“As close asGod’s curse to a whore’s arse.”
Mirabel blinked at her sister. “Surely you did not say what I think you did.”
Octavia was an original. She was free in her speech and thought, and she had never fit the mold society would have forced her into. However, Mirabel was still reasonably certain she must have misheard Octavia.
Her sister repeated herself, verbatim.
Mirabel felt weak. “And Gideon said this?”
Octavia was grim. “To his governess, no less. Apparently, she was standing too near to him when he was attempting to recite his French.”
“Where would he have possibly heard such a phrase, do you suppose?” she asked, though she feared she knew.
And that he was a golden-haired rascal who referred to her asMy Graceand could not seem to help himself from thieving anything in his vicinity. Although, to his credit, she had not noticed a thing missing from her person or reticule this morning, much to her delight and relief.
“Your Young Master Davy, of course,” Octavia answered needlessly. “Gideon admitted so to the governess after she boxed his ears.”
Mirabel’s body went hot. She was incredibly protective of her children. No one was permitted to punish them without her approval, and Walters was aware of this rule.
“She boxed his ears?” Mirabel repeated.
Her sister’s countenance grew worried. “I knew you would be displeased when Percy told me what had happened. Gideon was crying, and Joanna was doing her utmost to comfort him. The uproar led me to the schoolroom.”
Her son had been physically hurt.Punished.He had been crying.
And where had Mirabel been? Kissing a man who was ten years her junior in the East End after he had been set upon by a footpad and she had spent the night in his bed.
Shame warred with outrage for precedence.
Her heart was breaking.
“Mirabel?”
Octavia’s concerned voice cut through her riotous thoughts. She attempted to take a deep breath, but her chest hurt. Her eyes were stinging with tears of her own. “I should have been here.”
“I was here,” her sister reassured her. “I am sorry I was not able to stop what happened with the governess. Had I been aware there was an issue, I would have intervened sooner.”
“No,” she managed, attempting to gather her wildly vacillating emotions before continuing. “You have nothing for which you need apologize, Octavia. You are an excellent auntie and sister. I, however… I have failed my children.”
Just as Stanhope had always expected her to.
“You did not fail them,” Octavia hastened to argue. “For the first time in your life, you are living for yourself, and not just for your children and husband. Stanhope was a terrible man, and you know it. There is no harm in seeking that which makes you happy.”
She swallowed. “There is when it affects my children.”
Mirabel closed her eyes and inhaled, the world swirling and swimming about her. When she had been younger, she had fallen into the lake at their country estate in Staffordshire when she had made the foolish mistake of attempting to reach a feather which had blown from her hat. She had been unable to swim. The lake had been deep, the waters over her head. She still recalled frantically flapping her arms and legs, the tangle of her skirts and petticoats about her legs. The terror of thinking herself lost.
Until her groomsman had plucked her from the water, coughing and sputtering and terrified. But alive.
She felt that same strange frenzy of fear now, the certain knowledge that one wrong move would prove her end.
“Mirabel.”
Octavia’s voice reached her, permeating the roaring in her ears. Cutting through those dark memories. Her eyes opened to find her sister staring at her with a concerned expression on her face.
“I need to see Walters now,” she managed.
She was going to sack the woman. There was no question. Her rules were clear, and she made no exceptions. Not when it came to her beloved children.
