What had she come over here for? His forearms? Uncovered, sleeves rolled above the elbows, crisp hair ranging across the muscled length of them.
No! Not that. One didn’t go in search of forearms.
Unless they were perfect forearms like?—
No! “I have a few questions for you,” she snapped. “Do you have time? Are you done tormenting the children?”
“I do not have time. I am currently a pirate.” And didn’t he look it, a bead of sweat on his brow just beside a rakish curl…
The little girl screamed, and one of the boys climbed on top of a seat, tilting the boat sideways.
Somehow Richard knew, and he whipped around and grabbed the boy before he toppled into the water. “Everyone out!”
“No!” That, the little girl.
“Walk the plank, girlie, and that’s an order.” Richard propped the toddler on one hip and held the boat steady with his free hand as the girl stomped her way off the craft. Then he picked up the second boy and propped him on the other hip.
Oh my. Beatrice squirmed. Forearms straining against wiggling toddler limbs, lock of dark hair falling rakishly across one eye. She tingled. In places she shouldn’t. “Ow!” She looked down at her throbbing foot, at the little girl glaring up at her. “Did you stomp my foot?”
“Did you ruin my fun?”
She had a point. Beatrice knelt. “I did not mean to. I think that was your brother. And possibly your uncle. I’ll extend my apologies anyway. Do you need help guarding your boat from pirates right now?”
“You know how to fight pirates?”
“She does,” Richard said, settling the boys—twins—on the ground beside the girl. “She’s been fighting marauding evildoers since I’ve known her. But it’s time for you to run off now. Bishop and Pope are waiting for you.” He nodded toward the back of the crowd where two nursemaids of a same size in frilly white caps and aprons stood side by side in identical postures.
The girl groaned, but when the boys ran, she followed. Each nurse scooped up one boy, and then the group was gone, trudging up the hill to the house.
“Who are they?” Beatrice asked.
“My niece Lucy and my nephews William and Henry—or Willy and Henny, as Lucy calls them. Daniel’s children.”
Ah, yes. “Evelina wrote of them.” The young girl had, apparently, been conceived just before Daniel’s exile from England. And the twins had come to them from the Continent. No matter how far he roamed, Daniel’s actions rippled back toward home.
He seemed to be dissecting her with his gaze, as if he could see beyond her flat tone to her true feelings beneath. “Different mothers.”
Like him and his brothers. “Your brother and your father have much in common.”
Mr. Clark exhaled sharply. “John is afraid there are yet more children out there waiting to be discovered.”
“He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“He wants them all. If no one else wants them. We found one who was in a lovely home, well cared for and happy. Another little girl. He wouldn’t dare move her for the world. She didn’t want it, and her parents didn’t want to lose her, either. But he’s set up a fund for her. A dowry for her use only. And the mother receives a yearly sum as well.”
“John always was a knight in shining armor.”
“To Daniel’s devil. How any man could abandon his children as he has—” Anger bit Richard’s sentence in two, swallowed it in a single gulp.
She understood well how men could do such a thing, even if Richard did not. When men—like her father, for example—had no use for a child, they simply ignored them, gave them away, and did as they pleased. And what her father pleased was not acknowledging her existence. Until he needed something.
The old pain still clawed at her heart. Useless and ugly. Her nose and ears too big, her body too small, her face too little like her dead mother’s. She’d served no purpose to her father. He’d sent her away before they’d both been done wearing black, then welcomed her back when she’d become proficient enough at Spanish to benefit his business.
“Beatrice.” Richard’s voice could be like bathwater, warm and soothing. She remembered that now. “Are you unwell?”
She shrugged his concern away. “Daniel always called me a shrew. Among other things.”
“If he wasn’t already deported, I’d have sent him away myself.”
