Candace Camp - An Unexpected Pleasure

The twins were engaged in feeding their various animals, the dog, Rufus, beside them, gazing hopefully into the cages. Con and Alex turned at the sound of their entrance, and broke into smiles when they saw Megan and Theo.

“Theo! Miss Henderson!” they chorused.

Alex set the cup of fruits and nuts inside the large birdcage and closed the door, and the boys approached them.

“We’ve already fed the boa,” Alex said apologetically. “I’m sorry. If we had known you would come up here, we would have waited.”

“That’s all right,” Megan replied candidly. While she had grown up with boys and their variety of pets, watching a snake swallow several live mice did not appeal to her. “But you could introduce me to your other animals, if you like.”

“But first,” Theo put in, “I’ve brought Miss Henderson up here to tell you that she is going to be your new tutor.”

The two boys stared at her in surprise, but she was pleased to see that their surprise was quickly replaced by excitement.

“Wizard!” Alex exclaimed.

“You’ll be ever so much better a tutor!” Con added. “You’re not at all stuffy.”

“They usually are,” Alex explained.

“Well, I shall try my best not to be,” Megan assured them. “Now, why don’t we look at your animals! That’s a beautiful parrot.”

She pointed to the vivid red-and-blue bird sitting on its perch of a dead branch inside its large cage. It was busily cracking nuts with its powerful beak, but it paused to turn its head and regard her with one bright eye.

Dropping the nut in its beak, the parrot let out a loud squawk. “Hello!”

“Hello,” Megan answered, going over to him.

“Wellie. Treat. Wellie. Treat.” The bird began to shift from one claw to the other on its perch, turning its head this way and that to watch Megan.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“Wellington. Everyone calls him Wellie,” Con answered, coming up beside her.

“Don’t put your finger through the bars,” Alex warned, joining them. “Wellington sometimes takes a nip at one.”

Behind them, Theo let out a snort. “Sometimes? Without fail is more like it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful bird,” Megan said. “Where is it from?”

“The Solomon Islands,” Theo answered, coming up behind her. “I sent him to the boys, a fact for which much of my family never stops blaming me.”

“It’s not Wellington’s fault he gets out sometimes,” Con protested. “He only does what’s natural to him.”

“That’s true. A strong argument for leaving him in the jungle,” Theo responded. “There he can fly about all he pleases. I don’t really believe in taking animals from their habitat, but sometimes I find it hard to resist—particularly in this case, where I found him already caged in a market.”

“We’re awfully glad you did,” Con told him. “And Hercules, as well.”

“Hercules?” Megan asked, raising her brows.

“The boa,” Con replied, nodding his head toward the thick snake curled sleeping in another large cage.

“Come, see the others. Here are the turtle and frog.”

Megan let herself be led from cage to terrarium to cage to aquarium, admiring a variety of fish, fowl and reptiles, and even a rabbit and a fuzzy creature that the twins informed her was a guinea pig.

“You must be very responsible,” Megan told the boys.

They looked at her, slightly surprised. It was obviously not an appellation that they were accustomed to having attributed to them.

“Taking care of all these animals,” she explained.

“Oh.” The boys glanced at one another, and Alex said with a smile, “Yes, I suppose we are, actually.”

“Did you hear that, Theo?” Con asked, turning to his older brother.

“I certainly did.” Theo smiled at Megan. “I think Mother may have found the perfect tutor for you boys this time.”

Megan felt warmed all through by Theo’s smile. She could feel a blush rising up in her cheeks, and she looked away from him quickly.

It was crazy that she should react to him this way, she thought. Bizarre. She needed to get away and think this thing through by herself. Everything was different from what she had expected. She had not really thought of what she expected the Duke of Broughton’s family to be, but certainly it was not what she had seen of them. Theo’s sister, the twins, the duchess were warm and friendly, people who, if she had met them in any other circumstances, she would have liked immediately.

Even in these circumstances, she liked them, Megan had to admit. Of course, they were not responsible for what Theo had done. It was not beyond the realm of reason that they should be bright or concerned or humorous. Any family could turn out one bad specimen. Theo was not necessarily like his family.

The problem, though, Megan knew, was that Theo did seem like the rest of his family. He was charming and handsome and possessed a smile that she could feel all through her.

That was what she had to adjust to, she knew. She had to prepare herself to deal not with a cold and obvious villain, but with a man whose wickedness was concealed beneath a pleasant, appealing mask. She should have known that it would be too easy, too simplistic, for Moreland to be the way she had pictured him. After all, had not her own brother sent them a letter shortly after he joined up with Moreland’s party in which he had declared Moreland a “capital fellow”?

The man was deceptive, and she had to guard against his deception. She had to guard against her own feelings. She could not let her liking for Theo’s family color her judgment. Nor could she make the mistake of taking Theo Moreland at face value.

To succeed on her quest, Megan knew that she must be as deceptive as Moreland himself was. She had to pretend to like him, to be fooled by his easy charm, and all the while, inside, she must be like iron.

She had been in worse situations than this, she reminded herself, had faced worse enemies. She would get through this just as she had gotten through those other investigations, with determination and good sense. She had to. She owed it to Dennis.

“I should go now,” she said, and gave the boys a smile, then turned one that was less genuine toward Theo. “I have a great many things to do in order to get ready.”

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” Alex asked.

“No. I am afraid it will have to be the day after tomorrow. There are certain tasks that I must complete first.”

Like talking to the other men who had accompanied Theo Moreland and her brother on their trek up the Amazon. She had not really expected to be hired on here—and certainly not so quickly. She would have to do her interviews with Andrew Barchester and Julian Coffey tomorrow.

She knew that once she began working at Broughton House, she would have very little time on her own to interview people. Servants rarely got more than one day every two weeks off from work, and she suspected that it was probably even more difficult for governesses, who were probably expected to be with their charges every day, even if there were no studies pursued that day. It might be somewhat better for a tutor of boys as old as the twins, who did not need constant watching over as younger children did, but she could not count on that.

The boys insisted on coming down to see her off, a fact for which Megan was grateful. She frankly did not want to have to spend any more time alone in Theo’s company. It was altogether too unsettling.

Alex and Con kept up a steady stream of chatter as they went down the stairs, eliminating any necessity for Megan or Theo to speak.

She turned to the others to say a quick goodbye at the front door. Theo extended his hand to her, and it was impossible not to take it. Megan’s breath quickened as his hand engulfed hers. His palm was warm and a little rough, surprising her. She would not have expected an aristocrat to have worked enough to form calluses. Moreland must have been involved somehow in the menial tasks of his explorations. She had always pictured him riding along on some conveyance or other, with plenty of native servants to do all the work.