss Saunders.
“What?”
She half shrugged, which had a tantalizing effect on her gown. “Geoffrey would never wear that.”
“Perhaps if I told him it was an ancient horseman’s garb.”
“I don’t think he’d believe you. And if he did, he’d be bound to spoil the velvet.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Benjamin replaced the small garments and picked up a satin coat. “I think I remember my grandfather wearing something like this, with lots of lace at his shirtfront. Perhaps it was this very coat.” He held it up and looked closer. “I’m not sure. He died when I was around Geoffrey’s age.” He smiled at his disheveled companion. “Grandpapa didn’t care much for change at the last. Or for what people thought of his appearance. He wore what he liked.” Geoffrey would have appreciated that attitude, Benjamin thought. “He had a dueling scar across his cheek.” His hand went to his own face to demonstrate. “A bit puckered and quite frightening, as I recall. They don’t seem to go together—all this frippery and bloody sword work.”
“I imagine gentlemen took off their coats when dueling,” replied Miss Saunders.
Benjamin laughed.
“You should try it on,” she added in an odd tone.
He looked at her, hands clutching the brocade bodice to keep it from sliding off, a beam of sunlight shining through the uninhibited glory of her hair. Holding her gaze, Benjamin slowly took off his coat. “No wigs,” he said. “I draw the line there.”
“I haven’t found any,” she answered breathily.
He donned the bright satin garment. It fit well enough, only a little tight in the shoulders. It felt strange to have wide skirts around his legs. He made an elaborate bow. “Pon rep, my lady, I am so pleased to see you. I hope I find you in better health?”
“What do you mean, better?”
Benjamin straightened. “I’ve been concerned about you since—”
“I’m fine,” she interrupted. “My…outburst in the library was quite uncharacteristic, I assure you. It won’t happen again.”
“No apology is necessary.”
“I wasn’t apologizing.” Coppery glints snapped in the depths of her eyes. “Only informing you that all is well.”
He didn’t believe her, though he couldn’t have said why. Her bearing and expression were calm, her manner quelling. Clearly, she didn’t want to talk about the bout of weeping, and he had no right to press her. Why should he wish to? “I don’t know how ladies moved about in those gowns.” He indicated the sweep of peach brocade trailing over the floorboards.
“With stately elegance,” she replied.
“That is to say, very slowly. Have you seen the sort of shoes they wore? Teetering along on four-inch heels must have made it hard to run away.”
“From what?” she asked with a quizzical glance.
“Anything.” Benjamin had spoken randomly. All his attention was on her, leaving his tongue unsupervised. “Bears.”
“Bears?” She laughed.
It was a delightful sound. Benjamin realized he hadn’t heard it nearly often enough. Irresistibly drawn, he stepped closer. “Or impertinent admirers.”
“The gentlemen wore heels, too,” Miss Saunders said. “So it would have been an equal race, mincing along the cobblestones in a satin-draped procession.”
She looked up at him, still smiling. Her eyes were suffused with warmth now, her lips a little parted, and Benjamin couldn’t help himself. He moved closer still and kissed her.
Just a brush of his mouth on hers, an errant impulse. He pulled back at once.
She leaned forward and returned the favor, as if purely in the spirit of experiment. Benjamin felt a startling shudder of desire.
In the next moment, she’d twined her arms around his neck, and they were kissing as if their lives depended on it. He buried his fingers in her hair, as he’d been longing to do for days. It sprang free and tumbled over his hands, a glorious profusion of curls. Hairpins rained onto the attic floor.
She kissed with sheer inexperienced enthusiasm. One of the open trunks pressed against the back of Benjamin’s legs, and he nearly lost his balance and fell in. Her borrowed dress fell off one shoulder, revealing more of her underclothes. He was so tempted to help it along to the floor.
Then she pulled back and blinked at him, her eyes wide, dark pools. Her arms dropped to her sides. She took a step away, and another. “Oh.”
The small sound was a breath, a worry, an astonishment. Benjamin struggled with his arousal, glad now of the long, concealing coat.
Miss Saunders put her hands to her wild crown of hair. The lovely lines of her body were outlined in peach brocade and sunlight. “Oh dear.”
“I could help pin it up, if you like.” Benjamin bent and gathered a handful of hairpins.
“No, you couldn’t.”
He gave her the pins. “I have a deft hand,” he said.
“My hair is beyond deftness. It has to be wrestled into submission.”
He nearly lost his careful control at the phrase and the thoughts it elicited. “I have strong fingers.”
Miss Saunders flushed from her cheeks, down her neck, and across her half covered bosom.
She was delectable, Benjamin thought, so very alluring. She was also an unprotected young lady and a guest in his house. He’d very nearly crossed the line here, and he wanted to, desperately, still. He had to leave before he did. He reached for his coat. Miss Saunders moved when he did. Not a flinch, he decided, but a demonstration of uncertainty.
Benjamin snagged his coat. Rapidly, he shed the antique satin garment and resumed his own. He turned, reluctantly, and spotted a small white face peering from behind a broken cabinet near the stairway. “Geoffrey?”
His son darted from hiding and scurried down the stairs. Benjamin knew there was no catching him.
“He looked angry,” said Miss Saunders, her tone subdued.
“Only curious, I think.” In fact, Benjamin couldn’t have defined his son’s expression, seen so fleetingly. The boy had surely witnessed the kissing. There was nothing to be done about that, and nothing useful to say just now. Was he required to explain it to him? Benjamin found he couldn’t imagine that conversation.
As he walked to the steps and down into the inhabited parts of the house, he realized that he’d never spoken to his son about his deceased mother. Not one word. He had no idea what Geoffrey thought about Alice. Or knew about her, beyond the portrait in the library.
Part of him argued that this was best. He hadn’t burdened a child with the weight of his grief. Should Geoffrey have heard him rail against the cruelty of fate? Seen him pound the desk drunkenly and weep?
But another part wondered how he’d let his life grind to a halt. And so many responsibilities lapse.
When she was certain she was alone again, Jean’s knees gave way, and she sank onto one of the closed trunks in a welter of peach brocade. One sleeve of the gown fell off her shoulder. She didn’t notice. She simply reverberated, body and mind, with the aftermath of those kisses. She’d never felt anything like that.
She wasn’t a complete novice. She’d been kissed before. More than once, actually. Gentlemen would flirt and seize their chances, and she’d allowed a few of them to take minor liberties. When she felt curious, or temporarily beguiled. But she’d never been tempted beyond a fumbling embrace or two—those empty bits of nothing compared to what had just occurred. Jean put her hands to her blazing cheeks.
Everyone expected her to marry, of course. Her birth was genteel, and she had a tidy little fortune. But marriage meant putting her person, and her money, under another’s power. Jean couldn’t contemplate such a step without a shudder.
And so she moved from hostess to hostess, shedding complications with the changing scenes. The next time an importunate gentleman looked for her, she was gone. By the time they met again, the incident was long past, its lack of consequence obvious. None of these beaus had followed her about the country to press their suits. None had made her head spin. How could fingers running through her hair turn her weak with desire?
But Geoffrey had seen! She’d come here to save him, not dally with his father. What had the boy thought of their embrace? He’d certainly scowled. Hadn’t he? She couldn’t be certain now.
Jean’s hands shook as she changed into her own gown and tidied up the trunks. Alone in the dim, cavernous space, she could admit that she would very much like to kiss Lord Furness again. Even though that was probably a very bad idea.
She returned to her bedchamber, expecting every minute to see Geoffrey peering reproachfully around a corner. She reached safety without encountering anyone, however. “Tab?” she called as she closed the door behind her. A kitten seemed just the thing right now.
There was no response, and no sign of the little animal.
“Have you disappeared into your mysterious hiding place again?” She sighed and let it go. He’d emerge eventually to use the sand box and eat the food still in his bowl.
But he didn’t.
The day passed. Not ready to face Lord Furness, Jean wrote several letters and read for a while. When Tab didn’t reappear, she searched the room again, with no more success than the last time. Finally, when dinnertime loomed, she went downstairs to inquire.
“He was there when I made up the room this morning,” said a young housemaid. She smiled. “He likes to pounce on the sheets when I shake them out.”
“You’re sure he didn’t get out when you left?” asked Jean.
“No, miss. I was careful.”
Jean continued along the lower corridor to the kitchen, busy with preparations for the meal. Everyone there disavowed any knowledge of Tab. Overhearing, Mrs. McGinnis came out of her room and said the same. The cook, impatient at the interruption of her work, sniffed. “I’d look to young Master Geoffrey. When things go missing in this house, it’s usually him.”
Jean took this as prejudice. She walked through the lower floors of the house, calling softly for Tab, but got no response. Finally, she climbed the stairs to the nursery and asked her question there.
“I haven’t seen him, miss,” said Lily the nursery maid, who sat at a worktable with a pile of mending. “Have you seen Miss Saunders’s kitten, Geoffrey?”
The boy, making a tower with wooden blocks on the floor before the fire, didn’t look up.
A sound escaped the blanket tepee. It sounded remarkably like a mew.
“What was that?” asked Jean.
It came again, muffled but unmistakable. Jean walked over to the improvised tepee and pulled back a flap. A closed basket sat inside, the source of the mewing. One of Tab’s paws poked through a narrow opening in the fibers. Quickly, Jean bent, opened the basket, and lifted Tab out. She straightened with the kitten in her arms.
Geoffrey hit out at his construction, knocking the blocks helter-skelter over the floor. One hit the fire screen and bounced back to strike his knee. He showed no reaction.
Lily sprang up. “Lord a’ mercy, what have you been up to?”
“I wanted to play with him,” mumbled Geoffrey sullenly.
“But you weren’t playing with him,” Jean said. She couldn’t keep the emotion out of her voice. “You shut him up in a prison and left him.”
Geoffrey stuck out his tongue at her.
“Geoffrey!” Lily came to stand over him, hands on hips. She didn’t present a particularly authoritative figure. “Beg pardon at once. You told a lie, too. You know what Tom said about—”
“Didn’t! Didn’t speak!” The boy jumped up. “This is my house. The kitten was born near here. It should belong to me, not her.” He ran from the room.
Lily sighed. She looked quite dispirited. “Sorry, miss.”
“I spoke too sharply to him.” The kitten clawed at Jean’s hand. “I’m going to take Tab back to my room.” She carried the squirming animal downstairs, feeling remorseful. She should have moderated her tone with Geoffrey; he was very young. But the truth was, she would never react well to the thought of creatures shut in small spaces.
Tab visited his sand box, dug into his food bowl with gusto, and retired to the window seat for a thorough wash. When Jean went down to dinner soon after, she used the key that had been lying on the mantelpiece and locked her bedchamber door.
Word of Tab’s kidnapping and retrieval had reached her companions. “I’m glad your kitten has been found,” said Lord Macklin as they sat down to dinner.
“And sorry that Geoffrey took him,” said Lord Furness. “He is confined to quarters and will apologize to you tomorrow.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is. He’d been told the cat was yours.”
“Perhaps, you know, after he saw us in the attic…” Jean faltered under his uncle’s interested gaze.
Lord Furness spoke self-consciously. “There was nothing wrong with that. From Geoffrey’s point of view.”
“Nor from mine,” said Jean.
Their eyes met. The look was nearly as intimate as the kiss.
“And what of yours, Benjamin?” said Lord Macklin.
Their host blinked, turned to the older man. “My…?”
“Your point of view. We’ve heard about Geoffrey’s. And Miss Saunders’s. What about yours?”
For a moment, Jean thought he knew about the kiss. Then she saw he was only teasing, from the hints he’d picked up.
“I agree with Miss Saunders,” said Lord Furness, gazing at her again.
“You share her opinion that there was nothing wrong with…it?” his uncle replied. He appeared to be enjoying himself.
“Wholeheartedly.”
“And should it recur?”
Lord Furness’s eyes, which remained fixed on Jean, glinted with amusement and something more. “I shall live in hope,” he said.
Jean couldn’t stop the flush that warmed her cheeks, or the thrill that went with it. She could, however, change the subject. “Have you seen any more of your friend, Lord Macklin?”
“My friend?”
“The one you were surprised to meet in the village. Who’s such a creature of London.”
“Ah.” The older man accepted her diversion with a smile. “I have, in fact. She’s settled here for some weeks. For a rest.”
“From the rigors of society?” Jean asked. “The season hasn’t even started.”
Lord Macklin shook his head. “She has taxing…work.”
“What sort of work?” asked Jean, intrigued by this unusual piece of information. Ladies from London who were friends with an earl didn’t usually have employment.
“Who is this?” asked Lord Furness at the same moment.
“A friend I was surprised to see in Somerset, as Miss Saunders said.”
“I hope she doesn’t expect formal calls,” said their host, reverting to his earliest crusty manner. “Or entertainment.”
Something about the last word appeared to amuse his uncle very much. “She does not. She’s known for a charming lack of formality. And she’s here quite privately, on a repairing lease. She doesn’t want attention.”
“Surely we could exchange visits,” Jean said, even more interested in this mysterious figure.
“No,” said Lord Furness. “The neighborhood would take it as a signal that their society is welcome here and…erupt into a flurry of calls and invitations.”
“Like a volcano?” Jean found the image, and his uncharacteristic agitation, amusing.
His uncle calmed him with a gesture. “As I said, she’s here for a rest. She doesn’t want to see you either.”
Lord Furness blinked, nonplussed. Jean laughed.
Through the rest of dinner, she tried to discover more, but Lord Macklin was an old hand at evading questions he didn’t wish to answer. He revealed nothing significant.
• • •
When Benjamin sent for Geoffrey the next morning, to discuss his transgression and arrange for the official apology, the boy was nowhere to be found. He’d apparently sneaked out of his bedroom in the night, after Lily was asleep. As no doors or windows had been unbolted, he had to be in the house, but a search turned up no sign of him. Even Tom couldn’t find him, which he thought odd. “Reckoned I knew all his hidey-holes,” the lad said.
Benjamin organized a more systematic sweep of the house, beginning at the bottom and working up, but the dearth of staff made this a slow process. By noon, he’d begun to worry. Had Geoffrey gotten outside? Standing in the empty front hall, Benjamin reviewed the possibilities. No, not without leaving the exit he’d used open. Benjamin had been an inquisitive child here himself; there were no secret passages or escape tunnels at Furness Hall.
Miss Saunders came through the doors to the reception room. “Still no sign?”
Benjamin shook his head.
“I shouldn’t have scolded him,” she said, practically wringing her hands.
She reviewed the story of Tab’s release, as she’d done more than once, despite Benjamin’s reassurances. She was overly concerned about a sharp remark, as he was just a bit weary of telling her. Benjamin headed for the stairs. He felt better when he kept moving.
He walked an upper corridor, wondering what to do next. There was nowhere else to look. Every box and trunk in the attic had been opened and examined under his supervision. They’d peered under beds and behind sofas. They’d shaken each drapery and ransacked every cabinet. Perhaps his son, like cats, could walk through walls.
Struck by a sudden impulse, Benjamin went over and opened a door he never opened. The bedchamber beyond was barren—with the requisite furniture and draperies, but no ornament. He’d had Alice’s room cleared out a week after she died. The sight of her clothes and trinkets—the mere knowledge that they existed—had lacerated him beyond bearing. He hadn’t thought that Geoffrey might want some of them. He hadn’t thought at all, actually. “Did I do wrong, Alice?” he said aloud.
A small sound, a seeming response, startled him. Had he really heard it? And was he in the presence of a ghost? For months after his wife died, he’d half hoped for a visitation. Futilely, of course. Was he to receive one now? Preposterous. But he couldn’t help saying, “Alice?”
The soft, slithery sound came again, and this time he traced it to the cupboard at the top of the wardrobe. Which he knew to be locked; the key was in his jewelry case with his cuff links.
Benjamin went over and pulled at the cupboard door. Locked indeed. But a sudden flurry of movement from inside was not the least ghostlike. He knocked sharply. “Geoffrey?”
“Go away!” came the muffled reply.
Not bothering to argue, Benjamin went to fetch the key. He was not astonished to find it gone. Back at the wardrobe, he said, “Come out of there at once.”
“Won’t!”
“Then I shall have to break the door. That would be a shame.”
There was a short silence. Then the key turned in the lock. One of the cupboard doors opened, and Geoffrey peered down at him.
Benjamin opened the other, revealing a chamber pot sitting next to his son. He didn’t care to imagine using it in such a confined space. There was a clutter of stuff in the back of the cupboard as well. “Come down,” he said, holding out his arms.
Geoffrey didn’t jump into them. He climbed down, using carvings on the wood of the lower doors as handholds. “I fell asleep. I’m hungry.”
“You’ve no one to blame but yourself for that.”
The boy scowled. “This is my mama’s room.”
“It was. How do you know that?”
“Cook told me.”
The cook was a testy creature and often impatient with Geoffrey, though an artist with viands. Not the best source of information, Benjamin thought. He should have realized that the servants would talk about Alice, even if he didn’t. He should have realized a number of things.
“She died in here,” Geoffrey added.
Benjamin braced himself for questions, reproach, tears. What should he say? Geoffrey’s expression was bland, uninformative. “Yes,” Benjamin said. He’d hated this room for so many months. Now, it seemed just empty.
“The old lord died in your room. His wife died in the one across the hall from here.”
Startled, Benjamin gazed down at him. “Are you keeping a list?”
“I ’spect people have died all over this house. It’s old.” Geoffrey said this with a certain relish.
“Yes.”
“The lord with the long curls in the picture gallery broke his neck on a hunt. Over a regular rasper. Bradford said so.”
“It’s true. You’re, er, interested in death, are you?” What a foolish thing to say to a small child, Benjamin thought. Was this fascination related to Alice? Could it be when it appeared so…clinical?
“Tom doesn’t know where his family died,” Geoffrey answered with no sign of distress. “’Cept maybe Bristol.”
“Yes.”
“But I do.” This knowledge seemed to gratify him.
“Indeed,” said Benjamin. “I’m still alive, of course.”
Geoffrey gave him one of the measuring looks that always made the boy seem older than his years. Benjamin wondered if he ought to say something comforting about Alice. He couldn’t say she’d loved her son, because she’d died without even seeing him. She would have loved him of course, but was that a consolation? “You look just like your mother,” he said. And then nearly cursed. Had the servants talked about his reaction to this fact?
The boy still seemed unaffected. “I know. She’s in the library.”
Did he believe Alice was actually there? Had Benjamin’s brooding over the portrait taught him that? Benjamin felt all at sea and just a bit aggrieved. Gentlemen of his acquaintance were not required to grapple with such questions. Women took care of the children. Didn’t they? Finally, he said, “Her picture is there, yes.”
Geoffrey stared up at him. Benjamin had rarely felt at such a loss for words in his life. Before he found any, his son shrugged and turned away. “I’m hungry,” he said again. He started to walk away.
“Wait a moment.” He’d been searching for a miscreant before they veered into this exploration of mortality, Benjamin remembered. “We have certain matters to discuss. Concerning Miss Saunders’s kitten.”
Geoffrey’s expression grew sullen.
Benjamin pressed on. “You shouldn’t have taken it from her room. You understand that was wrong?”
“I would’ve put him back,” his son replied impatiently.
“And Lily says you lied about having it.”
“I did not! I didn’t speak!”
“A lie isn’t always spoken aloud. Not admitting what you’d done was a lie.”
Geoffrey scowled. He was quite good at that, Benjamin noted.
“Did you take Miss Saunders’s kitten because of…anything you saw in the attic?”
The boy looked less, not more, self-conscious. His celestial-blue eyes, Alice’s eyes, fixed on Benjamin. Then he let out a sigh and spoke like someone wishing to conclude an irritating bit of business. “What’s the punishment?”
“Eh?”
“That’s the rule. There’s always a punishment. Lily gives really stupid ones.”
He appeared to see this as an annoying game. Misbehave, receive a silly punishment, and forget the matter. “An honorable gentleman makes things right,” Benjamin said. “When he sees that he has made a mistake, he takes steps to correct it.”
Geoffrey’s face showed apprehension for the first time. Or perhaps it was just confusion?
“What do you think the punishment should be?”
His son blinked, astonished.
Briefly, Benjamin enjoyed seeing the boy as bewildered as he was coming to feel much of the time. Then, Geoffrey’s cerulean eyes flamed. “I won’t give up Fergus!” he declared. He stood straight and fierce, his little hands closed into fists. “If you try to take him away, I’ll…I’ll—”
“No.” Benjamin knelt and started to put his arm around the small, rigid figure. But Geoffrey stepped away before he could touch him. Benjamin put his reaction to this aside. “No, that’s too much.” And it was too much to ask the boy to choose his own punishment, he realized. “You will apologize to Miss Saunders. And you will leave her kitten alone unless you have her permission to play with it. Also, you will have no cakes for…a week.”
Geoffrey’s glare gradually eased. His chest still rose and fell rapidly. “Muffins?” he asked.
“No muffins. Or jam. In fact, no sweets of any kind.”
“Not even cocoa?” The wheedle of negotiation had entered his tone.
“Not even.” Feeling a little foolish on his knees, Benjamin rose. “So that’s settled then.” His son shrugged and turned toward the door. “You shouldn’t have taken that key from my room,” Benjamin added.
Geoffrey’s hand went to his shirtfront and clutched at something beneath the cloth. Did he have the key on a string around his neck? “It’s mine!”
Benjamin glanced into the still-open cupboard. He could just see a mass of white crumpled at the back. From a spray of lace along the edge, he thought he recognized one of Alice’s nightgowns. With a pang of muddled emotion, he let the subject drop.
Twenty minutes later, Geoffrey stood before Miss Saunders and apologized. Not exactly sullenly, Benjamin judged—more like a workman ticking off an irksome task.
“I’m sorry I took your kitten,” he said. “I won’t do it again.”
Miss Saunders nodded and smiled at the boy.
“I’m sorry I shut him up in the basket, too.”
The tone of this second part was different. Insinuating? But that was ridiculous, Benjamin thought. Still, some odd emotion seemed to travel between the other two, palpable but mysterious. Unless he was imagining it; surely he was.
“That’s good,” said Miss Saunders, no longer smiling.
Geoffrey looked at Benjamin, waited for a nod to signal that his duties were complete, and left the library.
The room was very quiet in his wake.
Benjamin wouldn’t have minded a compliment. He wanted to feel he’d done well, fulfilled some of his responsibilities as a father. On the other hand, he wasn’t certain the apology had gone well. For some reason. “I don’t recall things being so complicated when I was a child,” he said. “None of this trouble.”
“You were the child,” replied Miss Saunders.
He shook his head. “My mother was just better at it,” he said, trying not to sound aggrieved. “Everyone knows women are more suited to caring for children.”
“Everyone?” Her voice vibrated with some new outrage. “Does everyone?”
“It is a generally accepted—”
“So you’ve never encountered a bad mother? Not that you would have noticed, since women are simply designed by nature to care for their children. As everyone knows. And so, whatever they do must be right.”
He took offense at her contemptuous tone. “I didn’t say that.”
“No, you repeated platitudes. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“How the deuce have I offended you this time?”
“Women can be as cruel as men,” she replied bewilderingly. “More so!” Her dark eyes burned into him, as if to etch her point onto his brain. Then she walked out.
“Damn it all!” exclaimed Benjamin. He kicked at an ottoman. “What the devil was that about? What the hell is wrong with the woman?”
His gaze caught on the portrait of Alice above the fireplace. “You never spoke to me that way. You thought my ideas very astute, as I recall. Yes, and admirable, too.”
And now, instead of Alice, he had a female who exploded like a defective cannon at the least excuse—indeed with no excuse whatsoever, as far as he could see. Who complained and argued. Who…set him afire when she kissed him.
Benjamin stood very still in the middle of the library. Why had he thought instead of Alice? He wasn’t going to put Miss Saunders in his wife’s place. Certainly not. He’d never know what to expect from one day to the next. Which was not—emphatically not—a curiously attractive notion.