‘Well, it won’t be the last one you see in England, so you had best get used to the sight if you want me to think you deserve a dog of your own one day.’
‘I want one now,’ Toby insisted.
‘I wanted an angel boy for a son and a house in France where we could stay all summer without a care in the world, but instead I got you and the next place we need to be on your grandpapa’s list. Life is hard, my son.’
‘Why can’t we have a dog?’
‘Because a dog needs a home and we move around so much the poor beast would never know if it was coming or going.’
‘Then we should stop moving around and make a home for it.’
‘You would be bored within a week, Toby, and I would end up looking after the animal. Now that’s enough of the whole subject, unless you would like me to spank you instead?’
‘No,’ Toby said, eyeing her warily.
‘Then accept the fact your hen-witted conduct makes it less likely I will agree to what you want instead of the other way about and stop trying to look like a waif. I am a wonderfully kind and patient mother and, luckily for you, there is far too much for me to do right now to see that you get your just deserts. We must find our carriage and get to London so Grandpapa can start work. I doubt even you will be bored for long in such a great bustling place as London, although I would quite like you to be right now, so you should spare me a few moments to repent your stupidity in diving under a moving horse when you are nearly eight years of age and quite old enough to know better. You are supposed to be bright, are you not?’
‘What good is one of Grandpapa’s mysteries without a dog to help us track down the criminal?’ her son muttered disgustedly and carefully ignored her question, as if intelligence had nothing to do with his longing for a pet.
Hetta silently gave him full marks for determination, although her headache wished he would accept defeat and be a good, quiet boy for once. Other women did seem blessed with adoring little angels for offspring, though, and sometimes they made her son seem a little devil in comparison.
And how boring such perfectly behaved little cherubs must be to live with, her inner rebel whispered.
She wished it would be quiet and go away while she got on with her headache and a nice cup of tea in a peaceful and preferably darkened room, but that was never going to happen, was it? No, now she must find Papa and get him and her son to London, then hope for a rest when they got there.
‘Where has your grandpapa got off to now?’ she asked, smoothing Toby’s wildly curling mop like the doting mother he certainly didn’t want her to be. She chuckled when he shrugged her off and made a wry face. ‘Find him for me and I might try to forget you put ten years on my life with your latest duel with death, my son, but first promise me never to do anything so stupid again.’
‘I promise,’ he muttered with a fine show of reluctance, so she wouldn’t think it was too easy. ‘The man scared me when he shouted, but I suppose he was right,’ he admitted at last.
Progress indeed, Hetta decided as Toby scampered off to do as he was bid for once and she organised the transfer of their luggage to the inn where a fast carriage would be waiting to whisk them up to London. At last Sir Hadrian emerged from a ship’s chandler’s shop with a neatly wrapped package in his hands and Toby at his heels like a well-trained sheepdog. Sir Hadrian Porter looked vaguely about him as if he might have forgotten something, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. His smile when he saw his daughter was genuine, but Hetta did wonder for a moment if he was even capable of the sort of love she had longed for so badly when her mama died and he sent her back to his own mother like an unwanted parcel. Perhaps it was time she made an independent life for herself and Toby? But even though she had loved so many of the places they’d visited over the last seven years, none of them felt quite like home. She sighed at the drizzle now soaking determinedly through her cloak and put it aside as a problem for another day—this one had quite enough trouble in it to be going on with.
If there was a lovely cool room with fresh sheets and a kindly breeze fluttering through it to be had in London, Hetta certainly hadn’t found it, she decided wearily, as the shabby old carriage rumbled along for a few steps, then ground to a halt again. She was being pushed from pillar to post in this confounded country yet again and the headache she’d come ashore with in Dover was still plaguing her three days on. Two days ago, her grandmother had declared she could not and would not endure her great-grandson’s presence in her usually quiet and stately home in Grosvenor Square a moment longer. Henrietta must send the ungovernable brat to school straight away, even if most of them were closed for the summer, or take him away. So Hetta had gone to crumbling old Carrowe House to ask her father for advice on finding suitable lodgings, and the new Earl of Carrowe’s sister, Lady Aline Haile, insisted they stay there while she found somewhere.
Then Toby managed to find a way up on to the roofs of the decayed old mansion and Lord Carrowe had been so furious with him they’d had to leave that house as well, so here they were, back on the road again. The traffic was stubbornly blocked on the way to their next temporary lodging for the night. Most businessmen still in London now summer had finally arrived seemed to be fleeing the city for the villages around it to spend time with their family. She promised herself she would find somewhere cool and clean and suitable for a longer stay as soon as she had her breath back and got a decent night’s sleep. She could use the few days Lord Carrowe had offered them at his mother’s nearly restored house to regroup and decide what to do next.
‘I’m glad we had to leave Carrowe House, Mama. It was boring there when Lady Aline left for Worthing. It would be so much better if she stayed with us.’
‘Not for her,’ Hetta said as she wiped beads of perspiration from her forehead and wished she was enjoying a summer by the seaside as well as her new friend—at least there was one Haile she would like to meet again. ‘Lady Aline’s mama and twin sisters are in Worthing for the summer and who would not prefer to be by the sea on a day like this?’ she said with a gesture at the shouting, overheated drivers and unnerved horses outside the small windows of the ramshackle hackney.
‘Lord Carrowe is very stuffy. I don’t see how I could have harmed his roof when it was already full of holes.’
‘You could have gone through one of them or fallen off altogether, or been snatched up by one of your grandfather’s foes while you wandered around such a half-empty and insecure place heedless of any danger. I try not to be forever scolding and picking at you, but really, Toby—must you do everything you should not simply because someone forbade it?’
Toby eyed his mama and seemed to consider the question seriously. ‘Probably,’ he admitted at last. ‘How else can I find out why I’m not supposed to do it?’
‘Ask. Get a rational explanation and listen for once, because right now I have trouble believing you have any brains and never mind being clever.’
‘Lord Carrowe didn’t give me any reasons at all, let alone a rational one,’ Toby pointed out with his usual ruthless logic and carefully ignored her slight.
He was right. The gentleman had lost his impressive Haile temper and ordered them to his mother’s house in Hampstead for the night so he could wash his hands of
