“No, Lady Eden. I am ashamed to say I was tricked by an eight-year-old child. She had me completely convinced. By the time I hurried back upstairs, they were already gone. Millie and I have been hunting for them ever since. I think they must have run out of the house.”
“I’ll find them. Just give me a moment to put on my walking boots and change out of this gown. I think I know where they are.”
Sarah let out a breath of relief. “You do? Oh, thank goodness. I’ll come with you.”
“No,” said a deep voice from behind them that Eden immediately recognized as belonging to Connor. “I’ll go with Lady Eden to search for them. They’re my little heathens, after all. Gad, can they not behave for a single day?”
Eden winced as she cast him a sympathetic look. “Apparently not.”
He sighed. “I’ll wait for you in the entry hall. Hurry up and change out of your finery. Where do you think they’ve gone?”
“Remember the geese from this morning?”
He groaned. “The ones I frightened away with a mere comment?”
“It is unfinished business for them.” She nodded. “Wait for me. I won’t be a moment. Sarah, come with me. I’ll need help slipping out of this gown.”
She thought she noticed a flicker of heat in Connor’s eyes when she mentioned taking off her gown. But she dismissed the possibility. His expression was unreadable now.
Why would he ever care about her in that way?
She hurried to her bedchamber, changed into more practical attire, then found her spectacles and put them on before rushing downstairs to meet Connor. She was back to her usual form, except her hair was more attractively styled than usual. She hadn’t bothered to undo it, since there was to be supper and entertainments this evening and she needed to look sophisticated and alluring for that.
Connor smiled as she approached. “There’s my girl,” he said softly.
She grinned back at him. “Your owlish neighbor.”
He took her hand in his. “We had better hurry before the geese attack them. Gad, I hope they are there and not poking their faces or their fingers into a fox den.”
“I’m certain they have more sense than that.” She also hoped the boys would not throw stones at the geese and antagonize them as they had tried to do this morning. Although she did not have any brothers, she had been around Connor’s boys often enough to understand how young boys thought and acted. They would think it was a fun game to hit as many geese as they could while those poor birds were feeding in the pond. Of course, Priscilla, being the youngest, would likely be the slowest to run away when the angry birds hissed at them and retaliated by pecking at her legs.
Connor had ordered his rig readied while waiting for her, and it was there when they stepped out the front door. He wrapped his hands around her waist to help her into the passenger seat. “I hope they are there,” he muttered.
“I’m sure they are.” She forced herself to stop tingling. The mere touch of his firm, roughened hands on her body put her senses in a roil. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. Her heart was fluttering, as well.
He hopped up beside her and flicked the reins, spurring the horse to a fast trot.
Eden held on for dear life as they moved fast and seemed to hit every rut along the way. Although she did not complain, Connor must have noticed her hands turning white as she gripped the seat to keep herself from flying off. “Shift closer to me, Eden.”
“What?”
He placed an arm around her waist and hauled her up against his magnificently hard, fit body.
Dear heaven.
Was it wrong of her to hope it would take hours to find his children?
They reached the pond just as the little heathens burst out of the bramble bushes that surrounded the pond. They heard goosehonks and angry hisses mingled with Priscilla’s shrieks and the boys’ laughter.
“Devil take it,” Connor muttered, pulling up hard on the reins.
He handed them to Eden, and at the same time hopped down to run to his daughter, who had tripped and fallen. Poor little Priscilla was crying out for him as her bottom was about to be pecked by two large, enraged geese. With truly protective fatherly instinct, he placed himself between the angry geese and Priscilla, then hauled her into his arms. “Get in the rig. Now!” he growled at his boys, who needed no prompting and were already racing to it.
The geese were now biting Connor’s legs. But he was wearing boots, so they merely got a mouthful of leather, which made them angrier. They fluttered their feathers and hissed some more.
Connor ignored them and ran to the rig with his precious daughter clasped to his chest. Why could Eden’s own father never be like this?
She shook out of the thought. She was all grown up and on her own now.
