6. Pins to Paintings…to Punishments?

6

Pins to Paintings…to Punishments?

Voices filtering in from the Great Hall moments later heralded Ed’s long-anticipated arrival.

Warrick’s cheeks lifted, his heart buoyed on a relieved inhale that brought peachy heaven sailing toward his nose as he sought out Lady Redford’s relieved gaze halfway down the table. Flushed with joy, she scrambled to standing, inadvertently colliding with a tray-carrying servant dispensing the blissfully awaited compote of peaches and sugared nuts.

Warrick tensed his thighs—or tried to—ready to jump to her aid when knocking into the tray askewed her balance. But all he did was lurch into the table, as his bottom half denied his top half’s instincts.

Damn legs.

“Let us all remain seated,” Frost said by way of a command, immediately doing what Warrick could not and coming to her aid after the embarrassed servant scuttled back. “Allow Lady Redford and her son a moment of privacy before bombarding him with greetings.”

“Hear, hear!” Lord Ballenger echoed heartily, then turned to Warrick. “ Where the devil has he been?” his host asked, voice hushed, brow pinched and face ruddy. “More than half suspected he meant to cry off.”

Warrick knew Ballenger had been responsible for the arranged betrothal between his daughter and the son of his closest childhood friend, even if the original agreement had been not for Ed, but his older brother.

“I do not believe so. ’Tis just that…” A slight shrug of Warrick’s shoulders, a grit of his teeth, his hands hovering beside the mechanisms that moved his chair before he jerked one arm toward the other, made a chopping motion and watched as understanding dawned.

“Ah. Forgive me, son.” The bristling Lord Ballenger noticeably smoothed his ruffled feathers upon recollecting the most obvious loss his potential son-in-law had suffered. “Have been selfishly worried about my Anne, not giving considerate thought to the challenges that you both—all three of you,” Lord Ballenger added as Frost approached, “must now become accustomed to.”

“Thank God,” Frost said, his frown not easing despite his words. “Now that Ed’s accounted for, we need not search him out among the icicles and shadows.”

Moments prior…

Still sensing his eyes on her, like a tangible touch buzzing over her skin, Aphrodite crossed into the Great Hall aside Lady Anne and a chattering Harri.

“If you wish…” Aphrodite indicated the stairs. “I shall see to Lady Harriet from here.”

“Why do you not both come with me?” Harri proposed, gaze alight now that she was no longer under her mother’s watchful presence. “We can shuffle off to my room and play hustle cap, for you are both ever so much more entertaining than the babies in the nursery.”

Over the head of the child rising up and down on her toes, Lady Anne gave Aphrodite a conspirative smile. “I will take Harri up and stay with her. Have you eaten? Take thirty minutes for yourself and rejoin us when you’re ready.”

“But your dinner,” Aphrodite protested. “Has it not already been interrupted?”

“Not nearly enough,” the other woman muttered, then louder, “I insist. Please, take some time for yourself.”

The hollow in her belly relished the suggestion. “You are too kind.”

“Too selfish, I confess,” Lady Anne confided. “In truth, I shall savor the distraction.”

Bobbing up and down like a bouncing ball, Harri gave an exasperated sigh. “Adults. Too boring by half.”

“When we are not entertaining your whims, you mean?” Aphrodite surmised. “Mind your sister, now.”

“When do I not?”

“Every other minute,” said Lady Anne and the women parted on a shared laugh.

No sooner than her feet aimed for the servants’ hall and kitchens below, a sturdy clunk of the door’s knocker sounded.

The missing betrothed?

Just out of sight, Aphrodite paused. Ears perked.

For if Lady Anne’s espoused had arrived, Aphrodite would no doubt be tending her charge after all.

Another double thump-clunk reverberated, even louder than the last.

Wilson, the Larchmonts’ longtime butler, balding and brandishing a napkin, barreled up the servant stairs behind her. “Pardon… Ms.… Primrose.”

The poor man nearly panted as he scurried by, trying to race, chew and swallow at once. “Pitiful timing, my lad,” he grumbled. “Could…not have… knocked…ere or aft?”

My lad?

“I will get it!” Harri trilled, announcing to anyone and everyone within the house. A veritable whirlwind, she rushed ahead of both footman and butler to whip the heavy door open.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Lord Redford, at your service,” a firm voice intoned. “Come for the Twelfth Night Ball, if I am not mistaken, though a few calendar days early by my count, but here I am, dates notwithstanding. Do you require my written invitation?”

“What happened to your arm?” Harriet demanded—manners notwithstanding either—and Aphrodite slapped her forehead. “Where’s the rest of it?”

The rest of it? The man’s arm?

Aphrodite gulped. Hunger pangs turning to horror pains. Had she taught the child nothing?

“Harriet!” Lady Anne gasped.

“Lord Redford.” Wilson stepped into the breach. “’Tis beyond good to see you again.” Again. So Wilson’s “lad” was Lady Anne’s intended? “Come in, my lord. May I have your coat and hat? Your gloves? Er, apologies. Glove?”

“Think nothing of it, Wilson.” Lord Redford crossed over the threshold and began to remove his outer garments (seen because, by now, Aphrodite could not help but edge forward, only to glimpse, mind).

A notable presence, Lord Redford was only an inch or two shorter than Lord Frostwood’s impressive height and every bit as broad through the chest and shoulders as Lord Warrick. The rugged lines of his face crinkled easily into a smile as he spoke. “’Tis war, after all. Each of us must adapt and accommodate for change.”

It wasn’t until first his coat and scarf and then his glove (singular) was removed with Wilson’s assistance that the misshapen fingers were visible. He stretched them forth, opening and closing his hand several times as though to return warmth—or work out the cramped soreness, now free of the heavy travel trappings.

“Your hand,” Harri persisted, hovering between the adults as Lady Anne stood by silently, face ashen. “Did you lose it fighting Napoleon?”

“Aye. Left it in Spain, I fear.”

“Lord Redford!” The stout Lady Ballenger scurried in, the long feather protruding from her turban bobbing like a sail. “Welcome! Welcome! I see you have already met Anne. Your mother will be along?—”

“Anne?” His gaze swung from Harriet to her mother to Lady Anne’s pale countenance. Lord Redford’s forehead pinched in a frown. “ Lady Anne? Not Mary?”

Mary? Oh! Merry. What Harriet had been calling her sister all month: Soon-to-be-married Merry Anne. But why would he be surprised by her honorific of lady ? And when would he have heard the other?

“ Where at in Spain?” Harri cried on an excited screech—trying to rival her mother? “Did you see it afterward? Your hand? The rest of your arm? Terrifically gruesome! How much did you bleed? Did your claret splash out? Or only trickle?”

Aphrodite was going to be sick. Not at the words, though fairly gruesome in and of themselves, but that Lady Harriet, whom Aphrodite had been drumming manners and decorum into from the moment her employment commenced, should be asking?—

Asking? Nay, peltering the gentleman with such discourteous things.

“Did you scream when it happened?” Harriet’s enthusiastic barrage showed no signs of wavering.

“Terrifically gruesome,” Lord Redford responded. Admirable, his patience with the girl. “As to the, er… spatter , I am not certain that is a subject fit for genteel company.”

Bile crawled into her throat. Surely she would be shown the door soon. Would her efforts at least garner a reference?

“Oh, but you can tell me!” the girl encouraged, heedless of the destruction her every word wrought. “I am ever so curious about?—”

“Harriet Jane!” Lady Ballenger’s screak shook the chandelier and sent the mistletoe to quivering.

“ Lovely to meet you, Lord Redford!” Harriet called out, fighting against her sister’s valiant tugging. “You can tell me more later!”

Much closer to Aphrodite than the front door, Lady Anne wrenched the child around and gave her a sharp shake. “ Shhhht. Not another word—do you hear me? Not until we reach your room, you frustrating hoity-toity.”

As the pair ascended the stairs with all the haste Lady Anne could muster from the reluctant Harri, Aphrodite faded back toward the servants’ quarters. Toward the meal and granted respite, with three thoughts at the forefront:

1. The minutes, which had now dwindled from thirty to twenty-three.

2. The meal, which in no conceivable way could her roiling stomach begin to partake of.

3. Her position, which if she wasn’t bidding adieu to by morning, she would count herself among the most fortunate of governesses ever to walk the globe.

She refused to think on secrets .

The ones she suspected might exist between Lady Anne and Lord Redford.

The ones she herself shared with Lord Warrick.

Nay. Not contemplating either.

A deep sigh puffed from her lips as her feet dashed down the stairs. Forget servings of holiday fare. She needed to find a wall. A private one.

To bang her head against.

“Oh, Harri.”

“Do not look at me like that.” Standing there, in the lamplight some time later and not looking as guilty as she ought, Aphrodite’s charge crossed her legs.

Then uncrossed them. Stuck out her bottom lip and swung one leg back in front of the other, the toes of her foot practically perpendicular to the floor in the most convoluted of positions as the girl rocked back on her heels, tugging at the fabric beneath one arm. “I know you are mad at me. Can it not wait until tomorrow? Un merry Anne has already railed at me. To a copious degree.”

Back in the bedchamber of the ever-entertaining young lady, Aphrodite sought to subdue, not crush, the child’s vaunted spirit. But after Lady Anne took the youngster to task over her tongue’s ill-advised laxative greeting toward Lord Redford, it now fell to Aphrodite to address the other, egregious, error of the day.

Her dratted stomach persisted in tingling.

Worry over being cast out in the coming days? Penance for the few sparse bites she had managed to consume, after all (enough to quell any audible rumblings)? Certainly, the disturbingly delightful sensation could in no way be related to the illicit, if wordless, interlude shared with Lord Warrick.

One palm pressed to her traitorous middle, Aphrodite approached the bench at the foot of the bed. “Can you be still long enough to sit with me a moment?

“Please?” she encouraged when the child made no move to join her.

Balancing up on her toes twice before straightening her legs and moving toward the now-seated Aphrodite, Harri joined her with a light huff . “What?” She pulled up the skirt of her dress and started picking at nothing, avoiding Aphrodite’s eyes. “I did not mean any harm, only thought the ribbons belonged on the dogs.”

And the cats.

And some children.

A couple of birds.

And even upon the nose of the long-deceased fourth Earl of Ballenger, Aphrodite had seen to her dismay, upon her return upstairs when she chanced to inspect every painting in the emptied-of-guests dining room.

“It made me laugh,” Harri continued. “It was— is —festive and funny and I see no reason why?—”

“Halt.” Abandoning her own distractions, Aphrodite placed her hands over the twitchy fingers of her charge and gave a light shake, until Harriet’s gaze met her own. “Festive? Mayhap. Amusing? That might depend upon who you ask. But, Harriet, inconsiderate in the extreme. Completely out of bounds. Rude and thoughtless toward your parents, especially your father—whose family many of these paintings have been in for generations. You may have destroyed several priceless?—”

“Destroyed?” Harri cried, bounding to her feet. “I did no such thing!”

“Oh?” Aphrodite shifted to keep track of the girl as she stomped across the floor. Thank heavens the musicians had started playing lively and loudly. “Tell me—how did you affix the bows and ribbons?”

Harriet just looked at her, mouth half open—silent for once. Then she slammed it shut and shrugged, stomped off the opposite direction.

“No more of that, now.” Surging to standing the next time Harri drew near, Aphrodite snared the girl’s shoulders. “Halt. Answer me.”

“I couldn’t get pins to go through them without falling out.” Aphrodite cringed. “I tried sewing them on, but it was too hard with the paintings up against the wall,” Harriet all but whined—as though the canvases were at fault. “So I used paste.”

Smothering a groan, Aphrodite tugged Harri to her, her chin coming to rest on the top of the child’s head.

“What?” the youth murmured, not fighting the embrace. “Why are you not still yelling at me? Bemoaning my ‘vexing and troublesome nature’?”

Something Lady Ballenger had exclaimed more than once.

“Is that what you want? To be railed at? Do you think enduring a barrage of critical words is sufficient punishment?”

Harri eased free, looked up, her countenance—finally—burdened with guilt. “Perhaps?”

“Not even close. And some things cannot be resolved by yelling. Some things, you will learn in time I pray, hurt someone enough, cut deeply such that mere apologies of sorrow or regrets cannot ever make them right.”

“You tr-truly think I ruined the paintings? For ever ?” Her lower lip quivered.

“I really have no idea. But I do think, the moment your parents discover what you did—or someone brings it to their attention—you will be in more trouble than you ever have been thus far.”

“ Gawp. ” The strangled sound emerged. “ Ever? ”

“Mayhap. I surmise that their reaction alone will be sufficient for you to understand the egregiousness of your?—”

“I don’t know what that means. That eee-gree…thingummy.”

“ E-gre-gious. ” She let each syllable sit alone. “It means the severity of what you did. How very flagrant—intentional—your actions. How?—”

“I know. I know!” Harriet gripped the top of her head with both hands as though she could hold in some of the sense. “I am in full understanding of how poorly you think I behaved. You need not berate me further.”

“Very well. I know not what sort of punishment your parents will demand, but as for myself?—”

“ You are going to punish me too?”

“You give me no choice, Harri. My entire reason for being here is to see to your education. To see that you mature in such a way you shine a positive light on your family and toward your future. To ensure that one day, you may have your own family and behave in such a manner you bring about respect for yourself and those in your household, not ridicule.”

The girl had no answer for that. Had even lowered her hands and was now occupying them by yanking on the sides of the dress.

But how? What might finally reach through the impenetrable, stubborn skull of her student?

A thousand-word essay on The Evils of Arrogance, to be composed in Latin.

The answer echoed in her ears as though she had spoken the words aloud seconds ago, instead of half a day and a world away. “Despite the merriments going on this week, I expect you to compose a three-hundred-word apology to?—”

“ Three hundred? Are you?—”

“A five -hundred-word apology”—Aphrodite altered at the interruption, hoping to suppress any others—“directed to your father, explaining what you did and why, and expressing how you feel over the matter.” And if regret and remorse were not included, there would be consequences indeed. “For your mother, you will compose a four-hundred-word apology telling her how you seek to make reparations for this act. Reparations—how you seek to make it better.”

A single nod—despite a mutinous gleam.

“As to the rest?—”

“There is more ?”

“Much more. You will write three hundred words, intended for my eyes only, explaining your complete disregard for my position in this household and your understanding that through your actions”—and words—“I might be dismissed. Then?—”

“You cannot be! Mama and Papa would never turn you off. I won’t allow it!”

Pray, should things become dire, the Larchmonts would listen to their youngest’s wishes, allowing Aphrodite to retain her position in their household. “Though your fierce defense is flattering, neither of us knows exactly how your parents will respond.”

“Is there any more?” Harri’s vibrant tone had dulled, the seriousness of her actions reaching through the beautiful wall of energetic happiness and thoughtless selfishness that truly needed tempered.

“Aye. Lines. The one thing we have yet to try. You shall write ‘I will think upon how my actions and words affect others; I will refrain from selfish, destructive acts.’”

“All of that?” she questioned in mayhap the quietest voice Aphrodite had ever heard her use. “Is it not…absurdly long?”

Aphrodite allowed her sad smile to show just a hint of satisfaction. For Harriet, thank heavens and beribboned paintings, now seemed to understand the full import of what she had heedlessly done. “It is long. And between now and Twelfth Night”—which gave the girl a good ten days—“you will write it seven hundred times.”

“Gawp.”

Some time later, after Ed tracked down and trapped his reluctant betrothed—in the ladies’ retiring room, of all places—Warrick’s boon friend had somehow managed to turn the lady’s misgivings about their engagement into elation over their coming nuptials.

Exuberant celebrations were in order (or so claimed the young Lady Harriet, returned from upstairs with only a slight mitigation to her natural enthusiasm), ushering everyone in sight into the bowels of the ballroom where the blame dancing had already commenced.

From the crush edging the equally crowded dance floor, Warrick concentrated on the conversations that swirled above him—or tried to. Tried to calculate how long since he’d last relieved his bladder and wondered how long the revelry might go on tonight.

Those hovering near at least shielded his sitting self from any of the too-young, too-rude gagglers from this afternoon. Since when do you care what anyone else thinks?

Since I cannot get out of this infernal contraption!

He rubbed the back of his neck. Pinched the muscles on the sides and over his shoulders. Gah. How was one supposed to look up for hours without their neck screaming a protest?

How was one to suffer watching others flit, jump and skip their way across the dance floor when one had no hope of ever joining in?