Chapter 1
London, England
Bettington stared at his three sons in dismay.
Roger, the oldest, licked crumbs from his lower lip, but had the presence of mind to look sheepish.
William, age five and next younger, gazed at his father with dazed eyes.
He had no idea what he had done wrong, bursting out from the kitchen cupboard with a scream and scaring the cook and scullery maid to death.
Tio, at four, wore the innocent expression of a child who had followed his older brothers and enjoyed the biscuits and pudding they’d found in the larder.
How did Bettington punish his naughty children when they had chased off two maids, their second governess, and third housekeeper in four months?
Returning to the servants’, registry in Piccadilly was not a welcome option he relished. The last time, two months ago, when he’d applied for new staff, the owners of the registry had begun to look at him as if he were a ghoul. He was—when not besieged by errant children—a kindly soul!
He stood. Hands clasped behind his back, he strode around his desk.
He did not like to intimidate his children.
God knew, he had personal experience from his father that such show of force only withered a child’s spontaneity.
Ingenuity, too. His mother had left his belligerent father and lived in Brighton since his sister Ella had taken their father’s prize thoroughbred and run away.
They had never heard from Ella again. As for him, well, he had escaped much of his father’s cruelty because a week after his mother and Ella left, his doting uncle, his father’s younger brother, had taken him away and put him in Eton close to his own home.
Now his three boys needed the same empathy and structure his Uncle Hayward had shown him, and Bettington endeavored to imitate the man. But clearly he had not done well.
He sighed.
They needed a mother. Henrietta had passed away two years ago.
But in truth she had left their three sons even before they were born.
A self-possessed woman who took more time with her hair than her children, she had loved the marriage bed but hated pregnancy.
Most of all, the hard painful work of birthing was her hell.
The hours of that had turned her off her babies, their “wrinkled squinty looks” and certainly the very idea of nursing, let alone cooing to them.
Bettington frowned. In many ways he had been father and mother. Not the wet nursing of course, but so much else. Singing his children to sleep, reading stories to them, he even loved pushing them high in the garden swing.
But he couldn’t make them behave. Pick up their toys. Obey their governesses. Or be polite to those in the kitchen.
“This will not continue,” he said. “You three must behave. Roger,” he turned and faced them before continuing, “after the holiday, you will go away to Jasper Font school.”
“Sir?” The boy spoke up. He was tall for his age, keen about frogs and flowers—and roast “beast,” as he called a good round of beef. “Where is that?”
“South of London. In Kent.”
“I…I will sleep there?” His large sky blue eyes, so like his own, widened in shock.
“You will.”
“But…but, sir, I—”
Bettington lifted his palm. “William, you will no longer sleep in the nursery, but move further down the hall into your own room.”
The little boy’s chubby round face fell. At five, he liked anything with sugar in it. Cookies, ices, berry pies and his brothers. “But…but Tio will want me.”
Bettington winced. William and his youngest son Tio had often slept in the same bed whenever Tio had bad dreams. More often than not, he would find them hugging each other in the mornings, cherubic smiles on their lips. William loved his little brother. They had always made a good team. Too good.
A rap came at his office door.
“Come in,” he called to his butler, Fox.
“My lord,” the older man, who still wore chocolate pudding on his frockcoat, appeared calm as he met Bettington’s gaze. “You have a visitor.”
Bettington hoped it was the woman he’d been waiting for these past days.
“A lady?” He asked his man, hearing hope in his voice.
“Indeed, sir. The very one you spoke of. I have placed her in the drawing room, sir.”
Winifred Mathers. Bettington sighed. Her very name filled him with renewed hope. “Bring her here, Fox.”
The servant ran his large brown discerning eyes over the three young boys staring back at him. “Now, sir?”
“Now.”
Roger, William and Horatio shot glances at each other. Roger grinned. William straightened his shoulders. Tio had no idea how to react, so he just looked at his older siblings and shuffled his little feet.
Fox closed the double doors and went to do his master’s bidding.
Bettington needed Winifred Mathers. Her presence. Her person. Her firmness of mind…and he needed her this minute.
His body anticipated her arrival in a most inappropriate manner and so he cleared his throat once more, then folded his hands before him in a strategic place.
“My dear sons, you are about to meet our new housekeeper.”
The three knew Winifred already. Had done for the three years she had served in that capacity at his country house. But Bettington wanted to instill a firmer respect for her in her new position.
After all, her ability to rein the boys in was one of the reasons he had asked her to come and serve him here. The other reason was…well, to be honest, not one he could put before three little boys.
“She is a fine lady from the country.” A beauty. “She is a lady, educated and refined.” A treasure.
“Does she play croquet, sir?” This from Roger.
“Indeed she does.” He had watched her play with the staff last August in the country at Bettington Grange.
“Will she play with us?” Roger pursued his favorite topic.
“Not only that, she will teach you how to hold the bat correctly and to hit the ball gently.” So as not to break more windows.
William scrunched up his nose. “I want to shoot arrows.”
“You need to learn how to do that correctly, William.” The boy had found the old archer’s cache of arms in the back room of the garden shed last Monday and shot a maid in her bum.
The results had not been pretty or delicate.
The doctor whom Bettington summoned had taken a rueful assessment of Bettington and suggested William get ten lashes.
That Bettington would never do. No matter if William had put an arrow in the doctor’s arse.
“Is she young?” Roger had hope in his dancing eyes.
“Our new housekeeper is—”
“Not an old creeper like Mrs. Hardcastle?”
“Roger, please. You will not speak ill of servants. Mrs. Hardcastle was a good lady.” A bit stuffy and clumsy, but otherwise, a tyrant who screamed that she had nearly tumbled on a step that had wooden soldiers strewn about.
William chuckled.
Bettington scowled at him.
Tio sucked his lower lip, lost in this conversation.
Bettington gathered his wits. “Roger, you must be kind. Mrs Hardcastle did her best to—”
“She whipped me!” Roger said with venom.
“What? When?” No one could raise a hand to his children. Even if they were a bit…well, unruly. He would get that out of them, but not by pounding on their little bodies.
The boy shifted on his feet. His oldest knew that Bettington did not approve of physical punishment, and he had used that knowledge to gain favor with him. “Dunno. Last week.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why did she spank you, Roger?”
He shrugged his thin little shoulders. “Don’t remember.”
Bettington sighed.
A knock came at the doors.
Fox did not wait for permission. The door fell open, and to the man’s left stood the young woman Bettington had wanted in this house for years. Wanted but never had the right opportunity to place.
Not as his friend. Although she had been that for over a decade.
Not as his housekeeper. But now she would become exactly that, he hoped. She was a youthful sprite and witty, as well as sharp of mind and tongue. She was his last hope at a normal life. A woman whom he could look to each day with confidence that she could put sunshine in his day.
A murmur of approval ran through his three sons.
“Ohhhh, Miss Mathers.” Roger beamed.
“Yay!” William grinned, showing the gap where he’d lost two teeth yesterday.
“Miz Mabbers!” Tio had problems pronouncing ts and ths.
“Boys! Please welcome her here.”
Winifred Mathers was precisely what they needed. A woman of strong coloring, red gold hair and rosy cheeks, lush pink lips and eyes so green and brown that when Bettington looked at her, he thought he walked in a forest of delights.
“Miss Mathers.” He strode toward her, his hands out to welcome her.
She took his one hand to purposely shake it, but she winced, uneasy.
What was he thinking? She was to be his servant. His employee. Not his friend. But so much more.
He cleared his throat. “I trust you had a pleasant journey from Bettington Grange.” His country home in Kent was a mere hour’s coach ride from his home here at No. 42 Dudley Crescent.
“I did, thank you. I appreciated you ordering the grooms to carry me here in your traveling coach. The ride was very pleasant.”
She glanced at his three sons, who ogled her and clapped their hands in glee.
Pretty women were not abundant in their daily lives.
But this lovely one had been each summer.
Furthermore, they knew her well. They had played games with her.
One-legged races and apple bobbing contests.
For his children, she was the leader of merry rounds of laughter.
For adults, especially for Bettington, she played a harsh game of billiards and chess.
And she always dressed in pastel gowns that showed her pretty oval face and ivory complexion to a distracting perfection.
In fact, he’d often thought of her as a confection, like fondant or a strawberry ice.
He also wondered what she tasted like. Could he kiss her and learn?
His mouth watered. “Allow me to introduce you properly as our new housekeepr. I have not yet told the boys of the change in our staff here.”
“Sir, allow me to speak,” she interrupted and captured his gaze.“I have come out of courtesy.”
What did that mean? “Of course, Miss Mathers.”
“I—I accepted your offer and I have come in your carriage, for which I am most grateful, sir. But I must tell you I cannot stay. I must go.”
“What? Why? Is it your father? Is he ill?” That man claimed every ailment known to the world. He could be a cantankerous old bugger, too. And Phineas Mathers carried an old grudge against the Bettington family. Heaven knew what it was, but the fellow groused about it every chance he could.
“No, no, sir. Not my father. He is well, thank you. But I cannot stay because I will not accept your offer of the position.”
“You won’t be our housekeeper?” Roger asked, disappointment wrinkling his little brow.
“I did accept,” she said to him. “But, my lord,” she faced Bettington, “I have come. It is only courteous that I do. You see, I cannot stay. I apologize for the inconvenience and the mixup. But I am only here to say I am sorry that I cannot remain to serve as your housekeeper.”
Bettington stood before her, his stance wide, his feet rooting into the carpet. “This is highly irregular.”
“It is, I know. And I do regret my inability to stay.”
“What has happened that has changed your mind?” He fought frantically to find reason for her desertion. “Is the salary not sufficient? I can increase it.”
“No, no, sir.”
“My three boys have promised to behave.” Perhaps servants here had written and told tales to those at Bettington Grange about his boys’ latest antics.
She looked upon the three and gave them the giddiest of smiles. “I am certain they would.”
Tio pouted and grabbed her hand. “You’ll catch bubberflies with us.”
She and the three boys had caught butterflies one day last summer. Bettington had taken them down from London in June. He grinned, recalling the madcap scene in his rose garden. Cherubs among the red and white roses, his boys happy as they should be, scampering about and giggling.
“We had fun,” she conceded and bent to cup her hand to his cheek. “We did. But there are no bubber…butterflies in December.”
“Angels!” William declared. “That’s what come at Christmas. You said so!”
“Did I?”
“Angles!” Tio exclaimed. His youngest had trouble with gs too.
“Oh, my dears,” she crooned. “I am so sorry.”
Bettington saw that his little boys were tugging at her heartstrings.
But she dropped Tio’s hand and shook her head. “I recall I did mention that.”
“And fairies, too.” William stuck out his head like a tyrant. An insistent little man, William would one day terrorize the world with his demands.
“All three of you know I would be most happy to do all of that and—”
“Live with us,” Roger said as if it were an order.
“Yes, but you see, I simply cannot.”
“Why?” asked William.
“Yes, why?” Roger looked crestfallen.
Tio shifted one small foot to the other. “I wantta do angles.”
Hands on his hips, Bettington knew he appeared flustered and damn disappointed. “What then? What has changed your mind?”
He was frantic. You always looked at me with those doe eyes, as if no man in the world could ever match me.
You were kind, considerate to my wife when you were upstairs maid to her.
Later when you were downstairs maid and she gave you the keys to make you chatelaine, you ordered our lives at Bettington Grange like an army sergeant.
And your gazes at me became infrequent and secretive, but as hot and yearning.
He took two steps forward and grasped her shoulders. “Tell me, Winn— Miss Mathers. Why can you not stay?”
She licked those lovely lips of hers and cast a look of apology to each boy. To him, she raised her chin and locked her luscious chocolate and minty eyes on his.
“All of you will leave us. Miss Mathers and I have much to discuss.”
The three boys expressed their unhappy farewells and filed out the open doors.
Fox too lumbered away.
Bettington caught her hand. “I cannot let you go.”