“You are the headmaster of this orphanage,” she said. “Hired by the directors for your expertise in managing charitable establishments. How do you propose we address the shortage of funds?”
“Madam, I was hired because I have a firm grasp of the curriculum necessary to shape useful young men from brats and pickpockets. Financial matters are the province of the directors.”
Hitchings had a firm grasp of the birch rod and the Old Testament. At mealtimes, he had a firm grasp of his knife and fork.
“Your efforts with the boys could not be more appreciated,” Anwen said. “Nonetheless, based on your years of experience with similar organizations, you might have some suggestions for a lady who’d like to see this orphanage thriving well into the future—under your guiding hand, of course.”
She let that sink in—if the orphanage failed, Hitching’s livelihood failed with it. A simple enough general conclusion.
And the boys were not wayward. Not any longer.
“Charitable balls come to mind,” Hitchings said. “Subscriptions, donations, that sort of thing. To be blunt, Miss Anwen, that’s the only reason I can think of for the directors to bother with a ladies’ committee. Your feminine endowments allow you to charm the coin from those who enjoy an excess of riches. If you’ll excuse me, I have lessons to prepare.”
Anwen’s uncle was a duke, and her sister had just married a duke. This preening dolt would not leave her wrangling desks and chairs while implying that her breasts and hips were to be flaunted to keep a roof over his head.
“I’m sure the lesson preparation can wait a few more moments, Mr. Hitchings. How much longer would you say our present funds will last?”
He rolled up the papers in his hand, as if a nearby puppy might require swatting. “Weeks, two months at best.”
In other words, as the social season neared its conclusion, the orphanage would approach its end as well.
“Have you started applying for other positions?” Anwen gave him her best, most saccharine blink. “I’d be happy to write you a character if need be.”
“A character for me, Miss Anwen?”
“Your salary is one of our greatest expenses.” Hitchings’s remuneration, in addition to his allowance for ale, candles, and a new suit, exceeded the budget for coal by a handy fourteen pounds eight per year. Food was another significant item, and in Anwen’s opinion, also underfunded by at least twenty pounds a year. “In the interests of economy, the directors could seek to replace you with a lesser talent.”
Hitchings might have been a handsome man in his youth. He had thick dark hair going gray, some height, dark eyes, and the rhetorical instincts of a classroom thespian. Middle age had added a paunch to his figure, though, and Anwen had never seen him smile at a lady or a child.
He smiled at the directors. Every time he saw them, he was smiling, jovial, and briskly uncomplaining about the social alchemy he claimed to work, turning society’s tattered castoffs into useful articles.
“Replace me with a lesser talent?” Hitchings’s brows drew down. “That would hardly result in economy, Miss Anwen. Instead of budding felons learning the straight and narrow under the experienced hand of a dedicated master, you’d be feeding and clothing little criminals for no purpose whatsoever.”
Other than to keep them alive? “I take your meaning, Mr. Hitchings, but the directors are men of the world, and they deal in facts and figures more effectively than I ever hope to. While you could easily find a post that more appropriately rewards your many talents, the boys will starve without this place to call home. I expect the directors will see that logic easily enough.”
Especially if Anwen reminded them of it at every meeting.
Hitchings’s mouth worked like a beached fish’s, but no sound came out. He doubtless wasn’t offended that his salary might be called into question, he was offended that Anwen—diminutive, red-haired, well-born, young, and female—would do the questioning.
“I cannot be held responsible for the poorly reasoned decisions of my betters,” he said. “This organization needs substantial funds, Miss Anwen. You can embroider all the handkerchiefs you like, and that won’t keep the doors open.”
French lace edged Hitchings’s cravat, his coat had been tailored on Bond Street, and Anwen wished she had the strength to pitch him and his finery down the jakes.
“Thank you for putting the situation in terms I can grasp, Mr. Hitchings,” she said, adding a smile, the better to unnerve him. “I’ll meet with the ladies and see if we can’t address the problems our directors and staff are apparently helpless to solve. Please be about preparing the next lesson for the boys. We must not waste a day of whatever time remains to exert your good influence over them.”
Anwen paused by the door to surreptitiously snatch up Hitchings’s birch rod—he carried it with him everywhere—and tuck it into the folds of her cloak.
“You should probably finish tidying up the chairs and desks,” she added. “I have always admired your insistence on order in the boys’ environment, and what better place to set that example than in your own classroom?”
She left at a decorous walk, the birch rod tangling with her skirts, and ran smack into Lord Colin MacHugh not five yards down the corridor.
Colin MacHugh liked variety, and not only when it came to the ladies. Army life had offered a lot of variety—march today, make camp tomorrow, ride into battle the day after—and just enough predictability.
The rations had been bad, the weather foul at the worst times, and the battles tragic. Other than that, camaraderie had been a daily blessing, as had a sense of purpose. Besiege that town, get these orders forward to Wellington, report the location of that French patrol.
Life as a lord, by contrast, was tedious as hell.
Except where Anwen Windham was concerned. She crashed into Colin with the force of a small Channel storm making landfall.
“Good day,” Colin said, steadying her with a hand on each arm. “Are you fleeing bandits, or perhaps late for an appointment with the modiste?”
She stepped back, skewering him with a magnificent glower. “I am deloping, Lord Colin. Leaving the field of honor without striking a blow, despite all temptation to the contrary.”
Colin winged his arm. “That has to be the most frustrating way to conclude a serious quarrel, for both parties. Is that a birch rod you’re carrying?”
“Yes. Mr. Hitchings will doubtless notice it’s missing in the next fifteen minutes, for he can’t go longer than that without striking some hapless boy.”
They proceeded down the corridor, which, though spotless, had only a threadbare runner on the floor. No art on the walls, not even a child’s drawing or a stitched bible verse. The windows lacked curtains, and in the face of such dreariness, Colin’s imagination strayed to old memories.
“Sometimes a beating assuages a guilty conscience.” He’d dabbled in the English vice and quickly grown bored with it. He was easily bored, and the thought that the boys in this orphanage had only beatings to enliven their existence made him want to quit the premises posthaste. “I don’t suppose you’ve come across Lady Rosalyn Montague? I was to meet her here for an outing in the park.”
Miss Anwen unwound her arm from Colin’s, opened a window, and pitched the birch rod to the cobbles below. The premises had once been a grand house, the back overlooking a mews across the alley. A side garden had gone mostly to bracken, but the building was still in a decent neighborhood.
The birch rod clattered to the ground, startling a tabby feasting on a dead mouse outside the stables. The cat bolted, then came back for its unfinished meal and took off again.
“Lady Rosalyn has a megrim,” Miss Anwen said, “and could not attend the ladies’ committee meeting. Her brother was not among the directors in attendance either.”
“It’s a pretty day,” Colin said, rather than admit that being stood up annoyed him. “I don’t suppose you’d care to join me for a drive ’round the park?”
Coli
n’s older brother, Hamish, had recently married Anwen’s sister Megan. Colin didn’t know Anwen well, but as much as he craved fresh air and greenery, he’d be daft to tool about the park by himself. Far too many debutantes and matchmakers running tame for that magnitude of foolishness.
Anwen remained by the open window, making a wistful picture as the spring sunshine caught highlights in her red hair.
“I wish we could take the boys to the park. They get out so seldom, and they’re boys.”
Long ago, Colin had been a boy, though not a very happy one. “Instead of punishing the miscreants with beatings, you should reward the good fellows with an outing to the park. For the space of a day at least, you’d see sainthood where deviltry reigned before.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so. Will you drive out with me?”
“Yes, I shall. If I go back to Moreland House in my present mood, one of my sisters will ask if I’m well, and another will suggest I need a posset, and dear Aunt Esther will insist that I have a lie down, and then—I’m whining. My apologies.”
Miss Anwen was very pretty when she whined. “So you will join me, because you need time to maneuver your deceptions into place?”
She marched off toward the end of the corridor. “Lord Colin, you do not inspire a lady to spend time in your company by insulting her. I am not deceptive.”
Colin caught up with her easily and bowed her through the door. “I beg your pardon for my blunt word choice—I’m new to this business of being a lord. Perhaps you maneuver your polite fictions into place.”
“I do not indulge in polite fictions.”
She indulged in outright histrionics, which held his interest at least as well as a plate of biscuits served with good brandy would.
“Anwen, when I see you among your family, you are the most quiet, demure, retiring, unassuming facsimile of a spinster I’ve ever met. When I chance upon you without their company, you are a far livelier creature. You steal birch rods, for example.”
“Now you accuse me of theft, Lord Colin.”
“I’ve wanted to filch the occasional birch rod, but I lacked the daring. I’m offering you a compliment.”
If he complimented her gorgeous red hair—far more fiery than Colin’s own auburn locks—or her lovely complexion, or her luminous blue eyes, she’d deliver a scathing set down.
Once upon a time, before Colin’s family had acquired a ducal title, Colin had collected both set downs and kisses like some men collected cravat pins.
“You admire my thievery?” Miss Anwen asked, pausing at the top of the front stairs.
“The boys here will thank you for it as well, provided the blame for the missing birch rod doesn’t land on them.”
“Oh, dear.”
She honestly cared about these scapegrace children. The realization intrigued Colin as outlandish wagers, buxom tavern maids, and stolen kisses could not.
“We’ll have the birch rod returned to wherever you found it before we leave,” Colin said. “Hitchings merely overlooked it when he left the schoolroom.”
“Marvelous! You have a capacity for deception too, Lord Colin. Perhaps I’ve underestimated you.”
“Many do,” Colin said, escorting her down the steps.
He suspected many underestimated Miss Anwen too, and for the first time in days, Lord Colin MacHugh looked forward to the balance of his afternoon.
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The Trouble With Dukes Page 29
