A Gentleman By Any Other Name (3 page)

Chance was stung into explaining himself. “I would have one of the maids bring Alice to me when I wished to see her. I didn't really know much about Mrs. Jenkins. Not until last week, when I informed the woman we'd be leaving for Becket Hall and she would remain there with Alice and I realized that she was totally—oh, the devil with it! Who are you to question me?”

Julia's anger left her as self-preservation raised its not very noble but definitely necessary head. “I'm sorry, sir. I shouldn't have taken it upon myself to dismiss Mrs. Jenkins. And I have no right to badger you about your…your arrangements concerning Alice. In my defense, I can only say that it has been a long day. A very long day.”

As it had been for him. “And about to become longer, Miss Carruthers,” Chance said wearily, “for we leave for Becket Hall at six tomorrow morning, a very convenient leave-taking or else I would replace you. However, you, madam, having routed Mrs. Jenkins, are now in charge of preparing my daughter for the journey. Oh, one thing more. May I say how gratified I am to see that Alice now has a tiger to defend her, although I would remind you that she needs no defense from
me.
And now, if you don't mind, I believe your place is in the nursery, while mine is here, getting myself dedicatedly drunk.”

“Yes, sir. Forgive me, sir. Good evening to you, sir,” Julia said, curtsying to the man when she'd really much rather be boxing his ears. She then quickly swept past him and into the hallway, where Gibbons, with a slight nod of his head and shifting of his eyes, directed her toward the back of the house and the servant stairs.

T
HE JOURNEY BEGAN AS
did many journeys in England—amid a damp drizzle and accompanied by considerable fog.

Julia had roused Alice at five, only long enough to direct the child to the water closet and then wash her face and hands before pushing her reluctant limbs into a short blue gown Julia considered suitable for travel and a fur-trimmed blue coat with matching bonnet. She then carried the child down three flights of stairs and hoisted the once-again-sleeping princess into the traveling coach and wrapped her in a coach blanket.

Six o'clock of the morning, indeed! Did the man possess no sense at all?

“Watch her, please, Bettyann,” Julia asked of the housemaid who had followed behind Julia carrying Buttercup and a small portmanteau Julia had filled with items she considered necessary for a child's comfort inside the coach. “I'll only be a minute.”

Julia paused a moment to look at the fog that all but obscured the street. At home there was nearly always a morning mist, but it was white and smelled like fresh grass and the sea. Here the fog was yellow, dirty. She believed she could actually taste it. “Why did I ever think I would care for London?” she asked herself, then hiked up her skirts with more of an eye toward speed than decorum and headed up the steps once more, for she'd left her bonnet, gloves and pelisse in the nursery.

“Here now,” Chance Becket said warningly, grabbing at her shoulders as she all but cannoned into him, her gaze directed on the steps. “There's no need for such a rush, is there?”

Julia looked up at the man, struck yet again by his fine good looks and, this morning, the hint of real humor in his eyes. He was dressed for travel, a gray many-caped greatcoat hanging from his broad shoulders, the snow-white foam of his neck cloth visible at his throat, and he wore a matching gray curly-brimmed beaver hat.

Tall, handsome, his smile almost boyish even while the sparkle in his eyes told her he was far from a boy. Julia sent up a short prayer that she wouldn't disgrace herself by swallowing her own tongue, drat the man.

“You said six o'clock, sir,” she reminded him, doing her best to ignore the heat of his hands that could be felt through the thin stuff of her gown.

“Ah, so this is not Miss Julia Carruthers, is it? You only look like the woman. The Julia Carruthers I met yesterday would not only have snapped her fingers at my reasonable request but also told me she'd be ready to travel when she was ready to travel and not a moment before. I do believe I like this Julia Carruthers much more.”

“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!”

“Can't do that, missy. We're behind-times as it is.”

“I
said,
stop this coach! Miss Alice is ill!”

“Oh, blimey,” the groom said nervously. “Billy, Mr. Becket won't like that.”

“And yet Mr. Becket isn't down here, holding a pot for Miss Alice to be sick in!” Julia shouted. “If you're going to be frightened of anyone,
Billy,
it should be me, as soon as I can get my hands on you! Are you
aiming
for every hole in the road?”

There was no answer from Billy or the groom, but Julia could feel the coach slowing, its bumps and jiggles, if anything, becoming even more pronounced. But at last the coach stopped.

“I'm going to be sick again, Julia,” Alice said, almost apologizing.

Julia scrambled to the child, opening the off door as she did so, and pulled Alice rather unceremoniously toward the opening. Holding her by the shoulders, she said, “Just let it all go onto the ground, sweetheart. I'll hold you tight and you just be sick, all right?”

Alice's answer was a rather guttural, heaving noise, followed closely by a few startled male curses…which was when Julia realized that Chance Becket had dismounted and come to see why the coach had stopped.

“God's teeth, woman, you could give a man a little warning!”

“Or I could wish little Alice's aim were better,” Julia muttered, but very quietly.

Alice had more than emptied her small belly now, and Julia once more eased her against the seat, handing her a clean handkerchief. “Stay here, sweetheart, and don't cry. I'll handle—speak to your papa.”

Grabbing the brass pot with one hand, Julia kicked down the coach steps and made her way, pot first, out of the coach and onto the ground. She spied the coachman, a small, painfully thin man of indeterminate years who, she had noticed, walked with the same rolling motion of a seaman more used to ships than dry land. If he were to apply to her for her opinion on his choice of employment, she would be more than pleased to tell him leaving the sea for a coachman's seat had not been an inspired one.

“Billy,” Chance said. “You have a reason for stopping, I'll assume?”

“I'll answer that, Mr. Becket. Deal with this,
Billy,
and go to sleep tonight blessing your guardian angel that I haven't dumped its contents over your head,” she said, biting out the words, all but tossing the pot at the coachman, who was suddenly looking a little green himself.

“Why is Alice ill?”

Julia had to unclench her teeth before she could answer what had to be one of the most ignorant questions ever posed by a man. “The pitching of the coach, Mr. Becket. A child's stomach isn't always up to three full hours of such motion. And my stomach has expressed a similar wish as Miss Alice's, so if you'll excuse me?”

Chance stepped back as Julia looked rather wildly toward the line of trees, then all but bolted into them until he could no longer see the blue of her cloak.