might not be possible, but that did not mean she had to look forward to it.
Lud. Now she was in the basket.
Chapter 4
Dearest Matilda,
I was so glad to hear of all the dreadful things your boys have been up to this past week. Frogs in boots seem to be a favourite here too. I wonder if they are born with such thoughts in mind, the diabolical creatures. Honestly, Lyall and Muir are set on giving me a nervous collapse. I wouldn’t mind but Gordy is worse than the two of them put together. I daren’t let the three of them out of my sight for a moment. They’re both going to be as big as their father, which naturally brings every lad from miles around in to scrap with them. I seem to spend my days tending bruises from fights, scrapes from climbing trees, and wringing them out after they’ve fallen in the loch… again! Not that they complain, they’re always laughing and seem utterly bewildered by my fretting over them.
I sympathise with every broken window, vase, and shredded nerve, I assure you. Have you found slugs in your slippers yet? That one will stay with me till the day I die.
―Excerpt of a letter to The Most Honourable Matilda Barrington, Marchioness of Montagu, from Mrs Ruth Anderson.
21st March 1827, Montagu House, St James’s, London.
Phoebe concentrated on piling cherry jam onto a scone. Mama had not yet come down for breakfast, but her father was here, and his piercing gaze had settled on her. She could feel it boring into her brain and did not dare look up and meet it.
“Bee,” he said, his tone soft and enquiring. “You’d really do better to confess. You’ve been sat upon thorns these past few days. Who exactly is it you keep expecting to arrive?”
Phoebe swallowed, knowing she was doomed.
“No one,” she said, striving for innocence.
Her papa sighed, quite obviously disbelieving her. Her stomach squirmed and she put the scone down with regret, knowing it would stick in her throat.
“Bee,” he said again, a little sterner now. “I can’t abide lies, you know that.”
Guilt made her stomach squirm harder and she knew she couldn’t evade him now he was on the scent. He need only ask her outright what she’d done, and she would be forced to tell him. An evasion was one thing, but she’d not lie, and he knew it. Better to confess all, as he’d suggested, than make him ask her. She had jumped every time someone had knocked at the door, expecting Max to come and reveal all, but the days had passed and Max had not come.
Why?
Phoebe took a deep breath, her heart thudding in her chest, as she forced herself to meet her father’s eyes.
“You’ll be cross,” she said wretchedly.
“How cross?”
Phoebe swallowed.
A muscle in his jaw ticked.
“I see.”
“I’m fine.” Phoebe forced a bright smile, hoping that fact would ease the tension in the room. “There was no harm done, and no one saw me. Well, no one who would say anything.” She considered Baron Alvanly for a moment. “I think.”
Her father waited, staring at her, his silver eyes unnerving as she felt he could see just what she was thinking. Phoebe clutched the chair, willing herself to be brave and not run from the room.
“Perhaps we should wait for Mama—”
“Phoebe!”
Oh. Her full name. That wasn’t good.
“I w-went to see O’Sullivan fight Evans at Moulsey Hurst.”
There. She’d confessed.
Phoebe watched him, but his face was a blank. No reaction.
Oh, dear.
“And?” he asked, his voice dangerously calm.
Drat it. How did he always know there was an and?
“And… it was all fine. I saw the fight, but… but I didn’t much like it, so I left before the end. It was obvious Evans would lose, you see. So I was on my way back to hire a hackney, and a man tried to rob me, but I had my pistol and stopped him, and then Max came, and he told the man to go before I shot him, and then he saw me to his carriage and… and that’s all.”
There was the kind of silence that made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Her father said nothing. He was still for a long moment, during which Phoebe held her breath.
Very carefully, with precise movements, he refolded his napkin and set it back on the table, then he got to his feet.
“Tell your mother I am going to Angelo’s. I will speak to you this evening