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The boy scrambled into his pantaloons, picked up his shirt and coat, but, instead of approaching Stacey, disappeared into the trees. Stacey let him go and turned his attention to his daughter. She was out of the water and standing with her back to him, pulling a chemise over her head. Even in his fury, he could appreciate her youthful curved figure, with its neat waist. ‘When you are decently dressed, you may join me by the horses,’ he said, and turned from her to retrace his steps. She came to him two minutes later, flashing defiance from her blue eyes. ‘I don’t know why you are making such a fuss,’ she said as she scrambled into her saddle. ‘We were doing no harm.’
He could not trust himself to speak, but mounted his own horse and, picking up her reins, led her horse back towards the house without saying a word. It was an indignity that infuriated her and she tugged once or twice on the reins to try and wrest them from him, but, when she failed, slumped in her saddle and completed the journey in smouldering silence.
‘Go up to your room,’ Stacey told her when they reached the side door of the house nearest the stables. ‘Get dressed properly and, when you are fit to be seen, come down to the library. I wish to speak to you.’
After she had gone, he left the horses with the grooms and made his way slowly into the house, completely at a loss to know how to deal with the situation. He passed the drawing room on his way to the library. The door was open and his parents were sitting one on each side of the hearth; his mother was doing some embroidery and his father was reading a newspaper. They looked so complacently content, he was incensed all over again. ‘So this is how you look after my daughter in my absence, sir,’ he said, stopping in the doorway to glare at them. ‘Reading and stitching while she is running wild. Thanks to you, she is ruined beyond redemption.’
‘Oh, dear, what has she done now?’ his mother asked.
‘You may well ask. I rode through the woods on my way home and what did I find? My daughter, your beloved granddaughter, swimming in the lake…’
‘Oh, dear, it is so cold,’ Lady Malcomby said. ‘She will catch her death. I hope you have sent her to Susan to be warmed.’
‘If she were a boy I would warm her myself, I’d dust her breeches so she could not sit down for a week,’ he said.
‘Oh, come,’ his father said. ‘That’s doing it too brown.’
‘You have not heard the worst of it. She was naked as the day she was born—’
‘Naked!’ shrieked her ladyship, dropping her embroidery. ‘You mean she had no clothes on?’
‘Not even her chemise. Nor was she alone. There was some yokel with her. They were laughing and splashing each other…’
‘Was he also…Oh, dear, was he…?’
He nodded. ‘Not a stitch. Now perhaps you will tell me how to proceed, for I am sure I do not know what to do. I fear I shall thrash her as soon as look at her.’
‘Won’t help,’ his father said. ‘She is a child and I doubt she sees any wrong in what she has done and making a mountain out of it will only make her more wilful.’
‘She is not a child.’ He was almost shouting. ‘She is nearly a woman. If you had seen her as I did, coming out of the water, you would know that. Children grow up, you know, they do not remain children just because you would like them to. Had you not noticed that?’
‘Can’t say I had,’ his father said complacently. ‘But I suppose you are right.’
‘Then what am I to do?’
‘Lock her in her room for a few hours, I find that usually does the trick.’
Stacey laughed harshly. ‘Do you suppose locking her bedroom door will contain her? I’ll wager she can get out of the window and down the ivy as easily as I once could.’
‘Could you?’ his mother asked, diverted. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Who was the boy?’ the Earl asked.
‘I have no idea and tracking him down will serve no purpose; she is too young to be married off. It is Julia I am concerned with. She will have to go away to be taught how a young lady should behave. Someone, somewhere, must be prepared to take her.’ He turned from them and made for the library just as Julia descended the stairs. She looked demure in pale pink spotted muslin with a deep rose sash, and her hair tied back with a matching ribbon. She held her head high and was followed by Susan Handy, the stout, middle-aged woman who was her governess and who had been his nurse and governess. She had evidently come with her to make sure he did not carry out his threat to thrash her darling.
He smiled grimly. Miss Handy was quite unable to control her charge because she was too indulgent and too fat and breathless to run after her when she escaped. He ought to have done something about her when he first returned home two years before, but he hadn’t had the heart to dismiss her, for where would she go? ‘I do not need you, Miss Handy,’ he said coldly. ‘You may wait for Julia upstairs.’
‘You will not be unkind to her, Master Stacey? I am sure she is very sorry for being naughty and will be good in future.’
‘That we shall see,’ he said coldly, ushering his daughter into the library ahead of him. His red-hot fury had abated and he was now icily calm.
‘Papa…’ she began.
‘You will not speak, you will not say a word until I say you may. I am very angry with you and if I ever get my hands on that young man…’
‘But it was not his fault. I found him bathing in the lake and it looked so inviting…’
‘That’s enough!’ he roared. ‘You will tell me honestly, did he touch you? Did he behave in any way…?’ He did not know how to put into words what he was asking.
‘Of course he did not,’ she said haughtily. ‘He would not dream of laying hands on the granddaughter of an earl.’
He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Let us be thankful for that. You are going away to school, even if I have to scour the length and breadth of the country to find one that will take you, and nothing you can say or do will make me change my mind.’
She would not cry. He could see her herculean efforts to control her tears in the way she blinked and gulped and lifted her chin even higher and he admired her for it, but he would not weaken. ‘Until I say you may, you will stay in your room, and Miss Handy will find some fitting study for you. A book on ladylike behaviour would be suitable if such a thing is to be found.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
My lord, she called him, just as if they were mere acquaintances and not father and daughter. It cut him to the quick, but he made no comment and waved her away, too choked to speak. He watched her go, wanting to rush after her and hug her, to tell her everything would be all right and he understood, but he could not; she was too much like her dead mother. He had to find an establishment headed by an understanding woman who would make a lady of her without breaking her spirit. And where was such a one to be had?