JOSIE RACED UP two flights of cold stone stairs to the third floor, where both she and the boys had their rooms, Spencer a step ahead of her. The perpetually hungry boys often purloined food from the kitchen. Spencer was rarely caught; Clay, not nearly so clever or so fast, almost always was.
The door to the schoolroom was open, revealing a familiar tableau. Mrs. Pettibone had a fistful of Clay’s shirt clutched in her hand and the six-year-old was standing on tiptoes to avoid being strangled by the muslin at his throat.
“Stealing food again! What did I tell you would happen the next time? Do you remember? Or are you too feebleminded to recall?”
“If punishment should be meted out—” Miss Sharpe interjected.
“If? If?” Mrs. Pettibone said in outrage. “Are you suggesting you condone this behavior?”
“Mrs. Pettibone—” That was all Josie got out before the rail-thin woman rounded on her.
“Don’t bother pleading for mercy,” she snapped. “This insolent brat has been asking for a whipping, and he’s going to get it.”
“No one is going to discipline my charges but me!” Miss Sharpe retorted.
Josie took another step into the room, putting herself between Miss Sharpe and Mrs. Pettibone, and announced, “I just wanted to let you both know that this is my last day at Tearlach Castle.”
Mrs. Pettibone was so perturbed by Josie’s statement that she released her hold on Clay, who slumped to the floor and then scuttled away on hands and knees to hide behind Josie’s skirt.
The housekeeper found the boys a trial and Miss Sharpe a constant irritation, but she hated Josie with a passion. For someone as lowly as a maid-of-all-work, she considered Josie far too proud and interfering. Mrs. Pettibone would have dismissed her within a day of her arrival, when Josie had first interceded on behalf of Spencer and Clay—coincidentally, on the side of Miss Sharpe—but it turned out that she didn’t have the authority. The Duke of Blackthorne had apparently banished Josie to this remote prison with no hope of parole. The maid and the housekeeper had waged a war of words and wits—and Josie had walked a tightrope between the housekeeper and the governess—ever since.
“You can’t go anywhere,” Mrs. Pettibone said vindictively. “Blackthorne won’t allow it.”
“The duke no longer controls my destiny,” Josie replied. “I’m leaving today to rejoin my family in America.”
“With what funds?” the housekeeper inquired, one bushy white brow arched in disdain.
Josie had been paid next to nothing in the two years she’d worked at the castle. She lifted her chin and said, “My family provided money for my passage.”
Josie found the scowl on the housekeeper’s face immensely satisfying, but she hadn’t contemplated the effect her words would have on the two boys. Or rather, on Spencer, since Clay didn’t seem to understand the significance of what she’d said.
“You’re going away?” Spencer asked, a horrified look on his face.
“Good riddance,” the governess muttered, since Josie’s defense of the two boys had caused her to be the bane of that lady’s existence as well.
Josie brushed the dark hair in need of a cut out of Spencer’s eyes in a gesture as loving as it was necessary. “I’m afraid I must.” She wanted to reassure Spencer that she would be back to rescue him and his brother as soon as she could, but she didn’t want to reveal her plans to the spiteful housekeeper or the possessive governess, either or both of whom would surely intervene, if they could, to ruin Josie’s chance of separating the boys from their uncaring uncle.
“We’ll just see what His Grace has to say about this,” the housekeeper muttered. As she strode past Josie, she pointed an arthritic finger at Clay and said, “Don’t think you’ve escaped your punishment, you pestilential rodent. The moment Miss Wentworth is gone, you’ll have your comeuppance.”
Spencer put his narrow-shouldered, eight-year-old body between his brother and Mrs. Pettibone and said, “You’ll have to go through me first.”
The housekeeper glared at the defiant boy. “That can be arranged.”
“Over my dead body,” the governess growled.
Josie would have felt a great deal better about leaving, if the governess had been as much interested in protecting the boys as she was in squelching Mrs. Pettibone’s pretensions.
Josie quickly turned the two boys away from Mrs. Pettibone and Miss Sharpe and headed them toward the door. “I would appreciate your help packing.”
She ushered the boys down the hall to the small room she had to herself, since none of the other maids wanted to associate with someone who was so clearly a trial to both housekeeper and governess. The instant they were all inside, she shut the door and leaned back against it. Then she took the two steps necessary to gather one boy in each arm and pull them close.
“I didn’t want to say so in front of Mrs. Pettibone or Miss Sharpe, but I’ll be back as quickly as I can, and when I come, I’ll have the necessary blunt to take you both away from here.”
“You’re leaving?” Clay said.
She bent down on one knee so she could look into Clay’s confused gray eyes. Clay had always been slow to understand, and Josie knew he would always need someone to take care of him. “I must, dearest. But I’ll be back.”
Clay clutched her around the neck and cried, “Don’t go, Josie! Please. Don’t go!”
Josie held him close as he sobbed. She glanced up at Spencer, whose blue eyes welled with tears that he scrubbed away before they could fall. From his dejected appearance, he didn’t believe she’d be back, that this was goodbye forever.
Spencer looped a comforting arm around Clay’s shoulders and said in a voice that trembled with emotion, “Let her go, Clay. Josie needs to pack.”
Josie freed herself from Clay’s grasp and crossed the room to retrieve a cloth traveling bag from the bottom of her wardrobe. “I will be back,” she said to Spencer. “As soon as I can convince the duke—”
“Nothing you say is going to make a difference,” Spencer said bitterly.
“I’ll make him listen to me. I’ll make him understand—”
“Even if he listens,” Spencer argued, “I’ll bet you a golden guinea that he won’t let us go anywhere with you. Not that I have a guinea, or I’d have loaned it to you long before now, so you could escape this place.”
“There must be some way—” Josie began.
“Uncle Marcus has forgotten all about us!” Spencer cried. “It’s as though we fell down a well and disappeared from the face of the earth.”
“I intend to correct that,” Josie promised, stopping to give the distraught boy a reassuring hug. The sad truth was that she had no idea how she was going to convince the toplofty Duke of Blackthorne that he should allow his nephews to trot off to America with her. She only knew that she wasn’t going to leave these two boys prey to the callous whims of the feuding housekeeper and governess.
Once Josie was packed, the boys followed her downstairs to the kitchen, where she’d left the Pinkerton. “I’m ready,” she announced.
She turned to say a last goodbye and realized her throat was too thick with emotion to speak. Tears filled her eyes and made their stricken faces difficult to see. She swiped at her eyes, then bent down on one knee to embrace the two boys one final time.
“Be good while I’m away,” she croaked. “Don’t give Mrs. Pettibone an excuse to confront Miss Sharpe.”
“She doesn’t need an excuse,” Spencer muttered.
“I know,” Josie said, holding him tight. “Just do your best to stay out of her way.”
She kissed the tears from Clay’s cheeks, then rose and leaned down to kiss Spencer on the forehead. As her lips touched his skin he jerked backward. “You don’t have to leave! If you cared about us, you’d stay.”
Josie gasped at the virulence in his voice. “That isn’t fair! I have to go.”
Spencer put a supportive arm around Clay, who’d started crying in earnest, and said, “Then go! Get out! We don’t need you. We don’t need anybody. We were fine before you got here, and we’ll be fine when you’re long gone.”
“Spencer, I know this seems—” She stopped speaking because Spencer had grabbed Clay’s hand, torn open the kitchen door, and run outside, dragging his younger brother behind him.
Josie turned to the Pinkerton and said, “I have to speak to them, Mr….What is your name?”
“Thompson, miss.”
“I have to explain that I’m coming back, Mr. Thompson. They don’t understand that I have to leave.”
She’d only taken two steps toward the kitchen door when the Pinkerton said, “The sooner you go, Miss Wentworth, the sooner you can return, if that’s your intention.”
She stopped in her tracks, realizing the truth of his words, then turned to him and said fiercely, “I am coming back.”
“If you say so, Miss Wentworth.” He picked up her bag from the floor, where she’d dropped it to say farewell to the boys, and gestured toward the door. “Shall we go?”
Josie looked around the kitchen one last time, remembering all the potatoes she’d peeled, all the dishes she’d washed, all the silver she’d polished—even though His Grace had never shown up to use it. She was done being the Duke of Blackthorne’s servant. It was time to confront the man and make him pay for his dishonorable behavior toward her—and the two boys who’d had the misfortune to become his wards.