Page 10 of Brave New Earl (The Way to a Lord's Heart 1)

“Of course, milord.”

“You might have left him and gone on. He had nothing to do with you. Or you could have taken him along on your wanderings, I suppose.”

For the first time, Tom looked disturbed. “That woulda been wrong.”

“Why?” Benjamin asked.

“Well.” Tom frowned, seeming to grope for words. “Young Geoffrey ain’t like me. He’s a…regular person. Got a home and family. Belongs here.”

Miss Saunders made a sound. Benjamin ignored it. “So regular that he paints himself red and threatens people with a dangerous weapon?” she asked.

“I cannotsee how he got holt of that thing,” Tom complained. “He knows such stuff is not allowed. But that boy can be slippery as any eel I ever saw. He gets up in the night betimes, when you think he’s sound asleep.”

The nursery maid nodded confirmation of this. “I sleep right in the room, but he slips past me. I can’t stay awake all night. And then when I go to dress him in the morning, his feet are black with dust. His hair full of cobwebs sometimes. When I ask how he got so dirty, he just laughs at me.”

Briefly, Benjamin wished they would all just go away and let him sink back into peaceful gloom. Only yesterday, he’d enjoyed quiet solitude in this chamber, unaware of the chaos looming. But the gimlet-eyed Miss Saunders wouldn’t just disappear. Nor would his interested uncle, who appeared to be stifling a laugh, damn his eyes. And clearly, something had to be done about Geoffrey.

“I can go first thing in the morning if you want, my lord.” Tom was genial and respectful and apparently undaunted by the prospect of homelessness.

The housekeeper and the maid looked apprehensive. Benjamin thought his uncle’s laugh would escape this time. He didn’t check Miss Saunders’s expression. “We’ll leave things as they are for now,” he said. “While I, er, take stock.” And tried to form a plan for dealing with his son.

The nursery maid slumped in relief. Mrs. McGinnis almost smiled. She touched Tom’s arm and ushered the two of them out. To Benjamin’s surprise, his uncle went with them. A blessed silence fell over the room.

Except… Miss Saunders sat on the sofa, hands still folded in her lap, and a comprehensive critique of his character on her tongue, no doubt. She certainly looked disapproving, and primed to speak, and…really rather pretty. A curl of brown hair had escaped its pins and fallen over her brow, as if to point out the fine bones of her face. Her eyes crackled with intelligence and conviction, that coppery sparkle very much in evidence. If her lips hadn’t been pressed together—to hold back disparaging remarks, no doubt—they would have been beguilingly full, a lovely rose pink.

A vagrant spark illuminated Benjamin’s inner gloom. He found himself moving and then sitting beside her. “Well, have at it,” he said.

“What?”

“Tell me what a dreadful person I am.”

Jean had been thinking something like that, but his urging and his expression gave her pause. The melancholy cast of his handsome face reminded her of an image of Sir Galahad she’d seen in a stained-glass window. Dark lashes made his blue-gray eyes startlingly vivid. It was disconcerting to have him so close. From inches away, there was no denying the power of his presence. But nothing excused his cavalier treatment of his son. “Well, it’s even worse than I expected,” she said.

“It?”

Briefly she was lost in the intensity of his gaze. “Geoffrey.” She must stay focused; she had a mission. “Your son, Geoffrey. Who is growing up completely unsupervised, apparently, except by a vagabond.”

“That seems a harsh description for young Tom,” he replied.

To herself, Jean admitted that the boy had been likable—and oddly reassuring somehow. As if he could definitely be trusted. But that didn’t excuse the situation. “He isn’t a proper teacher. Geoffrey needs to learn responsibility and the skills to fulfill his future position in life. What if he decided follow Tom’s example and wander off across the country?”

“Like a ‘red Indian’?” asked her host. He smiled.

A tremor ran through Jean. A simple change in expression shouldnotbe able to alter a man so completely. That wasn’t credible. Or fair. Lord Furness wasn’t warm or sympathetic. She’d seen how he was, how he treated his child. But his smile was like a sudden burst of sunshine through that stained-glass window she’d pictured. He was illuminated, and the result left her breathless.

At a loss, she fell back on stored outrage. “You find that prospect amusing?”

“No. Of course not.”

His smile died. Jean dismissed her sharp pang of regret.

“You are unmarried,” he said.

He had no right to examine her in that searching way.Shehad no reason to feel flustered. “Obviously. As I told you, I amMissSaunders.”

“A spinster, in short. What do you know about rearing children?”

“I know what everyone knows. That they require love andattention.” The chocolate-box boy drifted through her mind again. Those truisms would have sufficed for him. Would they for the untamed Geoffrey?

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