Two pairs of keen blue eyes in two identical freckled faces glared up at her for a long moment. She studied them carefully in return, for though she already knew their names, their matching gray suits and bowl haircuts made it almost impossible to discern which one was Colin and which was Owen.
“I know who you are,” the boy on the left said abruptly, breaking the silence. “You’re the man from the park.”
“I am.”
She’d hoped her rapport with them the other day would make things easier, but now, as she studied their resentful faces, she appreciated that the opposite was closer to the truth. They felt betrayed, she realized; before, she might have been considered a friend, but now, she was a traitorous enemy, something for which even her excellent kite-flying skills could not atone. Ah, well. Their resentment couldn’t be helped, and there would be plenty of time for them to discover how nice she really was and how much fun lessons with her could be. For now, the only thing that needed to be understood was that she was in charge, and if the hostility in their eyes was anything to go by, fixing that fact in their brains would not be an easy task.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement and turned toward the doorway as Samuel entered the nursery with a pail of steaming, soapy water and an armful of towels.
“Put them there, Samuel, if you please,” she directed, pointed to the large round table in the center of the room. “When is their high tea?”
“Six o’clock.”
She nodded and moved around the twins as the footman followed her instructions. “Is it brought up here, or do the boys come down?”
“I usually bring it up.”
She glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Excellent,” she said, and began ushering the footman toward the door. “Then we will see you again in about half an hour.”
The footman gave her a dubious look. “Are you sure I can’t stay and help you settle in?”
“How kind of you, but it’s not necessary. I do have one question.” She paused by the door, gesturing to the knob. “I see that this door has a lock. Does it also have a key?”
“It does, sir. Two, in fact.” The footman leaned back in the doorway, reached overhead, and retrieved a skeleton key from the top edge of the casing. “This is the spare. Mrs. Richmond has the other. I’ll retrieve hers to have one made for you. In the meantime, you can use this one.”
He held the key out to her, and she took it. “Thank you, Samuel,” she said, putting the key in her trouser pocket. “You may go.”
The footman hesitated a moment as if reluctant to leave her on her own, but then, he gave a nod and departed.
She turned around to find the twins watching her, and she was pleased to see a hint of apprehension in their faces. Good—apprehension was a much more encouraging sign than bored indifference would have been.
“You can’t lock us in,” the boy on the left told her before she had any chance to speak. “What if there’s a fire?”
Her intent in obtaining a key was to keep them out of the nursery whenever she wasn’t watching them herself, for she had no intention of being showered with any more manure-laced water or subjected to any other tricks they might have in store. But she couldn’t see any harm in allowing them to think she was capable of keeping them prisoner, if necessary. “A fire is most unlikely,” she countered. “Unless you intend to start one?”
“Of course not,” the other boy said with dignity. “We’re not arsonists.”
“Quite so,” she said gravely. “But you do like firecrackers, I hear.”
“That was an accident.”
“Don’t tell him any more, Owen!” his brother cut in. “We don’t have to explain anything to him.”
The name caused Amanda to glance over both boys again. Eventually, of course, she’d be able to see the subtle differences between them, but for now, she needed something, anything, that would distinguish them in her mind, and after several seconds of study, she found it in the dark red scab of a healing cut on Owen’s left hand.
“Colin is right,” she said at last. “Everyone is entitled to keep some secrets. Still, given this apparent distrust on your part, I’d be quite justified in possessing some of the same, wouldn’t you agree? For the time being, however, I am choosing to trust you, and I should advise you not to betray that trust. Now,” she went on, grabbing two towels from the table before coming to stand directly in front of them, “since our meal isn’t until six o’clock, we have plenty of time for your first lesson, and I’m glad, because it’s a very important lesson, one you’ll find useful in every aspect of your lives.”
“What subject?” Owen asked, earning himself a sideways kick from his brother.
“Consequences.” Smiling brightly, she held out the towels.
Neither of them moved, but it was Colin who spoke first. “You can’t really expect us to mop the floor?” he said with derision. “Cleaning is for servants. We are gentlemen.”
“Gentlemen? Oh my word and la-di-da.” Her smile didn’t falter, and her hands holding the offered towels remained outstretched. “Perhaps it’s my plebian upbringing, but I don’t care two straws if you’re gentlemen. In my schoolroom, the ones who make the mess clean it up.”
“That would be you, then, wouldn’t it?” Colin countered at once. “You spilled the pail.”
Amanda laughed. “A clever argument, but futile. This mess was caused by you and your brother, and you two will clean it up.”
Colin’s gaze locked with hers, and though his eyes and coloring were completely different from his father, she could see a certain familial similarity in the narrowing of his eyes and the set of his jaw. “We don’t have to do what you say.”
“Yes, you do,” she answered at once. “Because if you don’t, you’ll be shipped off to Harrow faster than you can spit.”
“And you’ll be out of a job.”
“I can easily get another job,” she lied, still smiling, “but you’ll still be stuck at Harrow.”
Neither Colin nor his brother appeared to have a comeback for that, and with simultaneous heavy sighs, they snatched the towels from her outstretched fingers, and set to work, cleaning up the mess without too much complaint. In this newfound, albeit tenuous, spirit of cooperation, Amanda assisted them by retrieving their soiled towels, but she had barely disposed of them through the laundry chute that some enterprising soul had had built in one corner of the room when Samuel returned with the boys’ evening meal.
As the boys consumed Cornish pasties, oatcakes, potted beef, and bread-and-butter pudding, Amanda did not join them. Instead, she accepted Samuel’s offer to watch over them while she had a bathe and changed her soiled clothes.
The bathroom was enormous, for like most baths in wealthy households, it had once been a bedroom. There was a separate water closet, a long washstand laid with white marble and topped with two porcelain basins and matching pitchers, and a cupboard filled with soft, snowy white towels, jars of castile soap, and giant, misshapen sea sponges. Even more delightful, the claw-foot tub was connected to a set of water pipes coming up through the floor, with taps for both hot and cold water. She was amazed by such luxury, though she supposed in a duke’s household such things were commonplace, and she lingered in the bath longer than she probably ought to have done. But at last, clean, freshly dressed, and glad now that she’d had the foresight to purchase more than one secondhand suit, she returned to the nursery, where she found that full-scale war seemed to have broken out in her absence. Thankfully, however, it was the sort of war that didn’t hurt anyone.
With Samuel’s help, the boys were placing toy soldiers on the floor in military formations, blue on one side and red on the other, preparing for what seemed to be a pitched battle of epic proportions. The cat, still atop the bookcase, didn’t seem interested in the warfare going on below, for he was asleep, one gray paw over his eyes.
Samuel was the first to spy her standing in the doorway. “Ah, Mr. Seton,” he greeted. “The boys are reenac
ting Waterloo.”
“Yes, I see.” She entered the room, stepping carefully around a platoon of French troops, and walked to the table, but if she’d hoped for a bit of supper, she was disappointed, for the only food that remained was one half-eaten pasty.
“I’m afraid they ate your share before I could stop them,” Samuel said apologetically, rising to his feet. “They had ravenous appetites this evening.”
Amanda glanced at the twins. She couldn’t see Owen’s face, for he was bent over his troops, but she could see Colin’s, and the tiny hint of a smirk that curved the elder twin’s mouth made her suspect their appetites had been less of a consideration than the notion of scoring off her, but she didn’t express that theory aloud. “Yes, so it seems,” she said pleasantly, smiling back at the boy.
Colin jerked his chin and looked away, returning his attention to his soldiers.
“I’d best be getting back to my duties,” Samuel said, his words evoking a torrent of protest from the two boys, which he ignored as he edged his way around the toy soldiers and started for the door. “I’ll have Mrs. Richmond make a fresh tray of supper for you, Mr. Seton,” he offered, pausing by the door. “Just ring when you want it, and I’ll bring it up.”
“Oh no, please don’t bother,” she said at once, not wanting to take further advantage of a fellow servant’s goodwill, knowing she might well need his help often in the days ahead. “You have your own work to do. I’ll come down and fetch it myself once the boys are asleep. When is their bedtime?”
“Didn’t Lord Kenyon tell you?”
She made a face. “He didn’t tell me anything, to be honest. He was in rather a rush to catch his train.”
“I see. Well, they usually have a bathe at half past seven, and bedtime is at eight. That is,” he added ruefully, “if you can get them bathed and into their pajamas in half an hour.”
“Is that such a difficult business, then?”
“Sometimes,” the footman admitted and turned toward the bookcase. “I shall see you in the morning,” he added as he plucked the cat off the top, earning himself a slew of hissing protest from the animal. “I bring breakfast up at half past eight.”
Arms outstretched, holding the squirming, angry animal away from his body, Samuel left the nursery, kicking the door shut behind him as he departed.
“Do you want to play, Mr. Seton?” Owen’s voice asked behind her, and Amanda turned around just in time to see Colin give his brother an exasperated scowl.
“What?” Owen countered, not the least bit intimidated by his twin’s displeasure that she’d been invited to join. If Amanda had any illusions, however, that Owen’s invitation was borne of a genuine desire for her company, those illusions were dispelled by his next words. “I don’t want to be Bonaparte, and if Mr. Seton plays, I can be von Blücher instead.”
Colin rolled his eyes, but gave in. “Oh, all right, he can play, too,” he muttered, moving on his knees to a position behind the red-uniformed soldiers. “You need to be over there,” he told Amanda, pointing to a place across the room.
She moved to the indicated spot, but as she glanced over the neat rows of her blue-painted French army, she felt a bit out of her depth. Toy soldiers was a game she’d never played, not as a child, nor as a teacher. Still, in her role as a male tutor, she supposed she’d have to display at least a pretense of competence at boys’ games. And how hard could this one be, really? She knew all about the Battle of Waterloo.
Her knowledge of military history, however, proved wholly unnecessary, for she’d barely knelt behind her troops before Colin and Owen were both coming at her in a full-frontal assault, sweeping their soldiers at her in a growing pile and taking hers down with them, and though they punctuated their efforts with an impressive barrage of sounds meant to be cannon fire and shot, their efforts paid little heed to historical accuracy.
Unless she wanted to be mowed down along with her troops, Amanda was forced to give way, and she retreated, moving backward on her knees until she hit the opened toy cupboard behind her and she could retreat no farther and all her troops had been knocked over. With at least a dozen of Wellington’s troops still standing, the boys claimed victory for their British and Prussian forces with a triumphant yell.
“Let’s do the battle of Carthage next,” Owen suggested, but with a glance at the mantel clock, Amanda was forced to negate that plan.
“Not tonight,” she said, standing up. “It’s half past seven, so it’s time for a bathe. Then bed.”
Ignoring their groans and protests, she retrieved pajamas from the armoire in their bedroom, shoved one pair into each boy’s arms, and pointed to the door.
“March, soldiers,” she ordered, following them as they walked out of the nursery and down the corridor to the bath, noting in amusement how they dragged their feet as if they were facing a firing squad rather than a bath.
Once the tub had been filled halfway with warm water, Amanda left them to it with a reminder to also brush their teeth, and she returned to the nursery.
Her suitcase was still lying on the floor of her room, still open from when she’d retrieved her change of clothes earlier. She pulled out a fresh shirt and a set of underclothes for the morning and placed them on the dressing table, then put away the few remaining items of her masculine wardrobe. Closing her suitcase, she placed it on top of the armoire, then went to give the nursery a full inspection.
She unpacked her crate of supplies, and as she put her books on the shelf, she was pleased to see plenty of excellent titles already there. In the toy cupboard was a vast quantity of toys, puzzles and games—plenty of things, it would seem, to occupy a pair of ten-year-old boys. Their need to make mischief clearly had a deeper cause than a mere lack of distractions, and it didn’t take much reflection to know where to put the blame.
At once, an image of Lord Kenyon’s hard, lean face came into her mind, but Amanda shoved the image away. Neglectful parents created a sad gap in a child’s life, but they were as much a part of her job as French lessons and arithmetic, and a particularly common tale for children of the upper classes. The only thing she could do was attempt to fill the gap as best she could. It might take some doing in this case, particularly where Colin was concerned, for it was clear that boy was the primary instigator of the twins’ mischief making.
A sound caught her attention and she looked toward the door as the object of her thoughts entered the room, followed by his brother. Their wet hair and the way their pajamas stuck to their skin confirmed that they had indeed taken their bath.
“Did you brush your teeth?” she asked.
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, a surprisingly passive response. When she ushered them to bed, they complied without complaint. As she tucked them in, she couldn’t help wondering if behind this display of docility and cooperation, their minds were conjuring more trouble, and after nearly an hour with not one peep coming from the other bedroom, Amanda, fearing the worst, decided to check on them.
To her happy surprise, she found them fast asleep. She paused between their beds, studying one face and then the other, and even she could hardly believe these two sleeping boys were the same holy terrors who’d driven off twelve nannies in three years and arranged for a shower of manure tea to pour down on her head. Right now, they looked deceptively angelic.
She watched them several moments longer, but they did not move, and their breathing was deep and even. Satisfied, she withdrew into her own room, closed the door softly behind her, then went downstairs to fetch herself a tray of supper, retracing the route Samuel had led her earlier in the day.
She found the kitchens at the far end of the servants’ corridor. Samuel was nowhere in sight, but Mrs. Richmond was seated at a long central worktable, reading a newspaper and drinking a cup of tea, with the boys’ cat curled at her feet. She looked up as Amanda came in.
“Good evening, Mr. Seton,” she said, smiling. “Boys asleep?”
“They are, yes.”
“T
hat’s a relief, I’ll wager. Come down for your supper, have you?”
Standing up even as she asked the question, she crossed to the stove, where she took up a thick pad and removed an iron skillet from the lower oven. “I heard about the trick the boys played on you earlier,” she said as she placed the skillet on top of the stove and reached for a spoon from one of the hooks on the wall. “Terribly naughty of them to do something like that,” she went on as she placed oatcakes on a plate and spooned potted beef over them. “And on your first day, too. Samuel and I felt ever so badly for you. We ought to have checked the rooms beforehand.”
“Please don’t blame yourself,” Amanda replied. “It’s just a bit of dirty water, and no harm done.”
“Well, you’re taking their first prank in stride, I must say.”
Was it her imagination, Amanda wondered, or did the cook sound a little surprised? Unbidden, Lord Kenyon’s initial opinion of her echoed through her mind.
You can’t seriously think I’d consider you as a tutor for my children. You’re far too young.
Amanda smiled to herself, wondering what his opinion would be if he knew she was actually more than a decade older than she’d claimed, and female to boot.
He’d sack you in a heartbeat, girl, Amanda reminded herself sternly, and set aside any humorous imaginings on the subject.
“I’ve cleaned your suit,” the cook told her as she poured a cup of tea from the teapot by the stove. “I’ll take it up in a bit, where it can dry in your room. Sugar and milk in your tea?”
“No, thank you. I drink it plain.”
Teacup in one hand, the cook added two Cornish pasties to the plate with the other, then turned to bring her meal to the table, but Amanda spoke, stopping her. “Could I just take it on a tray?” she requested. “I don’t want to leave the boys alone too long.”
“That’s probably wise,” Mrs. Richmond said as she placed Amanda’s meal on the requested tray. “One never knows what those two will take it into their heads to do on their own.”
Governess Gone Rogue Page 7