Page 38 of Brave New Earl (The Way to a Lord's Heart 1)

She returned to her bedchamber, expecting every minute to see Geoffrey peering reproachfully around a corner. She reached safety without encountering anyone, however. “Tab?” she called as she closed the door behind her. A kitten seemed just the thing right now.

There was no response, and no sign of the little animal.

“Have you disappeared into your mysterious hiding place again?” She sighed and let it go. He’d emerge eventually to use the sand box and eat the food still in his bowl.

But he didn’t.

The day passed. Not ready to face Lord Furness, Jean wrote several letters and read for a while. When Tab didn’t reappear, she searched the room again, with no more success than the last time. Finally, when dinnertime loomed, she went downstairs to inquire.

“He was there when I made up the room this morning,” said a young housemaid. She smiled. “He likes to pounce on the sheets when I shake them out.”

“You’re sure he didn’t get out when you left?” asked Jean.

“No, miss. I was careful.”

Jean continued along the lower corridor to the kitchen, busy with preparations for the meal. Everyone there disavowed any knowledge of Tab. Overhearing, Mrs. McGinnis came out of her room and said the same. The cook, impatient at the interruption of her work, sniffed. “I’d look to young Master Geoffrey. When things go missing in this house, it’s usually him.”

Jean took this as prejudice. She walked through the lower floors of the house, calling softly for Tab, but got no response. Finally, she climbed the stairs to the nursery and asked her question there.

“I haven’t seen him, miss,” said Lily the nursery maid, who sat at a worktable with a pile of mending. “Have you seen Miss Saunders’s kitten, Geoffrey?”

The boy, making a tower with wooden blocks on the floor before the fire, didn’t look up.

A sound escaped the blanket tepee. It sounded remarkably like amew.

“What was that?” asked Jean.

It came again, muffled but unmistakable. Jean walked over to the improvised tepee and pulled back a flap. A closed basket sat inside, the source of the mewing. One of Tab’s paws poked through a narrow opening in the fibers. Quickly, Jean bent, opened the basket, and lifted Tab out. She straightened with the kitten in her arms.

Geoffrey hit out at his construction, knocking the blocks helter-skelter over the floor. One hit the fire screen and bounced back to strike his knee. He showed no reaction.

Lily sprang up. “Lord a’ mercy, what have you been up to?”

“I wanted to play with him,” mumbled Geoffrey sullenly.

“But you weren’t playing with him,” Jean said. She couldn’t keep the emotion out of her voice. “You shut him up in a prison and left him.”

Geoffrey stuck out his tongue at her.

“Geoffrey!” Lily came to stand over him, hands on hips. She didn’t present a particularly authoritative figure. “Beg pardon at once. You told a lie, too. You know what Tom said about—”

“Didn’t! Didn’t speak!” The boy jumped up. “This ismyhouse. The kitten was born near here. It should belong tome, not her.” He ran from the room.

Lily sighed. She looked quite dispirited. “Sorry, miss.”

“I spoke too sharply to him.” The kitten clawed at Jean’s hand. “I’m going to take Tab back to my room.” She carried the squirming animal downstairs, feeling remorseful. She should have moderated her tone with Geoffrey; he was very young. But the truth was, she would never react well to the thought of creatures shut in small spaces.

Tab visited his sand box, dug into his food bowl with gusto, and retired to the window seat for a thorough wash. When Jean went down to dinner soon after, she used the key that had been lying on the mantelpiece and locked her bedchamber door.

Word of Tab’s kidnapping and retrieval had reached her companions. “I’m glad your kitten has been found,” said Lord Macklin as they sat down to dinner.

“And sorry that Geoffrey took him,” said Lord Furness. “He is confined to quarters and will apologize to you tomorrow.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“It is. He’d been told the cat was yours.”

“Perhaps, you know, after he saw us in the attic…” Jean faltered under his uncle’s interested gaze.

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