KDBookOnline
Share Us
“Indeed,” Will echoed, taking Emmie’s other hand. “I suggest you and George partner, and do your best to imitate what Aunt Emmeline and I are doing. Then we can work with each of you on the steps and timing.”
Shaking his head, George backed toward the door. “I ain’t dancing in front of everybody.”
There were more than a dozen servants clustered in one corner of the room, and as she looked James Fletcher sauntered into the room as well, so Emmie could see why he might be embarrassed. “Oh, everyone is dancing,” she announced, and gestured at the group. “Pair up.”
“This is unexpected,” Will murmured, lifting her hand and shifting to face her.
“I am not a cold fish,” she stated under her breath.
A frown creased his forehead. “I never said you were a co—”
“That’s what you meant. That I have no heart, and I’m using the children to further my own agenda.”
“I didn’t mean to intimate that you are uncaring, for God’s sake. I only wish you would… relax a bit. Enjoy the madness. You used to laugh, you know. If we—you and I—don’t make some changes, in a few short weeks we will find ourselves precisely where we were before all this began. And I prefer this spot.”
Before she could decipher that, he bowed, she curtsied, and with a series of hops and skips and steps they made their way along the floor. Behind them in a ragged, loud, chortling double line, the children and five pairs of servants followed. Emmie risked a glance over her shoulder, then clenched her jaw to keep from laughing. Powell, red-faced and chest puffed out, pranced hand in hand with Hannah, while Rose threatened to yank George off his feet with her exaggerated leaps into the air. Edward had paired with Sally, and at the rear Mrs. Brubbins the cook trotted with Donald looking very thin and breakable beside her.
The only one not dancing was James. It didn’t seem like jealousy, but whatever the reason for his folded arms and the sneer on his face, she wished he would take himself elsewhere before George saw him and decided he shouldn’t be dancing, after all.
As she looked back at her own partner, Will met her gaze, his eyes twinkling. Then they parted, and he traveled down to the left of the pairs behind them while she went to the right, and they met up at the rear to begin all over again.
After the party at Welshire, after they’d delivered the children to a good family, Will didn’t want their lives to return to their previous calm, intricate, separate dance. And she’d been considering that very same thing.
She and Will had grown up friends. Then he’d started acting… differently, looking at her all the time. That was when he’d stopped jesting about proposing to her. Had there still been something between them that she’d avoided examining too closely? Or had Will been the safest, easiest choice? She’d known what he wanted in life, and she knew she could help him achieve it. A good trade, it had been.
That had been what she told herself. Just as when he’d stopped visiting her bedchamber, she’d told herself it had been a mutual decision. But over the past few days, he’d made it rather clear that separation wasn’t what he’d wanted. And now she had to consider that perhaps she didn’t want that any longer, either.
George pulled the silverware from his pockets and dumped it into the sack James held. Beside him, Rose freed a small glass bird from her reticule. “You can’t put this in with the silverware, James,” she said, holding it out to their older brother. “It’ll break. And it’s very pretty.”
“I don’t want glass birds. Bring me necklaces and earbobs.” James dropped the bird to the floor and kicked it beneath the bed. “Jewels. The missus must have pearls and diamonds. I’d look, but that devil of a butler’s taken to following me like a lost lamb everywhere.”
“They’ll notice if we take pearls,” George protested. A pair of cuff links could take near a week, between Mr. P and Powell and Davis watching him.
“It won’t matter,” James countered, “because once we have the rich things, we leave. I was thinking Yorkshire. That’s a fair distance from here, and from any messiness we left behind in London.”
“I already thought about Yorkshire, when it was just me and Rosie, because you ran off.” George lifted his chin, fairly sure James wouldn’t hit him; it would leave a mark, and none of them wanted to have to explain that to the Pershings. “It’ll be too cold for Rosie in the winter.”
James reached out his fist, his thin lips flat and almost invisible. At the last second, he opened his fingers and flicked George’s cravat. “You think you’re clever, George, but I’m the one who didn’t get nicked by the Bow Street Runners, and I’m the one who came all this way to find you and Rosie. We go where I say, because I’m the head of this family.” Shifting his attention, he pinched Rose’s cheek. Hard. “Jewels, Rosie. Silver and gold and jewels. Blunt, if you can get your hands on it. Understand?”
Rose rubbed her cheek, her gaze on where her stolen bird had gone. “You kicked my bird.” Gathering her skirts, she crouched down and crawled beneath the bed. “I chose it because it’s pretty. You shouldn’t have kicked it. What if it broke?”
“Rosie, I don’t care wh—”
“Here it is.” She emerged, straightening to brush off the small figurine. “Oh, good. It’s in one piece.”
George reached over and plucked a bit of string from her hair. “We need to get back. We have lessons. You keep the bird, Rose.” They could add it to her chest, along with the other things they hadn’t yet given over to James.
“Things we can sell, whelp. I’m getting tired of everyone watching me and talking behind my back, and that topsail Mrs. P insulting me with a smile. And you damned well don’t need to learn to dance or draw or whatever other sodding nonsense they’ve got you doing. We’ll have everything we want without you knowing how to sketch a bowl of fruit.”
“I’m learning to read, too,” George stated. “And that’s not nonsense, whatever you say.”
James grabbed him by the shoulder. “It is nonsense, Georgie. You’re already what you’re going to be, and you’re damned lucky you have me to teach you what you need to know. Otherwise, you’d still be sleeping in church cellars and begging for scraps. Now go do what I said, or I’ll thrash you.”
George wanted to yell that one day he would be big enough to thrash James right back, that he’d already made a plan and James was stomping all over it. Instead, he took Rosie’s hand and led her back to the drawing room.
James’s idea of family was them doing what James said. Right now George didn’t see a way out of that, even if he preferred listening to what Mr. P had to say about honor and manners and being respectable. The Pershings would only be in their lives for a few weeks, and after that, even if he and Rose ran, James might find them again.
And yes, drawing lessons were silly. But they were also fun. And he wasn’t ready yet to see them go, especially since he’d mentioned that James was going to get them a tutor when they had their own cottage, and Mrs. Pershing had decided that teaching him to paint would be a good idea, after all.