Chapter Four
“When will he be here, then?” Rebecca asked, stirring a fourth lump of sugar into her tea. “I’m dressed for sitting in the barouche, but if Eddie’s going to call, then I need to change into a walking muslin.”
“We didn’t set an exact time, I’m afraid,” Beckett replied, buttering his toast. “I would guess it will be within the hour.”
Sighing, his daughter pushed away from the table. “Excuse me, Papa. I need to go find Brubbie.”
“Just a moment, Cricket. Butler, Bradley, give us the room, if you please.”
“Of course, my lord.” Motioning at the senior footman, the butler led the way out of the breakfast room and shut the door behind them.
“If you’re going to tell me not to join Eddie in digging into the sewers, I wasn’t going to, anyway. I don’t mind a bit of mud, but I don’t much like rats.” She gave an exaggerated shudder.
“No, it’s not about tunneling. But thank you for setting my mind at ease.”
“You’re welcome.”
He gazed at her for a moment, all bouncing black curls and inquisitive green eyes, gangly arms and legs and still half a decade away from looking like a miniature adult. “It’s been you and me and Mrs. Brubbins for quite a long time, hasn’t it?” he began.
“Oh, yes. Are you thinking of adding a pony to our family? Because I think Charlie could use a friend.”
“That’s very kind of you, to think of Charlie. And I am thinking of adding to our family. Not a pony, though. Not at this moment.”
Scowling, she slumped in her chair. “Well, that’s disappointing, Papa. I thought we’d decided I was old enough for a pony.”
“You may well be, Rebecca. This discussion, however, is about adding a person to our family.”
“A person? Are you having a baby? Who is the mother?” She bounced upright again.
“There may be a baby in the offing, eventually, but I’m attempting to do things in the correct order.
Therefore, I have invited Lady Pauline Grenedy to come here for luncheon today.
I would like the two of you to be friends, with the idea that she may, one day soon, become my wife and your stepmother. ”
She set her gaze out the window. “I like the way things are,” she said, folding her arms on the table and dropping her chin onto them. “You and me and Brubbie. And the staff, of course, here and at Hentrose Park.”
“I know. You might find, though, that adding someone who enjoys the same things we do, and who can be available to talk to when I’m not, and who knows how to do and say the proper things in Society—which is where you’ll be in a few years—could be helpful. And pleasant.”
“What if I don’t like her?”
If Rebecca didn’t like Lady Pauline, he supposed he would step back and wait to have number seventeen thrown at him by his mother.
He’d proven his own poor judgment at finding a mate.
“All I ask is that you give her an honest chance. I don’t expect you to become bosom friends in one luncheon.
It may take two luncheons and an ice cream. ”
She grinned. “Or two ice creams.”
Beckett smiled back at her. “I’m thankful you’re old enough to understand bribery. Honest and open-minded. Yes?”
With a sigh she straightened again. “I still don’t think she’s necessary, but yes.
I will be honest and open-minded.” Standing, she walked around the table and gripped his shoulder so she could lift up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.
“And now I must go change my dress.” Halfway through the door, she turned around again. “Might Eddie stay for luncheon, too?”
That was more chaos than he’d planned for. On the other hand, chaos and Rebecca were very dear friends. The sooner Lady Pauline realized the state of the household and could come up with a plan to improve it, the better. “If Mrs. Silbern agrees, then yes, he may stay.”
“I’ll see to it.” With a twirl she pranced out of the room.
As he watched her go, Beckett sat back in his chair.
Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d done well by his daughter.
She spoke like a miniature adult on occasion and had a vocabulary beyond her years.
But there was a fine line between precocious and spoiled, and he’d tried very hard to avoid the latter.
It made sense that she wanted things to remain as they were. Sameness was comfortable. But the idea of having someone else to assist, to answer questions with facts when he could only suppose and surmise, someone to turn Rebecca into a proper young lady when the time arrived, that could be a boon.
The knocker on the front door, a cat with a mouse in its mouth, clanged against the heavy oak.
Beckett stood as he heard it open, Butler’s greeting, and the higher-pitched answer.
Iris Silbern hadn’t changed her mind, then, when he’d thought she might.
As she seemed quite willing to state her opinion, and quite capable of defending it, he considered her arrival a victory.
He stepped into the hallway. “You see, Mama?” Edmund was saying. “His name is Butler.” He looked up at the butler. “What if you were a groom?”
The servant straightened his back. “I would never, Master Edmund.”
“Would you have to change your name, though?”
Iris Silbern, still on the front step, smiled. “I believe there are quite a few persons named Smith who don’t work at a forge. A name is a name, passed down from parents whose parents might once have belonged to those occupations.”
Edmund faced her. “What’s a Silbern, then?”
“You are, Pickle. Not every name is an occupation. Sometimes it’s a place, and sometimes it’s just a convenient group of letters or the weather on the day someone of import was born.”
“Oh, you mean like Raines.” The boy approached to offer his hand to Beckett. “Was your family named after the weather?”
“Evidently so.” Beckett shook hands with him. “Might you have a maiden name, Mrs. Silbern? I’m suddenly very curious to know what your ancestors’ occupation might have been.”
Her cheeks darkened. “As I said, sometimes a name is just letters thrown together. Might I apologize to your daughter for stomping into your house yesterday?”
“Certainly. At the moment she’s changing into appropriate clothing for frolicking, but please come wait with me in the morning room.”
With a nod, Iris stepped into the house and followed her son, who’d evidently already learned the Raines House floor plan, into the morning room located just off the foyer.
“Thank you,” she said, nodding as she took a seat on the very front edge of a chair—no doubt so she could spring into action at the slightest provocation.
“How fares your aunt?” he asked, sitting opposite her while Edmund took a turn about the room and stopped in front of the wooden bird carvings lining one shelf.
“She’s improved a great deal. Over the winter she was bedridden. It’s only in the past few weeks she’d taken to the wheeled chair.”
“Which you are to push about. When not rubbing her feet.” It was none of his affair, but she’d been dressed for dancing last night, and she’d clearly enjoyed twirling about the ballroom. Anchoring her to someone else seemed akin to putting fetters on a hawk, preventing it from flying.
Her eyes narrowed. “I am doing her a favor, and in return, she and Uncle Harold are hosting Edmund and me for the Season.”
“I said we should harness the chair to a pair of big dogs,” Edmund commented, picking up a bird and turning it in his hand. “Did you carve these?”
“No. I purchased them from a wood-carver in Lincolnshire.”
“They’re sterling. You should paint them. Or I could paint them for you, in the birds’ colors.”
“Edmund, do not deface Lord Hentrose’s art collection.”
Sighing, he put the bird back. “I was only suggesting.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Beckett said, keeping his gaze on Iris on the chance she might lunge at him for what he was about to say. “If you can tell me your mother’s maiden name, you and Rebecca may paint those birds as a team.”
“Edm—”
“It’s Flexing.” The lad whipped around. “Does that mean your papa had bent arms, Mama?”
“Someone in the family did,” Beckett supplied, laughing. “And your mother does, certainly. There she is now, folding them.”
For a moment as her crossed arms went over her chest, he thought he’d made her angry, but then she snorted. “Very well, have your fun, but last night was not the first time we danced, Lord Hentrose.”
“Beckett,” he supplied again, furrowing his brow. “It wasn’t?”
“No. Eleven years ago I was just out, and you asked a cotillion of me. You told me I looked as graceful as a swan.”
Now Edmund was laughing. “You said that, my lord?”
“Iris Flexing,” he mused, running the name along his tongue and his memory.
There had been so many women with whom he’d danced before his marriage, but certainly he would have remembered one with striking hazel eyes and golden hair.
One who—“Wait a moment. You got strawberry cream on my sleeves, because you had it all over your hands and didn’t tell me. ”
Her smile deepened, her striking eyes sparkling. “You do remember.”
“Remember? I narrowly avoided being called Sticky Hentrose for the remainder of my life.”
Edmund fell on the floor, howling. “Oh! I can’t breathe!”
At that moment Rebecca bounced into the room. “What’s going on? Did someone poison Eddie?”
“Your papa danced with my mama once,” the boy choked out, still rolling about, “and she got strawberry cream on his sleeves, and everyone called him Sticky Hentrose!”
“I had to bribe three people to keep it quiet.” Beckett continued gazing at Iris Flexing Silbern. “Who did you end up marrying? A Silbern, I know, but…”
“Thomas Silbern. The second son of Viscount Bellamy.” She sent her son a glance. “He passed away four years ago.”