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Helena didn’t quite approve of Abby’s obsession with tittle-tattle, but in this case, Abby’s knowledge of London’s most notorious aristocrats could prove useful. “Lord Hawke looked as if he left London in a hurry, Abby. There must be more to his appearance here this morning than a sudden desire to come home, don’t you think?”
“Oh, there’s doings afoot, miss, and nothing good, neither. There’s a scandal behind it, to be sure. Not Lord Hawke’s first, either, but he’s such a favorite with thetonthey tend to forgive him his sins.” Abby tapped her lip, thinking. “Still, whatever he’s done this time must be awful, indeed, if he’s left London.”
Helena bit her lip. She didn’t like to encourage scandalmongering, but his presence here was certain to agitate the boys. It was rare for a single day to pass without Ryan and Etienne asking after him, and she’d rather know beforehand if he intended to vanish as suddenly as he’d appeared. Surely, that made it an exception? “Will you write to your sister in London, and find out what’s behind it?”
“I won’t have to.” Abby reached around her to grab the teapot, a sly grin on her lips. “If it’s as shocking as I suspect, she’ll have already written to me. Mark my words, miss. Whatever mischief his lordship’s been up to, we’ll know what it is before the week is out.”
“Thank you, Abby. Now, let’s see to the boy’s chocolate, shall we? They’ll wake soon, and I’d rather they weren’t obliged to scamper about searching for me.”
She’d learned the hard way the mischief two energetic boys could get into if left to their own devices in an old, empty castle like this one. The last time she’d been late coming to their bedchamber in the morning, she’d been obliged to spend hours searching for them, only to find them teetering atop a dusty ladder in the attic, plucking spiders from the rafters anddepositing them in old canning jars so they might “train them up for a spider circus.”
“I may as well.” Abby let out a theatrical sigh and reached into a cupboard for the block of chocolate. “I suppose preparing the chocolate is the most interesting thing that’s ever going to happen to me?—”
“Oh, here you are, Miss Templeton.” A breathless Mrs. Norris hurried into the kitchen, her wispy gray hair flying about her head. “I’m certain Abby must have told you Lord Hawke has arrived unexpectedly at Hawke’s Run this morning. Dear me, I’m rather aflutter, I’m afraid!”
“Yes, she told me, Mrs. Norris, and I saw his lordship coming up the drive.” This time, Helena held her tongue about the stench of brandy and courtesans. The less said aboutthatthe better.
“I’ve left Lord Hawke in his study,” Mrs. Norris said. “He has not yet summoned Ryan and Etienne, and perhaps it would be best, Miss Templeton, if you kept them away from that part of the house until he’s prepared to see them. His lordship is rather…fatigued from his journey.”
Helena smothered a snort. Fatigued, indeed. Lord Hawke’s trouble was that last night’s debauchery had caught up to him this morning, and he was as disagreeable as gentlemen generally were under such circumstances.
Mrs. Norris needn’t have worried, however, as she’d happily keep the boys as far as possible away from their father, and for as long as she could possibly manage it. It shouldn’t prove too difficult. If the past six months were any indication, Lord Hawke had little enough interest in his sons as it was.
It would have been best if he’d kept away, but odds were his lordship would quickly grow bored of the country, and scurry off back to his London amusements before the week was out.“Of course, Mrs. Norris. We’ll remain in the schoolroom until luncheon, and then we’ll venture outside this afternoon.”
Mrs. Norris breathed a sigh of relief. “Very good, Miss Templeton.”
“The chocolate is ready, Miss Templeton.”
“Thank you, Abby.” Helena took the tray with the stout silver chocolate pot and the porcelain cups and strode from the kitchen up the staircase and into the hallway. It was growing rather late. The boys would come in search of her if she didn’t appear, and the last thing she wanted was them encountering their bedraggled father on the staircase.
But as soon as she rounded the corner, she heard the unholy clatter of two pairs of six-year-old feet pounding down the staircase. Dash it, she was too late. She hurried forward, the cups rattling on the tray. “Pardon me, my fine gentlemen, but where do you think you’re going?”
Two pairs of eyes the same spring green as their father’s peered innocently down at her from the first-floor landing. “Our papa’s here!” Ryan announced. “We saw him coming up the drive from our bedchamber window.”
“He wasn’t wearing a hat,” Etienne added, as if this bit of information was far too fascinating to wait another minute. “It wasgone!”
It was, indeed, among other things, most notably his papa’s manners. “I see. And has your papa summoned you?”
Adrian, or Ryan, as he was called shook his head. “Not yet, but he?—”
“Then you’re to march straight back upstairs at once, if you please. You both know the rules. You’re to wait in your bedchamber in the mornings until I come fetch you.”
“But Miss Templeton?—”
“No arguments, if you please. Your father…” Isn’t fit to be seen. “Will send for you when he’s prepared to see you. Until then, we will proceed as we do every other morning. Up you go.”
She braced herself, her fingers tightening around the edges of the tray. For all their high-spirits, Ryan and Etienne were good lads, and she’d made great strides with them since she’d come to Hawke’s Run, but they were still little boys, and there were few creatures in all of existence who had less self-control. “Boys,” she began in a warning tone. “Did you hear what I?—”
But it was already too late. Ryan cast a sidelong glance at Etienne, and then both of them dove toward the bottom of the stairs at once. She leapt to block them—rather a foolish impulse, really, given she was burdened with a heavy tray—but all might still have been well, if Hestia hadn’t chosen that moment to make a wild dash for the staircase.
The tiny silver kitten sealed their fate.
She’d become quite nimble over the past six months of chasing two active boys, but the combined pandemonium of Ryan, Etienne and Hestia was too much for any mortal woman.
She stumbled backwards, and a blood-curdling feline shriek split the air as her foot came down hard on poor Hestia’s tail. The outraged kitten darted between her feet and up the stairs in a blur of raised gray fur at the same time the boys darted down them. Etienne jumped over a stair in a truly heroic effort to avoid trampling Hestia, but he knocked into his brother, who tumbled down the last two stairs. Etienne landed on top of him, then Helena’s feet got tangled in theirs, and she went down, her backside hitting the hard floor with a thud.
As for the tray, it seemed to hang suspended in mid-air for an instant, three horrified pairs of eyes fixed on it until, inevitably, it descended again in a deafening crash of silver and shattered porcelain, the chocolate splattering across the pristine white marble floor in a thick, dark, sticky river.