Chapter 8

Phoebe's brow creased in worry as she scanned the empty forecourt. "It's not like Helen to wander off alone."

"Izzy," Lord Farley muttered. "Damn that child."

Phoebe didn't bother to rebuke him for the oath this time. She felt like echoing him herself. This was Izzy's doing. Still, she couldn't believe that Izzy would go so far as to harm Helen. "Maybe Bruno ran off and Helen followed him."

"Or maybe Izzy took him again."

Still holding the baby, he strode to the front door, shoved it open, and bellowed for someone named Benson. Within seconds a stocky man arrived, pulling on his coat as he shuffled up. "Here, Take Nadia," Lord Farley ordered. "Like this," He positioned the baby as Phoebe had showed him in the man's reluctant grasp. "Alert the staff that Izzy and Mrs. Churchill's daughter, Helen—"

"She's not my—"

"—have gone missing. Also a puppy named Bruno. And whoever you give Nadia to, have them hold her just this way." Then, still in his shirt sleeves, he strode toward the far side of the house and the myriad outbuildings beyond.

After only a moment's hesitation, Phoebe went after him, holding up her skirts as she ran to keep up pace with his long, angry strides.

"She likes the stables. And also the ice-house," he muttered. "Don't ask me why."

"I'm beginning to think she might be trying to furnish a little hideaway of her own, somewhere in the woods near my house."

"I don't understand that girl."

"Nor I. But as you are her father, you must learn to," Phoebe said as they entered the stable.

He shot her a sharp look, causing her to turn away from those disturbingly direct eye. It reminded her though, of something she needed to be reminded of; that he was a viscount and she was a mere farmer's daughter. She didn't need her exacting mother here to tell her that she had no business instructing him about what he should or should not do.

The problem was that she had no actual experience dealing with the nobility. Despite her mother's endless lectures on the proper way to behave in polite society, she'd had very few opportunities to put those lessons to the test.

On the other hand, it was his daughter causing all the trouble, not Helen — whom he still thought was her daughter. Eventually she would have to disabuse him of that notion.

In the main section of the stable they found no evidence of the children. While he checked the several stalls and the tack room, Phoebe scurried up the ladder to the hayloft. Again she found no children, but there were signs of Izzy's presence in the past. An empty cup. A sheet. A doll and a doll bed.

"Look at this," she called down to Lord Farley.

In the moment he was beside her in the dusty, low-ceilinged portion of the loft. He picked up the doll with her cracked face and faded gingham dress. "If I remember correctly this is one of Sarah's dolls."

"Sarah?"

"My youngest sister."

Phoebe recalled from Mrs. Leake's remarks that Lord Farley had two sisters. Half-sisters. Just as Izzy had a half sister in Nadia, and other half siblings through her mother in London.

"Poor Izzy," she said, taking the nearly hairless doll from him. "She must be very lonely. I'm guessing she misses her family, even if they aren't ideal. You know, I'm beginning to think she's trying to create something of her own here, a family she can feel safe with." She looked up at him, "That could be why she took this doll, and it's probably why she tried to take our puppy."

He ran a hand through his hair. "If she wants a puppy she has only to ask me for one."

"But don't you see? To her, you're the one who stole her life from her. You're the one she's trying to defy."

His eyes held with hers, and even in the dim light of the loft, she saw the anguish that shadowed them. "I can't turn her to that god-awful life," he growled. "I won't."

"Of course not. But the two of you can't go on like this. It's up to you to find some common ground with her."

Phoebe stopped to replace the doll in its toy bed. When she stood, he was nearer than before, staring intently at her. "Will you help me?" he asked. "I need a governess. Will you take the position?"

A nervous flutter started in Phoebe's stomach. "I ... um ... I don't know."

"I suppose you have to discuss this with your husband. But I can make it well worth your while." He stepped nearer still. "And if you like, you can bring your daughter with you."

"She's not my daughter," Phoebe said as the flutter increased. Then abruptly she turned and started down the ladder. "We'll never find them if we don't look."

"She's not your daughter?"

When they reached the stable floor, it was she who strode ahead and he who followed in her wake. "Helen is my niece, my sister's child whom I have raised."

"I see. Have you other children of your own?"

"I am not wed, my lord." Why did her stomach tighten in a knot to tell him that? "Could we please concentrate on the task before us?"

But he was not to be put off. "You're not wed? So ... That means you're available for the position as governess to Izzy and Nadia?

She sighed. She was very available and she should be ecstatic at the opportunity offered her. Indeed, she ought to agree this very moment before he could change his mind. Here was the answer to her overdue taxes, a way to keep the house and farm, meager though they were.

But something inside Phoebe, some unfamiliar little buzz of alarm, centered deep in the nether reaches of her belly, warned her away from this man. Somehow she knew this would be no simple position in a large household. Not if Lord Farley were involved.

"I ... I shall have to think about that. Let's find Izzy and Helen first, though, shall we?" For a moment Phoebe expected him to argue further. But though his expression remained sharp, with a little nod he conceded the point.

She had forestalled him, but not for long. In truth, she feared that Lord Farley had only begun to pursue the subject of her becoming a governess for his two difficult children.