Chapter 11 #2
Ambrose reached out, his hand hovering for a second before he patted Arthur’s shoulder with a stiff squeeze. “A wise sentiment. Ensure you listen to her. She is… most diligent, my nephews.”
“We always listen to Miss Lewis,” Philip added, looking up at his uncle with wide, searching eyes. “She isn’t mean like the other governesses we used to have! She’s grand!”
A flicker of something passed over Ambrose’s azure eyes. “I am aware,” he murmured.
Imogen watched him as he stepped aside, pressing his back against the cool stone of a pillar to allow them to pass. As Imogen walked by, the scent of him, pine, old paper, and a hint of the crisp air she came from, washed over her, making her breath catch in her throat.
She didn’t turn. She did not falter. She kept her gaze forward, her shoulders held high with the dignity he had told her she deserved.
I have fared much worse, and just next door. I can deal with this Duke.
“Come along, Masters Lockhart,” she said, her voice clear and unwavering, despite the tremor in her hands. “Virgil won’t read itself.”
Ambrose remained pinned against the pillar.
He stared at the empty space where she had been, his thumb tracing the deep, jagged crease he had just crushed into a fifty-page legal contract he had spent days scrutinizing.
He didn’t move until the sound of the boys’ laughter was swallowed by the wind outside, leaving him alone with the suffocating scent of her lavender soap lingering in the drafty hall.
As much as he tried to ignore it, it intoxicated him more than the absinthe he had indulged in as a bachelor.
Those days have long passed, he thought to himself as he remembered the shadow of a man he once was, chasing widows and drink.
The heavy silence Ambrose had been cultivating was shattered not by a scream or a crash, but by a sound far more alarming. It was the rhythmic, wet thwack-slap of something hitting the mahogany floorboards of the foyer.
Those boys will be the destruction of this townhouse!
Ambrose bounded around the corner and down to the foyer to see what the matter was, his brow furrowed.
He was surprised to find Mr. Jennings, the normally unflappable valet, standing over a massive, salt-stained wooden crate.
Beside him stood a bewildered footman and a courier who looked as though he had just survived a shipwreck, dabbing his brow with a dirty handkerchief as he made a hasty exit.
“A delivery, Your Grace,” Jennings said. His voice was steady, but his eyebrows had migrated dangerously close to his receding hairline. “From His Grace, The Duke of Kirkhammer. He insisted it be delivered ‘with haste and extreme dampness.’”
Ambrose stepped closer. The crate was stenciled with the words:
PROPERTY OF THE ROYAL ADMIRALTY – PERISHABLE.
“Morgan is in Cornwall,” Ambrose muttered, eyeing a suspicious trail of seawater leaking onto the Persian rug. “What could he possibly have sent from the coast?”
At that moment, the schoolroom door upstairs creaked open. The boys, clearly sensing a disturbance in the force of their aristocratic home, came thundering down the stairs. Imogen trailed behind, breathless and wary.
“Boys! You cannot run in the house!”
“Is it a cannon?” Arthur shouted, skidding to a halt in front of Ambrose. “Did Uncle Morgan send us a cannon?”
“It’s leaking,” Philip noted with concern. “Cannons don’t leak. At least usually. Do they leak, Miss Lewis?”
“Not that I know of,” she replied as she stepped closer to the crate.
Jennings took a crowbar to the lid. With a screech of protest from the wood, the top popped off easily enough. Thankfully, there was no gunpowder.
Instead, nestled in a bed of seaweed and melting ice, sat two of the most enormous, prehistoric-looking lobsters Ambrose had ever seen. They were the size of small terriers, their claws bound with thick twine, waving their antennae with a slow, vengeful majesty.
There was a collective gasp as everyone stepped closer to peek inside.
“Good heavens,” Imogen whispered, clutching her hands together. “I have never seen such a thing in all my days!”
“Ah! They’re real monsters!” Arthur shrieked, his face lighting up with pure, unadulterated, and childlike joy. “Look at their armor! They’re sea knights!”
Jennings peered into the crate, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed. “There is a note, Your Grace.” He gingerly extracted a damp piece of parchment with two fingers, which he then read aloud.
Ambrose, please give these to the boys. Tell them the one with the chipped shell is named Charlemagne and the other is the Sun King. Don’t let the cook boil them until the boys have had a race.
Cheers,
Morgan.
“A race,” Ambrose repeated, the word sounding foreign in his mouth. “A race?”
“A race!” Arthur and Philip echoed in deafening harmony. “We must race the lobsters!”
Before Ambrose could protest, Jennings, who apparently possessed a hidden reservoir of mischief, had already tipped the crate forward. With a wet thud, the two giant crustaceans landed on the marble floor.
“Jennings!” Ambrose barked authoritatively, though he instinctively stepped back as Charlemagne began a slow, sideways scuttle toward his boots. “I expected more decorum from you!”
“I believe King Charlemagne is making a break for the dining room, Your Grace,” Jennings remarked with a deadpan expression, stepping nimbly out of the way.
“What in the devil is going on in here?” Mrs. Higgins said as she stepped into the hallway, which erupted into chaos.
The boys were on their hands and knees instantly, cheering and barking directions at the bewildered shellfish. Imogen, caught between a laugh and a look of sheer horror, tried to keep the boys from getting too close to the waving claws.
“Lord Arthur, please do not pet the crustaceans!” she cried, though her eyes danced with a lightness as a small chuckle came from her lips.
Ambrose stood frozen, watching the spectacle. He looked at his pristine foyer, now a mess of melted ice and seaweed. He looked at Jennings, who was still imperceptibly smirking.
If Father could only see me and his grandsons now.
Finally, his gaze landed on Imogen once more. She was flushed, her hair beginning to escape its pins as she corralled the boys. The suffocating tension he felt about his enigmatic governess in his chest snapped.
“Jennings,” Ambrose said, his voice cutting through the hullabaloo.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Gather the other footmen. Tell them we shall be having… a maritime derby in the long gallery.” Ambrose’s lips quirked, just a fraction. “And tell the cook that dinner will be delayed. Charlemagne has a lead on the competition.”
Imogen looked up then, her gaze meeting his. The distance she had maintained so carefully vanished in a shared moment of ridiculousness, which he reveled in. She didn’t curtsey. She simply gave him a wide, genuine smile.
“I believe le Roi Soleil is winning now, Your Grace,” she called out over the boys’ cheers, her green eyes meeting his.
Ambrose adjusted his coat, a ghost of a smile finally reaching his eyes. “We shall see who wins, Miss Lewis. We shall see.”