The Indebted Earl by Erica Vetsch (best new books to read .TXT) 📗

to fulfill at least part of his promise to Rich by visiting Lady Sophia and Lady Richardson, and he had been drawn into escorting them to the coast. He’d been landed with the earldom and estate his uncle never wanted him to have. And now three little girls had washed up on his shore, looking for a home.

What was next? An earthquake? Pestilence? Fire?

God, what are You doing to me? I had such a simple plan laid out, and at every turn, I am thwarted.

He stood in a corner room off the upstairs hall, in an alcove created by a turret. Surrounded by windows, he looked out on the sea, his heart as restless as the ever-moving ocean.

The room must have served as the old earl’s study off the master suite, and the proportions and location pleased Charles, the first thing in the house to do so. If he had been going to stay here, he would have made it his sanctum. A place of refuge. He would be half tempted to paint the entire room pale blue to remind him of the captain’s quarters aboard a naval vessel. He smiled ruefully. Wouldn’t his old uncle throw a tirade at the thought of his house being taken over by a limey?

Charles heard—of all things—giggling down the hall. As unfamiliar to him as Mandarin. Giggling made him uneasy, with no way to predict an outcome.

Little girls. He had no experience of them. In fact, if he was truthful, they scared him. Laughing one moment, crying the next. And the small one watched his every move.

The middle one, if she had been a boy, had the makings of a powder monkey. She was never still, hopping, skipping, and moving all the time. And with a tart tongue to her as well.

Charles tugged at his collar. Something Thea had said lingered in his mind. That her older sister had hoped the new earl would fall in love with her?

Preposterous.

Girls were as unreliable as gunpowder.

How thankful he was for Sophie—Lady Sophia, he corrected himself. What would he have done had he turned up at Gateshead on his own, with only a steward in residence, and been faced with the arrival of three little girls?

He might have abandoned ship and left the entire place to them.

At the moment, Lady Sophia and Lady Richardson were engaged in the task of putting the girls to bed, a reef he was glad to be clear of.

A tap on the door, and Lady Sophia leaned around its edge. “There you are.” She stepped all the way in. “The girls are just about settled, but would you believe that the little one, Betsy, refuses to go to sleep until you come and say good night? It seems she’s quite taken with you.” A bemused smile played on her lips, and her eyes glowed in the candle flame of the glass lamp she carried.

Charles frowned. “Me?” The little girl had studied him all through dinner. With the upheaval of the household, they had opted to dine all together in the breakfast room, and for the duration of the meal in those cozy quarters, he had felt her brown eyes regarding him. She had scarcely blinked as she nibbled her food. Had she thought he was going to turn to a sea monster and devour her?

And now she wanted him to bid her good night?

Girls were definitely unpredictable.

Of course, Thea had done her share of staring as well, but from her it seemed frank curiosity rather than wariness. He could deal with that, since he had a bit of curiosity about the girls himself.

For instance, he wondered what had prompted his crusty, uncaring, unforgiving uncle to take on the responsibility for three girls of whom he was no relation, when he had turned his back on his own sister and refused to budge?

And what was he, the new earl, supposed to do about it?

Charles followed Lady Sophia to the room she had selected for the girls, his enthusiasm for the endeavor hovering somewhere around nil.

“This was the nursery once upon a time, so it seemed fitting, though it doesn’t appear to have been used since your mother’s generation. Mrs. Chapman has offered to sleep in the nurse’s room until you can sort out a governess for the girls.”

Sort out a governess? Charles stopped in the darkened hallway, his mind framing a refusal. He wasn’t the girls’ guardian. Beyond a bit of Christian charity, giving them a bed for a night or two, they weren’t his responsibility. They certainly couldn’t live here alone once he received his new command.

Lady Sophia disappeared into the nursery and then stuck her head out the door to see where he’d gone. “Coming?”

He entered the room as he would an ambush. The two youngest girls leaned against pillows in one bed, while their older sister stood near the other bed, clutching a wrapper about herself. With her hair uncoiled and falling in a braid over her shoulder, she looked even younger than she had at dinner.

At his appearance, she scuttled under the covers and pulled them to her chin. “This is most improper, a gentleman coming into a lady’s boudoir.” Her eyes were round as portholes.

“Stop putting on airs,” Thea scoffed. “The place is full of people. Nothing ‘improper,’”—she rolled her eyes—“is going to happen.”

Mrs. Chapman carried a tray with three water glasses and set it on the table between the beds, and Lady Richardson drew the curtains against the night.

Lady Sophia set the lamp on a shelf and beckoned him closer.

Betsy stared at him with those brown eyes, the lamplight making shadows and highlights on her curly hair. Thea wriggled, thumping her pillow and tugging the blankets until she was comfortable.

“What am I supposed to do?” Charles whispered to Lady Sophia.

Surely she was smothering laughter at his expense. Did she expect him to be experienced at such maneuvers? One didn’t “tuck in” cabin boys and powder monkeys. One tossed them into their bunks or hammocks and blew