“That sounds as if it will involve quite a bit of work.”
“It will.” Harry sighed, then picked up his pen. “I’ll want you to write to Crabtoes and have him dig out my records at Rosehill. Have him send them to me here, as fast as possible. Then I’ll need you to help me sort through the papers I have here. I don’t have much that is pertinent to that time, but I recall seeing a box of my notes somewhere when we moved. Oh, and don’t forget to send in that announcement to the Times.”
Temple put out his cigar, carried it over to the fireplace, and disposed of both ashes and cigar, wiping out the glass bowl with his handkerchief before returning it to Harry’s desk. “Your marriage announcement?”
“Yes. It will save me from having to write to all my friends, and Plum will probably want her friends and family to know about it. Blast! Just when I wanted to spend some time reveling in my wife’s charms, I must spend my days pouring over fifteen-year-old notes…”
***
“I should very much like to know exactly how the bull found itself in the house. Would one of you like to tell me?”
Erk, erk, chirruped the pheasant. Plum gave it a look to let it know she didn’t appreciate its opinion, and honed her look to a glare. She sent it down the line of servants and children who stood before her.
“Well? Doesn’t someone have something to say?”
The ten pairs of eyes regarding her displayed nothing but innocence, innocence so great, it would make the cherubim themselves feel in need of a good purging.
Plum sighed. “Very well, if you wish to be difficult about this. Gertie?”
An older woman with brown hair flecked with gray nodded her head.
“You’re in charge of the children, are you not?”
“Aye…well, I was until ’is lordship married ye, and now ye’re in charge o’ the little buggers.”
Plum fought down a feeling of panic at that thought. They were only children, and she had lots of experience with Cordelia’s children over the years—experience playing with them, that is, in situations in which she knew full well Cordelia would never allow her to suggest romps that might prove to be unsuitable or dangerous. Now, however, she was in Cordelia’s position, and she felt sadly at a loss as to what she should and shouldn’t do with the children. After a morning’s concerted and uncomfortable thought on the subject, she had decided that she would be their friend, helping them, guiding them, mentoring them, without being too strict or having to dole out punishment.
That was, after all, what a father was for.
“Just so. However, you have more experience with them than I do, therefore you must have some idea how a bull was let into the house.”
The woman named George—a misnomer if ever there was one, since a lovelier, more curvaceous woman Plum had never seen, not even her dull gray gown and stained apron could dim her charms—raised her hand. “Through the door?”
Digger snickered. India rolled her eyes and looked bored as only a thirteen-year-old girl can look bored. Plum narrowed her glare onto them both.
“You wouldn’t have something to tell me, would you, Digger?”
“Sure I do, I have lots of things to tell you. Joshua is a friendly sort, kind of like Nash.”
Nash, she knew, was the pheasant. She had made its introduction earlier, when she and Juan rounded up the nursery staff, footmen, and children. “Joshua?”
“Joshua is the bull,” Digger said. “He’s friendly, see? He likes McTavish, so when we came in from hunting for Joshua’s tail—”
“I found a bull tail!” McTavish said happily, holding up a withered black object that looked more like a dehydrated snake than a tail. “Can I have a kitten now? You said I could.”
Plum raised an eyebrow at Digger and tipped her head slightly toward McTavish. Digger shook his head. She sent a silent prayer of gratitude that she would not be called upon to admire the replacement bull’s tail, and continued with her morning guidance to the children. “That explains how Joshua might have come into the hall, but how is it that he broke three very expensive-looking urns, and put his horns through the door to the necessary?”
Anne and Andrew giggled, realized they were both laughing at the same thing, and changed their giggles to glares.
“The urns weren’t expensive, ma’am,” George said. The other servants nodded. “His lordship wouldn’t put anything expensive in the hall.”
Plum frowned. “He wouldn’t?”
“No, ma’am. He knows, you see.”
“He does.”
“Yes’m. About the children.”
“Ah.” Plum added an extra point or two to her opinion of Harry’s intelligence, and moved on. “About the door—”
“Tavvy was in the necessary,” Digger—evidently spokesman for the children—said. India sat at the end of the blue sofa across from Plum ignoring them all, obviously pretending she was a thousand miles away.
“Nash had to use the pot,” McTavish said, teasing the pheasant with his dried snake cum bull tail.
Plum successfully removed the image from her mind of a pheasant using a chamber pot, and bravely forged onward. “Since we are all friends here, we’ll let this morning’s incident go without further comment.”
Several members of the staff sighed with relief and slouched back against the wall. Plum eyed them all. “I realize that I am a new member of the family, but I really must put my foot down about the entertaining of livestock inside the house. Henceforth, all animals that are not pets will remain outside. Animals other than cats and dogs are not allowed to follow you inside. Do you all understand?”
“Yes,” Andrew said, nodding.
“No,” Anne said, shaking her head.
Digger shrugged.
Gertie and George exchanged glances.
Juan threw himself to his knees before Plum, one hand on his chest, the other outstretched toward her. “The Holy Mother pours blessings on your head, Lady Plump. The bull, he causes much mess in the hall that the boys and I must clean. Last week it was peacocks. Before that, pigeons.” He shuddered and sent her a look of sultry invitation from under half-closed eyes, a look so blatant it would have shocked a harem girl.
Plum ignored him. “Thom, dear, do you have my memorandum pad? Thank you. Oh, have you all met my niece, Miss Fraser?”
Several heads nodded.
“Excellent. Gertie, you and George may return to the nursery. Juan—yes, thank you, I appreciate your gratitude, but I really don’t think that kissing my boots is presenting quite the appearance of dignity that the butler of a marquis should strive for—you and the footman may return to cleaning up the damage from the bull.” Plum waited until the servants filed from the room, Juan bringing up the rear, his handsome face arranged in a seductive little pout that would have melted the heart of a lesser woman.
“Now, children, as I’ve always felt it’s best to begin as you mean to go, I have made some notes this morning about what constitutes acceptable behavior, and how I expect each of you to—”
There was a mad rush for the door, the children fleeing from the room in a flurry of pheasant feathers, petticoats, and flashing black boots.
“—behave… Well, drat it all!” Plum stared in mingled dismay and annoyance as the door slammed shut behind McTavish. Before she had a chance to say anything else, the door opened again and the youngest of her new brood stuck his head back into the room.
“Kitten,” he reminded her.
Plum sighed, then felt her lips twitch as Thom’s giggle turned to full-fledged whoops of laughter.
“Come along, Aunt. I’ll walk with you and McTavish to the stables. One of the stable cats has a litter that she’s about ready to part with.”
Plum thought about sighing again, but decided that too much sighing was the sign of a weak intellect, and she was only now coming to realize that she cou
ldn’t afford to show even the slightest sign of weakness before the children. Harry had left them in her hands, so she would just have to find the proper way to deal with them and make them behave. “I am their friend, I am their friend,” she repeated to herself as she set her memorandum book on the table at the end of the couch and shook out her skirts.
McTavish stood watching her with hope, one pudgy little lip prepared to commence pouting if his objective of a kitten was thwarted. She smiled at him and held out her hand. “Shall we go find you a kitten, then?”
McTavish suffered her holding his hand, and led the way out of the house and down to the stables. On the way Plum made a mental note to send a letter to Cordelia asking her for tips and tricks for dealing successfully with the younger generation, and began to plan the ways she would win over the children’s hearts.
***
Harry entered the dining room and looked in surprise at the table set for nine. He was used to dining by himself or with Temple. The room was empty of all but Juan and Ben the first footman, both of whom were laying out a dining service Harry hadn’t seen since Beatrice passed away. “Are we having a dinner party?”
Juan sent him a look filled with sympathy and adjusted a lead crystal goblet infinitesimally to the left. Say what you will about Juan—and Harry had heard many things from every female he employed—the man knew how to set a table. “The Lady Plump, she says you are to have the diablitos to dinner.”
“Little…oh, the little devils.” Harry gave a wry smile of acknowledgment, glancing quickly at the dark red, water-stained wallpaper of the dining room. “Well, it might be for the best, Plum will want to redecorate anyway. The children dining in here will no doubt hasten her along that task.”
Juan snorted something that Harry interpreted as disagreement. He pushed his spectacles up and tried to look like a supportive, confident husband. “We just have to trust that she knows best about these things. Where is she, do you know?”
Juan shrugged. “That is what I do not know. She was here an hour ago, telling us that we must set places for the diablitos, and then she left.”
Harry tugged at his lower lip as he thought, then left the dining room. Perhaps Plum was having a rest before dinner. Perhaps she was spending a quiet hour in the room he had given over as her sitting room. Perhaps she was with Thom or India and Anne. Perhaps she was lying naked in his bed, waves of ebony hair surrounding her, waiting to entrap him in their silken strands… He shook that last image out of his head and went to search for his wife.
***
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 con
venient, 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.