Romney Marsh Trilogy: A Gentleman by Any Other Name / The Dangerous Debutante / Beware of Virtuous Women. Kasey Michaels
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may use these in any way you deem necessary, one from the War Office, one from the Naval Office. They explain your mission and give you our full authority to go where you want, when you want. We’re counting on you, son. Some arrogant bastard has gone so far as to deliver casks of French brandy to the residence of Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales.”
And she’d drunk it with her ladies-in-waiting, Chance knew, shaking his head now as the coach slowly moved through the afternoon traffic. Wisely he’d refrained from sharing that particular knowledge with his lordship. And now he was on his way back to Upper Brook Street, planning a departure for Becket Hall in the morning, before anyone could press more demands on him.
Which brought Chance back to the most recent addition to his small traveling company, the amazingly forceful Miss Julia Carruthers. Would she be ready to travel?
Chance smiled wryly. The woman would probably be ready to travel in an instant. All she’d have to do is slide a leg over her broomstick.
Still, anyone was better than Mrs. Jenkins. How could Beatrice have countenanced such an unsuitable woman? Worse, how had he not noticed that the woman was totally unacceptable?
The answer to both questions, of course, was that neither he nor Beatrice had paid all that much attention to Alice. Children were kept in the nursery, out of sight, often out of mind. Indeed, Alice had been rarely in London with them, and they had been even more rarely in the country with her. In the circle of society in which he and Beatrice moved, that was natural, that was accepted.
And wrong. So very wrong.
The months after Beatrice’s short illness and death, even though he’d sent for Alice, Chance had been too busy at the War Office to spend any real time with the child.
No, that was a lie. He could have found time for his daughter; he simply hadn’t.
And yet, Alice seemed to worship him, which was more than embarrassing. He’d almost rather she hated him or was indifferent to him.
Alice needed stability. She needed a good home and people who loved her. Besides, in that gaggle at Becket Hall, one small child could hardly make much of a difference. She’d simply be absorbed, taken up the way Ainsley Becket had taken up Chance, had taken up all of them.
And then he, Chance Becket, would be free to return to London and get on with this dreary business that was supposedly the ordinary, civilized life he had always wanted.
The coach drew to a halt, and Chance opened the door before jumping down lightly to the flagway without waiting for the groom to let down the stairs. “Be prepared to travel to Becket Hall at six tomorrow morning, Billy,” he called up to the coachman. “Both coaches. And Jacmel, as well.”
Ignoring Billy’s heartfelt “Huzzah!”, Chance climbed the few steps to his front door two at a time and entered without waiting for the footman, who should have already been there opening the door for him.
The entire ground-floor foyer, in fact, was empty; nobody there to meet him, greet his guests or even protect his home. These things had always taken care of themselves, his life moving along without a ripple. How was he to know that it was the ailing Mrs. Gibbons who held the ship steady and not his butler?
He stripped off his hat, gloves and the greatcoat he’d worn to protect him from the damp mist of a London evening and headed up the stairs. Toward the noise he could hear. Voices, raised.
“Here, here,” he reprimanded when he saw half his staff—what had to be half his staff—gathered around the closed doors to the drawing room. “What’s all this about?”
“Oh, Mr. Becket, sir,” Gibbons said, pushing his way through the small crowd of maids and footmen—and one young girl wearing an overly large white apron and holding what looked to be a half-plucked pigeon. “It’s Mrs. Jenkins, sir, and Miss Carruthers with her, poor thing. She’s not going quietly.”
“Not going where?” Chance asked, then stopped, flabbergasted at his own stupidity. He’d hired Julia Carruthers. Obviously, as Mrs. Jenkins had refused to relocate herself to Becket Hall. It was all perfectly logical, to a point, with only one minor yet rather important detail overlooked. He hadn’t told Mrs. Jenkins to take herself off, had he?
But these had been his decisions, damn it all to hell, even if he hadn’t as yet quite gotten around to explaining them to Mrs. Jenkins before leaving for the War Office. Now there were two nannies in the household, and one of them had become instantly superfluous. Gibbons had referred to Miss Carruthers as the “poor thing.” God. Had the older woman attacked her unwary replacement?
“Where is Alice?” he asked Gibbons. “And unless you want your head on a pike and your carcass pickled, tell me my daughter isn’t in there.”
Gibbons flinched. “Oh, no, sir. Bettyann’s got her all right and tight up in the nursery. It’d been the other way round, with Bettyann and MissAlice down here, but then Mrs. Jenkins comes running down the stairs—the front stairs, sir!—screeching for you at the top of her lungs, and Miss Carruthers right behind her. So Bettyann—she’s a good one, sir—she snatches up Miss Alice and takes her off, and…Oh, sir, you really shouldn’t have left things up in the air, sir, begging your pardon.”
“How can a man believe himself competent to help manage the war effort when he cannot so much as maneuver his way in his own household? No, Gibbons, don’t answer, it isn’t necessary. Everyone, take yourselves back to wherever you belong. Not you, Gibbons. You have someone 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