“I take it you’ve never lived in the country if you think this is quiet.” He stretched his legs and inspected his new boots, but it was too dark to see if they needed polish.
“No, I cannot recall ever leaving the city, although I suppose I may have as a child, when my father was alive. Mama was never strong enough for long journeys. She had to take a nurse with her when she traveled to the south of France for her health.”
That explained why Lady Phoebe lived with her aunts. They had ill parents in common, he supposed, but that didn’t bridge the gulf between their upbringings.
“When he broke his back, my father refused to leave his house. He’d have shot me for suggesting France.” Drew couldn’t explain their differences any better. France might as well be the moon to his parents.
“My mother went to school in Switzerland. She wasn’t always poor. And I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I’m quite sure this is improper.” She adjusted her robe so she could stand without tripping.
Drew was reluctant to give up the moment of. . . just existing, without any expectation or thought. He stood, glancing up to see if there were stars, but of course the clouds hid them. He offered his hand to help her up, and she accepted it as if it was the most natural act in the world. Her fingers were warmer than the chilly air, small boned and narrow.
When she stood, she just reached his shoulder. That answered one question.
He reluctantly released her hand and led the way back to the attic stairs. “I thank you for your vigilance, but I really do not expect you to sit guard on the roof.”
“It’s what I do,” she said simply, if puzzlingly.
“Send a servant to fetch me next time,” he suggested, taking her hand to assist her into the attic from the high step.
He was in an unlit room with a beautiful woman and discussing household duties. What the hell was the matter with him? When was the last time he’d been alone with a woman? All right, if a courtesan counted. . . But alone with a lady?
Never. He’d never been alone with a respectable female. They shouldn’t be alone now. And still, he wanted the moment to linger. At least the governess had more conversation than Miss Higginbotham, but if he were to marry, it had to be to someone who understood that his business was more important than pet boxes and who could handle tea parties without him.
“Thank you for looking for me,” she said softly. “It really wasn’t necessary, but it was. . . nice. I was feeling a little lonely, I suppose. I’ll do better.” She gathered her long robe and hurried down the stairs, leaving him in the attic, with only a lingering trace of her heather-scented soap.
Drew took the stairs at a slower pace, telling himself he’d wasted enough time on the governess. He had a business to run, inventions to finish, and no interest in social niceties. He needed to apply his nonexistent spare time to finding a wife who could handle society for him, and that was most definitely not a capricious madcap who sat on roofs listening to birds.
Washing in the amazing luxury of warm water delivered by a maid the next morning, Phoebe attempted to block the scene on the roof from her mind. She’d been alone and missing her home and succumbed to a moment of weakness. She would have been fine in a few minutes. It was highly embarrassing that Mr. Blair had discovered her.
He’d been remarkably kind about it, sharing his father’s injury and obstinacy with her—and letting her know about the poor boy sleeping in the stable! Wealth might be rather useful if one shared it. Although even wealth couldn’t always buy safety. She’d need to help with that. Strangers skulking in the alley meant she’d have to keep the children inside. She hated that.
She had breakfast in the nursery. Teaching the little ones etiquette would have to wait until after she’d taught them to actually sit at a table.
“No, Cat, you cannot feed Kitty your bacon on the floor. It will make him ill and you dirty before the day even starts. Enoch, put the chair down before it topples. If you wish to use your talent to make it easier to lift the chair and pull it out for Clare, that’s fine, but are you certain you wish to exhaust your energy on trivial things? Wouldn’t you rather wait for your lessons?”
“You will give me lessons on levitation?” Enoch asked, eagerly taking his seat without helping his little sister into hers.
“If you do your other lessons well and quickly. Cat, please come sit down before your eggs are cold. I’m sure your mother is trying to tell you the same.”
The twins looked so sad and pale, they broke Phoebe’s heart. What did one say to motherless children who’d been ripped from the only home they knew? If she’d wept on the rooftop, she could only imagine how they felt.
“Do you really think Mama is watching us?” Clare asked forlornly.
“I cannot see into the spirit world, so I cannot speak to that,” Phoebe said, straightening the child’s collar and pushing her braid out of her food. “But I know mothers love us, and they’re always with us in some way. Mine is many miles away, but I feel her right here.” She touched her heart. “And I hear her in my head, scolding me to eat before my food gets cold.”
“Mama used to say that,” Enoch said knowingly, shoving food into his mouth. “And she’d say not to eat too fast.”
“And she said not to talk with your mouth full,” Cat added.
They perked up a little as they reminded each other of the things their mother said. The nursemaid looked up from making the beds and winked at Phoebe over their heads. She hoped that meant approval.
She had the children writing their letters on their chalkboards when Mr. Morgan warily peered in, a wad of documents in his hand. He looked as if he’d entered a dragon den as he fiddled worriedly with his spectacles and waited to be noticed.
She took pity on the poor man and stepped into the hall. Mr. Morgan was the kind of solid man who would have fit in nicely back in her part of town. He was only half a head taller than she, although her heels gave her that height. She wanted to tap the curved hump of his nose and assure him she wouldn’t bite.
She hadn’t felt remotely sisterly with Mr. Blair last night. She wasn’t at all certain how to deal with that flutter of expectation he’d engendered.
“I’ve amended the contract,” Mr. Morgan said almost apologetically. “If you’d like to discuss the changes, I’d be happy to go over them with you.”
Her solicitor had explained all the chains the contract placed on her. She wanted the salary, but she couldn’t sell her soul and promise all the things Mr. Blair seemed to think essential to the welfare of his wards. She needed time to show him how ridiculous he was being.
“If you will send the contract to my solicitor, please, he’ll let me know if it’s ready for my signature. A lady must be careful of the terms to which she agrees, you understand,” she said, adding a flap of her lashes and a pretty smile.
Mr. Morgan stumbled all over himself and backed away. “Of course, my lady.”
He was much too easy. She shouldn’t play games with him like that. But she’d been feeling vulnerable after last night and needed to regain her equilibrium.
She returned to the children and had them finish up their letters to the Malcolm librarian, asking for information on their gifts.
“Books go in libraries, don’t they?” Clare whispered, holding her pencil as if it were a hammer she must use to put words on paper.
“When we’re not reading them,” Phoebe agreed, helping Clare to adjust her fingers.
“Clare has Mama’s book,” Cat said, drawing a picture of a book on her paper.
Mama’s book? Phoebe took a second to register the implication. Their mother had been a Malcolm. Malcolms kept journals. If Letitia had the Sight—what might she have kept in that journal? The children couldn’t read. . .
“Did your Mama give the book to you?” Phoebe asked, trying for insouciance as she continued to help with their writing.
Clare nodded. Cat ran to the cot and produced a leather-bound book. “Can you read it to us?”
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With trepidation, Phoebe took the heavy tome and peeked inside the front cover. The Journal of Letitia Malcolm Montgomery Blair read the frontispiece. The following pages were written in a hand so tiny that it took a moment to realize it was Latin.
Phoebe flipped through to the end. “It’s all in Latin, I fear, and mine is very rusty. I will have to find a dictionary to translate.”
“Latin?” Enoch looked up. “Cousin Drew knows Latin.”
Clare violently shook her braids. “Mama says no, no, no! Lady Phoebe must read it to us.”
A woman didn’t want her words read by men. Phoebe understood that. She set the book on the table. “I’ll start on it this evening. It may be very boring recipes. Now let’s finish our letters to the Librarian. We’ll tell her about your mama’s journal, shall we?”
They weren’t old enough to appreciate the books of Malcolm knowledge, but if there was anything of importance to be found in the library, the librarian would let her know, and she could decide if a trip to the castle library would be worthwhile. But she hoped Letitia’s journal held the answers she needed.
Would it hold the answers to why Letitia had been murdered?
Eight
Engrossed in the oily insides of his current project, confident that the new governess had his wards in hand, Drew ignored the whispers and patter of little feet outside his workshop.
He couldn’t ignore Hugh, who once more hovered with a packet of papers in hand.
“I’ve found additional investors for those buildings. I want to be in on the ground floor of rebuilding that slum.” Hugh stood immovable over him.
Applying his screwdriver, Drew tried to ignore his friend’s desperation, but unlike the children, Hugh was too big to disregard. Hugh was determined to find a way to wealth, but his funds were tight—the main reason he stayed with Drew. “The tenants?”
“The landlord swears they’re moving on. The place is a rat-infested slum! No one should live there. I’ve talked to some of them. One’s a university professor. He’s agreed he could find rooms closer to the school. He was simply reluctant to move his library. There are elderly widows in there with pensions. They could do better.”
Drew knew Hugh wasn’t ruthless, just unenlightened. And it might even be possible they’d be doing some of the tenants a favor by forcing them to look for better quarters. But he was pretty damned certain Hugh hadn’t talked to all the hundreds of tenants. They’d take one look at a large man in a business suit, see trouble, and hide.
He ignored a rap on the open door. He knew his bank account was bleeding money into Hugh’s project, but his past warred with his present. He couldn’t put people out in the cold. “Do we have to tear down all three buildings at once? Could we repair one and only tear down the other two?” Drew knew that would create hopeless overcrowding, but it was better than no housing at all.
A child wept in the hall and the rap became more demanding.
“No,” Hugh said firmly. “Removal of the destroyed one will cause the other two to collapse. We’ll have to brace the other attached properties as it is or the whole block will tumble like dominoes. The tenants need to leave now.”
The governess—who stood one whole head shorter than himself—entered without leave to glare at Drew as if she were a Valkyrie. “While you fling poor people into the street, your ward seems to have misplaced her sister.”
Drew had stayed awake half the night dreaming of this termagant and what he should have done when he had her alone. He needed her out of his sight. “The children are your business and tenants are mine. The brat isn’t in here.”
Drew brushed by her, aiming for his office to look for his copy of Sholes’ patent application for the useless American version of the pterotype. Maybe he had missed some detail. He lit a lamp in the windowless room—and noticed a mountain of books on the floor behind the door. Glancing up the bookshelves, he discovered one of the twins apparently sleeping on a top shelf. A chair propped precariously on some of his largest volumes indicated how she’d climbed there.
She probably thought herself quite hidden that far above her siblings. Drew shook his head at the precarious position. All she needed to do was toss in her sleep. . .
He disliked scaring her. He disliked watching her fall even more. His life had become a series of uncomfortable choices.
Hearing the other twin following him down the hall, crying, accompanied by Lady Phoebe’s whispered assurances, Drew sighed and picked up the sleeping child.
She was so tiny he feared he’d crush her. Had he not held them once since they’d arrived? Probably not. He’d left them to the servants. He knew nothing about children.
This one yawned and squirmed, cuddled up against his shoulder as if she belonged there, and promptly returned to sleep, nearly twisting his heart out of its socket. He didn’t have time for this.
He carried her out to the hall, where the usually unflustered Lady Phoebe looked just the least little bit perturbed as she led the other twin toward the stairs.
“Your stray, I presume?” he asked.
She swung around and relief briefly lit her expression, before she assumed her haughty air. “Ah, she fell asleep. I see a flaw in the process.”
“That’s so unfair,” the twin holding her hand said, pouting and sounding much older than she should. “She scared me.”
Drew now recognized the voluble one as Cat, so the one in his arms had to be mousy Clare. “She scared me too. She could have hurt herself. I don’t think they’re ready for scampering around alone, my lady.”
Instead of taking the child from him, the governess swept past to investigate his office. She chortled as she discovered the cubbyhole his ward had created. “She has a bit to learn about hiding, I fear, but she’s smart and a hard worker. That was quite a task.”
“I’m a hard worker,” Cat declared obdurately.
“Then you may attempt to put those books back where they belong,” Lady Phoebe said with a low laugh that shivered Drew’s timbers. “I’ll watch.”
Cat determinedly climbed the staircase of books to the propped up chair and tried to put one heavy volume back on the empty shelf. She tipped precariously. Lady Phoebe stepped in to push the book onto the shelf for her.
“We should wake Clare so she learns it’s harder to put things back than to take them down, but she apparently wore herself out.” Lady Phoebe finally held out her arms for the sleeping child. “Thank you for finding her. We are testing the extent of their abilities, but four-year-olds are not reliable subjects.”
“They should be learning their letters. That would be safer.” He shifted Clare into her arms.
Today, the lady was wearing a most ungoverness-like bright green gown that emphasized her natural—uncorseted—waist and bosom. He should be grateful that she appeared to be wearing a small petticoat and not a split skirt that caused indecent thoughts.
The front door knocker rapped. Drew passed Clare over, prepared to hide himself in his workshop again. The little maid raced to answer the door.
“I’m not home to visitors,” Drew told her. Abby bobbed a curtsey, knowing this was his usual preference.
Apparently still unhappy with him, Lady Phoebe scolded, “Don’t be foolish. People are more important than things. Abby, take the twins to the nursery, will you, please? I’ll answer the door.” She passed the sleeping child to the maid and shook wrinkles out of her skirt.
Looking a little befuddled, the maid followed the governess’s orders instead of Drew’s, hurrying up the stairs with the children while Lady Phoebe sailed down the hall to the door.
He’d wanted a governess to maintain order in the nursery, not a ringmaster for the circus his life had become. Drew watched in trepidation as the lady opened the door and merrily welcomed. . . Dalrymple from next door, and his niece, Miss Higginbotham. Drat, now he’d not have time to return to the machine before he had to leave for the manufactory board meeting.
He supposed if he were to court Miss
Higginbotham, he should. . .
“Blair, there you are.” Accustomed to the familiarity of a middle-class household with few servants, Dalrymple set his hat down on the hall table. “I wanted to speak with you a moment, if you don’t mind. We need to talk about the real estate investment in Old Town, and my niece wished to become better acquainted with Lady Phoebe, if she is not too busy.”
Lady Phoebe and Miss Higginbotham? Before Drew could panic, the lady sent Drew a sharp look, and declared, “I was about to order lunch and naps for the children. And I’d love a coze with Miss Higginbotham, if she is willing to accompany me into town while I run a few errands.”
Drew had the icy notion that despite her mild tone, she was about to undermine everything he was attempting to establish.
“I love your hat, Miss Higginbotham,” Phoebe declared as she swept the younger woman down the street toward town. She was still stewing about the overheard conversation and worried about the journal she’d hidden in her room. She hoped walking out might clear her head.
Besides, if Mr. Blair was courting this bit of fluff, she should learn whether Miss Higginbotham was a suitable mother for his wards. Men didn’t think like that, if they thought at all.
Her companion shyly touched the bouquet of blue flowers dangling over her hat brim. “Don’t tell anyone, but I trimmed it myself,” she murmured. “It seems such a waste to buy new when I so dearly loved last year’s style.”
Phoebe wouldn’t know last year’s style if it spit in her eyes, but she nodded knowingly. “I would love to learn how to do that, but I am not creative in the least.” She’d placed a bird feather in the band of her hat, next to the bedraggled and faded rosette with which it had been originally adorned.
“I’ll show you where I buy my flowers. Mama says I am not very clever, but I do know how to make a pretty hat.” Miss Dahlia Higginbotham walked with more purpose.
Lessons in Enchantment Page 7