Thankfully, out of habit, Norbert had fled to the classroom first at the furthest end of the hall, as he knew she tended to leave the French doors open. However, as the classroom door was firmly closed, therewas no clear exit to the garden, so he had inadvertently trapped himself in a dead end.
As the others fanned out behind her, cutting off his escape, all now armed with various vessels from the kitchen, the dog crouched, his big tail wagging while he plotted his next move.
“NO!” Georgie advanced with purpose, her schoolmistress’s finger pointed like a sword. “Put that poor frog down!”
His tail wagged some more as he bounced from side to side like a boxer in the ring, clearly seeing all this as one big, marvelous game. To taunt them, he allowed his jaws to open enough that they could all see the kidnapped but still hale and hearty frog jumping around behind his teeth.
“Put it down! NOW!”
“There’s no escape, you scabrous bag of fleas!” Beside her, Simpkins snapped open a tablecloth and held it up like a matador, ready to trap the dog in it if he had to. “Open your mouth or I’ll break your blasted jaws!”
“Be a good dog, Norbert.” Felix pushed himself to the fore and tried to use reason in case Simpkins carried out that threat. “Let the frog go and I’ll get you a sausage.”
As always, his ears pricked up at the wordsausageand, sensing an opportunity, Mrs. Rigsby pretended to rummage in her apron to convince the dog that she had one. Norbert’s attention wavered for a split second, but that was all it took for Simpkins to smother him in the tablecloth as he and Lottie tried to wrestle him to the ground. However, instead of disorientating him or stopping him as it was supposed to, it did neither, and Norbert was off again like a shot. Only this time, draped in linen like a ghostly apparition as he barged a hole through Marianne and Grace, knocking the littlest Pendleton onto her bottom in the process.
He had shed the fabric by the foot of the stairs and so gallopedup them unhindered, pausing on the landing only long enough to coquettishly check that everyone was still chasing him before he was off again.
Georgie watched him disappear into a bedchamber and plunged after him, only to skid to a stop by the unexpected sight of the wide-eyed, soap-covered, and spluttering Captain Kincaid shooting upright from what she assumed must have been his reclined position in his bathtub.
If she had thought he suited a damp shirt, he suited his birthday suit much better. At least from the waist up, which was all her suddenly hypnotized eyeballs were capable of looking at. His arms were quite magnificent. The muscles cording them were utterly perfect. His shoulders were a thing of beauty, and his chest…
Good heavens above, but that marvelous expanse of wondrousness very nearly had her sighing aloud.
“What the blazes!” Too surprised by the sudden intrusion of the entire household, an openly ogling Lottie, and the dog now flying toward his bed to give any consideration at all to his modesty, the captain waved his razor in the air. “Not my dress uniform!” That was when Georgie realized she was gaping at him, practically drooling like Norbert did at the wares hung in the butcher’s window, and hoisted her jaw back up. “Not tonight! Somebody stop him!”
Plaintive, panicked words which spurred Simpkins to lunge for it as if his life depended on it. He managed to hit the mattress and cover the captain’s smart navy-and-gold brocade coat with his body before the filthy Norbert landed on it.
No sooner did his paws hit the well-sprung bed than the dog immediately burped out the frog. It wasted no time hopping from the pillow to the captain’s magnificent naked shoulder; then, as he screamed in shock and before the laughing Lottie could grab it, it dove headfirst into the safety of his bathwater.
ChapterFOURTEEN
By the time he had finally captured the frog that Norbert had smuggled into the house, cleared all the sniggering spectators out of his bedchamber, and stuffed his body into the damned too-tight breeches because the newer ones were now covered in muddy paw prints, the ball was in full swing when Harry arrived.
It hadn’t been the best start to his planned night of oat sowing, but at least it had gone some way toward alleviating some of his tiredness. His heart hadn’t stopped racing since the dog’s rude interruption and, thanks to all the pumping blood coursing through his body, he had a bit of a spring in his step. A spring that would come in handy for a ball and, with any luck, the other delights which might follow it. Especially as, and despite his shock at the interruption, his stupid heart had leapt at its first sight of Miss Rowe earlier, and that absolutely had to stop.
As if it was meant to be, he collided with a familiar and very fine feminine face straightaway. “Why hello, Captain Kincaid. Don’t you look dashing this evening? So dashing I’d have saved the firstwaltz for you if you had bothered arriving before it was done.” The notorious widow gave him an unmistakably come-hither look over the top of her fan.
“There is still the second to look forward to, Mrs. Templeton.” For some peculiar reason, flirting felt awkward, probably because he was out of practice, so he persevered because she was exactly what he needed. “Or the last.”
She held out the wrist, where her dance card dangled in invitation. “Or we could cause a scandal and you could have both—but only if you find me some champagne first.”
“It would be my pleasure.” Harry held out his arm and she threaded hers through it proprietorially as he led her to the refreshment table.
She undressed him with her eyes as they clinked glasses, and then she paraded him around her similarly brazen friends for the next half an hour, still clinging to him like a limpet. Her fingers constantly explored his bicep in a manner which let him know that she was fair game and quite content to be caught.
He wanted to be relieved that already, more than dancing seemed assured. He also desperately wanted to feel some enthusiasm for the attractive and uncomplicated woman on his arm, as she was precisely what he had come here for—but instead he remained unmoved. He tried to convince himself that, too, was down to his lack of practice and not a genuine lack of interest and that he would warm up as the night wore on. But even as she twirled too close when the waltz began and plastered herself against him as they danced around the floor, nothing kindled in his too-tight breeches.
By the time the dance ended, Harry was again making fresh excuses for his apathy. Excuses that blamed his breeches for constricting him exactly as Simpkins had warned and which made it evenmore imperative that Mrs. Templeton should dispense with them at her earliest possible convenience.
Except, he wasn’t that keen. Or keen at all for that matter. Really did not want to be here. Should probably go home… He stared longingly at the door and tried to think of the politest excuse to extricate himself from the willing woman still clinging to him.
“Captain Kincaid.” One of the footmen tapped him on the shoulder, ruining his plan to escape the ballroom completely. “Admiral Nugent needs an urgent word with you.”
Moments later, he was shown into Nugent’s smoke-filled study. The discarded glasses all around the abandoned stubs of expensive cigars suggested another meeting had just taken place, and with men who were much more important than Harry was. He shook the admiral’s hand, then gingerly lowered his constricted backside into the chair opposite. Trying hard not to read anything into a sudden invitation from a man who, if all the naval gossip was to be believed, was next in line for admiral of the fleet.
“You did a damned good job sorting out that mess in Portsmouth, Kincaid. A bloody fine job. Well done.”
“Thank you, sir.” In keeping with the new, no-nonsense, single-minded Harry who was going to look after himself for a change, he decided to take the compliment rather than brush it away as he normally did.
