“I think that we will go shopping today. Each of you may have whatever you wish. How does that sound?”
“Anything?” asked Sam.
“Don’t be a greedy looby,” Theo said in an adult-like voice.
“Well, you know how much money we have,” said Lily. “Just keep that in mind.”
“Lily?”
“Yes, Theo.”
“I’m sorry, I forgot. It’s ‘Mama.’ Do you think Cousin Knight would let me borrow a book or two from his library?”
Lily hadn’t the foggiest idea of the viscount’s reaction to such a request. It seemed quite reasonable to her. “Why don’t you ask him, Theo? He appears to have your well-being at heart.”
“I want to ride his cattle,” said Sam.
“That, my love,” Lily said, “is another matter entirely. I’ve heard it said that gentlemen are very particular about their horses and little boys. We’ll see.
“There’s one more thing,” Lily said hesitantly, dreading what she had to tell them. “Your cousin Knight will become your legal guardian.”
“Why? He isn’t our mother,” Theo said reasonably. “What difference does it make?”
“He’ll just give us a bedchamber and food,” said Sam. “And maybe a horse to ride every so often.”
“He’s pretty,” said Laura Beth, and that comment drew all eyes.
“You stupid little girl. Men aren’t pretty.”
“Don’t scoff, Sam,” Theo said. He added patiently to his little sister, “Why do you say that, Laura Beth?”
But Laura Beth just shrugged and the thumb went back into her mouth.
Lily felt the lump in her throat. It was threatening. She had to get it out before she was a mute fool. “Your cousin Knight believes you boys should go to Eton. As to exactly when, I’m not certain yet. It’s just that he will have the authority to see that you do what he wishes.”
Theo whistled. “We’ve landed ourselves in the soup this time, haven’t we, Lily—Mama?”
Trust Theo to see through to the consequences with great rapidity.
“I don’t know yet,” she said truthfully. “I just don’t know. I do know that all of us need to stay out of his way. Now, we must concern ourselves about your ignorance, which is more vast than it should be. After we shop, we’ll have lessons, all right?”
Sam was vociferous in the negative. Theo’s eyes glowed and Lily felt guilt that he wasn’t with a tutor, a real tutor who knew all sorts of things, so many more things than she did. She would have to speak to the viscount.
Since there wasn’t a nursery, Lily asked Mrs. Allgood to have their breakfasts brought to her bedchamber. They were dressed and ready to leave Winthrop House by nine o’clock. Sam, thankfully, hadn’t done anything dreadful during the thirty minutes when Lily had to leave him to bathe and dress herself.
They met the viscount at the bottom of the stairs. He was on his way out.
“He is pretty,” Laura Beth said, her eyes on his pale biscuit-colored greatcoat.
Theo groaned and Sam scoffed.
Lily said easily, “Good morning, my lord. As you see, we are going out ourselves. I am taking the children shopping—each of them deserves a present.”
Knight had turned at the sound of Laura Beth’s voice. Pretty, am I? he thought, and grinned. But it was a shock to see a woman and three children trooping down his staircase to come to a halt in his entrance hall. The boys looked scrubbed and well turned out. Theo seemed faintly worried, and Knight realized the boy was reacting as would an adult uncertain of his reception. Sam looked like he owned the world and even if he didn’t, he’d still do as he wished. All of them were bundled up warmly. Lily was particularly ravishing in a thick, white-ermine-lined cloak of pale blue velvet, an expensive garment of the highest quality. Her muff matched and was of the softest ermine, though neither cloak nor muff looked particularly new. He wondered when Tris had given them to her. The cloak was also a bit short. Of course, Tris had married her before she was even fully grown, for God’s sake. Knight shook his head at his errant thoughts.
He smiled. “Good morning to all of you. May I give you a lift somewhere, Lily?”
“Oh, no, I don’t wish to impose,” she said quickly. “I spoke to Duckett and he told us where to go.”
“And that is?”
“To the Pantheon Bazaar.”
Knight winced. He saw no hope for it. He didn’t entirely trust Ugly Arnold to slither away in defeat. It was possible that he was watching the house, hoping to get Lily and the children alone. Would he abduct them? Knight cursed very softly, then raised his head and forced a smile. He would have Duckett send Raymond a message that he wouldn’t be coming to his house for the Four Horse Club meeting.
Manfully, he said, “I should very much like to escort you. After all, we haven’t really become acquainted as well as we should be yet.”
“But surely you have other plans, sir.”
“Not at all,” he said, and Lily held her peace even though she knew he was lying. “Consider my poor self at your disposal.”
Two hours later, Knight considered his poor self had been disposed of at least a dozen times. He was testy and quite fatigued from Sam’s exuberance and limitless excitement whenever he saw something that struck his fancy, and a fancy-striking something was at nearly every shop and booth. As for Theo, he tried to calm down his brother, but that seemed only to have the opposite effect. Laura Beth, equally tired, whined when her thumb wasn’t in her mouth and wanted to relieve herself at every odd moment.
The Pantheon Bazaar was filled to overflowing with shoppers. It was a place Knight had visited many years before, at about Theo’s age, if he remembered aright. It was a place he never wished to see again. Theo dawdled at every bookstall, much to Sam’s contempt. Lily knew that the viscount was becoming less charitably minded by the minute. She didn’t blame him. She herself would have liked to grab Sam’s earlobe at least a dozen times and shake him. The viscount wasn’t used to children, and today was the first day they’d been let loose, so to speak, in nearly a week.
She was on the point of telling them that they would purchase Laura Beth’s present and leave, when Laura Beth pulled her thumb from her mouth and started waving Czarina Catherine wildly in the air. “There he is!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “There he is—Ugly Arnold!”
Lily’s blood turned cold. Knight looked in the direction of the waving doll, and sure enough, there was Arnold Damson, lurking behind a booth of multicolored ribbons. There was a cretinous specimen with him.
“Oh, no,” Lily said and pulled Laura Beth against her. “Sam! Theo! Come here, both of you.”
Theo immediately turned, but Sam, in the throes of a new toy that was a hay wagon with real wheels and straw, paid her no heed.
“Sam,” Knight said, “get your butt over here now.”
Sam looked up, saw his cousin Knight standing there like the imperial emperor, and didn’t hesitate. He dashed to him.
“What’s wrong?”
“We have company,” said Knight. “None of you leave your mother. Sam, do you understand me?”
“Yes, certainly. I’m not a dumb looby.”
“That, my boy, is a matter of conjecture.”
“Ugly Arnold,” said Laura Beth. “He’s old.”
“Yes, love, he is,” Lily said. “He isn’t a very nice man either. But don’t worry, your cousin Knight will take proper care of him.”
I will, will I? Knight thought. She’d said it with such calm conviction. “Come along,” he said abruptly. “Let’s say hello to Ugly Arnold.”
Lily shot him an uncertain look but didn’t question his decision.
Arnold saw them approaching and panicked. They weren’t supposed to come toward him, for God’s sake. They weren’t supposed to have seen him. And they weren’t supposed to have been with that bloody sot of a viscount. Damnable fellow—he’d found out very late the previous evening, after ingratiating himself with a group of downy fellows, that Viscoun
t Castlerosse was a bachelor who defined the word itself. Him with children? Ludicrous. Ridiculous. Yet here he was, guarding them as if he were their bloody parent. It wasn’t to be borne. He said to Boggs, the villain with him, “Let’s go, dammit. We’ll get them later when he’s not about.”
Boggs, not at all a shy sort and wanting his five pounds, dug in his heels. “It’s just one gentleman, a dandy by the looks of him. I’ll clean up the ground with him.”
Arnold was undecided. Boggs was a brawny specimen, but the fellows of the night before had also said that the viscount was an athlete, a horseman, a man who took anybody in the ring and beat the wadding out of him. “No, later, perhaps. I want no fighting here. It’s too dangerous.”
Boggs had to be satisfied with that. He had to obey the bloke what had the quid.
“He’s a coward, Cousin Knight!” Sam shrieked, pointing and jumping up and down. “He’s running away!”
“Shut your trap, Sam,” Theo said quickly. “We don’t want people staring. It’s not good manners.”
“Indeed,” Knight said. “Restrain yourself, Sam. If Ugly Arnold tries anything, I’ll put you on him. All right?”
“I’ll smack him good,” said Sam.
Knight looked faintly approving at this well-meaning threat.
With the excitement over, the children finally realized their own fatigue. Sam was hungry. Theo was tense and exhausted. Laura Beth was fretting, her voice a high whine.
Lily turned to Knight. “I’ll see to them now. Please, I know you’re not used to children. I’ll take them home.”
Knight, who would have given just about anything to be freed from the pestilence of the three little beggars, said perversely, “Not at all. We still have a present to purchase for Laura Beth. We’ll do that, then I’ll escort you to Gunthers.” He turned to Theo. “Would you like an ice?”
The yelling approval was enough to smack through his eardrums.
What have I done? he asked himself. Just as he’d tried to insist that he pay for Theo’s book—a thesis on the feasibility of the steam engine—and for Sam’s ten-gun schooner, he again tried to insist on paying for Laura Beth’s sleepily chosen small white cotton gloves.
Lily said no.
Knight, infuriated, said yes and drew out a pound note.
“My lord,” Lily said, her teeth gritted, “we have already been through this twice. The children are my responsibility. I am not a pauper. I have the funds. I will buy their presents. They are from me, after all, not from you.”
Knight ostentatiously folded his pound note and gave her an exaggerated shrug. He was, quite frankly, too tired to think of a sharp retort.
Gunthers wasn’t as horrendous an experience as he’d expected. Once Sam had a large bowl of ice cream in front of him, he was quiet as a clam. Laura Beth was snuggled against Lily, accepting an occasional spoonful. She insisted on wearing her white gloves. Theo, wary and tired, ate his ice in silence, throwing an occasional uncertain look at Knight.
“My God, I don’t believe this.”
Knight looked up to see Julien St. Clair, the Earl of March, staring at him and his small herd. Beside him stood his countess, Katherine St. Clair. She poked her husband in the ribs and stepped forward, a smile on her face.
Introductions were got through. The children were subdued, but the earl and the countess weren’t to know why, Knight thought sardonically. They were polite and civil and diffident. As for Lily, she was what he would have expected: a lady with appropriate social graces and a kindness of spirit that made her new acquaintances want to continue in her company. Knight also noticed that Julien wasn’t bowled over by Lily’s beauty. His smile was social, not infatuated or lustful. That was a relief. Knight was beginning to believe that he would have to watch every male closely when one swam into Lily’s waters.
Julien St. Clair couldn’t come to grips with this Knight Winthrop. What had happened to his cynical, clever, completely irreverent friend? This man who was sitting at a circular table with a beautiful woman and three—three!—children. It boggled the mind. It left one stunned.
He heard Knight say to the older boy, “Theo, why don’t you show your new book to his lordship? I understand he’s fascinated with the subject of steam engines.”
Julien shot Knight a look, but the smile he gave Theo was warm and interested.
“She’s lovely,” Katherine St. Clair said to Lily. Laura Beth, shy and sleepy, said a blurry “Thank you” and buried her face against Lily’s shoulder.
“She’s also getting heavy. I trust she outgrows her desire to use me for a bed in the near future.”
“I declare, are those new gloves? How very smart they are.”
Laura Beth opened both eyes at this comment and thanked the lady again. “Mama bought them for me. Cousin Knight wanted to, but she wouldn’t let him. I think she wanted to smack him, but she didn’t. Mama said that—”
“You close that mouth of yours, my dear child. Here, have some more ice cream.” Lily looked up to see the countess regarding her intently. “She’s a very sweet little girl.”
“I would agree,” the countess said, nodding pleasantly.
Several other acquaintances stopped by briefly within the next fifteen minutes, and their reactions all fitted the incredulous mold of “By Jove, old man, children?”
“Good God, Knight, you in the infantry?”
“Bloody bedlam,” muttered the dazed Marquess of Bourne, shaking his grizzled head. “We might as well surrender to old Boney.”
Lily’s attention, for the most part, was on the children, primarily Sam. But even he minded his manners. Lily saw that Knight made certain he was given another bowl of ice cream the moment he finished his first one. In short, he had no time to turn his schooner’s cannon on any of their incredulous visitors.
“It’s ten-gun and wonderful,” Lily heard him say to Julien St. Clair. “I could kill every Frenchie if only I was just a few years older.”
“No doubt,” said Julien, smiling faintly.
“He’s rather bloodthirsty,” Knight said, and to his surprise, he ruffled Sam’s soft brown hair.
Julien stared. My God, it was simply more than a mere mortal could comprehend. When he and his countess took their leave, he remained silent and in a state of advanced confusion for the better part of two hours.
The carriage ride back to Winthrop House passed in similar peace.
“So that’s the trick, huh?” Knight remarked to Lily. “Glut the little heathen and peace is restored.”
“That about covers it,” Lily said, grinning widely.
The children were dispatched upstairs with Mrs. Allgood, Laura Beth and Sam to nap, Theo to pore over his new book.
“I think I’ll take a nap, too,” Knight said, stretching.
Lily gave him a crooked smile that made him instantly randy. “Parents say that children keep them young; however, I tend to think they age you.”
Knight gave her an answering smile, unable not to. He’d been too aware of her today, all day, and it bothered him tremendously. He decided then and there to take himself off to Daniella. She would ease him; she would restore his perspective. Further, visiting her would save him from the inevitable roasting from his friends. He didn’t doubt that his aberrant behavior would be the talk of the ton by evening. He wondered if it would be attributed to the beautiful Widow Winthrop. “I’m going out,” he said abruptly to Lily. “I shan’t be back for dinner.”
He left her standing in the entranceway, asking herself if she’d said something to offend him.
By ten o’clock that evening she was very afraid that there was something that would surely offend him now. She wouldn’t be surprised if Knight booted them out into the waiting arms of Ugly Arnold.
Five
Knight was pleasantly relaxed. He leaned his head back against the hackney squabs and closed his eyes. Unfortunately, that made him remember and he shuddered. It had been too close there for a while. But things had worked out, than
k all the powers that had taken pity on him. He didn’t want to dwell on it, but he couldn’t help himself. It had never before happened to him, never in all his male adult life.
Despite his randiness, he couldn’t seem to make things happen. Daniella was as she always was—beautiful, alluring, marvelously adaptive—and in the end, it was her skilled mouth that had brought him up to snuff, so to speak.
All because of a damned woman he’d known for such a short time it was objectively absurd.
And he’d thrown his head back and shouted her name at the moment of his sexual release.
It wasn’t to be borne. He would send her and the children to Castle Rosse. Soon.
He had to get his life back on its wonderfully predictable course before his mistress stabbed him for stupidity and his friends had him committed to an asylum. He could just hear Julien St. Clair telling all their mutual friends of his very odd encounter at Gunthers with Knight and his gaggle. Why, he was eating an ice, surrounded by children eating ices. And by toys. They were his family. Knight, with a family. Ah, but the mother, an angel of beauty, yes, our Knight…
He moaned, cutting off his imaginary monologue as he realized he could not send the brood away until he was officially and legally the children’s guardian. He couldn’t take the chance of sending them to Castle Rosse in case Ugly Arnold was still lurking about with evil intent in his heart.
He would speak to Tilney Jones on the morrow, hurry the fellow up, instruct him to grease every upturned palm. He didn’t care what it would cost.
Twenty minutes later, Knight let himself into his home with his latchkey. To his surprise, he saw a light coming from the drawing room. It was late, after midnight. He frowned and strode into the room.
He came to a stunned halt. “Lily, what are you doing up? Is something wrong?”
She looked pale and nervous and breathtakingly beautiful. Damned woman.
Lily tried to avoid lying. “Nothing is really wrong, if you mean that someone is ill,” she said.
“Excellent. We make progress.”
He was at his most sardonic—his voice smooth and bland, his left eyebrow arched upward, his look one of ironic hauteur. He walked past her to the sideboard and she smelled the subtle attar of rose perfume. He’d been with a woman, his mistress, no doubt. She swallowed.
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