How to Sin Successfully

Chapter Three

Acton Humphries, known to most in that part of Devonshire as Baron Wildeham, watched the scene unfold from his favourite position, recumbent on Lucas Harding’s divan, post-dinner brandy in hand. Across the room, Harding fiddled distractedly with the heavy paperweight on his desk. Harding could split the messenger’s head with the leaded-crystal ornament and he was mad enough to do it. The man’s colour was high and it wouldn’t be the first time rage had driven his actions. ‘You mean to tell me that my niece has managed to elude you and disappear entirely?’ Harding ground out when the messenger finished his report.

Acton sat up to join the proceedings. ‘Surely you must understand how improbable it seems. Miss Caulfield is a gently bred young lady who hasn’t been beyond Exeter in her entire life and you gentlemen are trained professionals,’ he drawled lazily, but only a stupid man would be drawn in by his apparent nonchalance. Acton was as angry over this latest development as Harding was. His long-standing relationship with Lucas Harding had developed a certain tension in the last week, ever since it became obvious Harding’s ungrateful niece had simply disappeared a coincidental four days before she was due to become his wife and Baroness Wildeham to boot.

‘I am sorry we don’t have better news.’ The messenger shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, sensing that anger was indeed boiling just beneath the surface in a barely disguised simmer.

‘Better news? You don’t have any news!’ Harding exploded. The explosion was justified, Acton mused. Maura’s disappearance had put her uncle in dire straits and she’d made him look the fool. She was contracted to marry him in exchange for erasing a gambling debt her uncle had rather rashly acquired. Harding had never believed his stallion, Captain, would lose to Acton’s Jupiter. Most fortunately, Acton was willing to take payment in the form of a bride as opposed to cash, especially when that bride was the delectable Maura Harding.

When he’d struck the deal, Harding had had a bride to offer. Now, he had neither bride nor money and the deadline was looming. If Harding didn’t retrieve Maura soon, he’d be destitute. Acton knew very well Harding was a mere knight and his property wasn’t entailed. If he took the house, Harding’s family would be left unsettled: his wife, the young twins and the two older sons. Maura was a fair trade for her uncle’s continued stability. The man had cared for Maura since she was sixteen and this was how she repaid him? Acton would never tolerate such disobedience. It was a woman’s lot in life to serve her family. Marrying him had become Maura’s duty, her service for the four years of living under her uncle’s roof.

‘Find her,’ Harding ground out, his temper cooling a bit. ‘Expand your search. Try the coaching inns again in case anyone remembers her.’ Acton privately disagreed. If she’d gone to a coaching inn, chances of finding her became slimmer. Hundreds of travellers passed through those inns and people’s memories could be dulled as time went on. The Runners could end up chasing false leads. But Acton knew Harding had honestly thought they’d find her in a nearby village or attempting to get work in Exeter. Harding had guessed wrong on that score and her trail was growing cold. Now it was time to do things his way.

‘What about London?’ Wildeham offered. ‘It seems a logical choice if someone wanted to hide and we haven’t tried there yet.’ It had only been a handful of days. By his calculations she would only just have arrived. A trail in London, if there was one, would still be very warm.

Harding shook his head in disagreement. ‘Unlikely, Wildeham. Maura has little to no money that I know of and no skills. Even if she could have afforded coach fare or begged a ride, she’s got nothing to live on once she reaches the city. She’s a gentleman’s daughter. She’s been raised to marry, not to labor.’

Wildeham saw the logic in Harding’s argument. If a girl like Maura thought to find employment in London, she’d be quickly disappointed. The town would devour a girl like her, and that worried him very much. He didn’t want Maura dead. He wanted her alive and penitent, very penitent.

Wildeham shifted in his seat to accommodate the early stirrings of arousal. Penitence conjured up all sorts of images of Maura on her knees before him. If anyone was doing any devouring, it was going to be him. He’d spent quite a few hours imagining the fantasies he’d play out with her once she was his. She would be sorry she’d run. There was nothing like the thrill of laying a rod across the smooth white expanse of untouched buttocks … But he digressed. Wildeham pulled his thoughts back to the situation at hand.

Maura Harding had run and he was more certain with each passing day she’d gone to London. Her uncle only saw a pretty, well-mannered girl. But he’d had the occasion to see much more. Harding and the Runner could talk all they wanted about searching the larger towns of Devonshire, but they’d never seen Maura with her temper up. They’d never seen her try to slap a man after he cornered her in the pantry for a little bit of slap and tickle. They’d never been on the receiving end of her tongue, and not in the French way he preferred. The little vixen had bit him when he’d tried to kiss her, nearly severing his tongue in two. That was all right with him. He liked it rough and he always hit them back. Nothing too hard, mind you, but enough to make his position on the matter clear. The more Maura fought, the more he wanted her, and he was going to have her. It was time to do things his way.

‘Are you two still debating a local search?’ He interrupted Harding and the Runner. He was growing impatient with their theorising, although this ‘treasure hunt of sorts’ could be fun in a tantalising, torture-pleasure scheme of things.

‘It’s what makes the most sense.’ Harding sighed. ‘She can’t have gone far.’

Acton warmed to the game. ‘By all means, continue with your efforts. It’s your coin, after all. I’ve got my own man for odd jobs like this. I’ll send him to London at my expense and see what he turns up. We’ll make it a wager, fifty pounds on the side to whoever finds her first.’

Harding smiled tolerantly as if he wasn’t the one faced with losing something more substantial than fifty pounds if the girl wasn’t retrieved. ‘All right, fifty pounds it is.’

Acton rose from the divan. ‘I will call it an early night, then. I have plans to make. Do give my regards to your wife, Harding.’ It was still early enough to summon Paul Digby, a sturdy ox of a man. Acton had used Digby before for all sorts of dirty work. Digby was a thinker, an unusual quality for a man his size. Digby could find anyone when he set his mind to it. If Maura was in London, she was about to be found.

Maura embraced the morning with a positive attitude and a plan. She’d not expected to be working with children when she’d made her application, but she would adjust. Childhood wasn’t so far behind her that she’d forgotten what it was like to be seven or eight. With that in mind, she’d risen early, arranged for breakfast to be delivered to the nursery and written out an orderly schedule for the day. She ran through that schedule in her mind on the way to the nursery; there would be breakfast, morning lessons, an afternoon walk, she would review manners over tea, there would be play time before dinner. It was all very efficient.

And entirely inappropriate. At the sight of the nursery, all her plans went out the window. The place was a mess. Toys of every sort lay spread on the floor or tucked haphazardly into any available nook. Clothes lay draped over furniture, wrinkled. Maura picked up a discarded shirt and shook it out. She’d not expected this.

Yesterday afternoon, there’d been no time to see the children’s quarters. The children had been ready for her, neatly dressed and pressed. They’d gone walking in the park across the street. The ‘invitation’ to her most unusual dinner with Lord Chatham had been waiting on her return. But she hadn’t worried. She should have. Nothing had prepared her for this. This would demand a re-routing of her carefully laid plans.

‘Six!’ Cecilia poked her head out of her little bedchamber off the nursery’s main room. ‘You’re here early!’ She ran across the hall to William’s room. ‘Will, Will, Six is here!’

‘I thought I’d come up for breakfast and we could continue getting acquainted.’ Maura smiled. She and the children had got off to a decent start yesterday, even if William had been less enthusiastic than Cecilia. William had been very quiet, very reserved on the walk.

‘What are we going to do today?’ Cecilia asked, slipping a hand through hers and swinging her arm.

‘We are going to eat and then we’re going to play a game,’ Maura said cheerily. She tugged on William’s blanket. ‘Now, out of bed, sleepyhead. Breakfast will be here any minute.’

‘Up here?’ William questioned. ‘Uncle Ree just lets us eat in the breakfast room downstairs whenever we want. Breakfast is served until eleven o’clock.’

That was interesting and potentially full of problems. ‘Does your uncle eat with you?’

‘No,’ William said dejectedly. ‘He’s usually in bed until noon.’

‘You eat alone?’ Maura busied herself in the little chamber, straightening here and there so her questions didn’t seem like an interrogation. This was something she needed to know. She didn’t want to upset a family ritual of eating together.

‘Yes,’ Cecilia proclaimed proudly. ‘We fill our own plates and eat as much as we want of whatever we want. The chairs are big, though, and my feet don’t touch the ground.’

Children eating copious amounts of self-selected food unsupervised wasn’t a family ritual; it was a recipe for disaster. The breakfast trays arrived and Maura hurried to clear the round table in the centre of the nursery.

‘Mmm, it smells good.’ Cecilia scampered after her and Maura noticed even William didn’t have to be asked twice to the table as she set out the dishes and removed the covers.

‘What’s that?’ William pointed to the plates arranged with strips of toast alongside an egg cup.

‘These are eggs and soldiers.’ Maura placed a plate in front of each of them and sat down. ‘Have you ever seen it before?’ She’d rather thought they would have. She’d been raised on it.

They shook their heads. ‘Soldiers?’ William asked curiously, poking around at the egg.

‘The toast strips are the soldiers.’ Maura picked up a spoon and tapped the top of the soft-boiled egg. The top broke open, revealing the runny yolk inside. ‘Now, you take a soldier and dip it in the egg.’ She demonstrated and took a bite. ‘Yummy. Try it,’ she urged them.

After the first bite, eggs and soldiers was an immediate success. ‘This is better than the porridge we had with those other governesses.’ Cecilia made a face reflecting her distaste of the porridge. ‘But,’ she proclaimed with a mouth of toast, ‘this is as good as breakfasts with Papa Elliott.’ She paused long enough to swallow. ‘He was Uncle Ree’s brother, but he’s dead now, like our father. I hope Uncle Ree doesn’t die.’ It was said with a child’s innocent carelessness of the facts, but Maura’s heart went out to them. Three father figures in eight years was a lot of change.

‘Why is it called eggs and soldiers?’ William ate his last bite.

Maura leaned forwards. ‘My mother told me eggs and soldiers was the tale of Humpty Dumpty.’ She recited the nursery rhyme to them. ‘The toast strips are all the king’s men and the runny egg is poor old Humpty Dumpty who can’t be put back together again.’ They laughed and Maura gathered up the dishes. ‘Who’s ready for a game?’

‘None of the other governesses played games,’ William said sceptically.

‘Well, Six does and I like her,’ Cecilia put in emphatically, turning blue eyes Maura’s way, a sudden concern mirrored in her eyes. ‘You aren’t going to leave, are you?’

‘No, of course not,’ Maura reassured her. She couldn’t possibly leave, no matter what. Leaving would mean being homeless. It would mean having no way to support herself. The children could put frogs in her bed and she’d have to stay. ‘Who knows what lava is?’

Cecilia had no idea, but William did. ‘It’s the hot stuff that comes out of volcanoes. Papa Elliott told me about Mount Etna in Italy.’ He grinned. ‘It sounds exciting, all that noise and rumbling. I’d like to be an explorer and see one some day. Papa Elliott said the last time Mount Etna erupted a little village almost got destroyed.’

‘The village was called Bronte,’ Maura supplied. ‘We could pretend today that our nursery is that village and we are explorers who have come to rescue the people from the volcano.’ Maura bent over and swept up a rag doll. ‘I got her, she’s safe. Does anyone know this little girl’s name?’

‘That’s Polly,’ Cecilia supplied.

‘Can you take Polly to a safe place on a shelf away from the lava?’ Maura handed the doll over to her. ‘In fact, the whole carpet is lava and we have to pull everyone and everything out and get them to safety. Cecilia, can you be in charge of saving all the dollies? William, you can be in charge of saving the village’s things, like their games, and the soldiers. Step quickly so the lava doesn’t burn your feet, too! I’ll get the books.’

Off they went, all three of them hopping about, grabbing up the ‘villagers’ and getting them resettled. It was a noisy business. Sometimes the rescuers weren’t fast enough and got burnt. Cecilia squealed the most over her imaginary close calls with the lava. Even William got involved, telling them an elaborate story about how his soldiers had come to help, but been cut off by a sudden earthquake that left them stranded on the mountain’s left slope.

It took the better part of an hour, but when the last villager was rescued, the floor was empty and the nursery was tidy.

‘Whew.’ Maura plopped into a child-sized chair at the table. ‘That was hard work. Good job, rescuers. See how nice the nursery looks.’

‘You tricked us.’ William sulked, suddenly suspicious. ‘That wasn’t a game, it was a trick to make us pick up.’

‘Did you have fun?’ Maura challenged good-naturedly.