Connor groaned, then frowned up at Wolfe. “Not everyone waits until they are as old as you to marry. How ’bout when I am ten?”
“Ten is not old enough,” Sissy told him before Wolfe could answer. “You need to wait until you are taller than her. That way the two of you will look nice whenever you stand together.”
“I could be taller than her by ten.” Connor tipped a decisive nod. “Father said I would prolly be just like him and Wolfe—big and tall.”
“Before we decide when you shall marry,” Wolfe said before the conversation devolved any further, “there is the matter of your punishment for disobeying Miss Hannah and leaving the confines of the garden. The entire household turned the place upside down because we could not find you. We were all worried you had come to some sort of harm.”
“No one worries about us,” Connor said, portraying a disturbing lack of emotion that broke Wolfe’s heart. Was that how the child truly felt?
“That’s what makes it so easy to slip away,” Sissy added, confirming Wolfe’s fears.
He halted and knelt in front of the children, taking them each by the shoulder. “Iworry about you. You are my only family. My brother and sister. I would be overwrought if anything were to happen to you.” He stared into their dark eyes that mirrored his own, wishing he knew how to be a good father to them rather than a bumbling guardian that had, so far, failed them miserably. “I know I have chosen poorly when it comes to nannies and governesses—”
“Father chose the nannies poorly,” Connor said, without a qualm about interrupting. “You just got tricked into bringing on the wrong governesses.”
Wolfe narrowed his eyes at the child, waiting for the boy to realize he had been rude.
“You interrupted,” Sissy whispered loudly with her hand cupped to her mouth, aiming the sound advice at her brother’s ear. “Say sorry.”
“Sorry.” But the lad didn’t sound as if he meant it.
“What am I going to do with you two?” Wolfe slowly shook his head, wishing the children knew how much he cared about them.
“Give us to Grace,” Sissy said, sounding entirely too excited about that plan.
Connor gave him a solid nod. “Grace would take us. She likes us. You heard her say so—did you not?”
Wolfe let his hands drop from their shoulders but remained crouched at their level, even though the scarred knee he’d injured in the war ached like the dickens. “You think I do not like you?”
They both frowned at him, as if seeing him for the first time.
“You like us,” Susannah finally said, “but we are a bovver to you. All the nannies and governesses said so, and so did Lady Longface. We heard her once when we hid behind the tea cart in the parlor, and she didn’t know we was there.”
Wolfe clenched his teeth to keep from laughing at his little sister’s apt description of his fiancée’s mother. Lady Euphemia Longmorten did indeed have the face of a mule. “Sissy—would you care to restate that in more polite terms?”
The child rolled her eyes. “LadyLongmortensaid we was a bovver to you too.”
While he had no doubt the spiteful woman had said such a thing, it would not be prudent to fuel the children’s low opinion of his future mother-in-law.
He almost shuddered at the thought ofthat.Lady Longmorten was one of the many reasons he had yet to find the inclination to formalize the union his father had arranged when Wolfe was just a little older than Connor, and Lady Margaret, his affianced, was still a babe. At present, he would rather walk straight through the doors of hell than to the wedding altar.
“The two of you are not a bother to me,” he said, “and we do not place store in the idle gossip of those who do not matter. The unacceptable nannies and governesses were all dismissed because of their dreadful behavior.”
Connor gave him a sly grin. “You do not like her either, do you?”
“Whom?”
“Lady Longface.”
“Connor.”
The boy resettled his grip on Hector, who was now sleeping soundly in his arms with his muzzle propped on the lad’s shoulder. “Fine. Lady Longmorten.”
“She is an upstanding woman of Society.” Wolfe almost choked on the words, but it was best that he not encourage the children’s unruliness—no matter how accurate they might be.
“That does not mean you like her,” Connor said. “Grace’s mother is already in heaven. I won’t have the problem of an old woman being rude to me when I marry Grace.”
Wolfe rose to his feet before his knee grew so stiff that he couldn’t walk. “How do you know Lady Grace’s mother is already in heaven?” Although he vaguely remembered talk of the Broadmeres’ losses. Apparently, the children had enjoyed quite the visit while Lady Grace was rescuing Hector.
