I have you, and she can go away.” Alice looked up at Julia. “Why would anyone want to poke a stick in her eye?”
“A good question, as I nearly did just that a few moments ago with your papa,” Julia said as they headed up the stairs, three whole flights, to the top of the house. “Oh, isn’t this pretty,” she said as they stepped into a large room with too few windows. “Aren’t you a lucky little girl.”
Alice became very serious. “No, I’m a motherless child and can never be happy again,” she said, clearly parroting someone else’s words.
“Mrs. Jenkins said that?”
Alice nodded, holding Buttercup close. “She is very put out that I am not dressed head to toe in black because Papa said I shouldn’t. And when I laugh she tells me I’m unnatural. What is that? Unnatural?”
“It’s nonsense, that’s what it is, and nothing to worry your pretty little head about,” Julia said, looking around the room, ready to slay dragons for this child. Or at the very least pop open one of the small, high windows and stuff Mrs. Jenkins out of it, onto the flagway below. “Ah, and here comes our tea, I believe.”
Alice scrambled into one of the chairs set around a low table, stuffing Buttercup into another one as a lace-capped maid carried in a large tray.
The maid stopped, wide-eyed. “Who are you?”
Julia took the tray before the maid dropped it. “I’m Julia Carruthers, Miss Alice’s new nurse…nanny. And you are…?”
“Bettyann. Good afternoon and welcome to you,” the girl said, dropping into a quick curtsy before casting her gaze toward the slightly ajar door on the far wall. “Will Mrs. Jenkins be leaving soon then, miss? She will, won’t she?”
“In there, is she?” Julia asked, following Bettyann’s nervous gaze, realizing that the uneven sounds she had been hearing were not that of wind in the eaves but rather deep snores coming from the other room. Anything less than cannon fire was not going to rouse Mrs. Jenkins. Certainly not Alice slipping out of the nursery, as she’d done only minutes ago. “Is this usual for Mrs. Jenkins?”
“Yes, miss. She mostly stays in there, and then Miss Alice flits about the house, getting underfoot—not that any of us minds, you understand. Will she be leaving then, miss?”
“Before the cat can lick its ear,” Julia said, feeling rather powerful in her new position. “I will be accompanying Miss Alice to…to Becket Hall.”
“Oh, very good, miss, very good. Miss Alice? You’ll want to eat while your porridge is warm. There’s plenty, miss, and more bowls in that cabinet over there. I’ll fetch you one.”
“Fetch two, please, Bettyann, as Mr. Becket will be joining us.”
“Oh, no, miss. He just went out. I saw him myself as he went. Mr. Gibbons said a messenger came and Mr. Becket told him everything was settled here and he had to go to the War Office to attend to something. Something very important, because Mr. Becket is very important.”
“Papa’s gone? But he promised.”
Bettyann’s features softened as she looked at the child. “He’ll be back, sweetings. And now you have Miss Carruthers.” The maid looked apprehensively at Julia. “You will stay?”
“My bags are stored with the landlord at the White Horse in Fetter Lane. If it would be possible for someone to fetch them?” Julia asked, already searching in the pocket of her gown for her purse. Her still very slim purse.
“Mr. Gibbons will send one of the footmen directly, miss. But I don’t know where to put you, begging your pardon. And Mrs. Gibbons is abed with a putrid cough these past two weeks. I suppose Mr. Gibbons might know. Oh dear, oh dear. This is all so above me.”
Before Bettyann suffered an apoplexy, Julia said, “Just have the bags taken to Mrs. Jenkins’s room, if you will.”
“But Mrs. Jenkins—”
“Will be gone,” Julia said, handing the maid a few coins.
“Before the cat can lick its ear. You said that. Oh, miss, won’t that be a treat,” Bettyann said, grinning, showing the space where one of her bottom teeth had once resided. “And Mr. Becket says you are to do this?”
“Mr. Becket has engaged my services, yes,” Julia answered, believing she’d ducked the full truth quite smoothly.
“Come sit down and eat, Julia,” Alice said around a mouthful of porridge. “Buttercup wants to tell you all about his trip to the moon last night and all the lovely cheese he brought back with him. He flew there on a huge bird named Simon.”
“A bit of a dreamer, Miss Alice is, miss,” Bettyann said, smiling.
“And what is childhood for if not dreams,” Julia answered, motioning for Bettyann to be on her way. “Once you’ve spoken to this Mr. Gibbons, please come back and escort Miss Alice and Buttercup down to the drawing room and stay with her while I speak with Mrs. Jenkins.”
“Going to be a bit of a row, is there, miss?”
“Not if I find what I think I’m going to find behind that door, no,” Julia said, wondering what had gotten into her that she felt so brave. But when she sat down across from Alice, she knew. A motherless child, as she had been a motherless child. They were going to get on together so well.
The father, however, could prove to be more of a problem. But then, as her own father had often told her, it was better to begin as one planned to go on. Although he also had sighed more than once over her rather headstrong manner.
Still, everything about her new position was wonderful. A sweet child to care for. A return to Kent, to her beloved slice of England. She’d only been in London for less than a day and already she knew that the journey had been a horrible mistake. If not for the notice in the newspaper left on a bench by a traveler, she would have already been on another coach, heading back to Rye, even more perilously close to poverty than she had been and with no prospects.
She had decided to seek her future in London for a reason. The newspaper had been left on the bench for a reason. She had seen Mr. Becket’s advertisement for a reason. Little Miss Alice had come downstairs for a reason.
Julia was not by nature a superstitious sort. Nor did she put much stock in Dame Fate. She truly believed a person made her own luck. But even she had to believe that this time there may have been a reason.
As for Mr. Becket himself? She would make sure that her good luck also became his good luck. She would become, in the next hour or two, indispensable to the man. She would begin as she planned to go on.
“Hmm, what lovely porridge,” Julia said to Alice and picked up her spoon.
CHAPTER TWO
CHANCE LEANED BACK ON the squabs of his town coach, muttered an automatic curse as Billy jerked the reins and the horses lurched forward. Even after all these years, he thought, Billy made a much better powder monkey than he did a coachman.
Then Chance frowned, returning his mind to the just-completed meeting with Sir Henry Cabot, one of the chief assistants at the War Office.
“How good of you to present yourself so promptly, Mr. Becket. We were afraid we might have missed you, that you’d already gone on your way.” He’d put down his pen that he had been holding poised over a sheet of thick vellum. “As long as you insist upon leaving us to travel to Romney Marsh, the minister has decided that you should linger there for a fortnight, perhaps even a month, if you were to discover anything of note.”
“Anything of note about what, sir?” Chance had asked as Sir Henry had dipped his pen and begun writing once more. “I had only planned to escort my daughter to Becket Hall and then almost immediately return here.”
“Yes, yes, Becket, but the minister says you’re to be in no rush. He’s spoken to Lord Greenley in the Naval