“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.
Seven
“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.
“How to make the children mind you?” Thom asked, still pouring over the book sitting before her. Plum craned her neck to see what it was that Thom found so fascinating, then jumped up and gasped, “Thomasine! What are you doing with that?”
Thom put a finger on a page to mark her spot, and looked up. “Reading. It’s very informative. How did you come up with the idea of Hunter Loosing an Arrow into a Mossy Crevice? I would think that something like that would hurt, should the gentleman’s aim be off.”
Plum marched over to her niece and snatched the book from her hands, stuffing it into the back of the writing bureau and slamming the lid shut. “Charles was very inventive and his aim was never off. That is all I am going to say on the subject.”
Thom grinned. Plum shook a finger at that grin. “I’ve told you before that you’re not to read the Guide until you are married!”
“I have no plans ever to marry. I shall be a doting aunt to your children. And Harry’s, too, if he’ll let me. I rather like them.”
“So do I, but that’s neither here nor there. And you’re changing the subject—that book is not suitable reading for you, and that’s that.”
Thom tipped her head and looked Plum over as she returned to her chair before the window and resumed drying her hair. “Are you ashamed that you wrote it?”
“Of course I’m not ashamed…not in the sense you mean, I’m not. There is nothing in there that is coarse or distasteful, it’s simply instruction of an intimate nature, a celebration if you will of the physical union between a husband and wife.”
“Then why did you
hide the book away in the bureau? Why don’t you set it out so people can see it and know you are the author?”
A look of horror crawled across Plum’s face. Her stomach balled up into a tiny little lead weight with the thought of just how their lives would be ruined should the identity of Vyvyan La Blue be made public. “Dear God in heaven, that would be the end.”
“Oh, surely you exaggerate,” Thom said.
Plum shook her head, horrific visions dancing in her head of ostracization a million times worse than what she’d experienced. “The last scandal took the life of your beloved mother, Thom. This one would…oh, it would destroy us all! You, Harry, the children…everyone would be tainted, everyone would be shunned.”
“Pooh. People wouldn’t be so cruel over such a silly thing.”
“Silly?” Plum stared at her niece, desperate to make her understand lest the girl inadvertently give away her secret. Before there was just Thom and herself to worry about, but now she had six more souls to protect. “Silly? Thom, I was silly once, when I was your age. Silly and naive to believe Charles was being truthful and honest when he married me. I suffered for that silliness, as did my family, most particularly your mother. Because of that silliness, I will have to spend the rest of my life in the country—which I don’t mind, I prefer country life, and thankfully Harry seems disinclined to go into town or Polite Society—but the fact remains that I cannot go anywhere people know me, or know of my past.”
Thom made an annoyed sound. “I don’t believe any of your acquaintances would still remember that old farrago. Yes, the people in Ram’s Bottom were rude to you about it, but they aren’t Society, and that’s who you’re worried about. You told me yourself that the ton isn’t happy unless it has a new scandal to chew over each week.”