Kasey Michaels - A Gentleman By Any Other Name

“You have considered the fact that a five-year-old child travels with you, haven’t you, sir? That a long day and fresh horseflesh along the way could get you to the coast by very late this evening, but that such a punishing pace could be harmful to this child?”

“To Alice, Miss Carruthers. I do remember my child’s name,” Chance said, bristling. If he only had time to replace this infuriating woman, he would be a happy man. Ainsley would love her belligerent spirit, though. Since Chance was all but dumping Alice into his adopted father’s lap, he might as well sweeten the pot…a thought that, rather than warm him, sent a chill straight to the bone. “She’ll be fine.”

“Of course, sir. You wouldn’t have it any other way,” Julia said, then rolled her eyes the moment she was past him and on her way up to the nursery again, and hang the fact that she’d opted for the main staircase. “Idiot,” she grumbled, hiking her skirts once more before she began the climb.

She halted on the second-floor landing as Gibbons directed two footmen who were carrying baggage on their shoulders toward the servant stairs, then looked down the front staircase, assured herself she was alone.

Wetting her lips, and with one more quick glance over her shoulder, she then gave in to what her father had termed her most besetting sin. She tiptoed down the hallway, into the bedchamber that had to belong to Chance Becket.

She didn’t know precisely why she wanted to see the chamber, unless she hoped to glimpse something of the man there. And if that was the case, she was instantly disappointed.

The man lived like a Spartan, the large chamber nearly devoid of any ornamentation save a few nondescript paintings on the walls. His brushes and many personal items were, of course, already on their way downstairs to the traveling coach, but there was something so empty, so impersonal about the room, that Julia wrapped her arms around her as if to fight off a chill.

“Lost your way, Miss Carruthers?”

Chance didn’t know whether to be angry or amused when she jumped, gave out a small startled squeal before turning about to face him, her eyes wide in her ashen face.

“I…I thought only to be certain that all of the baggage has been removed. And…and it has.” She lowered her head and took a step forward, but he stepped to his right, blocking her way. “Excuse me, sir.”

“You’re very efficient, Miss Carruthers,” Chance said, deciding, yes, he’d much rather be amused. “I vow, I’ve discovered a rare diamond and taken her into my employ. Has my valet packed up my tooth powder, or haven’t you inspected my dressing room as yet? Oh, and the drawers? Have you checked them. You know, the drawers containing my most personal items of clothing?”

Julia gave it up and just sighed. “Oh, all right, so I was poking my nose where it doesn’t belong and you caught me out at it. You’re delighted to have caught me, and I’m sorry you did. I merely wanted to see if there was something I could learn about you that might help me in understanding…” She took a breath and said what she had thought. “How do you live without things?”

Chance’s humor was rapidly dissipating now. “Excuse me?”

“Things, sir. Personal things. My father had a collection of shaving brushes with decorated handles he was fond of and an entire rack of strangely shaped pipes he’d collected. They’re gone now, of necessity sold, but he always kept them in his chamber where he could see them. And some shells he’d gathered and a small portrait of his sister and…and you have nothing. The maids must be quite pleased, as dusting your few bits of uncluttered furniture couldn’t take but a moment.”

Chance looked about his fairly cavernous bedchamber as if he’d never seen it before this moment. It was a bedchamber, somewhere to sleep. Beatrice had overseen the decoration of the rest of the house but had left his chamber relatively untouched. And so had he. Clearly Julia Carruthers seemed to think this unnatural.

“There are the paintings,” he pointed out, stung into defending himself.

“Yes, there are. Trees and grass and hills. And a pond. Where are they located?”

What a ridiculous question. Why didn’t he have an answer? He’d been living with these paintings for over six years. Chance coughed into his fist. “Located? I don’t know. My late wife was raised in Devonshire. That seems as good a place as any for trees and hills and ponds, don’t you think?”

“Having lived my life next door to Romney Marsh, where hills and trees are both at a premium, I confess I really couldn’t say. You’ve nothing of Romney Marsh or the sea here, do you, even though you were raised there?”

This conversation had gone on long enough. “I lived there, Miss Carruthers. There’s a difference. And only from an age not much younger than you are now, with the majority of my time being spent away at school. There, are you quite satisfied now? Or is there anything else you’d wish to know about or poke at before we’re able to be on our way?” He made a point of pulling his timepiece from his waistcoat pocket and opening it.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Julia decided, knowing she couldn’t be much more embarrassed than she already was at being discovered in her employer’s bedchamber. And thankfully it was much too late for him to fling a five-pound note at her and send her on her way. “The portrait over the mantel in the drawing room. Your wife, sir? Alice looks very little like her, although that may change as she grows.”

“My question was meant as an insult, Miss Carruthers, not an invitation. But since you probably know that and asked your question anyway, I can tell you we meant for another portrait, Alice posing with her, but Beatrice never seemed to find the time to—We’re done here, Miss Carruthers,” Chance snapped out tightly, then turned on his heel and left the chamber.

Julia lingered a few moments longer—just until she could hear his heels on the marble stairs over the rapid beating of her own heart—then raced to the nursery to snatch up the remainder of her belongings.

When she returned, breathless, to the street, it was to see she’d been correct, that her new employer had chosen to ride out of London on the large red horse she’d earlier seen saddled and tied to the second coach.

Which was just as well. She really wasn’t ready to face the man again and probably wouldn’t be for some time. She could only hope that he would have forgiven her inexcusable behavior before their first stop along the road. During which time, she promised herself, she would practice dedicating herself to being subservient and uninterested and totally uncurious about anyone or anything other than performing her assigned duties without bothering the man again. Cross her heart and hope to spit.

“So much for setting impossible goals,” Julia muttered not three hours later as she held Alice’s head while the child was sick into the ugly but efficient chamber pot that Julia had found beneath her seat in the coach. They’d stopped along the way, but only briefly, to change horses.

“I don’t like coaches,” Alice said a few moments later as Julia wiped the child’s mouth with a handkerchief. “I want it to stop. I want it to stop now, please, Julia.”

“And stop it will, I promise.” Julia eased Alice back against the velvet squabs and returned to her own seat, which was no mean feat, as the roadway below them must have been attacked by a tribe of wild men with picks and shovels intent on destroying it, and she was half bounced onto the floor twice.

Thinking words she could not say within Alice’s hearing, she then opened the small square door high above the rear-facing seat. Pressing her cheek against the coach wall, she could see the legs of the coach driver and the groom riding up beside him. “You, coachman!” she called out. “Stop the coach!”