me safe at home, I am afraid that you have failed.”
“You have your command,” Nicholas said.
“I do,” Bell replied. “But here I am, preparing to go, and how can I leave you here alone, leaping horses into rooms and God knows what?”
Molly breathed deeply, trying to enlarge herself. “I promise to behave as long as you’re away. You can trust me.”
“I most certainly cannot.” Bell laughed but it sounded more contemptuous than mirthful. “You would turn the whole house into a wild gypsy carnival.”
“I will govern Molly,” Nicholas said.
Bell regarded him and sighed with wary, chilled respect. “You have always had a will and I have always had to guide it. I have half a mind to take you overseas when I embark.”
Nicholas blanched even whiter than his ordinary pallor.
Bell rubbed his jaw and seemed to honestly consider it. At last he shook his head and said, “Your health is unreliable. The trip alone would kill you. I am forced to leave you here, not quite a man and not quite a boy. You lack the sure-footed wisdom to run a household, and your lenience with Molly is a long-abiding weakness. The two of you together … no, it simply won’t do.”
“Frances…,” Molly said, as if her father had forgotten.
Nicholas, however, saw the danger in an instant. “No,” he said, stepping up firmly to their father, one hand limp, the other fisted at his side.
“In recent weeks,” Bell said, “as I anticipated my departure, I thought a great deal of Frances’s ensconcement, shall we say, and of the virtues of her character. Devotion. Predictability. Familiarity. She is popular with the staff, respected and obeyed.”
“Loved,” Molly said.
“Yes, loved,” Bell agreed. “But like a child on a stallion, she is far too apt to let the reins slip away. I have hired a new governess, Mrs. Wickware, who brings a sterling reputation and extensive experience—”
“You can’t,” Molly said, gasping through her tears.
“It is done,” her father answered. “I will speak to Frances now, before we travel back to the city, giving her time to make arrangements and—”
“You’re sending her away?” Nicholas said.
“I must.”
Molly marveled at her brother’s instantaneous composure.
“You require someone stronger,” Nicholas conceded. “With Mrs. Wickware in charge, Frances might remain and fill another position.”
“Impossible,” their father said. “She is, as you have noted, much beloved by the staff. In matters of debate, they would defer to her rather than to Mrs. Wickware. A house cannot be governed in a state of ambiguity, any more than Floria can bow to two crowns. But you need not worry over Frances. I have found her an excellent position in Crookbury. As I said, I am not unappreciative—”
“You are a fiend,” Nicholas said.
“How dare you!”
“No, you can’t!” Molly yelled. “You can’t, it isn’t fair!”
“It is necessary,” Bell declared, ignoring Molly’s sobs and staring with ferocity at Nicholas, father and son nose to nose and locked as if their gazes were hypnotic, even fatal.
“She’s like our mother,” Molly said.
“But she is not!” Bell erupted. “Your mother died fourteen years ago.”
“So did you,” Nicholas said.
Bell struck him backhand, cutting his cheek with a ring and knocking him down with fearful ease. Molly ran to hold him, Nicholas hugged her back, and they protected each other in a knot of hands and elbows. Bell loomed above them, his gleaming boot tainted with the horse’s stale urine and his nostrils flaring open, audible and vulgar.
“I hate you,” Molly said. “You’re awful, I despise you.”
Bell was startled by her vehemence and backed toward the door. The frame boxed him in, both confining and enlarging him. “If your defiance has resulted from an overwarm attachment to your governess,” he said with overwrought composure, “I am required to warn Frances’s new employers, who have children of their own and may object—”
“No,” Molly said, clenching up tight. “No, it’s us. Only us.”
“Very well,” Bell said.
Nicholas remained silent, his face so immobile as to resemble the plaster death masks he’d studied as a child, causing Bell to shiver as he pivoted, exited the room, and left his son and daughter huddled on the floor.
* * *
Molly appealed to her father incessantly. She waylaid him on the stairs, and in the stables, and at the end of each day in his private room where he was bound to return, exhausted and irritable, to face yet another of her heartfelt pleas. His usual response being silence or avoidance, she resorted to flagrant disobedience—refusing to pack for their journey back to the city, failing to change