pack up Mrs. Jenkins’s things and have them at the servants’ entrance in ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Gibbons said, bowing. “And Miss Carruthers’s cases are already sitting in the kitchens ever since Richards fetched them from the White Horse. Shall I have them taken up to the nursery?”
“Whatever you think is right, Gibbons. I believe I’m quite done with managing domestic matters,” Chance said, then squared his shoulders and headed for the double doors…and the commotion going on behind them.
He spied Mrs. Jenkins the moment he pushed open the doors, the rather large woman standing in the middle of his drawing room, her fists jammed onto her hips as she stared across the room.
“And I say I stay right here until the bugger brings himself home! Then we’ll see, missy.”
Chance took three steps into the room, at last seeing Julia Carruthers as she sat, with her exceptional posture, in a chair near the front windows, looking as calm and placid and as regal as the queen on her throne. Vicars’ daughters obviously must be made of stern stuff!
“Shall we be forced to go through this again? I smelled the gin, Mrs. Jenkins,” Julia said, not noticing Chance’s presence, as she was wisely keeping her gaze solidly on Mrs. Jenkins, who looked more than ready—and able—to launch herself toward her. “You are, madam, a disgrace and an abomination, and so Mr. Becket will be told when he at last deigns to bring himself home and take care and command of his own household.”
Insults from both women, Chance realized. First a bugger, and then, clearly, a total failure at managing his household. Standing still and waiting for more damning revelations really didn’t appeal, so he said, “Ladies? At long last, the bugger’s home. May I ask what’s going on here?”
Julia Carruthers, he noticed, was intelligent enough to keep her mouth firmly shut, but he wasn’t quite so fortunate with Mrs. Jenkins.
“There you are!” she said, turning on him. “This…this girl dared to turn me off, tell me to leave. I’ll not be listening to the likes of her, let me tell you! Your lady wife took me on just afore she died, Lord rest her, and I’ve been doing my job just as I aught and I won’t be—”
“Your belongings and a five-pound note will be outside the servants’ entrance in ten minutes, Mrs. Jenkins. I would suggest that you be there to gather them up or else remain here and explain to me why I shouldn’t personally toss your gin-soaked self onto the flagway. An action, by the way, from which I would derive great pleasure and satisfaction.”
He couldn’t quite suppress a smile as the shocked woman opened and closed her mouth several times before picking up her skirts and running from the room.
Julia could no longer contain herself. “You’re going to give that terrible woman five pounds? She doesn’t deserve a bent penny. In any event, I was handling the matter.”
“I beg your pardon?” Chance slowly turned to look at Miss Carruthers, who had risen from her chair and was now walking across the room toward him with some determination, her arms folded beneath her bosom. Lord, but the girl was in a fury.
Julia knew the words I beg your pardon had sounded, in tone, much more like This is none of your business, you cheeky twit. But she’d just spent nearly an hour with Mrs. Jenkins, a woman with absolutely no redeeming qualities. She was, quite simply, too tired, too hungry and much too angry to stop herself.
“We’ll dispense with the small fortune you plan to gift the creature with, Mr. Becket, and concentrate on the woman. You knew that dreadful person was all but a sot and yet you kept her on?” She pushed one arm up straight and pointed toward the ceiling. “May I remind you in case the fact has slipped your mind—that’s your child up there, Mr. Becket.”
Chance was stung into explaining himself. “I would have one of the maids bring Alice to me when I wished to see her. I didn’t really know much about Mrs. Jenkins. Not until last week, when I informed the woman we’d be leaving for Becket Hall and she would remain there with Alice and I realized that she was totally—oh, the devil with it! Who are you to question me?”
Julia’s anger left her as self-preservation raised its not very noble but definitely necessary head. “I’m sorry, sir. I shouldn’t have taken it upon myself to dismiss Mrs. Jenkins. And I have no right to badger you about your…your arrangements concerning Alice. In my defense, I can only say that it has been a long day. A very long day.”
As it had been for him. “And about to become longer, Miss Carruthers,” Chance said wearily, “for we leave for Becket Hall at six tomorrow morning, a very convenient leave-taking or else I would replace you. However, you, madam, having routed Mrs. Jenkins, are now in charge of preparing my daughter for the journey. Oh, one thing more. May I say how gratified I am to see that Alice now has a tiger to defend her, although I would remind you that she needs no defense from me. And now, if you don’t mind, I believe your place is in the nursery, while mine is here, getting myself dedicatedly drunk.”
“Yes, sir. Forgive me, sir. Good evening to you, sir,” Julia said, curtsying to the man when she’d really much rather be boxing his ears. She then quickly swept past him and into the hallway, where Gibbons, with a slight nod of his head and shifting of his eyes, directed her toward the back of the house and the servant stairs.
CHAPTER THREE
THE JOURNEY BEGAN AS did many journeys in England—amid a damp drizzle and accompanied by considerable fog.
Julia had roused Alice at five, only long enough to direct the child to the water closet and then wash her face and hands before pushing her reluctant limbs into a short blue gown Julia considered suitable for travel and a fur-trimmed blue coat with matching bonnet. She then carried the child down three flights of stairs and hoisted the once-again-sleeping princess into the traveling coach and wrapped her in a coach blanket.
Six o’clock of the morning, indeed! Did the man possess no sense at all?
“Watch her, please, Bettyann,” Julia asked of the housemaid who had followed behind Julia carrying Buttercup and a small portmanteau Julia had filled with items she considered necessary for a child’s comfort inside the coach. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Julia paused a moment to look at the fog that all but obscured the street. At home there was nearly always a morning mist, but it was white and smelled like fresh grass and the sea. Here the fog was yellow, dirty. She believed she could actually taste it. “Why did I ever think I would care for London?” she asked herself, then hiked up her skirts with more of an eye toward speed than decorum and headed up the steps once more, for she’d left her bonnet, gloves and pelisse in the nursery.
“Here now,” Chance Becket said warningly, grabbing at her shoulders as she all but cannoned into him, her gaze directed on the steps. “There’s no need for such a rush, is there?”
Julia looked up at the man, struck yet again by his fine good looks and, this morning, the hint of real humor in his eyes. He was dressed for travel, a gray many-caped greatcoat hanging from his broad shoulders, the snow-white foam of his neck cloth visible at his throat, and he wore a matching gray curly-brimmed beaver hat.
Tall, handsome, his smile almost boyish even while the sparkle in his eyes told her he was far from a boy. Julia sent up a short prayer that she wouldn’t disgrace herself by swallowing her own tongue, drat the man.
“You said six o’clock, sir,” she reminded him, doing her best to ignore the heat of his hands that could be felt through the thin stuff of her gown.
“Ah, so this is not Miss Julia Carruthers, is it? You only look like the woman. The Julia Carruthers I met yesterday would not only have snapped her fingers at my reasonable request but also told me she’d be ready to travel when she was ready to travel and not a moment before. I do believe I like this Julia Carruthers much more.”
“You have considered the fact that a five-year-old child travels with you, haven’t you, sir? That a long day and fresh horseflesh along the way