Chapter Nine
“If I were to measure it in fractions, he is nine-tenths dislikable. He is a staid, stiff, pompous fuddy-duddy who has archaic ideas about the education of children and a tendency to lean toward the draconian in its execution.”
Georgie was still smarting about the way Captain Kincaid had criticized her that first afternoon despite him holding his counsel in the three days since. However, it was as plain as the perfectly straight nose on his disapproving face every evening at precisely five minutes to five that he was biting his tongue about her methods as hard as she was biting hers about his. Where, devil take him, he somehow managed to emerge from nine hours working at the Admiralty and a brisk horse ride home across the city without a single hair out of place while she always resembled a woman who had been dragged through a hedge backward.
Thankfully, there were no lessons to worry about on Saturday or Sunday, so this morning she had taken the children, the dog, and Felix’s cricket bat to St. James’s Park. They all had a thoroughly lovely time whacking the ball around while Norbert assisted with the fielding, then spent the remaining hour catching tadpoles in a glass jar so they could study them properly before they released them back into the pond.
All without any threat of scrutiny or silent judgment from her impeccable stickler of an employer.
She had only been in his employ for half a week and already dreaded those brief, daily visits to her classroom more than anything. His intense brown gaze was always everywhere as he asked questions about everything the children had learned. Georgie knew he would scrutinize all their written work for the day, too, given half a chance, and not just the pages she allowed him to see. Although why she felt compelled to hide the rest was a mystery, as almost all the children’s written work was perfectly fine. If one ignored Felix’s woeful lack of any formal mathematics work—which he had a talent for avoiding until she tricked him into learning some covert sums outside during their breaks—he at least made a stab at everything else. And while his sloppy handwriting might leave a lot to be desired, the boy had a clever and mature way with the written word. Marianne loved to write irrespective of whether that was numbers or letters, and little Grace was doing perfectly fine, too, especially when one considered she was only five.
But when the captain’s annoyingly symmetrical dark brows furrowed every afternoon as he scanned each sheet of paper left on the children’s desks alongside whatever else she had left oh-so-casually lying around on hers, she panicked. Especially when he always made a point of querying why she had chosen to, again, waste at least one to two valuable hours of learning in the garden in the middle of every day where conveniently, no written work was ever done. She was already running out of ways to explain that, in her professional opinion, not all learning had to be written down and that, in fact, the best learning often stuck in the brain when no writing was done at all.
Those brief visits unsettled her so much, she was on constant tenterhooks ever since. Especially as the daily handwriting lesson was really the only one in which the children fully behaved themselves how he expected them to. Marianne had a big hand in that. A bigger and more persuasive hand than the exiled Norbert’s constant howling throughout every afternoon did to distract them all. For some reason, and despite the withering power of Georgie’s trusty schoolmistress’s stare, Marianne’s was just as potent. Whenever the other two siblings began to lose focus, she gave them a warning look that somehow held the power to bring even Felix up short.
As much as it had come in useful in the last few days, the unspoken message in Marianne’s eyes and the way Felix especially seemed to physically suppress himself while under the glare of it bothered her. Georgie could not quite put her finger on why, but the feeling that they all knew something which she didn’t refused to go away, and that unsettled her almost as much as the captain’s daily inspections did.
“And the other tenth?” Typically, Portia asked the most important question and the only one Georgie couldn’t yet answer. Three and a half days in and she still couldn’t quite work Captain Kincaid out at all. In so many ways, he reminded her of the colonel and yet in so many more ways, he didn’t.
“Hard to say.” She stared at the Saturday afternoon rowing boats bobbing on the Serpentine while she tried to find the right way to explain her conundrum. “The children plainly adore him. So does the dog, although goodness knows why as the captain seems to have even less patience with Norbert than he does with me—and that is saying something.” It was as clear as the suspicion shimmering in the stickler’s stormy, dark eyes that he was unimpressed with everything about Georgie. Even her carrot-colored hair vexed him. She knew that for a fact because his gaze would often flick to the top of her head as if he couldn’t quite believe hair could be such an awful color either.
“Is he cruel to him?”
“No!” It was a vehement response because she would not have been able to stay employed by a man who was cruel to an innocent animal. “He moans about Norbert but…” She huffed because the truth only made the captain more likable. “He never fails to stroke his ears when the dog comes to him, and when he thinks nobody is looking, he even allows Norbert to lick his face while he kisses his nose.” She had almost choked when she had spied that from her hiding place on the landing last night when the captain had arrived home late.
“Well, that is always a good sign.” Lottie threw the last crumbs of the bread she had brought with her at the swans waiting for it at the water’s edge. Thanks to their different work commitments, that there were three of them all in the same place at the same time was almost unheard of nowadays. The only friend missing on their little jaunt through Hyde Park this sunny Saturday afternoon off was Kitty, who was traveling with her latest employers around the south coast. “Children and animals are always the best gauge of a person’s character.”
Lottie dusted the last crumbs from her hands with an unladylike slap, then threaded her arms through Georgia’s and Portia’s as the three of them set off around the Serpentine back toward Mayfair. “Dogs especially are stingy with their affections if they sense anything untoward. One of our most docile farm dogs took such a dislike to the oil seller, we had to shut her in the stables whenever the man turned up. We could not fathom why. But then it came to light that the oil seller was a wanted criminal. A murderer, no less! A man who had swindled an old lady in the next county and then throttled her when she threatened to report him to the authorities. But the dog knew that the scoundrel wasn’t a decent man the second she met him. Because dogs know such things. They are always a better judge of character than us humans.”
“Maybe.” Georgie refused to believe that the dim-witted Norbert was a better judge of character than she was. “Except he is such a stickler. For everything, but most particularly time. Do you know he even wears two pocket watches! And constantly refers to both. What sort of a person does that?” She had certainly never witnessed the like.
“One who cannot afford to be late. Or one who is so important his time is stretched to the limit. Neither make him a bad man.” Lottie’s reasonable, rational, and cheerful acceptance of the captain’s most peculiar quirk irritated Georgie. “Perhaps if we buy Kitty two, she might actually remember to use one of them and will thus keep this new post longer than she managed the last. Just five days to get dismissed is a staggering record—even for her.”
It was, but Georgie had only been working for the captain for four days and could not shake the worry that despite the neat and tidy classroom and well-behaved children he saw every afternoon at five minutes to five sharp, he still did not trust her as far as he could throw her. Nor did he particularly seem to like her either. He most definitely did not rate her abilities as a governess, else he wouldn’t keep checking up on her. Which meant that all her hard work to change his initial poor opinion of her had failed. All in all, she was unnerved—by the apparent precariousness of her situation and more so by the man.
Something peculiar happened to her skin whenever he was close by. It heated and prickled and tingled and did not seem to fit her bones properly. It was so overwhelming, she could not get him out of her classroom fast enough—which at least meant that the children were never late for supper.
“An obsession with the clock is an objectionable quality, to be sure, but I’ll wager that isn’t the main thing about your captain that grates.” Portia’s good opinion was never easily won. She was a cynic at heart—usually too cynical, in Georgie’s humble opinion—but in this instance, it was welcome.
“It isn’t. He has an annoying tendency to quote military leaders, even the unworthy ones.” Friday it had been Napoleon, after she had reassured him that all was well, so he really did not need to keep disrupting his busy day to inspect hers when he could ask Simpkins or Mrs. Rigsby to do it in his stead. He had shrugged. Then suppressed a smile as he said, “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.” And for once, the wretch even quoted Old Boney verbatim too. “He is also interfering and obviously arrogant enough to assume that his interference is necessary.”
“All men think they know best, that hardly makes your captain unique. It does guarantee that he is vexatious, however.” As a sister to a house full of brothers, Lottie had the most experience with the breed. “Is he also patronizing and condescending?”
“He is absolutely both of those things too. And so disapproving he puts me on edge.” She had also never been so aware of her own body in her life as she was when his was nearby. “He was engaged once—apparently—though it came to naught, and one cannot but wonder if that was because he is so intractable that he made the poor woman run a mile.” For how exactly could any woman measure up to the high standards he both set and expected?
How did any mere mortal?
“He’s a nitpicker. A man who seems to expect the entire universe to bend to his will. He’s too serious and far too full of his own importance.”
“Again, all traits that simply make him male.” Lottie brushed it all aside. “Throw in some gravitas in society and a healthy bank balance and you could be describing every gentleman of the ton.”
Except he wasn’t like every other gentleman of the ton. Most of those mere mortal aristocrats spent their days balancing their ledgers and their evenings at their clubs and hadn’t accomplished any of what Captain Kincaid had. They hadn’t risen through the ranks at lightning speed on nothing but their own merit. Nor did they singlehandedly keep the entire Royal Navy afloat, which, if Mrs. Rigsby or Simpkins were to be believed, he did.
“You will get used to it.” Portia squeezed her arm. “And you will rise above it and put your duty first as Miss Prentice taught you to because, frankly, you desperately need the money and the reference he will write after you have earned every penny.”
“But I am not convinced my duty is to him when surely it should be to the children I have been tasked with educating?”
She was coming to despise the regimented nature of her lessons inside and resented that she had to keep a close eye on the clock to avoid spending more time outside than he would allow her to get away with. Her inner Joan of Arc had always flexed against unreasonable rules and boundaries, and she had bitten her tongue so much since Wednesday, it was a wonder she had any tongue left. Her classroom already felt less like her domain and more like a prison thanks to him and, like the children and Norbert, she wanted to be outside. What better place to teach them about the world than being surrounded by it? Especially when outside, they always got so much done! The Pendleton brood weren’t used to a classroom. Felix and Grace, especially, found the confines of one stifling. Every time she was released from her seat, that little girl had accumulated so much unspent energy, she practically exploded and ran into something or fell over something. The poor thing was covered in bruises. “Shouldn’t their needs come first?”
Now it was Lottie’s turn to squeeze her arm. “That is the tightrope we have to walk, Georgie darling. The trick is to make it appear as if your duty is to the captain on the surface, while doing what you think best for the children behind his back. Once he stops watching you like a hawk, I have no doubt that you will work out how to do that, for what you lack in diplomacy, you make up for with tenacity. In the meantime, rather than resent his interference, try to see it in a positive light.” If Portia was the cynical friend, Lottie was the eternal optimist. “He clearly cares enough about his nieces and nephew that he feels the need to reassure himself that they are being properly looked after.”
“You can choose to see it that way. I choose to call a stiff and pompous nitpicker a stiff and pompous nitpicker.” Yet even that apt description did not seem to properly fit the man. “Although, once in a while the captain does seem…” How to describe a feeling—an instinct even—that wasn’t fully formed. “Almost human.”
Portia laughed at that pathetic attempt to distill her conflicted emotions into words. “As opposed to what?”
Georgie shrugged, amused herself by her own inarticulateness despite the inordinate amount of time she had dedicated to pondering Captain Harry Kincaid so far. “A soldier. A sailor. An officer. A stiff and unyielding military being who expects everything to be just so and believes all his orders are so profound that they should be followed to the letter.” Because he was so much like the colonel in so many ways, it made no sense to her that he really wasn’t like her horrid stepfather at all. Apart from being as unhealthily obsessed with his career as the colonel had been, of course.
“That simply makes him an employer.” Portia offered her a pitying smile. “This is still your first position, Georgie, and—”
“There is no need to rub it in!” Even amongst her best friends, her own shocking failure at securing a post after so many attempts was humiliating. “I can assure you, that was not for want of trying.”
“I did not mean it as a dig,” said Portia, unoffended, “merely an observation. You have come to this all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, enthused with lofty plans and even loftier expectations of what your role as a governess entails. Whereas those of us who have suffered employment for a while now have had all that wistful enthusiasm ground down. Mostly by the crushing realization that in the real world, we are not considered rational, independent, useful, and talented women at all, but mere employees. Paid to do a job, but instantly forgettable after we have worn ourselves out to do it well. And easily replaceable if we fail to measure up to our taskmaster’s expectations.”
Her politically radical friend curled her lip in disgust at the word taskmaster. “I am afraid nothing about that will change until the right to vote is extended to the minions as well as the masters. Until that necessary revolution happens, do what I do. Think of the Four D’s and force yourself act in the manner that we have been trained to, even if doing so gets on your last nerve and makes you hate yourself.”
“Duty, decorum, diligence, and discretion at all times,” parroted Georgie and Lottie in their usual parody of Miss Prentice’s lecturing tone before they wiggled their eyebrows simultaneously. Because, since they had been girls, they had promised themselves that after a life of service and good behavior, when they were all wizened spinsters expected to shrivel and die quietly, they had plans to do the opposite. To pool their resources and buy a cottage somewhere, then spend their dotages doing absolutely everything in their power to purposefully and outrageously ignore all four of Miss P’s hallowed tenets until the last one of them turned up their toes. It might be cold comfort for the husband she would never get to marry or the family she would never get the chance to make—but at least it was something to look forward to even if it wasn’t what her heart wanted.
“Exactly! And if that fails to stop you railing at the heavens at the cruel injustices of life, console yourself that as a governess, you come significantly higher in the servants’ pecking order and get paid more than a poor, abused scullery maid while trying to ignore that because of the inferiorities of your sex”—Portia paused to scowl again at what she considered the most flagrant of those injustices—“and your inability to wear breeches in public, you will never achieve the superior status or salary of a butler or a gamekeeper.”
“I’ve worn breeches in public,” said Lottie with a grin, “and can confirm it is very liberating. In fact…” She dropped her voice to a giggled whisper. “I am wearing them now.” When they both gaped, appalled, at her, her grin turned smug. “I often put them on instead of a petticoat. It makes running after my pompous employer’s awful children so much easier and one never knows when a clandestine opportunity to ride something from his lordship’s fine stable arises. If the family all disappear in the carriage, for instance, on an impromptu trip to Gunther’s, I need to be prepared.”
“You do know that he will dismiss you on the spot if he ever catches you.” Portia rolled her eyes in despair. “Exactly like Lord Rochford did when his neighbor tipped him off that you kept riding his stallion.”
“That horse was put on this earth to run like the wind.” Lottie waved that caution away as if it was no matter. “Not trot along sedately under the weight of his fat backside. And please do not give me thatlook, Portia Kendall, as obviously I have learned from my mistakes and now avidly avoid riding in Hyde Park like the plague, no matter how early the hour. Nowadays all I do here is stroll around sedately like a proper governess should and, if the whim strikes, I sometimes feed the ducks.” Their incorrigible friend wiggled her brows. “On the subject of feeding and impromptu trips to Gunther’s, I am starving, so who fancies an ice cream?”
With nothing better to do, the three of them hurried out of the park and along Charles Street until they joined the queue of people waiting patiently outside the shop at the corner of Berkeley Square.
A queue that, thanks to the clement, sunny weather, stretched so long it almost curved into Bruton Lane.
“If they have run out of violet ice before we get to the front of this ridiculous line, I shan’t be responsible for my actions.” Lottie stood on tiptoes to see if she could spy the counter through the window. “The lemon is a poor substitute.”
Being taller than both of them, Portia also raised herself to get a better look. “Rest easy. There is an entire barrel full of violet. Enough for everyone here—not that I shall be having any, because today’s cakes look too divine. There is a raspberry confection that has my name on it.”
Also preferring cake to ice cream, and too short to see anything but the man in front’s armpit, Georgie had to wait until the queue shuffled several paces forward before she was finally able to crane her neck high enough to get a look at the display for herself. Then instantly froze at the sight of her employer sitting at a table directly in front of it.
Laughing.
Laughing!
Who knew that he could? Or that it would suit him so much when all she ever saw him do was frown.
At least to her.
“Oh my goodness!” Of all the people to collide with on her day off, it was the one she wished to see the least. Especially since he was the picture of dashing, sartorial elegance in his perfectly tailored forest-green coat whereas the stiff breeze that had whipped across the Serpentine had played havoc with her coiffure. To such an extent that not even the twenty pins she had used to secure it had held it in place properly. Doubtless her head looked as if a bright orange firework had exploded beneath the brim of her bonnet. “We need to go!”
Her first instinct was to run, and she would have if Lottie hadn’t dragged her back by the sleeve.
“Not before I get my violet ice!” Then, noticing Georgie’s panicked expression, Lottie kept hold of it. “Is everything all right? Only you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“He’s not so much a ghost as Captain Kincaid!” Doing her best to hide behind Portia, and with her back turned to the window, she subtly gestured his way. Too subtly, apparently, as both Lottie and Portia were now both craning their necks trying to make him out.
“Is he the one with the crinkly gray hair and the straining coat?” Portia’s curious gaze was too close to the window. “For if he is, I must concur that he does look like an old curmudgeon.”
“Not him. The captain is the dark-haired fellow. Seated beside the potted palm.” She would have added the tall, commanding, outrageously good-looking one with the dazzling smile but kept that description to herself in case her friends decided to tease her about it.
“There are four potted palms and several dark-haired gentlemen.” Lottie’s face was also now so close to the window her breath was misting it. Georgie yanked her back.
“Could you try acting with a bit more discretion!” Despite the wall and several rows of busy tables beyond it, it still felt appropriate to drop her voice to a whispered hiss. “You are a protégé, after all.”
“Could you try to be a bit more specific, then!” Lottie did a very poor job of acting nonchalant as she continued to search for him. “There must be close to a hundred people in there and at least twenty of them are gentlemen with dark hair.”
Realizing that she would not be allowed to escape until her friends had seen the dratted captain for themselves, Georgie did a quick, surreptitious scan behind and blinked in shock when she finally noticed Felix, Marianne, and Grace sat with him. Had they just arrived? Or had she been so overwhelmed by the sight of him they had been rendered invisible? “He is the one directly in front and to the left of the counter. The one sitting alone with the three children.”
There was a long pause until Lottie broke it.
“That is Captain Kincaid?”
She nodded.
“That is your uptight, pompous, staid fuddy-duddy?”
She nodded again, scrunching her eyelids in mortification. “Oh, this is just too awful! I really cannot go in there. I wouldn’t know the first thing to say to him outside of work.”
“He really doesn’t look like a fuddy-duddy,” said Portia as she eyed him with open curiosity. “Or a stickler or a self-important nitpicker for that matter either.”
“Looks can be deceiving.” Just because he was suddenly smiling at the children did not mean he wasn’t an arrogant, insufferable pedant the rest of the time.
“On the subject of looks,” Lottie said, nudging her. “You failed to mention that Captain Kincaid looked so… splendid. Or that he is a prime physical specimen of manhood or that he is filled with so much obvious vim and vigor. Or that he fills his coats so magnificently.” She wiggled her brows. “I wish my employer were so easy on the eye. I would forgive all his pomposity if he were as tall, dark, and handsome as yours is. In fact, I’d be happy to swap places with you, Georgie, if you find him too difficult to work for.”
“So would I.” Portia was practically ogling him through the window now. “If one is doomed for the foreseeable to be a minion, it would certainly make the injustice of it easier to bear if I were his.”
“Now there’s an idea… I know it goes against absolutely everything that Miss P taught us, but if I were you…” Lottie sighed dreamily. “I’d forget he was my employer and I’d use my wiles on him. A man like that needs thorough kissing, marrying, and skipping off into the sunset with, as I should imagine it would be heavenly to wake up next to him in the morning.” As a farmer’s daughter, Lottie had always been the earthiest of them when it came to such things and often said things that shocked. But while that outrageous proposition was shocking enough, the next words were worse. “Although I sincerely doubt the night with him would be a chore either.”
While Georgie’s mouth gaped, Portia merely agreed, a wicked glimmer in her eye as she ogled the captain some more. “Oh, that wouldn’t be a chore at all. Especially the kissing part. He has the look of a man who would do it well.” Her friend chewed on her bottom lip as if she could taste his on it.
“Oh, indeed he does,” agreed Lottie with another sigh. “Very well.”
Georgie nudged them both to stop them gawking, oddly jealous that her friends were so tempted by the captain when they knew precisely what they were sighing about. Both had been thoroughly kissed at least thrice apiece by different gentlemen and had both been very candid about the experiences. In fact, after a particularly brief but passionate fusing of lips with one of her old employer’s groomsmen last autumn, Lottie had declared a tie between the right sort of kiss and galloping across a field as the most invigorating and pleasurable experience a woman could have, and that spoke volumes.
It also threw up a great many questions now that she felt forced to contemplate the captain’s lips herself. Enough that Georgie, who nobody had thus far ever wanted to steal a kiss from, briefly pondered what being kissed by him must be like until she checked herself. “I cannot believe what I am hearing! Nor that apparently you are both prepared to overlook every bad thing I have told you about him based purely on the breadth of his shoulders and the look of his mouth! Some friends you are!”
Portia exhaled in an uncharacteristically wistful fashion. “He does have excellent shoulders and a mouth to die for. I’d let him have me.”
“Me too,” said Lottie with a shameless leer at the captain again. “It’s one thing to have to meet your maker without ever having a ring on your finger, but it would be a travesty to do so in a package marked UNOPENED, too, and he is…”
“Agreed.” Portia nodded with a wicked smile. “A marvelous memory to recall on one’s deathbed.”
That was the last straw, and Georgie forgot to whisper. “Are you both so shallow that all it takes is a handsome face to seduce you?”
“It’s not just his mouth or his face. Or even his shoulders, although those are incentive enough.” An unrepentant Lottie turned to stare again, and when that earned her a jab in the arm, shrugged. “If one ignores his many attractive physical attributes, he also seems to have a nice way with the children.”
“He is their uncle! Their only uncle—so he has to be nice to them.”
“Do you see any other lone uncles in there, or even fathers for that matter, laughing over a mountain of ice cream with three children?” Lottie’s eyes wandered back to Captain Kincaid in blatant appreciation. “Did you not hear what I told you about the perceptiveness of children and animals? If the dog loves him and those children plainly worship the ground he walks on, then he cannot be all bad, Georgie. It’s simply not possible.”
“Maybe he’s been such a stickler toward you because he genuinely does care deeply about their welfare exactly as Lottie said. Have you considered that?” Clearly, Portia was now so enamored of his good looks that she had clean forgotten that she was a cynic who rarely gave anyone the benefit of the doubt until they had proved themselves worthy with deeds and not words. Instead, she smiled soppily as she gestured his way, needing neither deeds nor words when apparently, shoulders were quite enough. “And that is why they adore him so.”
Of course they adored him! He was a man who excelled at everything, after all, so of course he would also excel at being an uncle too! The overachieving wretch.
“Anyone can bribe a child for an hour or so with ice cream.” Although for some reason, he seemed to have bought the children the entire shop. “Stuffing them full of dessert does not make him redeemable. In fact, it suggests quite the opposite. That he is so irredeemable that the only way he can make them like him is to bribe them with treats.” Even as she said it, Georgie didn’t fully believe it. The children had loved him before the presence of ice cream. The way they spoke of him and the frequency in which he appeared in their conversations were proof that, for all his many, many, many faults, there was something intrinsically decent about him, even if she had no firsthand experience of it.
Felix had called him a good egg, when he forgot to be hard-boiled, and there was no sign of that hardness today. The egg who sat inside Gunther’s this afternoon was as soft as soft could be.
Against her will, she was compelled to glance at him again, and managed to catch him gently wiping little Grace’s ice cream–covered chin with his napkin, watching him smile as he did so and his besotted niece smile back.
Drat him.
Portia was right. He adored those children too.
And a soft-boiled Captain Kincaid was not a version of him she ever wanted to be forced to contemplate.