“You would end up roasted to cinders, but that’s hardly the point,” Lady Daisy said. “Here’s Fletcher, felled by exhaustion trying to keep you from mischief, and because her feet are near the fire and her boots tied together, you’d likely send her up in flames, too, and all of your stuffed animals and storybooks, and the whole house. Your ponies and elephants should hardly be subjected to death by immolation just so you can lark about for a few moments in the Swiss Alps.”
“My ponies are in the bedroom.”
The little barrister… Fabianus expected Lady Daisy to set the child down, pronounce her a public menace, and flounce on her way.
“Fire,” said Lady Daisy, “eats through old walls in no time, and your ponies cannot gallop away. A fire in a stable doubles in size in less than a minute, and if you have dashed out your brains, making a very great mess on the hearth, you will be unable to call for help. There is a way to explore the Alps safely though.”
With Aunt Helen, though Aunt was too canny to be charged with that penance. Fabianus turned, the better to watch Pandora take the bait.
“The Alps are very high,” Pandora said, “with snow all over them.”
“While books are quite near,” Lady Daisy replied, “all over Dorning Hall’s library, and in the schoolroom too. I even see some storybooks on the shelves under the window. If you apologize sincerely to Fletcher and to your papa, I might take him down to the library and help him find you a book about mountains while Fletcher reads you and Chloe a story.”
Lady Daisy whispered something more to Pandora that had the girl peering at Fabianus speculatively. Fletcher had unknotted and retied her boot laces and stood awkwardly by the chair, gaze on the carpet.
“You take my meaning?” Lady Daisy asked Pandora.
Pandora nodded, and Lady Daisy set her down.
“Shake on it.” Her ladyship extended a hand to the child. “That makes it a contract.” Pandora offered her little paw somewhat tentatively, and Lady Daisy shook. “Now the apologies, my girl.”
Little Chloe spoke up for the first time. “Don’t forget to look ’em in the eye. When you ’pologize, you have to always look ’em straight in the eye.”
Pandora stared at the fireplace, then at the mantel, then at Fletcher. “I am sorry for nearly bashing my brains out and getting blood all over the pretty carpet and for almost burning up the house and my stuffed animals.”
But not for frightening her father. “And?” Fabianus asked.
“And for my nearly burning up my storybooks?”
Lady Daisy was keeping an admirably straight face. “Pandora,” she said in tones dripping with disappointment. “Get to the important part.”
Pandora glanced at Chloe. “For tying Fletcher’s boots together. I won’t do it again.”
Lady Daisy ran a hand over Pandora’s cornsilk hair. “See that you don’t. Repeating a prank shows a lack of imagination, after all, and the best pranks aren’t mean or dangerous, as this one certainly was. My lord, I believe the children can get themselves acquainted from here. We have some books to find. Pandora, you may show me your best curtsey.”
Pandora looked at Fletcher in confusion, and Fletcher bobbed a curtsey. “G’day, your ladyship.”
Lady Daisy waited until Pandora performed a caricature of Fletcher’s curtsey. “G’day, your ladyship.” She even copied Fletcher’s slight rural twang.
Again, Lady Daisy’s countenance, even her marvelous periwinkles eyes, gave away no hint of mirth.
“A pleasure to meet you again, Miss Pandora.” Lady Daisy dipped shallowly at the knees, took Fabianus by the arm, and led him from the playroom. She processed with him in silent dignity until they reached the top of the steps, and then an odd sound escaped her.
“My lady?”
She dropped his arm and grasped the newel post. “That child,” she said, bursting into laughter. “That wonderful, precocious, precious child. She hasn’t a single brother, and yet, she’s off to climb the Alps already. Whatever you’re paying Fletcher, it’s not enough.”
“Fletcher’s wages are scandalously generous.”
“The Alps,” Lady Daisy said, waving a hand. “You’d best make sure the windows are all locked, lest she take a notion to conquer the Himalayas.”
She started down the steps while Fabianus contemplated a very great and tragic mess on his back terrace. “You are amused by this?” he asked, following her onto the staircase, though he himself had been tempted to smile a time or two in the past quarter hour. “The child flirts with terrible harm, and you are amused?”
“We all flirt with terrible harm from the moment of our birth, my lord. My husband fell off a horse he’d ridden safely for five years over a stile he’d been jumping since boyhood. Pandora has likely trod the mountainside mantel many times this day. The arrangement of the toy chest and the bookshelves all but begs her to do so. If she took a bad step, she’d probably land on the carpet and get a boo-boo or two, nothing more.”
They reached the landing, though Fabianus felt as if he’d fallen from a great height. “What, pray tell, is a boo-boo?”
“You know the little hurts that give us a pretext for cadging kisses from our parents. A boo-boo, an ouchie. She is a delightful child, my lord. Delightful.”
Fabianus silently begged leave to doubt that Pandora was or ever would be delightful, albeit from a certain perspective, she could be entertaining. Lady Daisy was smiling, though, and that was delightful indeed. He realized, as she went exploring in the library, what his problem was.
Realized again.
When he’d cut such a swath in London as a younger man, he’d occupied himself consoling widows between waltzes with wallflowers. His company had served a purpose and been appreciated by the ladies. He’d known exactly how to go on, until Marianne had completely unhorsed him.
He did not know how to go on with Lady Daisy. She wasn’t like any sort of widow, any sort of woman, he’d met before, and that intrigued him.
She also touched him—hugged him, took his arm, tidied him—and that intrigued him too.
Chapter Four
“I am dithering,” Daisy said, passing Lord Penweather three books. “The Welsh Mountaineer is a novel of recent publication, not for children, but I found it whacking good fun when I was waiting for Kenneth to arrive.”
She crossed to the atlas cabinet, which resembled a clothes press, a stack of many wide, flat drawers made of cedarwood to discourage bugs. His lordship set aside the three books she’d chosen and joined her as she spread Alexander von Humboldt’s Naturgemälde atop the cabinet.
“Papa had a framed version in his study, which I suspect now hangs in the earl’s apartment. I pored over it for hours.”
Lord Penweather took the place at her elbow. “As did I. My aunt sent me one of these when I finished at university. I don’t know as I’ve ever seen such a work of complete genius.”
He leaned closer to the illustration, taking up a quizzing glass from among the several sprinkled about the library. Daisy had expected that Penweather would bear the scent of bay rum, a pleasant, respectable, commonplace fragrance. Instead, he wore a citrus fragrance softened with an undernote of spices. Cinnamon, nutmeg—Daisy couldn’t quite sort them out.