Guilty Series

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “I tried sewing once, and I hated that. I know I’d hate embroidery just as much.” Once again, she appealed to her father, who had listened to this exchange in silence. “Please, Papa,” she implored. “I don’t want to stitch samplers and read stupid poetry and learn German, and I am hungry, really. Mrs. March has lovely comfits, but she”—Isabel paused and pointed at Grace—“she told Mrs. March not to give me any. She wouldn’t let me have any dresses I liked, and I haven’t been able to play piano all day.”

  “One cannot play piano and eat candy all the time.” Grace turned to Dylan. “Unless that is what you wish me to do with her?”

  He looked at his daughter, who was gazing back at him as if Grace’s regimen were the most barbaric of tortures.

  Dylan was not impressed. “I understand your passion for music, Isabel, better than anyone, but Mrs. Cheval is right. Young ladies need more education than the piano. In the mornings, you will do your mathematics, geography, German, and embroidery—whatever Mrs. Cheval deems appropriate. In the afternoons, you may play your piano until your dinner.”

  Isabel began to protest, but he cut her off. “That will be enough,” he said, in a voice that dismissed any further argument, and Grace gave a sigh of relief. “You are sleeping in the nursery,” he told his daughter, “and you will obey Mrs. Cheval’s instructions. If you do not, she has my permission to punish you by whatever means she sees fit. Is that clear?”

  Isabel did not reply. Instead, she bit down on her quivering lip and allowed the tears to spill down her cheek again. She seemed the perfect picture of misery.

  The quirk of a smile at the corner of Dylan’s mouth made it clear what he thought of this emotional display. “It seems you have something in your eye,” he teased her gently. “Would you like a handkerchief?”

  Any other child would have responded with frustration that the ploy didn’t work, but Isabel was cleverer than that. She switched to a different battleground. “I’m very hungry, Papa,” she moaned, still looking as pathetic as possible. “I didn’t eat before we went out because shepherd’s pie has peas in it, and I hate peas, and it’s two whole hours until dinner. Can’t I have something to eat?”

  “Heaven help us,” Grace muttered, pressing her fingers to her temples. “She never gives up, does she?”

  Dylan glanced up with a grin. “I told you she was just like me. I hate peas, too.” He looked back at Isabel again. “You are going to do what Mrs. Cheval tells you, aren’t you?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Yes,” she finally answered.

  “Promise me.”

  Isabel sighed, giving in. “I promise. I promise.” She gave him a hopeful look. “Can we have something to eat now?”

  “You do not want her to get in the habit of eating between meals,” Grace felt impelled to caution him. “If you let her have something now, she won’t eat her dinner.”

  “Perhaps,” he answered, “but I remember how long it always seemed until dinner. And after a day of shopping and trying to order my governess around, I would need sustenance, too.” Dylan slid an arm around his daughter and rose from the piano bench, lifting the child with him. Isabel gave a cry of delight, any pretense of suffering gone. She put her arms around her father’s neck, and they started for the doorway.

  “Where are we going, Papa?”

  “Where the food is, of course,” he answered as he carried her out of the room. “Get you to the kitchens, Beatrice! Get you to the kitchens.”

  “It’s heaven, Papa,” she corrected, laughing. “Heaven, not the kitchens.”

  “Well, I never can remember my Shakespeare. Besides, when you’re hungry, what is the difference between heaven and the kitchen?”

  Grace followed them, glad that Dylan had supported her side and happy that he was taking a bit of time with his daughter. A spoiled dinner later was worth the parental attention the child so desperately needed.

  Just around the corner from the kitchen, Dylan paused with his daughter in his arms, and Grace halted behind them. Keeping the child out of sight, he stuck his head around the doorjamb to take a look in the room, then he pulled back.

  “This is a perfect opportunity,” he whispered to his daughter, just loud enough that Grace could hear him, too. “Mrs. March is alone in there with a dozen brandy snaps. I’ll distract her while you grab the plate. Go out through the butler’s pantry, and I shall follow you.”

  He set his daughter on her feet and sauntered into the kitchen to greet the cook. Isabel slipped out of her shoes and waited, peeping around the doorway to watch for the right moment.

  Grace also watched as Dylan charmed Mrs. March with compliments about her cooking, moving about her kitchen and slowly maneuvering the stout little woman away from the brandy snaps. Only then did Isabel tiptoe up behind the cook and take the plate of sweets from the table. Grace pressed her fingers to her mouth, smiling.

  Isabel did not make a sound as she escaped out of the kitchen with the plate of sweets. Dylan lingered a few moments more, making culinary conversation, listening as if fascinated while Mrs. March explained in her thick Scottish burr that the secret of a good fool was in finding the sharpest, tartest gooseberries. When he could see that Isabel was safely gone, he excused himself from the cook with a bow, and Mrs. March returned her attention to rolling pastry dough as Dylan traced his daughter’s steps out of the kitchen, beckoning with one hand behind his back for Grace to follow him.

  She picked up Isabel’s shoes from the floor and started to comply, but she was obviously not as accomplished at skulking as the other two, for Mrs. March glanced over her shoulder at the precise moment she was crossing the kitchen and stopped her. “Ah, Mrs. Cheval, would you be having a moment to speak with me about Miss Isabel’s meals?”

  Grace hastily hid the child’s shoes behind her back as the cook turned to face her. Mrs March asked if she should be choosing Isabel’s menu from now on, or would Mrs. Cheval prefer to take on that task herself? The cook added that she had prepared mulligatawny soup and fish pie for Isabel’s dinner tonight, with brandy snaps for dessert.

  “That sounds perfectly acceptable,” Grace replied, trying to maintain a serious expression and not give the show away, hoping the cook wouldn’t notice that the dessert in question had just disappeared. “If it is easier for you to plan her menus yourself, please do so,” she said with a little cough. “Pardon me, but I must go.”

  The cook turned back around with a nod, returning her attention to her pastry crust. Grace started through the butler’s pantry, then stopped. “Mrs. March?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I only have one requirement for Isabel’s food. No peas. She hates peas.”

  The cook stared at her in astonishment that a child’s wishes had anything to do with the matter of what she ate, but Grace did not stop to explain that some battles just weren’t worth fighting. Instead, she continued on through the butler’s pantry and escaped.

  When she arrived back in the music room, she found that father and daughter together meant two loads of trouble instead of just one. They were a mess.

  It was very difficult to eat a brandy snap in a tidy way, for each tube of pastry had the unfortunate tendency to fall apart the moment one bit into it, leaving most of the whipped cream filling all over one’s fingers. But it seemed they had not even bothered to try being tidy. Crumbs and bits of brandied sugar were all over them and all over the table. There was a smear of cream on the rever of Dylan’s black coat and another on his sleeve. More cream was slathered on the front of Isabel’s lavender pinafore and all over her face. There was even cream in her hair.

  “Oh, dear.” Grace looked at them and started laughing. “If only Mrs. Ellis could see the pair of you. I shudder to think what she would say.”

  “You see, Isabel,” Dylan murmured to his daughter in a confidential manner, “I told you she wasn’t like nuns. She’s not nearly mean enough for that.”

  “I think you’re right, Papa. I alr
eady told her she was too nice to be a governess.”

  “I am back in your favor, I take it?” Grace turned her attention to Dylan. “Mr. Moore, you have my congratulations,” she said. “You have now taught your daughter how to steal from the cook.”

  “I already knew how!” Isabel told her.

  Grace gave a groan of mock exasperation, falling in with the game. “Hopeless, both of you.”

  “Spoken like a true nursery governess.” Dylan picked up another brandy snap from the table and sent another shower of crumbs and sugar onto the mahogany table in front of him when he took a bite.

  Grace glanced again at the brandy snaps that remained. She was getting hungry herself, and she had eaten her shepherd’s pie—two helpings of it, in fact. Now that she lived in a house where food was plentiful, she couldn’t seem to get enough.

  “You may have some, you know,” Dylan said, breaking into her thoughts, his voice amused. “A few brandy snaps won’t spoil your dinner.”

  She tore her gaze away from the sweets, knowing she could hardly do such a thing after the stance she had taken. “No, thank you,” she replied, trying not to look at the brandy snaps as she walked to the table and sat down.

  “Didn’t you ever sneak sweets from your family cook, Mrs. Cheval?” Isabel asked. “Not ever?”

  “Heavens, no! I wouldn’t have dared. Not from Mrs. Crenshaw.”

  She glanced at Dylan and noticed his skeptical look. “It’s true,” she said. “I never did. Dull of me not to steal from the cook, but there it is.”

  “Since I own the house and everything in it, including the brandy snaps, you could hardly call it stealing.” He licked a dab of cream from his thumb and looked at his partner in crime. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Right-oh,” the child agreed, her mouth full of cream.

  “Please don’t say ‘right-oh,’ Isabel,” Grace admonished, “and don’t speak with your mouth full.” Grace returned her attention to Dylan, smiling. “I don’t suppose you could have just told Mrs. March you wanted the snaps and taken them in a straightforward fashion?”

  “How much fun would that be?” he countered. “It’s much better when you can take them right from under her nose.”

  Isabel seemed to concur. “If we’d just asked for them, it wouldn’t have been the same at all.”

  “I daresay, but don’t be doing it every day, Isabel, or I suspect Mrs. March will stop making sweets for you altogether.”

  “No, she won’t.” Isabel popped the last bit into her mouth and stood up, then walked to the piano. “She won’t catch me.”

  “The moment she discovers the snaps are missing, she’ll know who did it, since you are the only child in the house.” Grace glanced at Dylan again. “Well,” she amended, “perhaps not the only one.”

  He grinned at that. She stiffened in her chair, watching as he began to lick cream from his fingers, one by one. An innocent enough thing to be doing, but the slow, deliberate way he did it and the laughter in his eyes told her he wasn’t thinking about anything innocent.

  Shameless man. She lowered her gaze to the table.

  “Papa?” That word broke the spell as Isabel turned toward them. “May I play your Broadwood Grand? It’s so much better than the pianoforte they moved into the nursery.”

  He glanced at the clock and shook his head. “I must work this afternoon. You may practice on it tonight before bedtime, if Mrs. Cheval has nothing else planned for you.”

  “That would be fine,” Grace said. “Perhaps, Isabel, you should take your bath now. You have cream and crumbs all over you.”

  “Take a bath at three o’clock in the afternoon?” Isabel looked at her askance.

  “Find Molly and tell her I said to draw you a bath now instead of after dinner. That way, once we have eaten, you will have a full two hours to play your father’s piano before bedtime.”

  Isabel needed no further coaxing. She started toward the door, then stopped and gave her father a hopeful look. “It would be much better for both of us if I had a Broadwood Grand, too.”

  “I do not think so.” Dylan pointed toward the door.

  “Papa!” Isabel gave a heavy sigh. “I thought at least you would understand how important it is to have a good piano,” she said with all the injured dignity an eight-year-old child could summon, then turned and left. The footman just outside the room closed the doors behind her.

  “From the look of things,” Dylan said, “I have fallen from grace.”

  “Never. You are her father. She adores you already.”

  “Only because I let her have a few brandy snaps.”

  “No, it isn’t. Little girls always adore their fathers.” Grace leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “All I know is that she has exhausted me. A whole day with her has left me feeling akin to limp lettuce.”

  “I suspect that is her intention.”

  “Oh, yes. She wants to wear me down, hoping I will find that giving in to her demands is easier than fighting with her about everything.”

  “Not a very effective strategy on her part, I’ll wager. German, mathematics, no food between meals. What an excellent governess you are, for you are a bit like an army general.”

  Grace sat up straight in her chair, indignant. “An army general? No, indeed!”

  “I am grateful I am not in your charge,” he went on, ignoring her protest, “for I would never get away with anything.”

  “I am soft as butter compared to the governess I had when I was Isabel’s age. Mrs. Filbert. She was very much the army general, very strict, and always emphasizing self-discipline.”

  “Ah, self-discipline! That explains why you keep staring at that last brandy snap with such longing, yet you will not just take it.”

  “I have not been staring at it.”

  “My apologies,” he said gravely. “I don’t believe you about your cook, by the way. No child goes through life without ever stealing sweets from the kitchen.”

  “I did,” she said and began to laugh at his obvious disbelief. “Truly. I was always a very good girl.”

  “Were you, now?” he asked, his opulent lashes lowering as he looked at her mouth. “You never did anything naughty?”

  “No,” she said, refusing to get all flustered by that question and the improper way he asked it.

  “Never?”

  Not until I scandalized everyone, shamed my family, and ruined my reputation. “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  The question was serious, and she blinked, disconcerted. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a straightforward question. Why were you a good girl all the time?”

  “I—” She broke off, unable to answer him, for she’d never thought about it. “I don’t know.”

  He pushed the plate a bit toward her.

  “No, I won’t have any,” she said with firm resolve. “I am attempting to set a good example for your daughter.”

  “I know. But Isabel isn’t here right now, is she?”

  Grace caught the movement of his hand and looked down as he took the last brandy snap from the plate. He leaned forward, bringing it close to her lips. She caught the scent of brandy and ginger and felt the sharp sting of hunger.

  She looked up above the brandy snap just a bit, enough to see his mouth, enough to see that he was smiling at her.

  “Go ahead,” he dared, his voice low and beckoning. “I won’t tell on you.”

  Her throat went dry, and she could not move. He was absurd, sneaking sweets from his own cook and pretending it was something forbidden. It was absurd that he could do this to her, hold out a brandy snap and make her feel as if it were the apple of Eden.

  “You must have been very naughty when you were a boy,” she accused, her words coming out in a choked rush, her fingers curling around the arms of her chair.

  “Very,” he agreed. “When I wasn’t stealing brandy snaps, I spent my time—” He broke off and pressed the confection to her mouth, touching cream to her lips. �
��I spent my time trying to trick Michaela Gordon into letting me see under her petticoats.”

  “Who was Michaela Gordon?” she whispered, her tongue tasting cream as he pushed the end of the pastry into her mouth.

  “A very pretty redhead,” he said lightly. “The vicar’s daughter.”

  “You would attempt to peek under the petticoats of a vicar’s daughter,” she said around the small pastry he had between her lips. She tasted whipped cream and took a bite before she could stop herself. It shattered in his hand, and she swallowed a mouthful of pastry and cream. He pushed the ends of two fingers against her lips, and she parted them, taking in what remained of the brandy snap—a few crumbs and lots of cream. Some of it must have ended up on her face instead of in her mouth, for Dylan began to laugh as he pulled his hand back.

  She couldn’t help laughing too, a laugh smothered by the fluff in her mouth. She swallowed it, but she could still feel the slick sweetness of cream on her lips, and she licked it off.

  His lashes lowered a fraction, and his smile vanished. He reached out again, pressing his cream-covered fingertips to her mouth.

  Oh, God.

  Desire came over her like a wave of warm honey as she looked at him. Her eyes started to close, and she felt her lips parting against his fingers just as the thought crossed her mind that he must have done this sort of thing a hundred times before.

  Grace jerked back, coming to her senses. He let his hand fall away, and he just looked at her, all amusement gone. Her breathing was a rapid rasp in the silence, and a hint of something undefinable came into his eyes, something that got past their opaque blackness, something almost tender.

  “You have cream all over your face,” he said, confirming her suspicion. He glanced down, reaching toward his breast pocket for his handkerchief, but his hand was still coated with whipped cream. He grasped the triangle of white linen carefully with the tips of two fingers, then pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  She took it and dabbed at her mouth and chin. At least a hundred times before, she said silently, trying to harden herself against that look in his eyes. She handed the handkerchief back to him, watching as he used it to clean the whipped cream from his fingers.