Chapter Five
As he, too, found the children’s uncharacteristic silence unsettling, Harry hurriedly led the way to the drawing room and was relieved to see the three of them sat as still as statues on the sofa. Exactly as they had solemnly pledged to be when he had left them there ten minutes ago.
It had taken a shilling apiece and a solemn pledge of his own to take them to Gunther’s on Saturday afternoon for ice cream, with the assurance that they could order whatever they wanted unhindered, to get them to behave like civilized human beings this morning. He wasn’t proud of that. Nor was he particularly proud that this wasn’t the first time he had been so browbeaten by the three of them that he had succumbed to bribery. The navy would be horrified at such a show of weakness as that was certainly not how they had trained him, and his military idol Sun Tzu would be spinning in his grave, too, despite his claim that victory was only ever reserved for those willing to pay the price of it. But frankly, after the battles he’d waged since blasted Flora’s departure, a couple of paltry shillings, all the ice cream in Gunther’s, and Harry’s pride still felt like a small price to pay for a few hours of blessed respite.
“Children—allow me to introduce Miss Rowe.” As one, they stood the moment she entered the room, and thanks to the promise of unlimited ice cream, even managed to pretend to possess some manners. “She will be your governess until your parents return.” Or until the half-pint savages blew her entrails out in bubbles.
In turn, he beckoned them forward in age order. “This handsome young sportsman is my nephew, Master Felix Pendleton.”
Instead of merely looking him up and down as she had Harry, she proffered her hand to the boy and shook it. “I am delighted to meet you, Master Felix, and to trounce you at cricket in the near future.” Then she did the unexpected again and beamed at his nephew. A smile so devastating that Harry’s breath caught in his throat and refused to budge—and that wasn’t good.
Especially when the last woman who had taken his breath away had knocked all the wind out of his sails before she scuttled his ship entirely.
“I should probably warn you in advance that I am a mean bowler, young man.” Miss Rowe folded her arms, an action which did wonders for her figure, as she offered Felix a saucy, smug grin. “In both execution and spirit.”
“I shall believe that when I see it,” said Felix with a smug grin of his own. He raised his eyebrows toward his sisters. “In my experience, girls cannot bowl.”
“Well, this one can.” Miss Rowe tapped her chest with gusto, drawing Harry’s eyes once more to her pert bosom encased in tight-fitting gray serge and giving them ideas they had no right having. Especially when she was his employee and a decent employer—an officer and a gentleman—had no right to ogle the help.
What on earth was the matter with him?
“I’m a fairly decent batter too but lack the dedication required to be a good fielder.” Her features were so animated when she spoke. Her green eyes were so friendly but mischievous as they locked with his nephew’s in convivial challenge. To his utter horror, Harry was envious of that. Envious that she obviously much preferred the boy to him. “Fielding, I will confess, is not my forte, so I am little better than mediocre. You?”
“I’m an all-rounder.” Thoroughly charmed and eager to impress, Felix thumped his own chest. “The best in the family. Better even than Uncle Harry here.”
“Says who?” Harry folded his own arms and summoned a feigned arrogant expression for effect. Or to impress her and win one of those devasting smiles too. He could not decide which it was and concluded it was likely best not to ponder it any further. “For if it is your mother who gave you that accolade, it was given only because my sister is still bitter at my catching her out last summer in the first innings, and not because of your superior talents, young whippersnapper.” He flicked his finger with a grin to dismiss Felix before he turned to the oldest of the girls. “Marianne, come and say ‘how do you do’ to Miss Rowe.” As he turned toward the newcomer, Harry caught her staring at him, quizzical, until she quickly masked it with a smile for his niece.
“What a pretty name!” Miss Rowe bestowed her breathtaking beam again. “Your uncle has informed me that you are a dancer, Miss Marianne.”
That was all it took to make the middle sibling forget her solemn pledge to behave like a restrained and sedate young lady. Because nothing suppressed his eldest niece’s penchant for showing off—not even ice cream—Marianne decided to not to walk forward like any decent, well-brought-up child would, but to pirouette toward Miss Rowe for all she was worth.
Harry gave her a look. One that said he would make her pay for this insubordination by being stingy at Gunther’s if she continued, but typically, it was ignored. Being a diva to her core, Marianne then finished her impromptu performance with a theatrical flourish before she dipped into an exaggerated curtsy.
“Enchantée, mademoiselle Rowe.” And of course, because she lived to test him, today Marianne was going to be a diva à la fran?aise—purely to vex him. “Comment allez-vous?”
“Très bien, merci!” The breathtaking beam stretched wider as Miss Rowe’s beguiling eyes twinkled, and she clapped before she shook his niece’s regally proffered hand. “And I must say bravo, Miss Marianne! A sublime performance and such impeccable French. What an accomplished young lady you are.”
“I can sing too. Shall I demonstrate?”
As Marianne’s skinny rib cage began to inflate, ready to blast out one of her awful, out-of-tune arias, Harry caught her shoulders, spun her around, and sent her back to the others with a decisive shove. “You can delight Miss Rowe another time with your unique musical stylings, young lady.”
Before the diva argued, he offered little Grace his most reassuring smile, praying that the half an hour he had spent with her this morning practicing walking, rather than sprinting, was still fresh enough in her mind that she wouldn’t explode forward like a whirling dervish and injure herself on the furniture again. “Last, but by no means least, may I present to you Miss Grace Pendleton, who is working hard to grow into that name.” It seemed only fair to both his five-year-old niece and Miss Rowe not to set the bar too high. Miss Rowe would discover soon enough that poor Grace possessed no grace whatsoever and went everywhere at a gallop, no matter what. Never mind that the sensitive baby of the family would also burst into tears if she thought she had disappointed someone in any way. What the child lacked in decorum, she more than made up with heart.
To her credit, his niece tried her best to be sedate and used two hands to pick up the edges of her frilly little skirt before she stomped slowly and methodically forward as if every single step was a challenge, her big blue eyes flicking to his as she sought reassurance for her efforts. While the new governess wasn’t looking, he winked at the child and gave her a subtle raised thumb before he hid it in his folded arms.
“How do you do, Miss Grace?” Miss Rowe knelt to shake the little and doubtless sticky hand. There had been some toffees involved in the walking practice too this morning, seeing as the task proved to be such a challenge and frustrated tears had been imminent.
“My tooth is wiggling, see?” Grace opened her mouth widely and close to Miss Rowe’s face, then pushed her tongue against the tiny incisor to prove that was so. “Once it falls out, I’m going to give it to Felix for his collection. He’s already got all of Marianne’s and his own, and once he gets all mine, he’s going to string them onto a necklace to give to Mama for Christmas. He’s very good at making jewelry. Last Christmas he made her a bracelet out of beetles. They were all dead, of course, first.”
It took all of Harry’s strength not to allow his mouth to hang slack, because of all the sentences he had hoped little Grace would say, it certainly wasn’t that one.
He was about to apologize for it when Miss Rowe smiled. “I am glad to hear it, for it strikes me that a bracelet made of live beetles would be a trifle itchy. But still fun, though. Especially in church.” Then she laughed.
It was unrestrained and earthy and outrageously seductive.
Seductive enough that it thoroughly scrambled his wits, and his jaw did gape momentarily until he hoisted it up like a mainsail before she turned to him with a genuine smile. “Your nieces and nephew are quite delightful, Captain Kincaid. I believe we shall all get on famously.”
“Excellent.” Now that they had all conspired to lull her into a false sense of security, it seemed a prudent time for him to leave before all hell broke loose and she changed her mind. “I shall pass you to the capable hands of Mrs. Rigsby so that you can unpack and prepare before your lessons commence after luncheon, which will give you…” He snapped open one of his pocket watches. “… almost six hours to steel yourself for the ordeal before you have to sip from the cup of destruction.”
“You consider Genghis Khan a military giant whose shoulders you want to stand on?”
He shrugged, impressed that she had recognized that misquote too and more impressed that she had the confidence to call him on it. Maybe she had some steel in her spine after all. “As you clearly like to read, too, Miss Rowe, I daresay you will agree that while he was undeniably a ruthless, bloodthirsty, and power-hungry maniac with few pleasant qualities to recommend him, old Genghis knew how to fight a battle.” He hoped, for her sake, that she did too. “If you will just follow me.”
As her smile melted and she sailed past him again, he hung back to give the manipulative children a wink for upholding their bargain, then stiffened.
“Norbert!” Simpkins’s panicked voice came from afar, signaling that all hell was indeed about to break loose.
“NORBERT!” Something crashed in the vicinity of the kitchen.
“NORBERT! Those sausages are not meant for you, you scabrous bag of fleas!”
There was a scuffle. One which clearly included Mrs. Rigsby as his two most senior servants loudly wrestled for the stolen sausages, then another, bigger, crash.
If that wasn’t enough to raise all of Harry’s hackles as he dashed into the hallway to intercede, Simpkins resorted to salty sailor insults, a sure sign that he was at his wit’s end with a situation far beyond even his meticulous control. “Get back here this second, you useless, bilge-sucking, horn-swaggling, DERANGED, SCURVY DOG!”
Clearly unfettered and in a hurry to escape, Norbert’s enormous paws thundered down the hallway as he barreled toward them, the string of pilfered sausages dangling from his mouth.
He dropped them the moment he spotted Miss Rowe and sped up, eager to greet the latest human to grace his pack in his own inimitable way. Before he could warn her to take cover, Norbert launched like a racehorse jumping a gate. Time slowed as Harry lunged, too late to use his body to make any significant impact on Norbert’s determined trajectory. Instead, Harry’s head met the opposite wall with such a thud that he saw stars, while a blur of excited gray whizzed past him.
Norbert hit Miss Rowe with some force. Enough that Harry heard all the air exit her lungs in one big whoosh. Green eyes wide, she shrieked as she flew backward beneath the animal’s immense weight. Then lay motionless and winded beneath him as the giant devil-dog licked her startled face as if his troublesome, grossly untrained canine life depended upon it.
After the most dubious of starts, which thanks to the pompous captain had lived up to all her lowest expectations, Georgie’s first day had improved rapidly.
To be fair, the only way was up after Norbert had knocked her down so spectacularly. But after dreading crossing Captain Kincaid’s threshold, then having all her worst fears about him confirmed with his regimented and soulless attempt at creating a classroom, he had redeemed himself slightly by trying to save her.
That had been noble, despite his failure.
He had been so mortified by Norbert’s exuberant welcome that he had apologized profusely for a full half an hour before she had managed to convince him no real harm had been done and that he could go about his day. The same could not be said for him, though, as Captain Kincaid had crashed headlong into the wall with such force a nasty bump had erupted on his forehead. Enough of one that the butler had insisted he might be too concussed to ride his horse to Whitehall. After a short argument, which the butler won, Simpkins issued him with a cold compress to use in the carriage. Despite all the captain’s protestations that the wound wasn’t bad enough for all that fuss, Georgie had still witnessed him press it to his temple and wince when he finally left.
Since then, with the children mysteriously missing, she hadn’t done much of anything beyond unpack, take a tour of the house, and drink tea with Mrs. Rigsby. The cook had been a wealth of information about her new employer and was such a shameless gossip that Georgie hadn’t even needed to ask about him.
Now she knew that Captain Kincaid had turned thirty at Christmas. That he excelled at everything he turned his hand to and that was why he had risen in the ranks of the navy so fast. That he had gone from being a boy first class on board his first ship to captain at just five and twenty, which Mrs. Rigsby believed made him the youngest ever. That he was working at the Admiralty for the foreseeable, and had been for the last two years, because it was the quickest route to promotion and because he had a talent for getting troublesome things done fast. While that talent would also doubtless ensure the captain became the youngest admiral the navy had ever seen too—as was his destiny—it was, according to the cook, also a double-edged sword. His superiors now constantly took advantage of his good nature—which Georgie would believe he actually possessed when she saw it—because they kept him so busy he barely had time to sleep.
Mrs. Rigsby had also claimed that the captain paid decent wages, treated his staff well, and didn’t bring loose women home. If he did anything with loose women outside of these walls, Mrs. Rigsby couldn’t say, but she did know that he had briefly been engaged, although she was sketchy on the details because it was before he moved here and so she had no clue why he and his fiancée had split. And that he sometimes sat in the garden for hours and simply stared at the plants. That particular behavior, she had assured Georgie with a shake of her head, was a sure sign that their master had taken too much on and no longer knew which way was up.
Which all felt familiar to her too at this precise moment. She had trained to be a governess for more years than any other governess of her acquaintance, and now that she was one, she had no clue which way was up either. The grateful and well-behaved young ladies in Miss Prentice’s benevolent school were a very different kettle of fish to three actual children, and she’d never had to deal with an employer before.
“Is here all right?” Eager to please, Felix had appointed himself her chief furniture mover as she rearranged their classroom. He had turned up early for the first lesson with Norbert in tow. Partly out of curiosity and a greater part, she suspected, to see what he and his sisters were letting themselves in for. Hence, he had brought the dog as support, even though he had been warned by Simpkins that Norbert had to remain in the yard during lessons. Now that all the desks and chairs had been turned around, they were trying to find a new home for the blackboard on the opposite, and far more interesting, side of the room than the uninspiring location their uncle had chosen.
“Yes. Perfect. We don’t want to block the French doors and this lovely view of the garden.” Or the giant dog currently snoring upside down as he basked in the afternoon sun streaming through them.
She had considered trying to make the captain’s configuration work despite her rebellious need to change it on principle, but knew within minutes of unpacking her books that it would be too constricting and depressing to have her new pupils stare at nothing. Nothing except her and the ridiculously large clock marking time on the wall. A depressing view for even the most scholarly of pupils, let alone these three, who had clearly not had the most conventional education.
According to Felix, who she had been gently quizzing for the last ten minutes, the children had never had a governess before. It was their mother who had taught them all to read and write, and their father who instructed them on the sciences. The eldest Pendleton claimed he no longer had to suffer through mathematics at home because he already knew all that he needed to, so she wouldn’t need to bother making him attend those lessons with his sisters. He would use that time to exercise Norbert just as he did at home. He had said all that with the unconvincing nonchalance of one who would rather pull out his own teeth than solve a mathematical problem, so Georgie suspected he struggled with numbers.
Felix also claimed to have a penchant for the Greek and Roman classics despite being only ten, most especially those that included epic battles. However, he had no time for Plato because he thought the ancient philosopher spent too much time thinking and not enough doing. Homer, however, told tales filled with derring-do, so he was all right. But his favorite book was more modern—Ornithologica Britannica by Marmaduke Tunstall—because it was the definitive work on English birds, exactly as the title claimed.
Young Master Felix would obviously prefer a similar book on insects of the British Isles because insects were his whole life, but as one didn’t yet exist, he planned to write it before he reached his quarter century. After that age, he was going to sail the world like his favorite uncle, Harry—but not in the service of the king. Instead, he was going to circumnavigate the globe single-handed while he wrote a seven-volume encyclopedia detailing all the earth’s insects in time for his thirtieth birthday. Thirty, he had explained, was the perfect age to publish your life’s work before you had to settle down. When she had asked why he had settled on seven as the perfect number of volumes for such a herculean task—a deliberate nod to his love of the classics—he had stared at her as if she were daft. Then explained that he would have to sail all seven of the seas to find all the countries within them to record all their insects, so therefore each volume would encompass one voyage.
She admired that ambition and logic too much to point out that it was flawed. It wasn’t her place to crush his dreams when she fundamentally believed that the role of a good teacher was to nurture them. Neither was it her place to quiz him about the current level of his sisters’ educations when getting important and accurate information was always better straight from the horse’s mouth than via hearsay or gossip. Unless there was no other option, of course.
“So tell me…” Georgie threw open the French doors to allow the fresh spring breeze to whoosh into the room and ruffle the snoring Norbert’s shaggy gray fur. “What makes your uncle Harry your favorite uncle.”
“Two things,” answered Felix with all the seriousness of a ten-year-old as he held up a pair of fingers. “Firstly, he reads the best bedtime stories.”
An answer that Georgie hadn’t expected in a million years. “How so?”
“He does all the voices and acts out all the exciting parts.” An image which did not fit with the upright, staid, regimented timekeeper she had disliked at first sight at all. But then, she was sure she had seen him wink at little Grace when she had done her best to walk with decorum this morning, and that did not fit with that image either, so perhaps her first impressions did need some tweaking. He was still eminently dislikable, obviously, but not all bad like the colonel had been.
Yet.
“And the second reason?”
“He’s our only uncle,” said the boy with a shrug, “so has to be our favorite. However, I do believe that even if I had another, I would still like Uncle Harry the best.”
“Why?”
Felix gave that some thought, then shrugged again. “Because he’s ultimately a good egg—that’s what Mama always says when he exasperates her—” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “But only when he forgets to be a hard-boiled one.”
Georgie chuckled at that fitting analogy. Captain Kincaid was clearly cut from the same unforgiving cloth as the colonel but had been made using a slightly better-fitting pattern.
That he wasn’t a complete ogre was a relief as she didn’t want to have to fully hate her new, and so far, only employer during their limited time together. This appointment was an opportunity and hopefully the boost she needed to finally launch her stalled career as a governess. It would not only provide her with experience, but hopefully an excellent reference from the captain when she came to leave. With her atrocious inability to impress at an interview, Georgie needed categoric proof that she was employable to tempt another family to take a chance on her. As Miss Prentice had warned repeatedly over the last few days, if she didn’t bite her tongue while in Captain Kincaid’s brief employ and see it through to the duration, then she would bite it off to spite her face. Therefore, no matter what the provocation, she would bite it until it bled if necessary, because beggars really couldn’t be choosers. And a hard-boiled egg was better than a rotten one. At least the rest of the captain’s family were lovely.
“What sort of egg are you, Felix? Only I’ll wager, from our short acquaintance, that you are more a deviled than a coddled one.”
“Deviled for definite.” His toothy grin suited him. “As the baby of the family, Grace is the coddled one. She’s frightened of her own shadow and will cry at the slightest provocation so we have to wrap her in down to protect her.”
“And Marianne?”
He rolled his eyes at the mere mention of his other sister’s name. “Scrambled.” Then he dropped his voice to a whisper in case the middle Pendleton heard. “She’s as mad as a hatter, drives everyone to distraction, and is oblivious because she lives mostly in her own world—but don’t tell her that I told you.”
“My lips are sealed.” Georgie pretended to button them a second before Marianne and Grace came through the door holding hands.
Poor Grace looked terrified and on the cusp of tears, exactly as her big brother had warned. Hardly a surprise when Mrs. Rigsby had told her that this was the first time the children had been left for more than an hour by their mother. Add to that the fact that London was a very different place to the quiet coastal house Felix had told her they usually lived in, and none of them had ever been to anything resembling a school. Not even a Sunday school, if the boy was to be believed, so the three much-too-large-for-Grace desks and chairs must have appeared intimidating no matter which way they faced.
So too would grilling the poor thing on her abilities with numbers and letters despite Georgie urgently needing to know them to do her job properly. As much as she hated to link anything to time when her confusing employer was so obsessed by it, pitching her classes at the wrong level was a complete waste of it. However, the three test papers she had spent several hours putting together for today had been a waste of hers. They were not used to sitting examinations, and foisting one upon them now could well do more harm than good to their fledgling relationship.
But there were more ways to test the children’s educational abilities, and unlike their old-fashioned uncle, she was nothing if not open to better, less stuffy ways of doing things. “Why don’t we commence our first lesson in the great outdoors?” She pointed to the surprisingly pretty and well-tended garden that the captain liked to sit in. “I read somewhere that the average garden is home to over a thousand different species of flora and fauna. I wonder what lives in this one?”
“Ants and wood lice and earwigs, for certain.” Felix was already out the door and keen to go hunting for them. As he bounded off, Norbert rose from his prostrate position, stretched his ridiculously long limbs, then chased after the boy with his big tongue lolling.
“And butterflies,” added Marianne, prancing after her brother down the neat lawn and flapping her arms gracefully as if she had become one, completely forgetting her terrified little sister whose bottom lip was trembling because she had no earthly idea what to do now that she had been left alone.
Georgie held her hand out, smiling. “Come on, Grace.” Sensing that the child wouldn’t want to be too far behind the others, the second Grace warily took it, she pulled her into a run, quietly enjoying the sound of the little girl’s relieved and excited giggle as they dashed down the perfectly manicured lawn so fast that the neat hedge encompassing it blurred.