chew on it. I think it would behoove both you and Corrie to learn a lesson from this. It might be too late, but who knows?”
“Hmm. Are you going to work at Lyon ’s Gate today?”
Douglas shook his head. “With James gone all the time, I must see to business here.”
She went up on her tiptoes, drew him down to her, and whispered against his ear, “I haven’t minded rubbing down your sore muscles, my lord.”
“I married a baggage, thank God.”
CHAPTER 16
“ Everett! Don’t eat that nail!”
Three adults and Martha ran toward the little boy, but his mother was the fastest. Corrie whipped him up in her arms, pulled the nail out of his hand, spit on her handkerchief and wiped his mouth. “No, no, no!” she yelled in his face and shook him for good measure.
Everett stared at his mother, screwed up his face, threw back his head and yowled.
His twin, Douglas, grabbed his mother’s skirt and yanked hard. Corrie, both hands trying to hold Everett still, crooned down to Douglas, “Just a moment, baby, just another moment, and Mama will pick you up too.”
Everett ’s voice went up another octave. Douglas screwed up his face, opened his mouth and matched his twin’s volume. Martha patted their hands. “Heavenly groats, my lady, me own little brother niv-never-made so much racket as these little nits.”
Jason called out, “Who wants to waltz with me?”
There was an instant of complete silence, then, “I do!”
“I do!”
“Me first, Uncle Jason!”
Everett was trying to pull away from his mother and Douglas was jumping up and down, now pulling on Jason’s dirty pant leg.
Jason, laughing, picked up Douglas and gathered Everett to his other side, and called out, “I need some music, please.”
Hallie, who’d come running out of the house at Everett ’s yells, didn’t hesitate. She started singing one of Duchess Wyndham’s ditties, written some twenty years before and still a favorite in the king’s navy. She sang it in three-quarter time to a popular waltz tune so the words fit the rhythm of a waltz, for the most part, making anyone listening laugh his head off.
Jason whirled and dipped and glided. The twins laughed and shrieked. Every adult within one hundred feet stopped working to watch, and listen.
Three of the workers knew the ditty and began singing along with Hallie. They were all swaying, then Mackie, a bricklayer, yelled to one of the women, “Meg, come dance wit’ me!”
Soon there were at least four couples waltzing, Martha herself doing very well with young Thomas the blacksmith’s son, who had just celebrated his tenth birthday. Alex heard her say, “She’s my mistress, she is. Jest listen to those beautiful pipes inside her purty self.”
The dowager countess, Lady Lydia, hummed and swayed in her chair, in blessed shade beside the front door, Angela Tewksbury at her side, laughing, trying to clap her hands in three-quarter waltz time.
Hollis stood in the doorway smiling benignly, foot tapping. He caught Jason’s eye and pointed to the platter and formed the words
“Dance!”
“Dance!”
It required another full rendition of the sailor’s song before the twins decided they wanted lemonade, all because Hollis was drinking a big glass, letting a dribble run down his chin, not three feet from them.
Soon they were seated on a blanket in the shade next to Lady Lydia and Mrs. Tewksbury, a plate of cakes and biscuits on the blanket between them. They were jabbering in twin talk, each trying to grab the most cakes.
“Give me water, Hollis,” Jason said, breathing hard. “Merciful heavens those two have more energy than Eliza Dickers. I don’t think even she wore me out as much as those two.”
One of his father’s eyebrows kicked up. “A Baltimore belle?”
Hallie sneered, her expression condemning as a nun’s. “Ah, yes, my lord. I understand that Jason’s belle, Eliza Dickers, could perhaps be considered something of a virtuous widow, once upon a time, before your son’s arrival to Baltimore.”
Jason stiffened straight as the new fence poles he’d hammered into the ground only an hour before. He gave her a look to curdle butter and a voice to freeze the outskirts of Hell. “Eliza Dickers is a lady who is one of Jessie Wyndham’s best friends. She, unlike you, Miss Carrick, is an adult. She hurts no one, either with actions or words.”
He turned on his heel and walked back to his brother.
Hallie stared after him. “Oh dear.”
Douglas said, “Why do you dislike my son so, Miss Carrick?”
“Oh dear,” Hallie said again. “I didn’t mean-truly I didn’t, it’s just that I’m-”
“You’re still furious with him because he owns half of Lyon ’s Gate?”
“No,” she said, staring at Jason whilst he spoke to his mother now, his hand on her sleeve.
“Ah,” said Douglas ’s father, and smiled at her.
Hallie stilled. “I don’t like what you’re thinking, sir, even though I don’t know what it is, and I don’t ever want to know what it is.”
She watched Jason raise a glass of water and down the entire glass, his strong throat working. His shirt, open halfway down his chest, was sweated through and clinging to him. The hair on his chest was dirty and shiny as well with sweat, which she wasn’t going to think about.
If Douglas wasn’t mistaken, and he never was about things like this, Hallie Carrick was staring at his son with a rather alarmed expression on her face. He would wager a bundle of groats that she’d been jealous. Yes, she’d given a display of nice, raw jealousy, as low and human as could be. It was difficult to see another side to her, Douglas thought, a charmingly human side, since he’d wanted to strangle her for so long.
He watched Jason toss his glass to one of the workers standing near Hollis. Douglas said to Hallie, “Your voice is good and strong. Do you know that Duchess Wyndham is James Wyndham’s cousin-in-law?”
“Oh yes, she’s very famous in Baltimore. I believe Wilhelmina Wyndham quite hates her, although she hates a goodly number of people so that’s no particular distinction.”
“I can’t believe you made that ditty fit waltz time, sort of. Well done.”
“Thank you, sir. I suppose it’s time for me to get back to hanging the new bedchamber draperies.”
Douglas watched her walk into the house, her eyes on her shoes, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, her shoulders a bit slumped.
James came up behind his brother, his arms folded over his own sweaty shirt. “Hallie hasn’t worn breeches since that very first time we met her.”
Jason, no hesitation at all, laughed. “I’m not about to say anything. She’d strip off her gown and pull on breeches just to spite me. Blessed hell, it’s hotter now than it was a minute ago.”
James took a glass of water from one of the workers, took a sip, then dumped the rest of the glass over his
