Page 5 of Second Chances
“Nurse will be very cross with me if I do not send you up immediately or sooner,” Mr. Benning said, addressing his children. “Say good night to Miss Thompson.”
Georgette said it at some length, and the little boy spoke for the first time.
“Will you come up to kiss us, Papa?” he whispered.
“Wild horses would not stop me,” his father said. “But it will be after I have dined with Miss Thompson, and by then you will both be fast asleep. In the meanwhile, I will kiss you now.”
The little boy scurried over to him, clutched the outsides of his breeches, and raised his face, his lips puckered. Mr. Benning bent to cup his face and kiss him and then tousle his hair, which actually looked more like soft blond down than hair.
“Good night, son,” he said.
“Good night, Papa,” the child said. He darted a look at Eleanor before tucking his chin against his chest and muttering something that might have been good night.
“Good night, Robert,” Eleanor said while Georgette was claiming her kiss from her father. “Good night, Georgette.”
The little girl took her brother’s hand as they left the room.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting for your dinner,” Mr. Benning said. “Please have a seat.”
“Your lordship?” She raised her eyebrows as she sat and he moved to a small side table to pour them each a glass of wine.
“The Earl of Staunton,” he explained, handing her a glass. “You need not my lord me, however. I am quite content to be Michael Benning.”
Why was it, Eleanor wondered, that handsome men seemed to become even more good-looking as they aged while the opposite was true of women? He was solid of build with an elegant figure and dark hair beginning to recede at the temples but looking strangely attractive as it did so. His face, which had probably been purely gorgeous when he was twenty, now had the firmness of character and experience to make it all the more worth looking at. Or so it seemed to her. She had not known him when he was twenty. And she was not usually given to such analysis of a man’s charms. She did not usually dine alone with single gentlemen either. The room seemed suddenly very quiet.
“To storms and the unexpected pleasures they sometimes bring,” he said, seating himself and raising his glass.
“Indeed,” she agreed, raising hers. Was he saying she was an unexpected pleasure brought by the storm? What a very nice compliment!
Georgette, her brother’s hand still clasped in her own, paused at the top of the stairs before proceeding to the room where their nurse would be awaiting them. “Well?” she asked him in an urgent whisper. “What did you think?”
“You really believe she is the one, Georgie?” he asked.
“Oh, I do,” she said with passionate conviction. “I really, really do, Robbie. Did you notice her eyes? They seem to smile all the time. And did you notice that she did not wait for you to make your bow to her? Instead, she agreed with me that it takes all sorts to make a world and said that funny thing about believing you had made your bow in your head. Then she went on to talk about sunshine tomorrow before Papa had a chance to insist that you bow outside your head as well as just in it. I really, really, really think she is the one.”
“Our new mama,” Robert whispered, his eyes wide and dreamy, as though he were testing the thought in his mind. “But does Papa know? And does she know? And what about Miss Everly?”
“If Papa marries Miss Everly,” Georgette said, “I shall run away from home. I swear I will. I’ll go to America and ride across it on a horse until I am so far away no one will find me. Ever. It’s huge, America is, Robbie. If you were to put England down inside it somewhere and Scotland and Wales and Ireland too, no one would ever find them either.”
“Will you take me with you, Georgie?” he asked wistfully. “And can Papa come too?”
“Not if he is married to Miss Everly,” she said. “Though it would be horrid to go without him and never see him again, would it not? We will just have to see that it never happens. She does not like us any more than we like her. At least, she does not like me. And that mother of hers detests us both, even you, probably because you are the heir. Oh, Robbie, Miss Thompson is the one. I just know it. I feel it here.” She smote the left side of her breast with one closed fist. “I think she likes us. Even me, though I talked her head off this afternoon and ate her cakes.”
“But how is it ever going to happen?” he asked, more practical than his sister. “If the sun shines tomorrow, she will go on her way to wherever she is going and we will go on our way to where we are going, and we will never ever see her again. Even England is big, Georgie. I think.”
“I will make a plan,” she promised.
“But what?” he asked.
“I just will,” she said. “I will think hard before I go to sleep. But do you agree with me, Robbie? For it is no good at all if only I want her. I might as well sleep instead of thinking if that is so. We both have to want her more than anyone or anything else in the whole world. Is she the one?”
“Yes,” he said. “She is.”
Chapter 3
Michael had been wondering if he had acted too impulsively in inviting Miss Thompson to dine with him. She was, after all, very clearly a gentlewoman of some refinement. Now, however, he was reassured. She had been kind to the children, and a smile still lurked in her eyes. He felt instantly comfortable with her and found himself wondering why when he had decided to look about him during the Season for a new wife, it was the young ladies upon whom he had turned his attention. He had not considered an older lady, someone closer to him in age and experience. It was not as if he needed more children, though some people might say it was his duty to produce a spare or two to go with his heir.
“You have delightful children, Lord Staunton,” Miss Thompson said after the innkeeper and a maid had cleared the table and set it again for two.
