The room was mostly dark and silent, with only a bit of light shining through the window from the morning sun. Oliver took a step forward and looked around the room. He didn’t see Jamie, but knew that if his son was in here, he would likely be crouching behind a chair or had stuffed himself between some shelves.
Oliver began slowly walking around the room, and then said his son’s name. “Jamie? Are you in here?” He paused after he said it to listen for any noise. Nothing.
He took a few more steps, and then again said, “Jamie. Please come out. The entire staff is worried about you.” Oliver paused to listen again, and this time, he heard a stirring sound on the opposite side of the room. He turned slowly, and then started to walk in the direction of the noise.
“Jamie,” he said more loudly now. “Hiding will not stop your lessons. The longer you hide, the more trouble you are going to be in.”
Again, Oliver paused to listen, and this time, not only did he hear the stirring, but he noticed a dark object in the corner moving around. He quickly walked over to the corner, and Jamie looked up at him.
“Stand.” Oliver said sternly, and Jamie immediately obeyed.
Oliver looked at his son and said, “What do you think you are doing? Hiding in the library? You had half the staff in a panic looking for you!”
Jamie looked down at the ground and nodded.
“James! Answer me.” Oliver said loudly. Now that his fear had fully subsided, it had been replaced with anger.
Jamie must have realized that Oliver was not going to play around because he looked up and said quietly, “I thought it would be funny, Father.”
Oliver could feel the heat rising up to his cheeks. “Well, it wasn’t, Jamie. There was nothing funny about it at all.”
Again, Oliver watched as Jamie dropped his head down. “I am sorry, Father,” his son said.
“Don’t say sorry to me. You had better go apologize to the staff who have been searching for you this morning. Do you think they don’t have anything better to do than look all over the manor for a naughty child? Do you think I don’t have anything better to do? You have seriously disrupted this entire household this morning, and I will not stand for it. After your lessons, you are to go back to your nanny who will give you an appropriate punishment. Is that understood?”
Jamie looked down. “Yes, Father,”
“Good,” Oliver said in a huff. “Follow me.”
He turned towards the door and quickly strode out of the library with his son following behind him. Oliver retraced his steps back to the grand staircase, where he immediately saw Wright walking towards them.
“Oh, you found him, Your Grace,” Wright said, looking relieved.
“Yes, I did,” said Oliver, sternly. “He was in the library, hiding.”
Wright looked at Jamie, and Oliver couldn’t tell if he was relieved or upset with the child. “Wright, please call off the search. I would like you to accompany Lord Seton to breakfast, and then make sure that he gets to his lessons with Miss Ainsley. Also, inform the nanny that he should be punished for his actions. I must get to work in my office. I have wasted too much time on this today.”
Oliver turned to Jamie, who looked either sad or embarrassed…he didn’t know which. “I don’t expect to hear about any more mischief from you. Do you understand this?”
Jamie nodded, and then said, “Yes, Father.”
“Very well,” Oliver looked at Wright. “Please make sure that Jamie has apologized to the staff, too.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“Now, I have work to do,” Oliver said, turning from his son and heading towards his office.
* * *
After the excitement of the morning, Priscilla was having a difficult time focusing on her lesson planning. Lord Seton had been taken to breakfast after apologizing to all of the staff, and Wright asked her to wait for him in the schoolroom.
She thought that she could use this time to come up with some type of lesson plan, which she could then fill out later when learning what Lord Seton had covered with his former governesses.
But something was bothering her. Yes, it was true that she had grown up an orphan, and Priscilla knew that fathers didn’t take a major role in childrearing, but she couldn’t help but notice that the Duke was quite cold towards his son. She would make a note to try to observe their interactions from now on.
Looking at the blank paper on her desk in the schoolroom, Priscilla was at the point where she thought it would be best to just wait for Lord Seton to arrive. She glanced at the clock, which hung from the wall, and noted that it was getting late in the morning. Obviously, they wouldn’t get a strong start on lessons, but perhaps it was best to ease the young Lord into his new situation.
Priscilla stood and walked over to the window, which gave her the same view as her bedroom window. In the full light of day, she could see much more than she could the night before. She had no doubt that the building she could see in the distance was, indeed, the distillery, as she could see workers moving barrels from one open door to another.
Beyond the distillery, she could see fields, which were growing some type of grain, and then beyond the fields, she could see woods. It was all very beautiful, and she wondered if all that she could see belonged to the Duke.
Before she could look at more, she heard a knock at the door. “Enter,” she said, and as she was expecting, Lord Seton was standing there.
Priscilla smiled widely at him, thinking that the young Lord had been through enough this morning, and then she said happily, “Welcome, My Lord! I am so glad to see you.”
Based on his expression, Priscilla could tell that Lord Seton was expecting her to be cross with him.
“My Lord,” Priscilla said cheerily. “You can sit anywhere. Even if you would like to sit at the desk you can. You can also sit at the table.”
Lord Seton looked at her with an expression of surprise, and she could see a smile forming on his mouth. He chose to walk over to the table, pulled out the chair, and sat down.
Priscilla followed him to the table, and she pulled out the chair directly across from him and sat down.
“We got a bit of a late start, today, didn’t we?” Priscilla asked him, still smiling. She thought that perhaps the young gentleman needed a bit more happiness in his life. She couldn’t imagine that he had a lot of interaction with children his own age at this point, though he would go to boarding school as he got older.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Well, you had to have a little breakfast, didn’t you?” Priscilla thought it best to not focus on him hiding this morning.
“Yes, Miss,” he said, and she watched as Lord Seton squirmed in his seat.
“I know that you aren’t fully comfortable with me yet, but I promise that we are going to get to know each other, and I will teach you what you need to be a successful gentleman.”
Lord Seton nodded, “Thank you.”
Obviously, someone had taught him proper manners.
“I want to get started, but not with lessons. Instead, I want to try to get to know you a bit better than before and expand upon our conversation from yesterday. Is that all right?”
Lord Seton smiled at her from across the table and nodded.
“Good. Now we already talked about the fact that you like history, but we have to learn more than that, right?”
“Yes,” Lord Seton replied. Priscilla could tell that he was beginning to relax a bit based on his posture.
“What is a subject that you don’t like?”
“Mathematics, I don’t like numbers and equations.”
“Fine. Honestly, I don’t much care for mathematics, either. We still have to learn it, but I will try to make it as fun as possible. Does that sound all right?”
Lord Seton smiled and said, “Yes, that sounds good.”
“You seem like a person who likes to have fun. So I think that is appropriate in this case. Do you like to have fun, My Lord?”
“Yes, I do,”
“Seems like you could get pretty lonely here, right?” Priscilla was attempting to get him to trust her a bit more, and she thought she would move with her instinct.
Lord Seton was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Sometimes it is. I just read when I get lonely.”
“Do you have any friends?”
Lord Seton’ head fell, and he shook his head. “No. I have cousins who visit sometimes, but that’s all. We live too far out in the country to meet other children.”
Priscilla was a bit puzzled. “Who told you that? There is a wonderful town not far from here. I used to live on the outskirts, and it is not very far from your manor.”
Lord Seton looked up at her. “Really?”
“Oh yes! Perhaps we could go sometimes.”
“Really? We could?”
“If it is all right with your father, I think we could.”
“I would like that, Miss Ainsley. My other governesses didn’t take me anywhere except on walks. And Miss Collins is the one who told me that we were too far in the country to meet other children.”
Priscilla felt bad for the young lord. “Well, I will do my best to convince your father to allow us to do that sometime. I’m sure we could even get a lesson out of it.”
Lord Seton beamed at this. “I am excited about it.”
“Well, let’s make that a goal. Assuming, of course, we don’t have any other issues with your father. I think he was pretty upset with you this morning, so today might not be the best day to ask him about it.”
“Yes. I suppose you are right.”
“Good. Now, should we start with mathematics or save it for later?”
* * *
Oliver was sitting in his office with one of the supervisors at the distillery. The supervisor was explaining what happened earlier in the day when an entire barrel of whisky fell off of the shelf, cracked, and spilled, losing hundreds of pounds of merchandise.
“Your Grace, the offending staff member will be disciplined, and we will take time after hours to thoroughly examine all of our barrel lifts.”
“Very good,” Oliver said, though he was annoyed at how this day had gone so far. First the issue with Jamie, and now this.
“Is that all, Your Grace?”
“Yes, thank you. I have paperwork to attend to.”
Oliver watched as the supervisor stood and walked out of the office, and then he sighed.
He still was angry at Jamie’s actions, and he hoped that the staff had gotten his son back in line. Oliver couldn’t afford to lose any more employees, and at the rate Jamie was going, there would be another resignation by the end of the week.
Oliver shook his head, and he leaned back in his seat at the table. He pulled a large pile of orders that his staff had sat aside due to inconsistencies towards him and began to flip through them one by one.
Business was certainly booming, and though the distillery had plenty of whisky on hand, losing an entire barrel could cause some issues in the years to come. It generally takes ten to twelve years to properly age whisky, and in some cases, they allow the barrels to age twenty years or more. That meant that the barrels they started today might not be ready until Jamie was controlling the distillery. Assuming that happens.
Oliver was a bit worried that Jamie might not want to…or be capable of…taking over the distillery, and Oliver didn’t have any other heir. He also thought that it would be unlikely that he would marry again, so the odds of having another child were slim. He had already been on this earth for five-and-thirty years, and ladies who were of child-bearing age had their choice of gentlemen.
He couldn’t worry about that now, though. He had to go through these orders and then stop work early today, as Darnerton would be arriving for dinner this evening. Perhaps, Oliver thought, he could rely on some advice from his old friend about what to do with Jamie. After all, he had a son who was a bit older, and he might have some words of wisdom.
Chapter 6
“Lord Seton,” Miss Slade, his nanny, said as she walked into his quarters. “I have been looking for you.”
Jamie knew what was coming, as he remembered his father’s words from this morning: “Inform the nanny that he should be punished for his actions.”
He slowly turned to her and expected to see her with the switch in her hands, but they held nothing.
“Were your lessons good today?” she asked, as she began going through his wardrobe. “I hope the new governess taught you something, at least.”
“She did, Miss Slade.” He had actually enjoyed the afternoon with Miss Ainsley, but he wasn’t going to let his guard down. She was probably just like any other governess he had.
“Well, what did you learn?” Miss Slade pulled out a jacket, looked at it, and then put it back in.
“Arithmetic, mostly.” He walked over to a chair and sat down, waiting for her to choose his clothing for dinner. Since his father had allowed him to sit at the main dining table with him, instead of eating his meals with Miss Slade, he felt important and worthy.
“I suppose that is a skill that you will need to know,” Miss Slade pulled out another jacket. She then turned to him. “This one will do, I think. Do you?”
Jamie nodded, and continued to watch her choose his dinner clothes.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Your father has a visitor tonight. The Earl of Darnerton. I haven’t yet gotten confirmation on if you are to eat in the dining room with them or with me.”
Jamie’s heart fell. He knew that at ten years of age he wouldn’t always get to sit in the dining room, but he also knew that he really wanted to.
“Probably with you, then,” Jamie replied.
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“No. I just like sitting in the main dining room.”
He saw Miss Slade sigh, and then she said, “I know, my young Lord.” She turned to him then and said, “Don’t feel bad. Someday, this will all be yours and you can sit in the main dining room anytime you wish, as you will be making the decisions.”
Jamie nodded. He knew this to be true, but it was frustrating to him that he had to wait so long, and that his father didn’t seem to want him around.
If anyone could make him feel better, it was Miss Slade, but she was an old woman. She had been his mother’s nanny, too, when she was a young lady, and now, she was nanny to him.
“I can’t decide what jacket is best. I think this will be appropriate, but if you are eating with the Earl and your father, I think another jacket is better. Wait here, and I will go ask Wright.”
Jamie watched as Miss Slade left his quarters, and then he leaned back in his chair. He was getting an idea. He knew that he said no more pranks, but if he couldn’t sit in the dining room, he might as well play a little joke on his father and the Earl.
He waited a couple of minutes, in order to ensure that Miss Slade was safely down the hall, and then he quietly opened the door. It creaked, and he paused, but then stepped out into the hallway. It was totally empty, which was a great sign that he could get away with this without being seen.
He had to make his way to his secret cache of tricks down in the library, and then sneak into the dining room. He knew just what to do to get his father’s attention…
* * *
Priscilla thought that the lessons with Lord Seton had gone very well today. He seemed to catch onto things quickly, and she could tell that he was a very bright young gentleman.
Since this was the case, and she had an idea of what he could handle, she planned on spending the rest of the afternoon creating lessons for the rest of the week.
She picked up the pencil, and then heard a door open in the hallway and someone whistling. She knew that Lord Seton’ quarters were right down the hall, so she snuck over to her door and slowly opened it to peek out. She saw an older woman walking down the hall, and she assumed it was Miss Slade, Lord Seton’s nanny.
Priscilla closed the door and walked back to her
desk. She sat down and started to write again, and then she heard another strange noise, almost like a creaking sound. Again, she walked over to the door and opened it slowly so that she could peek out.
This time, she saw Lord Seton, but he was acting strangely. He was tiptoeing and walking slowly, and Priscilla knew exactly what he was doing, as she used to do the same thing…he didn’t want to be seen nor heard, because it was likely that he was planning a prank.
The Devious Seduction 0f A Wayward Duke (Steamy Historical Romance) Page 5