she jumped off the last stair, landing gracefully in her satin soft-soled slippers, her curls bouncing around her smiling face. “Everyone is so very nice, and I’m not stuck away in the nursery eating porridge. Although Buttercup will miss me horribly. Could I please go back upstairs and—”
“I don’t think there’s a place laid for Buttercup, sweetheart,” Julia said, smiling, then swiftly said something to divert the child. “But I have heard that you will sit beside Callie at every meal now that you behaved so well at luncheon this afternoon, and she’s almost as fine a companion as Buttercup, isn’t she?”
Alice became very solemn. “She’s better, but we can’t tell Buttercup because she’ll be sad.”
Walking slowly, in no hurry to enter the dining room, Julia said, “I thought Buttercup was a boy rabbit.”
“He was, but Callie and I decided that no boys should be allowed in the nursery, so now he’s a girl. We don’t like boys. They’re very fickle, you understand. We took a pact and everything.”
Now Julia grinned. “Is that so? Well, my darling, I think that’s very wise of you and Callie.”
“She says so. That we’re even brilliant, because boys are lower than snails, and that’s quite low. Julia? What’s a fickle?”
“Um…well…I suppose Callie meant that a fickle person plays with you very nicely one day and then ignores you the next—and for no good reason, too,” Julia said, trying not to think of Chance as she explained.
“Oh. Like Court being nice to Callie, tossing a ball with her one day and then when she wants to play again today, calling her a pernikious brat and telling her to go away?”
“Pernicious, sweetheart. And yes, that’s it exactly,” Julia said as they entered the dining room to see half the chairs still empty. Spencer was there, his left arm in a sling, his expression bordering on petulant, as if he dared anyone to say he was still too sick to have left his bed, but he was the only male Becket present.
Julia knew where Chance had gone, but to see that Rian, Court and Ainsley were also absent? Clearly something was afoot. And just as clearly she shouldn’t comment on that fact.
“Come sit next to me, Alice,” Cassandra called out cheerfully. “We’re all just sitting where we want to tonight, except for Spence, of course. He’d rather be in Hades than here with all us girls.”
“Stubble it, brat,” Spence growled halfheartedly, reaching for his wineglass as Julia sat down beside him.
Morgan, who was already seated across the table from her brother, made an elaborate business out of unfolding her serviette and placing it in her lap. “My, aren’t you the cheery one, Spencer Becket. What’s the matter? Wouldn’t the other boys invite you along to play?”
“That means they’re all fickles, and shame on them,” Alice solemnly informed Julia as she tucked a linen serviette into the neck of the child’s pretty pink gown, just as her father had done for her when she was a little girl.
“Yes, dear,” Julia said, biting back a nervous giggle. “But we’re polite ladies and we don’t make such comments in company.”
“Oh. But they are fickles, aren’t they?”
While Morgan and Spencer continued their argument, Julia tapped a finger against her own lips before intoning seriously, “Porridge. Nursery.”
“I’m sorry.” Alice pulled a comical face and quickly turned to speak with Cassandra.
“Morgan,” Elly said quietly from the head of the table, her chin lowered as she appeared to be inspecting her water glass, “that will be enough, thank you,” and both Morgan and Spencer went silent, holding their argument to glares across the table.
Then Eleanor looked up, smiled at Julia, who was suitably impressed with the seemingly fragile young woman’s quiet air of command. “Papa and everyone went to the Last Voyage to visit with our friends, something they do once a week, leaving us ladies on our own. Poor Spence couldn’t go with them, not with his injured arm.”
“Yes, your arm,” Julia said, something contrary in her not about to willingly swallow Elly’s fib. Either these people trusted her, let her in, or she would be as contrary as she wished to be. Even if her papa was sitting on some lovely cloud, tsk-tsking and racing to convince the other angels that he’d “raised the child up much better than this.”
So looking, she hoped, merely idly curious, she asked, “How did you come to injure your arm, Spence? A sprain, I suppose? I did notice that your mount had suffered some sort of…misadventure. Did you fall off?”
“I most certainly did not,” Spencer shot back angrily. “And where’s Fanny? Why is she always late?”
Morgan dipped her spoon into the soup that had already been set before everyone. “To annoy you would be my guess, brother dear. Oh, here she comes now.” Then in a low whisper Morgan added, “Bloody hell.”
Julia, whose back was to the door, turned in her chair to see Fanny entering the dining room on the arm of Lieutenant Diamond. There was color in the girl’s cheeks, but all the flawless Irish complexion around those two spots of color had gone deathly pale.
“Look who I found as I was returning from my walk,” she said, her cheerful tone not accompanied by a smile. “Lieutenant Diamond has come to see Chance and Papa. I’ve told him Chance is gone about the king’s business, didn’t I, Lieutenant?”
“That you did, Miss Fanny. Good evening Miss Becket, Miss Carruthers, ladies—and, of course, Mr. Becket,” Diamond said as he bowed, his eyes on Morgan, who was blinking rapidly in his direction, her flirtation just a tad overdone. “A fine man, your brother. But I did still hope to see Mr. Ainsley Becket on a matter that I’m sure is of no interest to you ladies.”
Spencer belatedly got to his feet, also to bow, although his greeting was more in the way of a short, sharp nod of his head. “As Fanny also probably already told you, our father isn’t here.”
Morgan rested her chin in her palm as she leaned one elbow on the table. “Oh, hush, Spence. And on the contrary, Lieutenant. I find your brave work with the dragoons highly interesting…and very exciting.”
“Morgan, sit back,” Elly said, “Juanita needs to put down those bowls.”
Julia was distracted for the moments it took Juanita to place a large bowl in the center of the table, then deftly follow up by transferring two heavy platters balanced on her beefy right arm to the table before turning on her heels and heading back toward the doorway that led to a set of stairs and the kitchens below.
Two things amazed Julia, had amazed her from the beginning, about the dining room at Becket Hall. One was that other than for the soup course (for everyone but Alice), the food was delivered in large bowls and platters, and everyone helped themselves, then passed the food to the next person. Highly informal, the Beckets dining as she and her papa had at the vicarage, with no attentive servants, no separate courses. Not at all, she knew from novels she had read, the way things were done in London society.
The other thing that amazed her, even more than Juanita’s bulk or the soft white blouse and many-colored striped skirt she wore, was the fact that the woman had no right hand.
Chance
