“You mean worms, don’t you? Willie eats worms, Willie eats worms!” Lydia trilled, dancing about in her glee, her pinching boots forgotten.
“He does not!” Daisy protested, lifting the boy down from the wooden table and standing him on the dirt. “Stay,” she warned tightly.
Willie began to cry.
“Willie eats worms, Willie eats—”
“For the love of heaven, Lydia, stifle yourself.” Daisy winced. She was being a bad governess. A bad, bad governess. Clearly the children had no place in the greenhouse, and should be taken inside for a midmorning snack. William was always up for a snack, and Lydia could be easily bribed with the promise of a special story before bedtime. One having to do with dragons, or perhaps man-eating fish. Any sort of monster or ogre would do, as long as they died horribly in the end and the princess was saved by the handsome knight.
And speaking of handsome knights, she thought even as she pointed out a particularly fine rose to the children, I’m more now than ever convinced there aren’t any in my immediate future. I picked the one perfect spot for us to meet and talk without being observed, and all I’ve gotten for my genius so far are two filthy children and my hair misbehaving badly in all this humid heat. Where is the man?
“Now, children, this is a rose,” she said, holding on to the tail of William’s small jacket so he couldn’t wander. “I’m convinced it has some intricate Latin name, but for now we’ll simply call it a rose. A...a pink rose. Why don’t you sniff it, Lydia? It should smell delicious.”
“Ow! Ow, ow, ow!” Lydia cried out a moment later, holding on to one hand with the other and hopping about in circles. “I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding!”
William began to cry. Again.
“You must have grabbed a thorn,” Daisy said, reaching for Lydia. “Stop hopping and let me see. Ah, yes, there it is. Let me just pluck it out.”
“No! Don’t touch it! This is all your fault, Daisy. You made me hurt myself.”
“Yes, of course,” Daisy bit out as she attempted to hold the child still. “I thought making you cry would be the perfect topping for my morning.”
“My, my, my, what do we have here? I was drawn inside by what I thought was a voice raised in song, a song of worms, no less, only to find a pretty princess, crying. No, no, this cannot be countenanced.”
Daisy’s spine went stiff at the highly dramatic, definitely mocking tone in Valentine Redgrave’s voice. Now he bothers to present himself? Just when I’m at my worst? How wonderful.
There was one thing to say, however: Lydia was definitely all female. The child took one look at Valentine and her cries were cut off as if by magic. The magic of a smile. “Are you a prince?”
“Indeed I am, fair lady, late from the kingdom of Redgravia,” Valentine said, bowing as if to a queen.
“Oh, good grief.” Daisy longed to murder him, and she’d always believed herself to be a calm, carefully controlled person. Perhaps a tad sarcastic when pushed too far, a failing her father had never been reluctant to point out to her, but she was by and large, she thought, a reasonable person. “Miss Lydia’s got a rose thorn stuck in her thumb and refuses to let me dislodge it,” she said, which was the only greeting he would get from her. A prince? Indeed!
“And I can see why she refused you, Miss Marchant,” Valentine said, going down on one knee in the dirt. “Clearly this is a magical thorn, and only a prince of the blood can remove it.”
“Then perhaps you’d be so good as to toddle off and fetch us one,” Daisy said sweetly, her blood boiling now. Did he have to look so much like a fairy-tale prince?
His smile made her feel petty. After all, he was only trying to help. The thorn had to be removed, and she didn’t relish chasing a screeching Lydia all over the greenhouse to get the job done.
“Your hand, fair princess, if you please,” he said, holding out his own.
Lydia curtsied and offered her hand (both done rather saucily, which made Daisy wonder if some females were simply born to beguile the opposite sex—a gift from the gods she herself had not been granted).
Valentine looked deeply into the girl’s eyes, complimenting them on their sky-blue brilliance, and at the same time managed to remove the thorn—which wasn’t all that deep in any case. He then dabbed at her thumb with a pristine handkerchief he’d produced from somewhere, neatly blotting away the single drop of blood.
“And now to banish the pain with a kiss,” he said. “By your leave, my princess?”
As Daisy opened her mouth to protest, Lydia nodded furiously...and Valentine bent, pressed a kiss on the child’s thumb.
“You’ve mud on your royal knee, prince,” she said as he stood up once more.
“Better than on my nose,” he countered, and then laughed as Daisy instinctively raised her fingers to her face.
“There’s no mud on my nose.”
“True. But your reaction tells me if I’d told you not to turn about because someone is standing behind you, the first thing you’d do is turn around. That’s the trouble with women. You’re too curious. I can’t have that.”
He couldn’t have that? The nerve of the man! She’d thought he’d be serious today. But here they were again, as they were last night, with him hinting at something she didn’t understand. It was a game she had no interest in playing at the moment. “Children, it’s time to go inside,” she said quietly. As far away from this genial madman as we can get!
But Lydia, who minutes earlier would have leaped at this suggestion, was too busy staring at her thumb in some bemusement. “I don’t want to go inside. I want to look at the pretty man...the pretty flowers. Don’t we, Willie?”
Since William was sucking on one of a handful of pastilles he’d inexplicably come in possession of, he neither agreed nor disagreed. He was too busy smiling up at Valentine.
“You’re incorrigible, and all your children will grow up to be entirely unmanageable,” she accused him quietly.
“You can’t ruin a child by encouraging their imaginations, my dearest grandmother always said, you can only achieve that by breaking his natural spirit to suit your will.” Valentine grinned. “She raised the entire current crop of Redgraves, you understand.”
“That explains so much. Your sisters were allowed to revel in fantasies and you and your brothers were given anything and everything you wished.”
“Two brothers, and we learned life has its responsibilities, as well, and one younger sister, who variously dubbed me her shining prince or the ogre at the gate, depending on her mood. Luckily for the young lady here, I suppose, I mostly was cast in the role of rescuing hero. With Kate, you rather had to be.”
Daisy shifted her feet in slight embarrassment. “Well, you certainly took to the role.”
“Thank you.” He gifted both them with an elegant bow. “Your humble servant, ladies.” Then he straightened, and called out to a young servant who’d just entered the greenhouse. “Here, young man,” he said, already reaching into his pocket, to extract a coin quickly slipped into an entirely new pocket. “The young miss wishes to have you assist her in gathering a large bouquet for the nursery, if you please. As for young Master William, he would very much desire a small trowel, a pot of water, an apron of sorts and a low table he can use to make pies. Mud pies. All young gentlemen enjoy patting out mud pies. Isn’t that right, Master William? Why, I can nearly feel the pleasurable experience of Redgrave mud squeezing out from between my fingers. Pure heaven, I promise you.”
For a child who seemed to never understand much of anything Daisy said to him, young Master William showed a quick intelligence in grasping what Valentine had offered. He grabbed