Silk And Seduction Bundle 2. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ you—’ the second twin took a deep breath ‘—do you like animals?’

      ‘Yes, I do.’

      He brightened up immediately, reached into his own jacket, and extracted the sinuous body of a ferret. ‘This is Tim. I use him for rabbitting.’

      Skip’s head shot up. He looked straight at Tim, pulled back his lips and snarled in the manner of one greeting an old adversary. The ferret shot out of the boy’s grasp, the dog bounded back onto the carpet, and for a few seconds, the floor about Midge’s feet was a blur of fur and teeth and tails.

      The ferret emerged from the mêlée first, streaking across the rug and straight up the curtains where it found a precarious perch on the curtain rod.

      The terrier started jumping up and down on the spot, yapping furiously for a few seconds, then, balked of its prey, sank its teeth into a fold of velvet and worried at the curtain as though killing a rat. The action made the curtain pole, on which the ferret was balancing, rattle in its moorings. Tim promptly abandoned it and ran along the picture rail, scattering items of pottery as he went.

      Uttering a cry of alarm, Midge flew across the room in time to catch a bud vase, a cup and a plate in rapid succession while Skip, who seemed to have temporarily forgotten that it was the ferret he had been after, redoubled his ferocious attack on the curtains.

      When the ferret reached the chimney breast, instead of swarming round its edges, it ran straight down the silk wallpaper, landing on the tea table, where it used the vase as a springboard to launch himself into his master’s waiting arms. The vase wobbled, rocked, then pivoted towards the edge of the table. Midge dived to catch it, at the exact same moment that Skip’s hind legs found purchase on the carpet and he finally managed to make some headway. Just as Midge’s hands closed round the vase, the curtain pole parted company from its moorings, bringing yards of green velvet slithering down on her.

      From within the smothering folds of the curtains, Midge heard the crash of breaking crockery, a yelp and the clang of the brass curtain pole landing on the floor.

      It was hard to breathe. Even harder to find a way out of the heavy curtaining wrapped round her body. Eventually, she found a chink, through which she saw that the sound of breaking crockery had come from the doorway, where a maid had dropped the promised tea tray. The vase, she noted with a feeling of triumph, was lying cushioned by a fold of velvet, the plate, cup and bud vase beside it. She pushed the curtain off her face and sat up.

      ‘Not a single thing broken!’ she crowed, flushed with success.

      There was no sign of the dog or the ferret, but the twins were standing before the hearth, clutching each other’s hands as they stared, aghast, at the slender, fair-haired gentleman who had paused just beyond the wreckage of the tea things.

      Monty was there, too, sauntering across from his own quarters, and bowing politely to the fair-haired gentleman.

      He cleared his throat, then waved one arm in the direction of the cascade of curtaining, from the depths of which Midge was still struggling to emerge.

      ‘Allow me,’ he said, ‘to present my wife.’

      The fair-haired gentleman’s eyes swept the length of Midge’s legs, which had emerged from the curtaining minus her skirts. Then, his nostrils flaring in a fastidious expression of distaste, he turned on his heel and stalked away.

      Chapter Eight

      ‘We didn’t mean any harm, Vern!’

      The twins were having a hard time keeping up with Monty as he strode out of the house and through the stable yard to the kennels.

      ‘We just wanted to see what she was like!’

      ‘That had better have been all it was,’ snapped Monty, as he produced Skip from inside his jacket. ‘I hope it was not the kind of devilment you have employed in the past, to rid yourself of every governess who has dared to set foot in your schoolroom.’

      ‘We never meant—’

      ‘Oh, didn’t you! Well, even if you did not humiliate her on purpose, that is what you have done, with your wilful disregard of the rules. You know you are not supposed to bring animals indoors! You were lucky I heard Skip barking and got to him before father came in,’ he growled, stuffing the wriggling bundle of fur firmly into his cage.

      ‘You ain’t…you ain’t gonna put Skip in a sack and drown him, are you?’

      Monty turned to his woebegone younger brother in surprise. ‘Why in God’s name should I do that?’

      ‘Piers would’ve,’ said the other sulkily, extracting the ferret from his own jacket, then thrusting his pet into his hutch.

      ‘I am not Piers!’ he grated, filled with loathing for the man who would have deliberately inflicted so much pain on two defenceless children. ‘I hope to God I am nothing like him.’

      The Earl of Corfe’s firstborn had been spoilt from birth, and grown into a cruel and selfish young man. Every time he had come home from school, Monty had been the butt of his sadistic sense of humour. As, in their turn, had these two.

      ‘The earl says you ain’t,’ declared Jeremiah.

      ‘Says it all the time,’ said Tobias.

      And Monty could just hear the tone of voice in which his father said it. With a rueful grin, he leaned down and ruffled the boys’ hair.

      As one, they stepped back, out of his reach. But then Jeremiah glanced at Skip, snuffling happily round his pen, squared his shoulders, and declared, ‘We’ll tell her we’re sorry.’

      ‘Yes, we’ll make it up to her!’

      ‘I hope so,’ said Monty. ‘Because she is your sister now. And she is here to stay.’

      Two sombre footmen came to the sitting room, armed with stepladders, to re-hang the curtains.

      ‘I slipped on the floorboards,’ said Midge, redfaced, as one of them climbed to remount the curtain pole. ‘And grabbed the curtains to prevent myself from falling.’

      The two men exchanged meaningful glances as they re-positioned the set of ladders by the chimney-breast and carefully began to replace the delicate ornaments in their correct positions.

      Knowing she had done all she could to prevent the boys from getting into trouble, Midge retreated to her bedroom to get changed for dinner.

      She did not see Monty again until just before it was time to go downstairs. He emerged from the door to his own room, strode across to her and took both her hands in his.

      ‘Are you angry with me?’ he said.

      ‘Me? Angry with you?’

      If anything, she would have thought Monty would have been furious with her for having made such a spectacle of herself.

      ‘It was imperative I got the dog out of here before father realized what the twins had done,’ he explained. ‘When I got down to the kennels and learned their punishment for breaking the rules would have been to see their СКАЧАТЬ