“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 Office and together they’ve decided you might as well make yourself useful,” Sir Henry had said, frowning over what he’d written and then sanding the page.

“Useful, sir?” With Sir Henry, Chance knew his contribution to any conversation was to say a word or two occasionally, except when he simply nodded his agreement with some statement.

Sir Henry had held a thick stick of wax over the candle flame, then pressed the War Office seal onto the page. “There, done. Useful, yes, that is what I said. You did reside in the area for some years, am I correct? You know about the freetrading.”

Chance frowned. “Very little, sir. I didn’t actually…spend much time at Becket Hall.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have either, had I been you. Horribly rural. Well, nevertheless, nobody would suspect you of anything, as you’ll simply be visiting with your family—and with your daughter along, as well. All will seem perfectly normal, with you above suspicion.”

“Suspicion of what, sir?” Chance had asked this question already fairly certain he knew the answer. And Sir Henry hadn’t disappointed him.

“You’re to nose about quietly, Becket, speak to the Preventative Waterguard stationed up and down the coast, as well as the volunteers, dragoons and Customs officials. See what you can ferret out on your own, as well. Smuggling is everywhere on the coast, but lately we’re hearing very disturbing news from Romney Marsh. We’re bloody hell losing a fortune in revenue, not to even think about the secrets that could be flitting back and forth between the Marsh and Paris. We are at war, and those bumpkin idiots are ferrying Frenchmen to our shores. Traitors, that’s what they are, the lot of them.”

“They’re men who can’t feed their families on what their own country pays them for wool, so they take the wool to France, almost within moments of it being sheared off the sheep’s back, then bring back a few casks of tea or brandy to sell here. This is nothing new, Sir Henry, the Marshmen have been freebooting for centuries. War with France won’t stop them.”

“Becket, when I require a lecture on the matter, I will apply for one. This latest bit we’ve heard is much more than the actions of a few malcontents. There’s talk of a very large, well-organized gang operating from the Marsh. Your mission is to personally speak to our representatives and make them aware that we are aware of their ineptitude in not capturing and putting a stop to these troublemakers.”

“And to capture a few of them myself, so you can parade them here to be hanged in chains as a warning to their compatriots, I suppose?” Chance had asked the man, not at all happy about this turn of events.

“A young, strong, strapping fellow like yourself? The idea isn’t outside the realm of possibility. But I believe you’re being facetious now, Becket, and we surely don’t wish you to put yourself in any personal danger,” Sir Henry had said, handing over the paper plus another he’d pulled from a drawer. “You 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 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 could get you to the coast by very late this evening, but that such a punishing pace could be harmful to this child?”

“To Alice, Miss Carruthers. I do remember my child’s name,” Chance said, bristling. If he only had time to replace this infuriating woman, he would be a happy man. Ainsley would love her belligerent spirit, though. Since Chance was all but dumping Alice into his adopted father’s lap, he might as well sweeten the pot…a thought that, rather than warm him, sent a chill straight to the bone. “She’ll be fine.”

“Of course, sir. You wouldn’t have it any other way,” Julia said, then rolled her eyes the moment she was past him and on her way up to the nursery again, and hang the fact that she’d opted for the main staircase. “Idiot,” she grumbled, hiking her skirts once more before she began the climb.

She halted on the second-floor landing as Gibbons directed two footmen who were carrying baggage on their shoulders toward the servant stairs, then looked down the front staircase, assured herself she was alone.

Wetting her lips, and with one more quick glance over her shoulder, she then gave in to what her father had termed her most besetting sin. She tiptoed down the hallway, into the bedchamber that had to belong to Chance Becket.

She didn’t know precisely why she wanted to see the chamber, unless she hoped to glimpse something of the man there. And if that was the case, she was instantly disappointed.

The man lived like a Spartan, the large chamber nearly devoid of any ornamentation save a few nondescript paintings on the walls. His brushes and many personal items were, of course, already on their way downstairs to the traveling coach, but there was something so empty, so impersonal about the room, that Julia wrapped her arms around her as if to fight off a chill.

“Lost your way, Miss Carruthers?”

Chance didn’t know whether to be angry or amused when she jumped, gave out a small startled squeal before turning about to face him, her eyes wide in her ashen face.

“I…I thought only to be certain that all of the baggage has been removed. And…and it has.” She lowered her head and took a step forward, but he stepped to his right, blocking her way. “Excuse me, sir.”

“You’re very efficient, Miss Carruthers,” Chance said, deciding, yes, he’d much rather be amused. “I vow, I’ve discovered a rare diamond and taken her into my employ. Has my valet packed up my tooth powder, or haven’t you inspected my dressing room as yet? Oh, and the drawers? Have you checked them. You know, the drawers containing my most personal items of clothing?”

Julia gave it up and just sighed. “Oh, all right, so I was poking my nose where it doesn’t belong and you caught me out at it. You’re delighted to have caught me, and I’m sorry you did. I merely wanted to see if there was something I could learn about you that might help me in understanding…” She took a breath and said what she had thought. “How do you live without things?”

Chance’s humor was rapidly dissipating now. “Excuse me?”

“Things, sir. Personal things. My father had a collection of shaving brushes with decorated handles he was fond of and an entire rack of strangely shaped pipes he’d collected. They’re gone now, of necessity sold, but he always kept them in his chamber where he could see them. And some shells he’d gathered and a small portrait of his sister and…and you have nothing. The maids must be quite pleased, as dusting your few bits of uncluttered furniture couldn’t take but a moment.”

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