A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,39

Oak said, undoing the final button. “But now that the task is complete, let’s find your mother so she can fuss over you.”

Bracken took Alexander’s jacket. “Mrs. Channing is in her private parlor. We’ll have your trunks sent up to your rooms, Mr. Dorning.”

“My thanks.” Oak extended a hand to the boy. “Come along, lad, and prepare to endure a thorough maternal hugging.”

“Mama will hug me?” Alexander took Oak’s hand and pulled him toward the steps.

“And you will allow it. You will even hug her back a little, gently, because the ladies can be delicate.”

This curious, energetic version of Alexander was a very different little boy from the silent, sullen child who’d trudged down the front steps two hours earlier. Oak felt a peculiar sense of accomplishment for having coaxed the livelier child from the shadows in the schoolroom.

“Mrs. Channing.” Oak stopped several paces from her desk and bowed. Alexander, who was still hand in hand with Oak, did likewise an instant later.

“Mama, I took the ribbons. I steered Atlas all the way home from Bathboro, and he never put a foot wrong. Mr. Dorning said I am a natural whip.”

Vera had come around from behind her desk and held out her arms to her son. “You are a brilliant whip. I saw you with my own two eyes. Come here.”

Alexander grinned at Oak and scampered across the carpet as his mother knelt to indulge in the predicted affection.

“Tomorrow we will hack out on Charles II,” Alexander said when Vera let him go. “What color is a lark’s song, Mama?”

“I hardly know. The color of happiness, maybe?”

“I asked Mr. Dorning, and he said there is no wrong answer to such a question, because we each hear that song differently according to our moods. Then he asked me what color a nightingale’s song would be, but that’s difficult, because they sing most often in the dark, don’t they, and how does one show a color in the darkness?”

Oak assisted Vera to rise.

“Mr. Dorning, my son is becoming a philosopher.”

“Master Alexander is very bright,” Oak said. “He notices much and thinks deeply, but now I must accompany him back to the schoolroom, or Mr. Forester will fear his pupil was kidnapped by brigands.” Oak again held out a hand to the boy, who was all but skipping around the room. “If you’ll excuse us, Mrs. Channing?”

Alexander caught Oak’s hand and came to a stop. “Must I return to the schoolroom, sir?”

“Alas, yes, for all good things must end, but I can see that you arrive to your destination in the style to which a skilled coachy is entitled.” He swung Alexander up onto his back and scissored the boy’s legs around his waist. “Grab me about the neck and off we go.”

“When you’ve delivered your charge, Mr. Dorning, I’d like a moment of your time, please.”

“Of course. Alexander, let’s be off.”

Oak trotted from the room, jostling the boy on his back some, but not too much. A piggyback ride wasn’t supposed to be a serious undertaking.

“You won’t tell Mr. Forester I nearly lost my cap, will you?” Alexander asked when Oak set him on his feet in the schoolroom.

“Of course not. You were too busy steering Atlas to notice I snatched it from your head before the wind could toss it into the bushes. I’ll look forward to tomorrow’s outing, Alexander.”

“I will too, sir.” Alexander sat at his desk, once again the unhappy lump of little boy he’d been two hours ago.

“Alexander, have you Bible verses to copy for today?”

“Yes, sir. Twenty verses a day, without fail, except on the Sabbath, when I am to do forty.”

Bloody hell. If anything was likely to put a child on the path to ignoring divine guidance, that would do it.

“Why not start on today’s verses, and I’ll let Mr. Forester know you’re back at your labors.”

“Yes, sir.”

Oak left Alexander paging through the Bible on the table at the front of the room, pencil in hand, foolscap on the table beside him. Alexander stood on a box for this effort, much as Oak had stood on boxes to study his father’s maps.

But Bible verses could not hold a candle to maps in terms of sparking a small boy’s fancy, and the schoolroom had neither a globe nor an atlas. Oak left the scholar to his verses and departed, intent on tidying himself up before he rejoined Vera in her private parlor. He was thus rounding a corner in the direction of the back steps when he