Rebecca Hagan Lee (19 page)

James bit his bottom lip to strangle his laughter as Emerald kicked free of her diaper,

“Oh!” Elizabeth’s incredible blue-green eyes widened in utter disbelief. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” She hugged Emerald close to her body, then looked at James. “I don’t understand what went wrong. I’ve never—” She stopped abruptly. “I’ve never had this happen to me before.”

“Not to worry,” James said as he set Garnet on her feet, then crossed over to where Elizabeth stood and held out his arms for Emerald. The bare-bottomed tot released her hold around Elizabeth’s neck and slipped into James’s welcoming embrace. “It happens to me all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yes, indeed.” He bent and retrieved the lost diaper and the nightgown Elizabeth had dropped on the floor. He draped the garments over his shoulder, then carried Emerald over to the low bureau that doubled as a changing table. Shifting Emerald to one side so that she rode on his left hip, James opened the top right drawer of the bureau and quickly shoved the freshly laundered stacks of clothing inside. That done, he pushed the drawer closed and lay Emerald on top of the thin pad.

Elizabeth was stunned by James’s proficiency in the nursery. She watched, open-mouthed, as he pulled the diaper from his shoulder and carefully unpinned it. He stuck the safety pin into the fabric of the breast pocket of his jacket, well out of Emerald’s curious reach, then grasped the little girl by the ankles, lifted her hips, and positioned the diaper beneath her.

“It’s been my experience,” he confided as he pulled the three sections of the cloth together and pinned them snugly into place, “that children are a lot like Shetland ponies. They tend to puff out their stomachs and if you don’t pull the cinch tight enough, the saddle slides down around their bellies.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her, and Elizabeth saw
that his brilliant blue eyes were sparkling with mirth. “I never had a pony,” she said.

“Well, of course! That explains it,” he pronounced as he pulled Emerald into a sitting position, took her nightgown from its resting place on his shoulder, and dropped it over her head and tied the satin bow at her neck with a flourish.

“Explains what?” she asked, unable to resist the teasing note in his voice.

“Why you didn’t know to tighten the cinch.” James smoothed Emerald’s gown into place and carried her back to her baby bed. “I knew a teacher with your experience and
vast
knowledge of children would know her way around a nursery.”

Elizabeth frowned. “I never claimed to have a vast knowledge of children. You took it for granted …”

James stiffened. Elizabeth watched as the sparkle in his blue eyes disappeared, replaced by something harder and colder.

“I never take anything for granted,” he told her. “I knew yesterday afternoon how much, or should I say, how little practical experience you had with small children.”

“How did you know?” she asked.

“I knew from the bewildered and dismayed expression you had on your face when I first told you about the Treasures.”

Elizabeth could have informed her new employer that her bewildered and dismayed expression had come from the fact that she had thought of him as single and available and had never once considered that he might be a married man with four little girls. And while she was on the subject, she could have pointed out the fact that James hadn’t told her anything about the Treasures except their ages, and that he hadn’t dared breathe a word about the fact that his daughters were Chinese. But Elizabeth tactfully managed to refrain from making those points. She concentrated, instead, on pulling together the pieces of her already battered sense of pride. “Is that why you came up here?” she asked, more
sharply than she intended when she realized her satin wrapper had come untied and hung open, revealing her nightgown and adding to her nervous, unsettled feeling. “To supervise an
incompetent
governess?”

He glanced over at Elizabeth as she snatched up the ends of the sash of her robe, pulled them tight, and tied them in a bow at her waist.
She certainly is defensive and prickly this morning.
“There’s a big difference between incompetent and inexperienced,” James told her as he lifted Emerald from her bed and held her in his arms. “And no, I didn’t come to stand over your shoulder and pass judgment. I came to the nursery because I thought Diamond would be awake and fussy and ready for a fresh diaper and breakfast. Not necessarily in that order. She usually—”

James broke off abruptly and watched as Elizabeth slapped her palm against her forehead.

“Diamond!” she said as she rushed to the cradle. “Oh, my goodness, Garnet, we forgot about Diamond!”

“What about Diamond?” James was standing at Elizabeth’s side in an instant. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Elizabeth answered, staring down at the baby who lay quietly gazing up at the ceiling and contentedly sucking on her fingers.

“Are you certain?” James wrinkled his nose in distaste as he leaned over the cradle and caught a whiff of Diamond’s soiled undergarment.

“I’m certain,” Elizabeth replied, turning her attention away from the baby in the cradle long enough to study James’s profile. “Absolutely certain that you were right about Diamond. She’s hungry and she needs changing. And not necessarily in that order.”

James gave her a boyish grin. “Be my guest,” he invited, reaching out to hand her another fresh diaper.

Elizabeth blanched. Practicing on Emerald was one thing, but Diamond … Diamond was so small.

Seeing the look on Elizabeth’s face, James relented. “Here, you take Emmy.” He handed Emerald over to Elizabeth.
“And I’ll change Diamond.” He carried the baby over to the changing table and held out his hand for the clean diaper, which Elizabeth gladly relinquished. “Now, watch closely and pay attention,” he instructed. “This is your last lesson in diaper changing. I’m not always going to be around.”

“You’re not going away again?”

James recognized the hint of alarm in her tone of voice for what it was—not panic, but genuine disappointment. “Not out of town,” he told her. “But to the office. I do work for a living, you know.” He unpinned and removed the baby’s dirty diaper, then held out his hand like a surgeon demanding a scalpel. “Warm damp cloth.”

Elizabeth rushed to the bathroom to get one, then returned and placed it in his hand.

“This is the tricky part,” James explained, lifting Diamond’s hips and gently, thoroughly washing her. “Be sure you get her clean. Babies have very sensitive skin.” He shoved the dirty diaper and face cloth to the far end of the bureau, positioned the fresh linen into place. “Powder,” he demanded, and Garnet bumped his leg with the can. James reached down and took the powder from her. He nodded toward the powder on Garnet, then winked at Elizabeth and Emerald. “I think you’ve got the powdering part down pat.” He sprinkled talc on the baby, gently rubbed it in. “As for the cinching and the pinning, same procedure as before,” he told Elizabeth. “But on a smaller scale. Any questions?”

Elizabeth bit her bottom lip and shook her head at the same time, then blurted out, “What about that? What do you do about that?”

“What?”

Elizabeth pointed to the baby’s raw belly button. “What do you do for it? Emerald’s doesn’t look like that.”

“Neither does Garnet’s or mine,” James replied. “Or yours.” Suddenly intrigued by the idea of intimately exploring Elizabeth’s belly button, he gave her a smoldering
look. “But that’s because ours have healed. Diamond’s hasn’t had time.”

“Healed from what?” Elizabeth hated to sound ignorant, but her curiosity got the best of her.

James chuckled. “From birth, Miss Sadler. You’re looking at what’s left of Diamond’s umbilical cord—the cord that attached her to her mother while she was inside the womb.”

“Oh,” she replied, her cheeks turning a most becoming shade of pink.

“Yes, oh,” James agreed. “How refreshing to have a novice governess!” he teased.

“I’ll learn,” Elizabeth promised.

“You already have,” James said, flashing her a truly devastating smile. “Any more questions?”

“No.”

“Then, we’ll pin Diamond together,” he announced, doing just that by fastening the safety pin in the center of the three sections of her diaper, “and begin lesson number two.”

“Lesson number two?” Elizabeth parroted.

“Breakfast,” he announced.

“Yours? Mine?”

James shook his head, then nodded toward Garnet, Emerald, and Diamond. “Theirs. And we’ll start with. Diamond.” He lifted the baby from the changing table, cradled her against his chest, then reached down and took Garnet by the hand. “Let’s go eat, shall we?”

“I can’t go down to breakfast dressed like this,” Elizabeth protested, suddenly remembering she was still barefoot and wearing nothing but a satin wrapper and nightgown.

“Of course you can,” James told her, shrugging his shoulders. “Everyone else is in their nightclothes.” He nodded to indicate the little girls.

“You’re not,” Elizabeth said.

James glanced down at his suit and noted the blotches of white talcum powder across the front of it. “Only because I have an early meeting with my associate, Will Keegan,
at the office this morning. Otherwise, I’d have breakfast in my dressing gown every morning. Come on,” he urged. “Or our breakfast will be cold.”

Still, Elizabeth hesitated. “This isn’t proper.”

“Sure it is,” James told her. “House rule number one: Everyone eats breakfast dressed in their nightclothes.”

Elizabeth smiled. “I don’t believe you have any such rule.”

“It’s true,” he fibbed. “It’s a Craig family custom. One my mother adopted from the Chinese servants. And believe me,” he continued, embellishing the story, “it’s quite a practical custom when you have small children. Look at all the powder on my suit. Dressing gowns are easier to clean.”

“The powder will brush right off and you know it.”

“Maybe so,” James agreed, “but what about spilled juice and milk and porridge? And buttery handprints and splotches of jam?”

“Surely, you’re exaggerating.”

“You saw me yesterday,” James reminded her. “Did I look as if I were exaggerating?”

“That was one day out of many,” Elizabeth told him. “And you said yourself that you’d had a little difficulty getting away on time because you were without a governess. But you’re a successful businessman, and I’m willing to bet your morning routine usually goes as smooth as clockwork.” She recalled her experience as a child sitting fully dressed beside her brother and father at the breakfast table every morning while her mother and grandmother dined on trays in their bedrooms. In a businessman’s world everything ran according to schedule. Owen’s tutor escorted them downstairs and stayed to report her younger brother’s progress in mathematics and economics while her father read the morning financial pages and drank exactly one and one-half cups of coffee. At precisely eight o’clock her father rose from the table, checked the time on his watch against the time of the casement clock in the hall, instructed Elizabeth to say good-bye to Owen and Mr. Frederick, then
walked with her out the front door and down the street to Lady Wimbley’s Female Academy two blocks away from the bank. He never asked about her progress at school, never asked anything at all, and Elizabeth was expected never to volunteer information or start a conversation on her own. She was a girl and girls were pretty decorations meant to be seen, never heard.

“My schedule ran as smooth as clockwork before I had the Treasures,” James told her. “Now I’ve learned to make allowances. Every morning brings a new adventure.”

“At breakfast?” Elizabeth laughed at the idea.

James raised an eyebrow at her charming, blissful naïveté. “My dear novice governess,” he said in a wise, patronizing tone. “You shouldn’t worry about whether your mode of dress is proper or improper, but if it will make you feel any better, I’ll have someone bring my dressing gown to the dining room so I can wear it over my suit at breakfast. In the meantime, I suggest you simply prepare yourself. Lesson number two, the Treasures’ breakfast adventure is about to begin.”

BREAKFAST WAS A
bigger adventure than Elizabeth could ever have imagined. It bore absolutely no resemblance to the staid, proper mealtimes she had endured growing up. Breakfast at the Craig mansion was homey, cheerful, and at times, chaotic. Elizabeth soon learned that feeding a hungry newborn and three equally hungry, energetic, and demanding toddlers required the instigation of a battle plan that would impress a British army field marshal.

Upon sitting down at the table to a dish of warm oatmeal, sweetened with applesauce and cream, that Mrs. G. had assured Elizabeth was Ruby’s favorite breakfast food, Ruby had decided she hated, not the meal, but the bowl it was served in and refused to eat until her porridge was transferred into another bowl. At last count, they had gone through three bowls with James finally dishing the current serving of oatmeal into a crystal sherbet glass that Elizabeth was certain would be sacrificed in a show of temper before the meal ended. Although James appeared to be surprised by Ruby’s oatmeal rebellion, Elizabeth was amazed at his seemingly unending patience. James seemed more than willing to allow Ruby to express her feelings as long as
expressing her feelings didn’t include sweeping her bowls of porridge off the table and onto the floor. James had indulged Ruby’s whim, changing bowls three times, and still, he hadn’t once raised his voice in anger or lifted a hand to spank her or to send her away from the dining table.
Her
father hadn’t been as patient. He had insisted on excruciatingly correct table manners, and every little spill or clank of silver against china brought an instant rebuke.

And while she admired his handling of the situation, Elizabeth couldn’t help wondering how much longer James would continue to be patient, how much longer he would accept Ruby’s behavior before he lost his temper. Especially since the normally easygoing Garnet and Emerald had decided to follow Ruby’s lead and had also joined the oatmeal revolt, insisting on crystal sherbet glasses as well, which upset Ruby even more because she apparently wanted to be the only one eating porridge off crystal.