“If the girls have riding lessons—which they’ll need, then you’ll want to join them.” Dorothy didn’t leave any room for argument. “And an opera cloak is an utter necessity if I decided you should accompany me to the theatre—or even to a soiree. Humor me, Caro. The only child I ever raised was Merrick, and shopping for a young man is nowhere near as entertaining. I’m enjoying myself, so stop complaining and help decide which dress you’ll wear this evening to the MacKays’ dinner party. I think the sapphire velvet, don’t you? Or would you prefer the bronze taffeta?”
Caroline looked at the two evening gowns, which each required minimal modification—a tuck at the waist and an inch or so off the hem. Neither operation would take much time at all on the newest automated alteration machine. Caroline stayed far from the device as she chose between the two gowns. “The blue.” Not that the bronze wasn’t prettier, but the blue velvet showed far less skin, which was still a considerable bit more than Caroline was comfortable with. “And the paisley shawl to go with it, perhaps?” Lord knew she’d freeze to death without something to cover her shoulders.
“Excellent choice.” Dorothy beamed, lifting up the soft wool, patterned in ruby, gold and sapphire. “Now, we must go. You still need a hat, gloves and slippers to match.”
“Of course.” Caroline managed to keep her groan internal. Once they were on the sidewalk outside, though, she muttered, “I feel like one of Nell’s dolls.”
Dorothy simply laughed.
Merrick paced at the bottom of the stairs waiting for Dorothy and Miss Bristol. Why on Earth had Gideon gone and invited Merrick’s governess to a dinner party? While Gideon didn’t have enough innate power to be a Knight like his father or older brother, he should have still possessed enough to be immune to her unwitting faery enchantment. That meant his interest in Miss Bristol was genuine, at least. Before the night was over, Merrick would know if it was honorable as well. The woman was under his protection, after all.
Dorothy came down the steps first, in one of her usual severe, dark-toned gowns, but still managing to look elegant. Her grin, though, was as light-hearted and impish as Merrick had seen it in years.
“What are you up to, aunt?” He knew her too well. When she smiled like that, there was certainly mischief involved. “And what’s keeping Caro—Miss Bristol?” When had he begun to think of her by her given name? Most inappropriate.
“She’s saying good-night to the children. She’ll be along in a moment.”
Sure enough, just a minute or so later, a figure appeared at the top of the stairs. Merrick couldn’t take his eyes off her. Where had his demure wren of a governess gone? Her dull plumage had been transformed into that of a peacock, in a bright blue velvet gown that exposed far too much of her lush upper curves, nipped in tightly at the waist, then belled out into fashionably flounced skirts. A simple strand of pearls graced her throat and tiny pearl studs dotted her earlobes. A brilliantly patterned paisley shawl draped over one arm, and a blue velvet ribbon was woven through her simply styled hair. Dorothy had even convinced her to leave her spectacles behind, so her emerald eyes gleamed brightly. In short, she’d become a beauty. Merrick was going to have to beat off the other males with his walking stick, especially Gideon.
Damn it to hell.
“Are you absolutely sure the high heels are required, Miss Dorothy? I’m liable to fall to my death coming down the stairs.”
“Nonsense.” Dorothy gripped Merrick’s arm when he would have run up to assist the younger woman. “You’re as nimble as one of the children. Now just hold the banister lightly and sweep down with all the grace you normally try to conceal.”
Caroline—yes, hell, he couldn’t really think of her as Miss Bristol anymore—rolled her eyes and gave a wry chuckle. “Well, if I kill myself, it will be your own fault when you have to interview new governess candidates.” Slowly, with her head held high, she lifted her skirts with one hand, gripped the railing with the other and began her descent.
He offered his arm as she reached the bottom of the stairs, hoping she didn’t notice his body’s physical reaction to hers. As always, there was that momentary jolt of electricity when they touched, even through her glove and his sleeve. “You look lovely, Miss Bristol. Shall we go?”
“Thank you, Sir Merrick, but the credit goes to your aunt. I assured her none of this was necessary. While I must thank you both, I am sorry she insisted on spending good money to outfit me.”
He laughed. “My aunt answers only to herself, and her finances are her own.” Though he intended to pay her back for Caroline’s wardrobe. The woman worked for him, not Dorothy, and Merrick was sick of seeing her flit about the house in her hideous clothes. “She merely lives with me because this house is too big for just one of us to rattle around in alone.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dorothy said, taking Merrick’s other arm and tugging them all toward the door. “It gave me pleasure to take Caro shopping, so I did. End of story. Now, who should we expect at tonight’s festivities? We can fill Caro in along the way.”
Caro. Yes, the nickname suited her—young, pretty, bright—somehow it conjured all those characteristics. As the carriage rolled along toward Gideon’s new house, Merrick pondered the transformation, not entirely pleased about it. It had been better, safer, when only he’d seen the beauty under the dowdy garments. Now he couldn’t even pretend to find her unattractive. The men would be buzzing around her like flies, even though she was technically in service. Although—perhaps there was something he could do…
His mouth was moving before his brain even knew he was speaking. “Aunt, given Edwin’s discovery, and the unusual situation with my wards, I think we should tell everyone that Miss Bristol is a friend of the family. Perhaps her mother was a school friend of yours, or of my mother’s.”
“Excellent idea, Merrick.” Dorothy nodded her approval. “She’s chosen to make her own way, rather than live on charity, but really, she’s a welcome guest in our home, and would be, with or without the children. When she heard of our need, of course she came immediately to be of assistance, since neither you nor I have any experience with children.”
“Which puts her much more squarely under my protection.” Merrick didn’t miss the way Caroline’s eyes widened at his statement. She opened her mouth, probably to argue, but he held up his hand and looked into her eyes. “And with that, you had better call us Merrick and Dorothy, while you shall be Caro. Is that acceptable?”
“I honestly don’t understand any of this.” She looked up at him. “Why this subterfuge? Why can’t I simply be the governess?”
Dorothy replied before Merrick could form the words. “For one thing, with a young, eligible master of the household, many people will think the worst if you’re simply working for him. As my protégé, though, you’re in a much more respectable position, idiotic though that is. Also, it will allow me to take you out in society much more than I could otherwise—a prospect I find pleasant. As I said, I never had a daughter. Finally, there’s your, shall we say, mixed heritage. Among most people, that issue would never arise. Among the families of the Order, though, it will be obvious, and several of them are in Town at the moment. I’d rather they believe you’re the daughter of an old friend than assume you’ve been planted among us as some kind of spy.”
Merrick winced. A spy among the Order was exactly what he’d been warned to watch for, but he knew it wasn’t Caro.
He kept her hand on his arm as they strolled into Gideon’s new house, met at the door by his butler, whom Merrick recognized as the elder MacKay’s former head footman. After handing over their coats and hats, Merrick continued to keep a grip on Caroline while they were led to a fairly spacious drawing room and greeted by Evelyn and Sir William MacKay.
Gideon gravitated to Caro’s side like a magnet. While Merrick chatted with his former mentor, Gideon somehow spirited Caro off to introduce her around the room.
“She’s lovely,” Merrick overheard Lady MacKay telling Dor
othy. “You’re lucky to have someone who could step right in and help with the children.”
“Absolutely,” Dorothy agreed. “Though I’d already offered her the chance just to come keep me company for the Season, but she’s got pride, and insists on making her own way.”
Bless Dorothy. She could lie without a blink.
“What a dear. And Gideon certainly seems taken. I think I shall have to get to know your Miss Bristol sooner rather than later.”
“Come to tea, soon. We’ve an excellent pair of nursery maids now, so I’m able to pry Caroline away from the children on occasion. The girl really should have a family of her own. She’s marvelous with them.”
Merrick listened to the women with half an ear while appearing to focus all his attention on Sir William’s discussion of steam-powered crop harvesters and their implications on lost income to the crofters—a subject Merrick would have normally bitten into with enthusiasm. Instead, he saw Gideon lay his hand on the back of Caro’s waist and felt the strangest urge to rush over and remove it at the wrist.
It was liable to be a very long evening.
The small, family dinner proved to be a feast for a mere thirty people, including, incredibly, the Duke and Duchess of Trowbridge, who greeted Caroline without a hint of condescension as a member of the Hadrian household. Caroline once again felt like Cinderella at the ball, but somehow it wasn’t as pleasant as she’d expected to have the attention of the prince. Gideon, as he’d insisted she call him, was kind and handsome and courteous. He was also quite brilliant and didn’t seem to mind that Caroline had a brain of her own. His conversation was varied and lively, his attentions flattering without encroaching. So why did her eyes keep straying to Sir Merrick and his partner, some redheaded Scottish debutante who giggled more than she spoke?
After dinner there was dancing, to tunes provided by an automaton quartet. Caroline kept to the far side of the room when Gideon tried to whirl her closer to show off the musical machines. It was a relief when Sir William claimed her for the next dance and seemed content to stay on the far side of the room. She instinctively liked Gideon’s parents and gathered that Sir William had been something of a mentor to Merrick after his father’s death.
Sir William handed her off to a pleasant young man named Liam McCullough, who was apparently a constable despite being the son of an Irish nobleman. After Mr. McCullough, Caroline danced with the Honorable Mr. Francis Gavin, a middle-aged man with wandering hands, who was apparently some sort of clerk in Merrick’s mysterious Order. Eventually, Mr. Gavin handed her off to Merrick for the next set, which of course, had to be a waltz.
Caroline swallowed hard as her employer pulled her close into the required embrace for the dance. Even though his hands never touched her bare skin—her long evening gloves saw to that—she could feel his closeness in a much more visceral way than she had when dancing with Gideon. As always, there was that flutter of nervous reaction the moment they touched. By the time the song had ended, Caroline was breathless. At least Merrick appeared to be affected, too. A fine sheen of sweat dampened the dark hairs at his temples.
“Shall we step out onto the terrace to catch our breath?”
There were other couples outside the open French doors, so she nodded, not trusting her voice to speak. Merrick paused at a chair where she’d left her shawl, and draped it over her shoulders before leading her out into the night.
Surely there would be stars visible, if only they weren’t hidden by fog and coal smoke. It was such a fantasy of an evening that somewhere inside, Caroline had expected stars. Still, the evening air cooled her overheated skin and she breathed deeply.
“It’s a lovely house, isn’t it?” She tried desperately to maintain a polite conversation.
“It’s all right,” he agreed. “A shame that someone used the wrong color brick when they blocked the cellar windows, but other than that, it seems in good repair.”
Caroline laughed. Of course Merrick would notice such things—he saw everything around him. Caroline had been too busy admiring the flowerbed out front to even note that there were cellar windows. “I’m sure it just lends a touch of character to the exterior.”
“Someday, Miss Bristol, you shall have to tell me where you learned such perfect manners and how to dance like a lady born.” His murmur, pitched so low only she could hear, caused his breath to puff warm against her ear, setting up sympathetic vibrations in much lower portions of her anatomy. His hip pressed against hers, further addling her senses. Her heart raced erratically, her lower belly began to ache, and her breasts felt so swollen she feared they’d pop right out of the low décolletage of her gown.
“I was raised in a noble household,” she admitted. “But times change, and suddenly I needed to work. It’s a common enough story.”
His chuckle tickled the side of her throat and intensified the ache in her womb. She’d never felt physical desire before, but she was too honest with herself to deny that she certainly was experiencing it now. “Somehow I doubt that anything about you is common.”
“Pointed ears and all,” she agreed, trying to keep her spine stiff when she desperately wanted to melt and lean back against his broad, solid strength.
“Assuredly.” He brushed his hand along her bare upper arm, causing her to gasp. Then he opened his mouth as if to say something, but before he could, Sir William was there, tapping him on the shoulder.
“Something’s come up, Merrick. His grace needs us immediately.”
Even in the dim light filtering out from the open doors, Caroline could see that the older man’s face was set in grim lines. She stepped aside from Merrick. “Will you need to leave immediately, Sir Merrick? I can fetch your aunt so we may be off at once.”
“No need.” Merrick snapped immediately into his predatory demeanor. “I’ll go along with Sir William. You and Aunt Dorothy can stay as long as you like, then return home in the carriage.”
“As you wish.”
Moments later, Merrick was gone and she was back in the ballroom, dancing another waltz, this one with Gideon. Why did it seem as if the magick had been drained from the evening?
Chapter Eight
Finally, after nearly a week of delays, Caroline was able to take the children on their promised outing to the Zoological Garden at Regent’s Park the morning after the dinner party at Gideon MacKay’s. She’d tried to convince Mr. Berry to let Tommy join them, but to no avail, so their spirits were a trifle subdued as they set out in one of the Hadrian’s larger but less comfortable carriages. Soon, however, the adventure of the trip and the promise of a stop for an ice cream on the way home had boosted their youthful spirits back into place. Caroline only wished it worked on her own muddled senses.
They chatted excitedly in the coach, with George in the opposite corner from Caroline. Nell’s lark and Jamie’s monkey had been left behind. Nell preferred to leave Lark as a guardian for her “family” of dolls, while Jamie was too entranced with the idea of seeing real monkeys to worry about Jojo, his mechanical one. To him, Jojo was a favorite toy, while George, to Wink, was nearly a living, breathing pet. He was such a part of the nursery that sometimes even Caroline forgot the large dog was a machine, and stopped herself just in time to refrain from petting him. It was still beyond her comprehension that her negative effect on all things mechanical might be a hereditary failing that stemmed from faery blood. How she wished her mother was still alive to ask.
Once they reached the zoo, even Caroline forgot about her worries and gave in to the excitement of the adventure—though it took a good bit of herding to keep all four children from running in four different directions. Without Sally’s able assistance, Caroline wasn’t sure she’d have been able to manage. Wink had brought a sketchbook and was making notes and drawings regarding shape and proportions of various species. Jamie delighted in feeding peanuts to the elephants, Nell was engrossed in watching a mother gorilla nurse its young, and Piers seemed to be absorbing and memorizing—well, everything. A
fter a little while the boys grew restless, while the girls wanted to see the Botanic Gardens nearby, so they determined to split up. Caroline would go with the girls to provide a botany lesson, while Sally would take the boys for a ramble along the canal towpath on the other side of the zoo. They’d meet in an hour back at the carriage for their picnic luncheon.
The gardens were just beginning to bloom, and Caroline let her senses fill with the shades of green, the sound of the soft breeze, the warmth of the sun and the fragrances of rich soil and budding blooms. She’d missed spending time outdoors in the last few days, and by themselves, Nell and Wink were relatively easy companions. As they walked, she explained some of the different families of plant life to the girls.
When it came time to return to the carriage, the only thing that kept them from lingering were growling stomachs, their appetites having been heightened by the exercise and fresh air. Cutting through a small grove of trees, she found herself lifting her skirts and running alongside the girls—well, behind them, at any rate. Her corset and more extensive petticoats hampered her speed, if not her enjoyment.
Perhaps twenty yards ahead of Caroline, Wink let out a shriek as she tumbled to the ground. Almost simultaneously, dark shapes emerged from behind the trees on either side of the path, closing in on both girls. Caroline counted four as she ran forward, brandishing her umbrella like a weapon.
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