Chapter Four
His house was an oasis of uneasy and unsustainable calm as Harry welcomed his new governess into it. He knew that blissful state of affairs was doomed to be short, so he was eager to dispense with his part in today’s proceedings as quickly as possible. Before all hell broke loose again the second Simpkins returned with the mad Norbert, Harry wanted to be seated astride his horse and halfway to the Admiralty, blessedly unburdened by the unwelcome additional responsibility blasted Flora had saddled him with.
It was undoubtedly the coward’s way out that labeled him the worst sort of uncle, and yet, as much as he adored the destructive little monsters and was starting to loathe the Admiralty, he was entirely at peace with it.
The last few days had been chaotic torture. Their lack of routine, responsibility, and structure was so reminiscent of his own shambolic childhood, before the admiral had rescued him and taught him the meaning of discipline, that he fully expected his roof to leak at any moment and the debt collectors to knock at his door to make the nightmare complete. Worrying about those things was ludicrous, he knew, as he had his roof thoroughly checked every September and he did not owe a single soul a shilling because, unlike his father and because of all his grandfather’s strict but practical tutoring, Harry never spent beyond his means and paid every bill promptly.
His mother, on the other hand, might well have been the admiral’s daughter, but she hadn’t spent her formative years being brought up by him. Instead, thanks to his wife’s rapid, tempestuous affair with a free-spirited and scandalous artist ten years her junior, she had been brought up in hedonistic and decadent disorder. Then had chosen to fall head over heels with a man much the same. Between her and his poet father, it was a wonder they ever managed to buy a house. That they managed to own it for the fourteen years it took for Harry to be able to earn his own wages to keep those debt collectors at bay was a blasted miracle. Twice, his mild-mannered papa had been taken away in irons to debtors’ prison before Harry had turned ten. He had lost count of how many debt collectors hammered on their door over the years and how many times he had to suffer the public shame of watching more of the family’s belongings get carted away. A decade and a half on and those old wounds were still deep. Deep enough that he had awoken twice this week in a cold sweat, convinced that he had traveled back in time and the bailiff was about to remove all the family silver.
“Welcome to Hanover Square, Miss Rowe.”
“Thank you, Captain Kincaid. I am delighted to be here.” The polite smile she offered was more reserved than delighted. Wary, measured, and assessing as she took it all in. He supposed he couldn’t blame her for that. Not when she really had no comprehension—yet—of the battle she had agreed to fight. With some luck and a good wind, this small and seemingly humorless woman was everything the lauded Miss Prentice had claimed she was and would swiftly implement the structure, routine, and discipline the children desperately needed. Harry loved his sister as much as he loved her feral offspring, but knew she wasn’t the best role model for them if they were going to succeed in the world as he had. Having them foisted upon him might well be a huge inconvenience, but at least he could gift them with the tools to help them learn some self-control.
He took a surreptitious glance at his new governess and almost sighed aloud.
If one ignored her much-too-pretty face, overtly feminine figure, and the striking hair that constantly drew his gaze—three things that had, worryingly, taken his breath away the first time he had set eyes upon her—Miss Rowe did not look commanding enough to be able to control the little savages for more than five minutes, let alone teach them any self-control. Frankly, it would take Joan of Arc and the better part of her crusading army to defeat his indefatigable nieces and nephew into civilized compliance.
They had certainly defeated him these past few days.
There was just too much of Flora in them, and by default, far too much of his parents. Scatterbrained, undisciplined unruliness was as ingrained in the Kincaids’ blood as the spots were on a leopard’s coat, and those spots never changed. But he was hopeful some of it could be trained out of them, at least in the short term. Enough that he could survive this ordeal with most of his hair and sanity intact until his blasted sister reclaimed them and his life returned to its usual even, albeit overworked, keel.
Which all rather hinged on the success of the unimposing yet strangely compelling woman standing before him.
God help them both.
“I have made arrangements for Mrs. Rigsby, my cook, to take you under her wing this morning and show you around.” Keen to get going while the going was good, Harry ushered her along the quiet hallway with a sweep of his arm as the groom dragged the first of her three enormous trunks upstairs. “The children have been told to expect their lessons to begin after luncheon today, so you have until then to settle in. I thought it only fair to ease you in gently.” As Simpkins had quite rightly pointed out, they currently needed Miss Rowe more than she needed them, so it wasn’t in Harry’s best interests to scare her with the unvarnished, ugly truth straightaway. It would be harder for her to run screaming for the hills if she were unpacked and in the thick of it. “However, I personally wanted to show you the teaching space I have organized. I hope the preparations I have made meet your particular expectations—despite the short notice.”
While still as reluctant to speak as she had been in her interview, Miss Rowe had been quite verbose in her subsequent letter to him in which she listed all the extensive paraphernalia she required to teach his unruly charges what she called “a broad and stimulating curriculum.” Some he understood and approved of—dictionaries, atlases, and abacuses all made perfect sense. Some he sort of understood, as even the most diligent students needed some respite from the necessary rigors of mathematics and good penmanship. Therefore, he had been more than happy to purchase the paints and the easels and the long list of fanciful books filled with children’s rhymes she had specified. Diversions he assumed she would use to fill the lesson-free Saturday mornings and church-free Sunday afternoons.
What she planned to do with all the magnifying glasses, scissors, string, ribbons, buttons, and colored feathers, he had no clue, but had purchased them anyway in case the absence of feathers caused an immediate change of heart that left him governess-less. Despite all his many, many, many reservations about the diminutive redhead beside him being up to the job he had been press-ganged into giving her, the alternative was terrifying. Four failed days of coping with them himself and he was already exhausted, and poor Simpkins could barely stand, he had been run so ragged.
“This is your classroom.” He flung open the morning room door, quietly proud of the transformation he had achieved in such a short space of time.
Where he had once read his newspapers while he watched the sun rise over his beloved garden, was now a school room that even Eton would be proud of. Three sturdy desks sat where his comfortable Chesterfield had been, all strategically turned to face the wall so that his easily distracted relatives would not be waylaid from their studies by any birds or buzzing insects beyond the French doors.
That wall, which had once displayed a whimsical Gainsborough he had inherited from his un-whimsical grandfather, now housed a substantial chalkboard. Above that, of course, was a clock. As futile as it likely was, Harry had wanted a timepiece front and center in hopes that Miss Rowe could instill upon the little savages, in their disorganized mama’s absence, the importance of time. Their inability to do anything, beyond spread carnage, in a timely manner since they had arrived had him pulling his hair out. Every single task they did apparently took them at least twice as long as what he deemed necessary to do it in. Even a simple stroll around the perimeter of St. James’s Park—which usually took him a mere seven-and-twenty minutes at his usual brisk pace—had taken them all an hour and a half yesterday. Granted, a significant chunk of that was the stupid dog’s fault—but still. Norbert’s regrettable incident with the pie seller aside, the children had turned dithering and dallying into an art form.
Harry had been a spent force by the time he had wrangled them all back to the house thirty minutes late for supper. Slightly traumatized too by the ordeal, truth be told. Again, much of that was down to Norbert. Like their exasperating mother, Felix, Marianne, and Grace marched to their own drum irrespective of the reassuring, steady beat that the rest of the world dictated. That absence of haste, of purpose, or of any need for any rational, forward momentum, combined with their atrocious lack of self-discipline, made it easier to herd cats in fog than it did to shepherd three Pendletons on a simple lap of the park.
Everything about them was such a shambles that Harry genuinely dreaded to think what sort of adults they would turn into without this timely Flora-less intervention. Thankfully, before he had turned irreversibly into a shambolic Kincaid himself, the admiral had intervened when Harry had been around Felix’s age. His grandfather had then instilled within him all the morals which had been so deficient in his parents and put him on a path of meaning and purpose in the navy. Thanks to the admiral’s heavy guiding hand, Harry was the man he was, and if there was one silver lining to Flora’s latest debacle, it was that he now had a chance to return that favor. He would use his guiding hand and solid, sensible principles on the children in the hope that he might be able to save his nieces and nephew from becoming full-blown shambolic Kincaids too.
With that in mind, as encouragement, he had taken the liberty of noting some pertinent times down the side of the blackboard to remind them that a happy, ordered life required a schedule. Their first lesson would start each day at nine sharp. They would be granted a short break of ten minutes at eleven, then work diligently till one when Mrs. Rigby would serve their luncheon. Then, suitably rested and replenished, the little miscreants would work solidly from two till five to maximize all the best hours of the day.
Then with any luck, and if Sun Tzu was right and the line between disorder and order did indeed lie in the logistics, the miniature hurricanes would be too tired from a day of hard educational yards to wreak too much havoc in the two hours they had left before their bedtime.
That was the planned course he had charted, and he had everything crossed that everyone would follow it.
He glanced at Miss Rowe again, hoping that she did indeed possess the spine of steel she would need for the voyage ahead and all his justifiable misgivings about her were unfounded. However, rather than being hugely impressed at his efforts to build her a classroom from scratch in mere days, he sensed she was unimpressed. Unimpressed enough that he felt an explanation for his reasoning was in order in the hope he could prize some gratitude from her flattened lips.
“Obviously, I faced the desks away from all distractions of outside.” He gestured to the French doors. “However, please feel free to cover all this glass with paper if you feel it needs to be done. Or draw the curtains if you prefer.”
A perfectly sensible suggestion which elicited a wrinkle of her pretty, freckled nose. “Wouldn’t both of those things make the room a bit dingy, Captain? Darkness is hardly conducive to learning.”
“No. I suppose it isn’t.” He could tell she already thought him a clueless idiot, at least where education was concerned. She was right, of course, as his own education had been as ramshackle and piecemeal as the rest of his childhood had been until the navy saved him, but it still made him feel foolish and pathetically eager to correct that assumption. “Perhaps a screen is the answer to stop their limited attention from wandering?”
She went to speak, then bit her lip while she nodded with polite insincerity. It drew his eyes to that plump, pink flesh and that in turn made him supremely aware of his own lips—which was most disconcerting.
“I am sure we will manage well enough as things are.” She bit her lip again as if she wanted to say more but had decided against it.
“Er… um…” Harry wrenched his gaze from her mouth, shocked that he had allowed his mind to be waylaid by it. “Luncheon will be served at one sharp and the children’s supper promptly at five. Mrs. Rigsby will apprise you of the staff’s mealtimes, as what goes on in the galley is nothing to do with me.”
Both Simpkins and Mrs. Rigsby would mutiny if he ever interfered downstairs again and, after he had offered one suggestion too many, he was banned from the kitchen if his formidable cook was in it. It was, with the benefit of hindsight, a solution that benefited them both. Mrs. Rigsby made the most delicious meals and kept tidy accounts, and in return, whatever happened downstairs were, by and large, blessed things he did not have to worry about.
Harry was all about delegating if he could entrust the person to do the job properly. Unfortunately, experience had taught him that most people needed managing. He hoped that Miss Rowe wasn’t one of them.
“Noted,” said Miss Rowe, not noting anything down at all. “One and five. Sharp.”
“You will find all the equipment you requested in those boxes.” The numbered stack lived out of the way in a corner to keep the deck clear. He pointed to the labels affixed to the sides of each, wondering what it was about her that made him all flustered when he hadn’t found much to like about her so far beyond her seductive appearance, and he certainly did not want to like her like that!
“For convenience and expediency’s sake, I’ve listed what is inside of each.” He had modeled the inventory on a ship’s manifest, all alphabetical and complete with a grid to keep an accurate tally of what needed replacing when things inevitably perished. “That way you can count everything out and count it all back in again.” If the abacuses lasted a week in the clumsy hands of his sister’s offspring, it would be a blasted miracle.
Her gaze scanned his comprehensive tally but still gave nothing away, making Harry feel once again that he was the one being judged, exactly as he had in Miss Prentice’s study. Miss Rowe had watched him then like a specimen under a microscope. With open curiosity and yet still with complete and somewhat superior indifference. As if from that one meeting alone he had been weighed, measured, and found wanting.
It had been most unsettling at the time, and it still galled that he had handled that whole interview wrong. In his panic, mere hours after he had watched his blasted sister’s ship sail toward the horizon, too late to stop her, he had been so desperate to secure a governess to handle the mess Flora had left him with that he had allowed himself to be—frankly—bullied. As a result, instead of putting Miss Rowe through her paces to ensure she was the right candidate for the job, it had been he who had to jump through hoops. Leaving him now in two minds as to whether he had been either blindsided or hoodwinked.
Aside from all Miss Prentice’s gushing claims about her indispensable protégé, which he had no way of substantiating because he had been too befuddled by that meeting to insist upon further references, Harry knew nothing about the woman beside him. Nothing beyond the fact that she was punctual—a definite point in her favor—barely reached his shoulders, was too damn attractive for her own good, and was as sparing with her words as she was with her praise.
“Does this all meet with your satisfaction, Miss Rowe?” He was going to pry some acknowledgment for his efforts out of her distracting, pursed lips if it killed him.
“It is very ordered.” He could not read any reaction at all in her very green eyes as she ran her fingertip over the neat pile of new books lining the bookshelf. A bookshelf Harry had personally dragged in from his study at close to midnight last night so that she had somewhere to store everything neatly. “Almost military in its precision.”
Finally, she had noticed something he had done well! “I applied the same logic to this layout as I do on board a ship, Miss Rowe.”
“A place for everything and everything in its place.”
“Precisely.” He smiled and when she failed to smile back, felt compelled to defend the process of his sound logic further. “Chaos only wastes time.” Thanks to the unmitigated chaos of the last four days, he had wasted so much of it that it would likely take another week to just catch his tail. He had never been so behind in his work. For the children, it turned out, ate all his time for breakfast. And luncheon. And dinner. In fact, this ordered classroom had barely come about in the nick of time because it had taken him and Simpkins until close to one this morning to achieve, as it had been a particularly trying day.
The worst day of the four so far, and that was saying something when the previous three had been unbearable.
After a full day at the Admiralty, he had relieved a frazzled Simpkins of sentry duty as soon he had rushed home so that his second-in-command could have well-earned rest from herding the Pendleton brood, eat some dinner, and doubtless cry in a corner. Stupidly, Harry had thought it might be a good idea to take the lot of them out for a bracing walk to allow Norbert to do his business because the stubborn mutt refused to do it in the garden. Harry had hoped, fruitlessly it turned out, that the exercise would be all it took to get the disorderly brood in the mood for bed. Two birds, as it were, and one stone.
In theory, it had been a sound plan.
In practice, it turned out, not so much. Largely because he had foolishly failed to factor in Norbert’s talent for sniffing out food or the brute strength he could unleash to get to it. Therefore, when the mutt’s sensitive nostrils had caught a whiff of the unsuspecting pie seller, he had almost yanked Harry’s arm out of its socket as he dragged him in hot pursuit of the pastries.
What had happened next was not an ordeal he was proud of, as he had been forced to purchase the dog three steak-and-kidney puddings before Norbert would release the pie man from the end of the alleyway he had pinned him to. Then had learned the hard way that it wasn’t just chicken that disagreed with the beast’s bowels.
In a place where bowels had no place—Norbert had used the only trees available to empty them—the two potted, miniature conifers flanking his imperious neighbor Lady Flatman’s pristine doorstep.
The mere memory of the incident made him shudder.
The memory of Lady Flatman’s understandably explosive reaction to the violation made him shudder some more before he remembered to paste a more appropriate expression back on his face.
Miss Rowe gave him an odd look but didn’t comment, thank goodness, sparing him from having to explain to her the depravity he had been forced to endure. Instead, she moved to the three identical pencil pots, frowning at the three rulers lined up together exactly one inch apart beside the similarly arranged compasses and notebooks.
“I see no sign of chaos here, Captain.” Somehow, she managed to ensure even that compliment sounded like an insult, making him wonder why she so obviously didn’t like him when he had bent over backward to cater to her every whim. Then wonder why he cared about her opinions at all when he was the one paying her wages!
“Discipline is the soul of an army, Miss Rowe.” Was that Nelson or Wellington? He was so aggrieved he couldn’t remember.
“Perhaps so—but we must also be mindful that these are children and not soldiers.” Her smile was insincere. “But obviously I will bear your sentiments in mind.” Which he took as tantamount to her telling him he was an idiot because she knew better.
He considered countering, then decided against it. As Sun Tzu so sensibly said, the most prudent know when to fight and when not to fight, and he had more important things to do today than wasting time correcting his prickly new governess,
As Miss Rowe scrutinized the rest of his handiwork, he surreptitiously scrutinized her to see if he could gauge some more of her apparent superior measure. He had always, with just one notable exception, been a good judge of character. But so far, she baffled him. If she was the irreplaceable educational paragon Miss Prentice had promised, he saw no sign of it. However, her eyes, which were everywhere, hinted that she possessed an inquisitive and clever brain. The plain, sensible dress and unfussy bun suggested she was the sort to brook no nonsense, but she lacked the gravitas necessary, in his humble opinion, to enforce it.
If he, with all his years of experience managing men, could not make those children behave without pathetically resorting to bribery, he feared for her sanity. Toss her petiteness and the exuberant Norbert into the mix, and he feared for her safety too. For all her bold, direct stares when she did deign to speak to him, and all the subtle ways she found to look down her dainty, upturned nose at him, she still seemed ill-equipped to rise to the challenge his irrepressible family presented.
That cold dose of pragmatism forced him to reevaluate the situation at speed, as was his way, only this time that unique skill of identifying a problem long before it happened gave him no satisfaction. If he was right about her, the children would eat her alive and there wasn’t much he could do about it beyond watch them spit out the bones.
If he was lucky, he estimated he had a week before she quit and left screaming in surrender. Thanks to Miss Prentice’s clever manipulation of his dire situation, Harry had done something he hadn’t done in years. He had hired the wrong person to do the job. Miss Rowe was a mistake. A small, snooty, and costly one. But one he had no choice but to live with.
He could not dismiss her. Not yet at least. No matter what the grounds or provocation. Beggars could not be choosers and he was a desperate man, so no matter how ineffectual she proved to be or how unsuitable or unpleasant, he had to keep her for as long as he could.
However, as was also his way when he sensed storm clouds gathering, his problem-solving mind was already planning a contingency. He made a mental note to tell Simpkins to start sourcing her first replacement immediately. To line them up like cannon balls in readiness for the bloody, senseless conflict ahead. Forewarned was forearmed, after all, and poor Miss Rowe was destined to be the first of many who would fall before blasted Flora returned—that was the sad fact—so he would need to be nimble, resourceful, and think well ahead to mitigate for all the inconvenience. All the things he excelled at. Cold comfort after he had allowed himself such high hopes.
To cover his disappointment, he continued with his tour. “I had this clock installed yesterday.” He pointed to it, proud that he had still had the wherewithal to think about purchasing a special clock for the classroom at all when she had forgotten to request one. Further proof, if proof were needed, that he was always at his best during a crisis. Even when he was positively drowning in crises right, left, and center.
Instead of thanking him profusely for correcting her oversight, she gave another curt nod of acknowledgment. “A clock will be useful.” And just like that, she dismissed it to take in the blackboard. Her eyes widened slightly at his neatly chalked timetable written down the side of it before she turned to him, emotionless, her finger flicking to his two watch chains. “I see that you are a stickler for time, Captain.”
“Tempus fugit, Miss Rowe.” Out of habit, or perhaps because he had just used one of the admiral’s favorite sayings, he touched the pocket that held the watch his grandfather had always worn. “Time flies—unless you keep a firm hold upon it and, like Wellington, I much prefer to do the business of the day in the day.”
“I see you are also a fan of misquoting the military men of yore.” Her emotive nose wrinkled again in a way that showed she disapproved more of him misquoting Wellington than she did of the duke himself. “Nelson last week. Wellington today.”
“It would be foolish not to stand on the shoulders of giants, Miss Rowe.” As he had no clue who to attribute that quote to, he shrugged. “And I like to read… when I have the time.” Her gaze followed his fingers going unconsciously to one of his pocket watches before it wandered back to his precise timetable for the day, making him feel as though he was out of step, pedantic, crusty, and old.
So very old.
“I assume I can tweak this classroom to my satisfaction, Captain?”
Was it his imagination, or did even the word captain sound begrudging? As if his sixteen years serving king and country were a mark against him. “But of course.” Although why she would want to change anything when absolutely everything she needed was no further away than three paces, he didn’t understand. “This is your bridge, Miss Rowe, and the helm is yours.” Heaven help them all, for this voyage had more of the stench of doom about it than his frustrating stint on the Baltimore.
But Harry would look on the bright side.
At least her presence here in the short term would give him and his staff some respite from the relentless chore of keeping the children and their outsized dog entertained. It would also give him some limited peace of mind that they were all safe while he did his wretched duty at the Admiralty even if he still had to keep a close eye on her, so he would be thankful for small mercies, no matter how brief. Or small. And talking of small… Of their own accord, his eyes wandered to the petite Miss Rowe again only to find hers staring at him. “Please feel free to chart the course as you see fit.”
“Marvelous. Seeing as everything is shipshape, Captain, I think I should like to meet my crew now.” The sudden twinkle in her fine eyes suggested she was mocking him and his constant naval references, and might actually possess a sense of humor, albeit one buried under a thick layer of disdain. “Where are the children?”
“Awaiting you in the drawing room, Miss Rowe.” He led her to the open doorway, then paused to allow her to walk through it first. “They are excited to meet you.”
“Are you sure?” She sailed past, cupping her ear to listen for them with a wry smile that hinted again that humor lurked beneath her no-nonsense exterior. “Only it is so quiet, I was beginning to wonder if you had locked them in the brig.”