Charles’s last coherent thought before he fell down the stairs was that he would never again be taken in by childish innocence. In a flash they had gone from innocuous, if annoying, innocent children into five murderous terrors bent on his destruction. The youngest boy threw the kitten at his face, scratching his cheek just as another one of the monsters kicked him. A third bit his hand, while the eldest boy and girl shoved him backward until he lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs.
Snarling, furious, and in no little amount of pain, Charles half-fell, half-limped down the remaining flight of stairs, followed by the shrieks and screams of the children as they ran after him. He shoved aside a startled footman who appeared at the bottom of the stairs, flinging the front door open and throwing himself out it, trailing curses and promises of revenge behind him.
Fortunately for his abused body, neither the children nor the footman pursued him. The children stood on the front steps and hurled taunts at him as he limped across the small green that graced the square, but he ignored them, pausing in the shadow of tree to wipe the blood from his cheek.
“They’ll pay, they’ll all pay,” he swore as he gingerly felt around the bite on his hand. The door to Rosse’s house closed with a loud bang. He shook his fist at it. “I’ll see them groveling and begging for mercy before the week is out. She thinks she’s smarter than me, she thinks she can outwit me, well I’ll show her! I’ll have her on her knees before I’m through with her. With all of them! They’ll all feel the weight of my wrath.”
“Having a spot of trouble, are you?” A voice emerged from behind him, deep into the shadow of a nearby rhododendron. “It looks as if you had a less than pleasant send-off.”
Charles spun around, almost jumping from his skin at the man’s voice. His own voice shook as he tried to brazen his way out of the situation. “What? Who…who are you, sir? Come forward where I can see you!”
“I am a friend, I assure you,” the voice said. A shadow flickered, then resolved itself into the figure of a man of middle height and age. “Someone who thinks we might be of mutual help to one another. I sense you have a grievance against Lady Rosse. Perhaps we might have a little chat, you and I, and you can explain the nature of your grievance.”
“Why would I want to do that?” Charles asked, relaxing at the sight of the man’s bland, placid face. Although the stranger wasn’t a gentleman, as he was, his voice was relatively educated and not that of a thug.
“I thought you might want to bend a sympathetic ear to your tale of woe.”
Not likely. Charles wasn’t about to share the ripe goose that was sure to be his. Plum owed him, and he would collect his reward. “I don’t know you, do I? What the devil do you mean accosting me in this fashion? Who are you?”
“I told you,” the man said, smiling. “I’m a friend.”
“You’re no friend of mine,” Charles said with a haughty sniff, straightening his waistcoat.
“Is it not said that my enemy’s enemies must be my friends? I believe we have a shared interest in the Rosse family. Yours, I gather, is to seek revenge on Lady Rosse, while mine…”
“Yes?” Charles said, only moderately interested in the man. He had no time to waste in idle gossip. He had to return home so he could best plan out the next step in his revenge.
“Mine is to see them all destroyed.”
Charles’s head snapped up at that. He eyed the mysterious man for a moment, considering whether or not he might make use of the man, then gestured graciously. “I find that you interest me strangely. Shall we take a little stroll?”
“Indeed we shall,” the man said, smiling again. “Indeed we shall.”
“I’m quite able to walk, Harry.”
“No you’re not. You’re not doing a blessed thing until you’re safely delivered of the babe. Not one single thing, do you understand me? Not one. I shall beat you mercilessly if you attempt even the littlest act.”
Plum kissed Harry’s ear as he carried her up the steps to their home. “But some exercises are beneficial for ladies in my condition.”
“No,” Harry said abruptly, kicking the door until Ben the footman opened it. “No walks, no riding, no driving through the park, nothing. You are to remain off your feet at all time. Exercise of any form is entirely out of the question. I might allow you to lay in a chaise and read if you promise not to exert yourself while you do so.”
“My lord, if I might have a word with you?”
“Not even calisthenics?” Plum whispered in his ear, ignoring the footman trying to get Harry’s attention. Her teeth grazed his earlobe. “Say, perhaps, ones that might be done from the comfort and safety of one’s bed?”
“It is a matter of some importance, my lord.”
Harry paused at the foot of the stairs. He looked at her with narrowed eyes. She rubbed her nose against his. “Do you honestly believe, madam, that my will, my resolute, inflexible, unbending will is so easily swayed?”
“Yes,” she said, all but purring in his arms.
“You know me so well,” he said with that wonderful twinkle in his eyes as he started up the stairs.
“My lord, I would not bother you if it was not a matter of some urgency—” Ben was summarily ignored by both Plum and Harry.
“Papa!”
Both Plum and Harry looked up at the shouts that greeted their arrival.
“Papa, you’ll never guess!” India said as she appeared at the landing.
“—but you should know, my lord, about the incident that happened here earlier.”
“I get to tell it, I’m the one who pushed him down the stairs,” Digger said. The other children followed quickly, swarming Harry and Plum, all of them talking at once.
“I pushed him, too, and I’m the eldest.”
“You’re just a lady, I’m an earl.”
Ben gave it another valiant try. “It was just a short while ago, my lord. I was on duty in the hall, as I have been these past three nights—”
“Children—” Harry said, trying to make himself heard above the din.
“Mama, pet Harry!”
“Papa, Andy bit the man, and I kicked his shin, and he ran away!”
“—when a man ran down the stairs, followed by the children.”
“An earl is nothing compared to being the eldest,” India informed her brother. “The eldest is the most important.”
“One at a time! You can’t all speak at once.” Harry ordered. No one paid him any attention.
Plum giggled, filled to overflowing with love and happiness and hope even in the midst of such a maelstrom. Harry knew the worst about her, and he didn’t care.
“He ruined our surprise, too. Tell him, Anne.”
“My lord, the man appeared to have met with some accident, which, Lord Marston later informed me, was of his and the other children’s doing.”
“Pet Harry, Mama!”
“He did, he ruined our surprise. I didn’t like him.”
“I didn’t like him more than you didn’t like him, Anne!”
“An earl is a title. Being eldest isn’t a title, it’s just a thing.”