She narrowed her eyes on Oliver. “Do you know the duke?” she asked.
That flicker of fear, so minute, flashed again. “No.” He spoke sharply. Too sharply for one so young.
She considered him for a time, then said, “What do you think of playing a game?”
Oliver’s small frame stiffened. “What sort of game are you talking about?”
Irritated, she glanced up the hill. She would have to level with them… to a degree. “Yes, well, the, er, duke and I go way back.” Way back to when he was merely a marquis, and she’d fallen into his arms in a dark garden, utterly humiliating herself. Frankly, he couldn’t think much worse of her than he had that night, which should work to her advantage. “I need to be a completely different person.”
Identical frowns covered the boys’ faces. But only Oliver addressed the issue. “How are you going to do that? You have the same face, don’t you?”
Rebecca caught Serena’s slight grin from the corner of her eye and couldn’t resist her own. “True. I have the same face, however, he believes me a hoyden from my earlier days and I would encourage the same—”
His mouth fell open. “You mean youwanthim to think bad of you?”
“It will make things easier. For all of us.” She couldn’t very well explain the ridiculous yearning she’d felt toward him since she was a girl. The very thought was unbearable.
“What happened?” the nosy Oliver asked.
“Just a little incident during my come-out season. I have no intention of sharing such a story with a child. All you need know is that there is no cause for reminding anyone of the unfortunate incident.” She shook her head.
“He ruined you, didn’t he?”
“What the devil do you know about—” Exasperation threatened her mild temperament. “Of course not. Never you mind. But I would like for you to call me “Miss” Thatcher rather than “Lady” Rebecca.”
“You mean like a governess or a tutor or something?”
She beamed. “What an excellent idea. Miss Thatcher, your governess. Do you think you can do that? It would benefit me, er, us greatly.”
“It’ll cost you,” Oliver said.
She narrowed her eyes on him. This was one moment in which she was glad Owen did not speak. She bent down to Oliver’s eye level. “And, exactly, what will it cost me?”
He never even blinked. “Not telling his lordship there are two of us.”
She rose to her full height and folded her arms over her chest. “How am I to manage that, pray tell? In every instance I’ve met the man, not once have I been able to discern him as blind.”
Oliver straightened away from her and paced to the edge of the water and back. “I don’t know. But he can’t know there are two of us.”
Rebecca looked at Serena who shrugged. “Go up and tell Barrett we’ll be right there. Don’t say anything to the duke.”
Serena nodded and hurried up the hill.
Rebecca glanced back at the boys. “All right, all right. Let me think a minute.”
“You could be our mother,” Oliver said slyly.
“I’m only five and twenty! Hardly old enough to have ten-year-old children.”
He poked his lips out in a stubborn pout. “We’re only seven.”
He bartered like a seasoned peddler. Rebecca clasped her hands at her lower back and did her own pacing, studying the ground, more questions than answers pelting her. She finally stopped and looked at the boys. “Are you sure that reprobate isn’t following us?”
What little color in Owen’s face fled and his hands visibly shook. Oliver was at his side in an instant.
Her heart went out to them, but she hadn’t lost all of her rational senses.
“We can’t know for certain that he’s not,” Oliver hedged.
