style="font-size:15px;"> An instant later, the child came racing around the corner and barreled straight into him. Her head struck him in the belly, like a small blond cannonball, knocking the breath out of him. Meanwhile the collision sent her tumbling backward onto her bottom. It could not have winded her as it had Gideon, for her mouth fell open to emit an earsplitting wail that made his aching head throb. Her eyes screwed up and commenced to gush tears at a most alarming rate. The sight unnerved Gideon like nothing in his eventful naval career…with one recent exception.
Before he could catch his breath or rally his shattered composure, Marian Murray charged around the corner and swooped down to enfold her young charge. “Wist ye now, Dolly!”
She looked up at Gideon, her eyes blazing with fierce protectiveness. “What did you do to her?”
“What…?” Gideon gasped. “I…?”
That was one unjust accusation too many. Somehow he managed to suck in enough air to fuel his reply. “I did…nothing to her! That little imp ploughed into me. A few inches taller and she’d have stove in my ribs.”
Anger over a great many things that had nothing to do with the present situation came boiling out of him. “What was she doing tearing through the halls like a wild thing? Someone could have been hurt much worse.”
Now he’d done it. No doubt his rebuke would make the child howl even louder, if that were possible. Less than twenty-four hours had passed, and already he’d begun to regret his hasty decision to let the children stay.
To his amazement, Gideon realized the child was not weeping harder. Indeed, she seemed to have stopped. Her sobs had somehow turned to chuckles.
“Wild thing.” She repeated his words as if they were a most amusing compliment, then chuckled again.
“You needn’t sound so pleased with yourself.” Miss Murray helped the child to her feet and dusted her off. “Captain Radcliffe is right. You could have been hurt a good deal worse. Now tell him you’re sorry and promise it won’t happen again.”
The little scamp broke into a broad grin that was strangely infectious. “I’m sorry I bumped into you, Captain. I hope I didn’t hurt you too much. I promise I won’t run so fast around corners after this.”
“I’m not certain that running indoors at all is a good idea.” Gideon struggled to keep the corners of his mouth from curling up, as they itched to do. “You are not a filly, after all, and this is not Newmarket racecourse.”
If Miss Murray found his remark at all amusing, she certainly gave no sign. “I apologize, as well, Captain. This is all my fault. I will keep Dolly under much closer supervision from now on.”
Gideon found himself torn between a strange desire to linger there in the hallway with them and an urgent need to get away. Since the latter made far more sense, he gave a stiff nod to acknowledge her assurance and strode away in search of a strong cup of coffee to restore his composure.
“Dorothy Ann Radcliffe,” Marian muttered as she marched her young pupil back to the nursery, “you won’t be content until you make my hair turn white, will you?”
“Could I really do that, Miss Marian?” Dolly sounded far more intrigued by the possibility than chastened.
“I don’t care to find out, thank you very much.” Marian pointed to a low, three-legged stool in the corner, with which Dolly’s bottom was quite familiar. “Go sit for ten minutes and think about what you’ve done.”
“Why must I sit in the corner?” demanded the child. “When you told the Captain it was all your fault?”
“Impudence, for a start.” Marian fixed her with a stern look. “I warn you, I am not in the mood to tolerate any more of your foolishness, just now.”
Though Dolly deserved her punishment, Marian could not deny her own responsibility for what had happened. Since their father’s death, she had encouraged Dolly’s high spirits, in the hope of lifting her sister’s.
“What happened?” asked Cissy, who sat at the nursery table, an untouched bowl of porridge in front of her. “I heard shouting and bawling.”
Before Marian could get a word out, Dolly announced, “I bumped into the captain and fell down.”
Walking toward the corner stool, she rubbed her bottom. “He called me a wild thing and said the house isn’t a racecourse. I think he’s funny.”
Captain Radcliffe was anything but amusing. A little shudder ran through Marian as she recalled his dark scowl, which seemed to threaten he would send the girls away if another such mishap occurred. “That’s quite enough out of you, miss. I don’t want to hear another word for ten minutes or I’ll add ten more. Is that understood?”
Dolly opened her mouth to reply, then shut it again and nodded as she sank onto the stool.
Marian returned to her rapidly cooling breakfast but found she had no appetite for it now.
“What did he say, Miss Marian?” Cissy asked in an anxious tone.
“He wasn’t happy about being rammed into on his first morning here, of course.” Marian cast a reproachful look toward the corner stool. “I can’t say I blame him.”
Now that she thought back on it, the captain had seemed more vexed by her tactless assumption that he’d done something to hurt Dolly, rather than the other way around. She couldn’t blame him for that, either. No one liked to be unjustly accused, especially when they were the injured party. But what else was she to think, after the experiences of her past and the things she’d read about him in the newspapers? There had been reports of severe cruelty to the younger members of his crew, resulting in at least one death,
“I don’t mean what the captain said just now.” Cissy pushed her porridge around the bowl with her spoon. “What did he say last night when you went to talk to him…at eight bells?”
“Oh, that.” He’d told her about being sent away to sea when he was only a little older than Cissy, though Marian sensed he hadn’t intended to. “He said you and Dolly are welcome to stay at Knightley Park until your aunt comes back from abroad. That was kind of him, wasn’t it?”
So it was, Marian reminded herself, though she still resented his obvious reluctance.
Cissy ignored the question. “I wish Aunt Lavinia would come tomorrow and take us away with her.”
“I don’t!” cried Dolly, undeterred by the prospect of ten more minutes in the corner. “I want to stay at Knightley Park as long as we can.”
That was what Marian wanted for the girls, too. She feared what might become of Cissy and Dolly once Lady Villiers took charge of them. Her best hope was that she would be allowed to remain as their governess. Though she disliked the idea of having no fixed home, flitting from one fashionable destination to another, at least she would be able to shield the children from the worst excesses of their aunt’s way of life.
But what if Lady Villiers decided that traveling with her two young nieces and their governess in tow would be too inconvenient? What if she dismissed Marian and placed the girls in a boarding school, while she used their money to stave off her creditors?
