Chapter 3 #2
“You must, my lord. Please, call her back down at once. Tell her you’ve changed your mind, and beg her to stay.”
Beg Miss Templeton? It would be a frosty day in hell before he’d beg her for a single thing. “Certainly not. It’s quite out of the ques—”
“If Miss Templeton leaves this house, Lord Hawke, then I will follow her right out the door.”
“What?” For God’s sake, had Miss Templeton bewitched them all? “You can’t mean that, Mrs. Norris!”
“Indeed, I do, and if I leave, I daresay Abby will be right on my heels.”
“Abby?” Who the devil was Abby?
“Abigail Hurley, my lord. Your kitchen maid.”
“Never heard of her.”
Mrs. Norris huffed. “She’s been with us for nearly a year, my lord. If you recall, last year you gave me leave to hire whatever servants I deemed necessary to efficiently run your household.”
Had he, indeed? He had no memory of that, but then he’d rarely passed a sober day in London since he’d fled Hawke’s Run all those months ago.
“I chose both Abby and Mrs. Templeton after much judicious consideration,” Mrs. Norris went on, “and I have never had cause to regret either—”
“Did you happen to see the remnants of this morning’s catastrophe at the bottom of the staircase when you passed, Mrs. Norris? I would think that alone was enough cause for regret.”
“It was an accident, my lord. Surely, you don’t blame Miss Templeton for an accident that might have happened to anyone?”
“I don’t blame her, Mrs. Norris.” Of course, he blamed her. Whose fault was it, if not hers? “But surely you see that Miss Templeton is a small little bit of a thing, and not physically up to the task of managing two energetic young boys. She also happens to be a single young lady.”
A rather attractive single young lady, at that. Those eyes…
He cleared his throat. “It’s not appropriate for her to remain here, now I’ve returned to Hawke’s Run.” If he’d been any less of an infamous rake it might not have mattered, but here they were.
“Governesses do tend to be single ladies, my lord, and there’s nothing scandalous about it, but if you’re concerned for Miss Templeton’s reputation, I will personally take responsibility for her well-being while she remains under your roof.”
He drummed his fingers against his desk, eying her. “I don’t understand, Mrs. Norris. At least half a dozen governesses and as many nursemaids have come and gone from Hawke’s Run since…”
Since Sophie died.
But he wouldn’t think on that just now. The memories would catch him soon enough, just as they always did when he was here. “Are you so reluctant to take on Ryan and Etienne until another governess can be found? I’m aware they’re rather a handful—”
“That isn’t it at all, my lord. I love those boys as if they were my own, as naughty as they are.
That’s the very reason why I can’t stand by silently by while you dismiss Miss Templeton.
She’s turned Ryan and Etienne around, and make no mistake.
You won’t find another like her, and it isn’t…
forgive me, Lord Hawke, but it isn’t fair to the boys to take her away from them when they have so little constancy in their lives. ”
He winced. Well, that was plain enough.
He’d never intended to stay away from Hawke’s Run as long as he had.
Business had taken him to London, but once he was there, he’d lost himself in an endless round of drinking and debauchery.
Every morning over the past six months he’d woken with an aching head and bleary eyes and sworn to himself he’d return home to his sons that very day, but then the numbing cycle would begin again, and he’d lose another day.
And another, and another…
Now he was home, and his boys had grown so much like Sophie that looking into their eyes was like looking through a window into the past. Or was it a looking glass?
Yes, a shattered looking glass, with the reflection of the life that should have been theirs, only with a massive crack down the middle that distorted everything, ruined it—
“…she has a way with the boys I’ve never seen before, and as you’re aware, my lord, Ryan and Etienne become more wild, more unruly with every subsequent governess.”
It was his fault his boys were so lost. Their every struggle, their every failing—all of it was his fault. He couldn’t bear to scold them, or lecture them, or shout at them.
He couldn’t bear to look at them…
He loved them desperately, but with a strange sort of fierce hopelessness, forever torn between the urge to snatch them both tightly to him, and push them away for their own good.
He might have become a decent father with Sophie’s help, but she was gone, and bit by bit he’d fallen back into the same disgraceful behavior he’d indulged in before he’d made her his.
He was, alas, his father’s son. If that weren’t bad enough, he was also his sons’ father, and his boys deserved so much more, so much better than him—
“…a truly extraordinary talent with children.”
He dragged his attention back to Mrs. Norris, who was still talking.
She was a dry woman, not given to extravagant praise, but she was waxing veritably poetic about Miss Templeton.
“I don’t know how she manages it, but they adore and respect her in equal measure.
Indeed, my lord she’s done wonders with them.
They want to please her, and hang on her every word. ”
That little bit of a blue-eyed thing and her fiendish hell cat had tamed his wild boys? Surely not, yet to hear Mrs. Norris tell it, Miss Templeton was the patron saint of wicked children.