Chapter 5
“What the devil do you mean nothing to be done!”
Hearing the angry bellow coming from the library, Emma froze where she stood. Her first impulse was to turn and flee, but curiosity got the better of her.
She’d come downstairs this morning, intending to ask Andrew precisely what had possessed him to allow Lucien Morgen to remain at Newgale, especially after she’d made her own wishes perfectly clear.
Nor had she thought the duke any less eager to leave, and yet here he remained, and she heartily suspected Andrew to be at the root of it all.
It seemed as though the duke may have suspected the same, for at the moment, they sounded at daggers drawn.
The duke’s voice boomed even through closed doors. Emma flinched at the fury of it. “You can find those bloody carriage wheels is what you can do!”
In contrast, Andrew’s reply was quite calm, muffled a bit, but Emma could make it out well enough to discern that it was an apology of some sort. Something about the strangest theft he had ever encountered... didn’t know how they’d managed to steal them all.
There were no thieves here in Newgale. Barely anyone but modest locals in town, this was not a place where brigands lay in wait.
Fairly dying with curiosity, Emma placed her ear to the door and overheard, “Blast it, Peters. This reeks of a hum! Who the devil would snatch four carriage wheels and leave pure blood Arabians in their stead?”
“Demme, if I know,” she heard Andrew mumble. And then, “Don’t look at me, Willyngham. Confounded heathens took mine, as well.”
“I want those bloody wheels!” she heard the duke roar, and then someone slammed something—the desk, she imagined—with such rage that the doorframe vibrated.
“How do you propose I do that? I’ve no notion where to be—”
“I don’t give a damn how!” There was a moment of taut silence, and then the duke demanded, “Just do it!”
His shouting was so near the door suddenly that Emma panicked at the sound of it.
Suppressing a mortified shriek at the thought of being discovered eavesdropping, she flung herself away from the door and dashed down the corridor, hurrying toward the drawing room.
To her immense relief, she slipped inside and out of view within an ace of being discovered, only to startle three eavesdropping children.
As she entered, all three scattered, squawking in surprise. She let out a cry of her own and opened her mouth to speak, but in that instant the library door opened and slammed shut, and her face heated profusely.
“Well,” she said low, eyeing all three suspiciously, but she could say nothing more. How could she reprimand them for eavesdropping when she was as guilty of the same?
“We din’t do it, Aunt Em,” Jonathon said, his eyes wide with fright. Lettie elbowed him at once and he looked at her guiltily. “Oh,” he said softly.
“What sort thing did you not do?” Emma asked, straightening the folds of her skirts as she entered the drawing room. She cast a nervous backward glance at the door.
“Oh... just nothing,” Jon answered in a small little voice, looking guiltier every instant. He peered down at his feet suddenly. His socks were muddy.
Emma inspected his sisters as well. Their shoes were muddy too, and with a fresh dusting of snow on the ground, there was only one place they would have acquired such a bit of muck: in the stables.
“We were merely admiring the new crèche, Aunt Em,” Samantha offered sweetly, giving her little brother a nudge.
Emma’s brow lifted. “From the door?” she asked dubiously.
Samantha considered that an instant and then admitted with a shrug, “Well, we did hear the duke shouting,” she said matter-of-factly.
Emma’s face burned a little hotter. “Yes, well... so did I,” she confessed. “It seems someone has robbed him of his means of escap—er departure,” she explained, watching them and noting all three fidgeted at the news.
“Did you see the crèche, Aunt Em?” Lettie asked suddenly, conveniently changing the topic.
Samantha perked up. “Oh, yes—isn’t it grand?” she added quickly, giving her sister a well-done nod.
“And it’s already half full!” Jonathon blurted excitedly.
Both his sisters elbowed him this time, one from each direction.
Emma ventured closer to examine the small wooden crib that now sat before the hearth.
It was crudely constructed, but still a charming sight.
Given the scarcity of time before Christmas, she imagined Andrew had troubled to build it himself, for it very much looked as though he had.
“I see that it is,” she said a little warily and couldn’t help but wonder how they’d managed such a great start so early this morning.
Jonathon shifted excitedly from foot to foot. “Just like you said, Aunt Em! There’s one straw for each of us for every whee—”
With a horrified gasp, Samantha slapped a hand over her brother’s impetuous mouth. “Weeeed,” she squealed in his stead. “One for each weed.”
Emma’s brows drew together. “One for each... weed?”
Samantha nodded. “Oh, yes, Aunt Em! One blade of straw for each and every weed we pulled from mother’s herb garden. Wasn’t that a good deed?”
“Really?” Emma asked. She didn’t have the heart to remind them that they were in the midst of winter.
There was no garden to speak of. And she was beginning to understand with sudden clarity the strange conversation she’d overheard outside the library door.
Taking in Jonathon’s guilty expression, and the girls’ much too innocent smiles, she had a sudden insight as to what dreadful mishap had befallen the duke’s carriage wheels.
Nevertheless, she also knew the children could never have accomplished such a monumental feat alone, nor were they devious enough to carry it through without help.
And she knew precisely who to hold accountable.
Their father, the trickster. “One for each weed, is it?” she muttered, cursing her dear brother to Jericho and back.
“Oh, yes, Aunt Em!” Samantha and Lettie replied at once, both grinning with what could be nothing more than relief. Jonathon, with Samantha’s hand still muzzling his mouth, merely glanced up at his sisters, his brows drawing together in confusion.
“Is it alright if we each put straws in if we all three helped?”
Emma tilted them a knowing look. “It took all three of you to pull a single weed?”
All three children nodded soberly.
“Well, now, don’t you think that’s a mite excessive? Besides, pulling weeds in the middle of winter may not precisely qualify as a good deed, at all,” she informed them lamentably.
“Oh, but they were very special weeds,” Lettie returned hopefully.
“And we pulled them all for a very good cause, Aunt Em,” Samantha declared.
“Is that so?” Emma relented. She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe they had actually vandalized the duke’s carriage on her behalf.
The thought of it was too humiliating by half.
Nevertheless, the image of them stealing carriage wheels—along with the duke’s reaction this morn—struck a humorous chord.
She stifled a smile. For shame that her brother would stoop to such ends to prevent the duke from leaving Newgale.
Not to mention that he should involve his precious children in such terrible misconduct.
For certain, she was going to blister his ears at the first opportunity.
In the meantime, it was all she could do to keep from bursting into hilarities at their guilty expressions.
“Aunt Em,” Lettie said plaintively, looking a little dismayed, “you did say one wisp of straw for each good deed, did you not? We only did what you said,” she reassured.
Emma pursed her lips together, trying in vain to frown at them. “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I?”
The little fiends.
Backed by their father, she knew they would never confess, and so she didn’t bother trying to make them do so.
Lord, but she did love them immensely, though she had half a mind to go and tell the duke precisely what had befallen his blessed wheels so that he could take his carriage and be gone.
And yet the thought of him knowing mortified her.
No, she simply couldn’t bear it. Nor could she bear to stand before the children an instant longer without bursting into peals of laughter.
“Aunt Em,” Jonathon ventured. “Do you think the duke will stay for Christmas now that his—” Lettie stomped on his dirty black shoe none too gently. “Ow!” he screamed and turned to give his sister a most wounded look. “I wasn’t gonna say it!” he shrieked in indignation. “I wasn’t going to!”
Emma gave them her most disapproving glower. “I really don’t know,” she told them. “But I, for one, wish he would not.”
The very last thing she intended to do was to play into their mischievous little hands.
“Oh, my!” she exclaimed suddenly, dramatically, placing a hand to her temple. “I believe I am having a sudden attack of the vapors.” It wasn’t completely feigned, she acknowledged, for the very thought of the duke’s continued presence at Newgale left her flustered and ill at ease.
“You are?” Samantha asked, her little brows crashing.
“Oh, yes,” she assured them.
“Oh, but Aunt Em, you never get the vapors!”
She gave them all a hearty scowl. “Nevertheless, it seems I am getting them now,” she apprised.
She had no notion what they were up to, nor what her foolish brother could possibly be thinking, but she planned to spend the rest of the day within her room, reading.
If they so desperately wished the duke to remain at Newgale, then they could entertain the demon without her.
Surely, she thought, once they realized that she was not about to participate in this madness, they would return his carriage wheels, and he would be away before noon.
She moaned pitifully and said, “Oh, dear... won’t you tell your Papa, please, in case he should like to know, that I shall be indisposed…”
“Until when?” Samantha asked, sounding panicked.