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“—behave…Well, drat it all!” Plum stared in mingled dismay and annoyance as the door slammed shut behind McTavish. Before she had a chance to say anything else, the door opened again and the youngest of her new brood stuck his head back into the room.
“Kitten,” he reminded her.
Plum sighed, then felt her lips twitch as Thom’s giggle turned to full-fledged whoops of laughter.
“Come along, Aunt. I’ll walk with you and McTavish to the stables. One of the stable cats has a litter that she’s about ready to part with.”
Plum thought about sighing again, but decided that too much sighing was the sign of a weak intellect, and she was only now coming to realize that she couldn’t afford to show even the slightest sign of weakness before the children. Harry had left them in her hands, so she would just have to find the proper way to deal with them and make them behave. “I am their friend, I am their friend,” she repeated to herself as she set her memorandum book on the table at the end of the couch and shook out her skirts.
McTavish stood watching her with hope, one pudgy little lip prepared to commence pouting if his objective of a kitten was thwarted. She smiled at him and held out her hand. “Shall we go find you a kitten, then?”
McTavish suffered her holding his hand, and led the way out of the house and down to the stables. On the way Plum made a mental note to send a letter to Cordelia asking her for tips and tricks for dealing successfully with the younger generation, and began to plan ways she would win over the children’s hearts.
Harry entered the dining room and looked in surprise at the table set for nine. He was used to dining by himself or with Temple. The room was empty of all but Juan and Ben the first footman, both of whom were laying out a dining service Harry hadn’t seen since Beatrice passed away. “Are we having a dinner party?”
Juan sent him a look filled with sympathy, and adjusted a lead crystal goblet infinitesimally to the left. Say what you will about Juan — and Harry had heard many things from every female he employed — the man knew how to set a table. “The Lady Plump, she says you are to have the diablitos to dinner.”
“Little…oh, the little devils.” Harry gave a wry smile of acknowledgment, glancing quickly at the dark red, water-stained wallpaper of the dining room. “Well, it might be for the best, Plum will want to redecorate anyway. The children dining in here will no doubt hasten her along that task.”
Juan snorted something that Harry interpreted as disagreement. He pushed his spectacles up and tried to look like a supportive, confident husband. “We just have to trust that she knows best about these things. Where is she, do you know?”
Juan shrugged. “That is what I do not know. She was here an hour ago, telling us that we must set places for the diablitos, and then she left.”
Harry tugged at his lower lip as he thought, then left the dining room. Perhaps Plum was having a rest before dinner. Perhaps she was spending a quiet hour in the room he had given over as her sitting room. Perhaps she was with Thom or India and Anne. Perhaps she was lying naked in his bed, waves of ebony hair surrounding her, waiting to entrap him in their silken strands…He shook that last image out of his head and went to search for his wife.
He found her locked in one of the gardening sheds, filthy, hungry, and absolutely furious.
“Harry!” she shrieked when he opened the door to the shed, and fell into his arms in a most gratifying manner, trembling and shaking with what he assumed was horror and shock.
Once again his wife showed her unexpected depths.
“Where are they?” she growled, pushing himself back from his chest. “Where are those little…little…”
“Devils?”
“Yes! Exactly! Devils! What a very good word that is. Apt, too. Very apt.”
She was magnificent in her fury, inky hair tumbling down from its once tidy braid, her eyes flashing with promised retribution, her cheeks pink with emotion. And she was all his, every last delectable morsel of her.
Morsels he was perilously close to losing unless he calmed her down and made her believe the children did not routinely lock people into garden sheds as pranks.
“They have been sent to the nursery without their suppers.”
“Good,” Plum snarled, and pushed past him to freedom, trying to tidy herself as they walked through the overgrown garden back to the house. “They don’t deserve the nice dinner I planned. They locked me in there, Harry, trapped me with all the spiders and beetles and slithery things.”
Harry tutted, and murmured sympathetic noises as he slid his hand around her waist, ostensibly to help her walk, but really because he just liked touching her.
“McTavish, the very same McTavish that I had just given a kitten to, lured me into the shed, then escaped out through the narrow space in the corner as the others locked me in.”
“Ungrateful little monster.”
“They’re all ungrateful. They spurned my overtures of friendship, positively spurned them!”
“They don’t deserve you, they really don’t,” Harry said soothingly, then could have bitten his tongue. The last thought he wanted to put in her mind was leaving him.
Plum froze for a moment at his words, then resumed her way to the house at a slower pace, one given more to deep thought. “Perhaps I was overhasty in my judgment. They’re not bad children, not really.”
Harry thought it best not to comment on that since he was a fairly honest man, one who disliked having to lie unless it was absolutely necessary.
“Truly, I believe they are more spirited than anything else,” Plum said thoughtfully, the fire in her lovely dark eyes dying down to a mere smolder. “Spirit in children is something to be hoped for.”
“As it is in a wife.”
Plum turned her big velvety eyes upon him. “Yeeees,” she said slowly, a faint frown between those glorious straight brows. She bit her lower lip, sending a flash of heat to Harry’s groin as her small white teeth toyed with that delightful little pink lip. “I wouldn’t want you to think I wasn’t up to the task of mothering such high-spirited children. I am, I was just taken by surprise by their—”
“Nefarious plot to frighten you?” he suggested, having no false impression of just what were the children’s true intentions.
“—cunning ability to create a detailed plot and see it through to its logical end,” Plum finished with a small smile of triumph as they approached the house.
Harry held open the one working French door that led from the terrace to the room he had turned over to his wife. “Cunning…well, yes, I suppose that’s one way of describing them. Plum”—he grabbed her hand as she was about to sweep through the room. Her fingers tightened on his as he stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, musing idly that it had been a very long time indeed when he had been aroused simply by holding a woman’s hand—“you need not protect them, you know. I have already informed them that they will wait supperless until you have named their punishment for this afternoon’s activities.”
“Punishment?” Plum’s frown increased as she worried her lip.
He nodded. “You can be assured that whatever discipline you desire for them will be carried out without regard to their entreaties for leniency or compassion.”
“Discipline? You wish for me to discipline them?” she asked, her voice a little on the squeaky side.
“Of course. You were the one they injured, thus you must mete out justice. I’ve found if you don’t look them in the eye when you pronounce their punishment, it helps. None of them seem to have difficulty summoning up tears, and they can be quite effective when combined with quivering lips.”
“Tears,” Plum repeated, a throb in her voice.
Harry wanted more than ever to kiss her at the sound. Could there be a woman more perfect for him? He allowed himself to kiss the back of her hand twice before opening the door to the hall, escorting her to the bottom of the curved oak staircase. “Just don’t allow yourself to be swayed when they throw themselves at your feet and beg for mercy.” Plum made an inarticulate noise in the back of her throat as he released her hand and started toward the dining room. “I will tell Juan to remove the children’s places—”
“No!”
Harry stopped, startled by the vehemence in her objection. “No? Surely you do not wish to reward the little bu…devils by allowing them the honor of dining with us?”
Plum took a deep breath (an act he much appreciated considering the tight nature of her bodice) and clutched her hands together in mute appeal. “Please, Harry. I do so very much want us to be a family, and I thought when it was convenient, when no one is dining with us, the children could join us for dinner. My parents often let my sister and me have dinner with them, and I have many fond memories of those times. Please, please let the children join us.”
Harry frowned, about to tell her that she was mistress of the house, and as such she did not need his approval regarding who she wanted at dinner, but stopped when she came forward and took his hands in hers.
“I promise you they will be well-behaved and no trouble. I’m sure they are very sorry for their little joke on me, and I hate to see them castigated over something so silly. Please let them join us. They won’t be any bother, you’ll see.”
Harry disengaged a hand and ran his thumb over Plum’s abused lower lip, every muscle in his body, every sinew, every iota of his being urging him to sweep her up in his arms and carry her off to his bed. He closed his eyes for a moment against the temptation she presented, fighting for control, one part of his mind amazed at how strongly he was reacting to her. It must be due to the accumulated loneliness (not to mention celibacy) of the past five years. There was no other reason he could be so violently attracted to a woman he’d met just a few days before.
Evidently Plum interpreted his silence not as a struggle of his mind against his body but as a disbelief in her abilities as a mother, for she clutched his hand between hers, squeezing it as she whispered, “Please.”