All the children were present — India was reading a book, the twins were rolling on the floor arguing over a wooden figure meant to go in their sailing boats, Thom was chatting with a one of the London footmen whose name she couldn’t remember, and Digger was standing at the bottom of the stairs, glaring up at her. Behind him, Juan was dressed for the outdoors, holding her parasol and gloves.
“You’re late,” Digger said with a scornful curl of his lip. “You said ten o’clock. It’s three minutes after!”
“I beg your pardon,” she said humbly, eyeing Juan as she took the parasol and gloves. “We can get started now if everyone is…Juan, are you accompanying us?”
Evidently he was waiting for just such an opening, for he flung himself at her feet and scattered wet kisses over the back of her hand. “It will be the greatest joy in my heart to be of the many services to my most very lady.”
Gently Plum disengaged her hand. “Is it the norm for fashionable butlers to attend their mistresses? I had rather thought that was in the line of a maid or a footman.”
He got to his feet, giving her a sidelong glance that would have simmered stew. “It depends on the mistress, does it not, delicious one?”
Plum opened her mouth to dispute the innuendo he was making, then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. To be truthful, she liked Juan despite — or rather because — of his flirtatious nature. “Well, we shall just have to make it a fashion, shall we not? Are we all ready? Excellent. Off we go.”
Fortunately for her nerves, she did not have long to wait before her questions regarding Charles and what he wanted were answered. She and Thom were strolling across the park while the children shrieked and ran circles around them when she noticed Charles bowing to her from the back of a bay gelding.
“I see an acquaintance I must speak to,” she told Thom. “Could you please take the children on to see the Serpentine? Don’t let them go into the water, and don’t let the girls climb any trees, or they’ll tear their gowns, and don’t let the boys pretend they’re beggars and solicit people for money like they did yesterday, and don’t let them—”
Thom laughed and held up her hand. “I won’t let them do anything but sail their boats.”
“Thank you,” Plum said with a grateful smile. “I’ll be with you shortly. Juan, and you and…er…the footman may attend to Miss Fraser.”
Juan shook his head, simultaneously waggling his eyebrows. “Harry would not be liking that.”
“He wouldn’t?” Plum asked, one eye on the approaching Charles.
“It would not be making him happy, no. He would want me, your Juan of the most devoted nature, to be always at your side, protecting you against the rousing rabble.”
“Traditionally there are very few rabble-rousers to be found in Hyde Park,” Plum pointed out, shooing him toward Thom. “I will be fine by myself.”
“I will tear my heart out with my own hands and stomp on it heartily before I abandon the most beloved of all my mistresses,” Juan said with a dramatic flare to his nostrils that warned of the strength of his intentions.
Plum gave up trying to shoo him away. “Very well, but stay well back. I have no need of your protection now. Go on, Thom. I will meet you later.”
Thom cast a curious glance to where Charles was dismounting, handing his reins to a groom before strolling toward Plum, but made no further comment as she hurried off after the children. Juan loitered around in the background; she hoped far enough away that he couldn’t overhear her conversation.
“Charles,” Plum said as he stopped before her, making her an elaborate bow. “I rather suspected I might run into you. I just had no idea it would be so soon.”
“As effervescent a wit as ever, my dear,” he said, holding out his arm for her. “I find myself unable to pass by the opportunity to have a cozy little chat with you. Shall we stroll in this direction?”
She scorned the offer of his arm, but began walking in the direction he indicated, thankfully in the opposite direction to the artificial lake the children had been headed to. “About what do you wish to chat? Surely there can be little you wish to say to me, and I have nothing pleasant to say to you.”
“My dear, my dear,” Charles protested in so patently false a tone of dismay that Plum wanted to kick him in the shins. “I am wounded that your thoughts have not softened toward me over the years.”
“Softened?” Plum asked in mingled horror and fury. “You ruined me, cast me aside without any protest to your family, without any regard or interest as to my wellbeing or future. For all you knew I might have been pregnant, and yet you allowed your family to bundle your wife and you off to the continent without so much as a second thought about me. How is your wife, by the by?”
“Dead these last seven years, poor soul. I remarried, the daughter of a Greek nobleman, a rather rough girl, but pleasing enough.” Charles tried to chuck her under her chin. She smacked at his hand. “Helena is much more biddable than you were, my dear, but alas, that has its drawbacks. She has not the fire you had in bed—”
Plum slapped him, as hard as she could with her gloved hand, which unfortunately did not allow her much of a slap. Still, it was better than nothing. “I tolerate your presence here simply because I must know what you want of me, but I will not allow you to abuse me any further, not even verbally — Juan, no, release him, he is not a rabble-rouser.”
“You struck him the blow,” Juan said, his eyes filled with Basque vengeance as he grabbed Charles by the neckcloth. “Now I must strangle him. Harry would not like it if I did not avenge the dishonor this one has done you.”
“It’s all right, he simply spoke without thinking. Please release him, Juan,” Plum soothed, pulling the distraught butler from a red-faced Charles.
Juan allowed himself to be stopped from throttling Charles, but he spat something out to the latter that sounded like it was a curse before walking a few feet away to seethe in a menacing manner.
Charles sputtered over the incident until Plum snapped at him. “Stop acting like such an infant, you brought that upon yourself. Now, please do me the kindness of stating your goal without harassing me further—”
“I can assure you that I have no intention of harassing you,” Charles said, his muddy brown eyes alight with anger. He rubbed his cheek, his lips thinned. “Indeed my thoughts of you have been quite of the opposite variety, especially upon my arrival in Paris last month, when a very interesting tome was placed into my hands, a tome concerning acts of great intimacy that seemed oddly familiar.”
Ah, now they were arriving to the meat of the discussion. Plum said nothing but raised her brow in imitation of Harry’s best quizzical look.
“I find myself — naturally, it is embarrassing to have to admit this — in a particularly unpleasant situation of having my funds tied up.”
Plum almost laughed aloud, a sigh of relief on her lips. Money — that’s all Charles wanted, just money. Both the laughter and sigh dried up as she realized that she had no money whatsoever.
“As it would appear that the book you so cleverly penned using our experiences together as man and wife—”
“Illegally man and wife, although you hadn’t bothered to tell me that until it was too late,” Plum couldn’t help but add.
“—as the sole basis of this, I’m told, very popular book, I cannot help but think that you might be willing to show gratitude and appreciation in a pecuniary sense to one who made the book possible, as it were.”