“Actually,” said a deep voice very close below her, “we’re five ladies, a cat and a gentleman in a tree.” He pulled himself effortlessly onto the same broad branch and, over his daughter’s head, grinned at Alice like the veriest urchin. “How long since you climbed a tree, Lady Charlton?”
“Years.” She eyed his long legs, enclosed and protected by supple buckskin breeches. “Ladies’ clothing is not conducive to tree climbing.”
He glanced at the ripped seams of her sleeves. She was immediately aware of his gaze. “So I see. Perhaps I should get breeches made for the girls.”
Between them, Lina gasped. “Girls can wearbreeches?”
“Only in private,” Alice said hastily. “And when there are no gentlemen around.”
Lina turned and looked accusingly at her father.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Fathers are not gentlemen.”
Alice spluttered. “Very true.”
His eyes darkened. His smile was full of dark promise. “And you can take that as fair warning.”
Alice swallowed. “Time to go inside now,” she announced to the occupants of the tree. “Mrs.Tweed has a lovely afternoon tea ready for us. I trust you are all hungry.”
His gray eyes dropped to her mouth and stayed there. “Ravenous.”
One by one, they all scrambled down from the tree. Alice insisting on going first so that she didn’t have to endure Lord Tarrant standing below her, looking up. Or helping her down.
He helped his daughters down, swinging them by the hands for the last little distance. Debo was the most difficult: she didn’t want to let go of her feline captive.
“Pass it to me,” he told her. “I’ll keep it safe.”
She hesitated, and her hold must have loosened, for with a wriggle, a yowl and a leap, the cat was away, bounding down the tree and vanishing into the shrubbery. With awail, Debo tried to grab it and would have fallen had her father not managed to grab her in time.
“Thassmycaaaaat!” she wailed.
“It’snotyour cat,” he told her and brought her down far enough to hand her down to Alice, waiting on the ground. “Hang on to her,” he told Alice, “or she’ll disappear after that wretched animal.”
“S’not a wretched animal,” Debo grumbled.
“No,” Alice agreed as she set her on her feet. “He’s a very handsome cat. But he does belong to somebody else. They’d be very sad if you took him away. You wouldn’t want to make them sad, would you?”
Debo shrugged. Anonymous cat owners moved her not at all.
“Your father will get you a kitten very soon, I’m sure,” Alice said, as he came slithering down the tree.
Debo gave him a cynical look. “S’what he said back at Miss Coates’s. But still, I got no cat.”
He brushed twigs off his coat. “I’m doing my best, Debo.”
The little girl sniffed.
“Come along, there’s a lovely tea waiting for us inside,” Alice said. “Wash your hands in the scullery first.”
As they walked back toward the house, Alice felt a small, cold hand slip into hers. She looked down and smiled. Lina was walking along beside her, giving a happy little skip from time to time.
***
Mrs.Tweed had outdone herself. There were dainty triangular sandwiches with their crusts cut off—cucumber, egg and watercress, ham, and chicken. There were little sausage rolls, hot from the oven, the pastry golden, crisp and flaky. In the center of the table sat a large, luscious sponge cake oozing with cream and jam. There were tiny individual number cakes, each one just large enough for a small girl to hold in her hand. There were wafer-thinalmond biscuits—crisp, nutty and sweetly bland—and to finish, a dish of fruits, including fat, sugar-encrusted purple grapes that crunched deliciously as they bit into them.
The girls—and Lucy—oohed and aahed over the sight, and for the first ten minutes there was no sound at the table other than “Please pass the...” and the sound of chewing and blissful sighs.
Mrs.Tweed had provided a large pot of tea, but there was also milk for the children or lemonade, cold, tart-sweet and refreshing, which Alice chose. Lord Tarrant drank the tea but accepted a glass of wine when Tweed offered it to him.
