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she saw two identical small boys, dressed in nankeen breeches and rather shabby jackets.

      ‘You must be Monty’s brothers!’ She beamed down at them. ‘You look so much like him!’ And they did, in spite of what he had said about them possibly having different parentage. Both of them had his thick, fair hair, startlingly green eyes and dimples in the centre of very determined chins.

      One of them dug the other in the ribs with his elbow. ‘She means Vern.’

      The other nodded. ‘Spec so.’ Then added, ‘We aren’t supposed to be here.’

      ‘But we wanted to take a look at you.’

      ‘And show you Skip,’ said the first, looking down at the front of his jacket which was filled out by a mass of something squirming. The corner of a dog’s ear promptly flipped out over the edge of the boy’s lapels.

      ‘Oh, is it a terrier?’ she asked, warmed by the first sign of anything approaching informal behaviour since setting foot in the house.

      The twin with the bulging jacket nodded. ‘Best ratter in the county,’ he declared.

      Midge bit back a grin. The boy was probably only allowed to use his dog under the strict supervision of a gamekeeper, within the bounds of his own park. But the fact remained he was immensely proud of his pet and wanted to show it off to his new big sister.

      She pulled the door open wider to let the boys and their dog in. The twins scanned the corridor behind them rapidly, then exchanged a look with each other, before darting into the formal sitting room.

      The minute the door closed behind them, the boy with the dog undid his jacket, and a very excited tan-and-white terrier dropped onto the rug. Tail up, nose down, it embarked on a rapid exploration of the room. Its little paws scrabbled frantically on the smooth surface of the floorboards when it left the safety of the carpet, but it had been running so fast it was unable to slow its skid by much, and landed against the wainscot under the window with an audible thud.

      Midge stifled a giggle as, with a doggy attempt at nonchalance, Skip put his nose straight down and began to sniff determinedly along the wainscoting, as though this was exactly where he had decided to be.

      ‘Looks like he’s got the scent of a rat,’ said his owner knowingly.

      ‘I am sure there are no rats up here,’ said Midge. There were so many staff, and the household appeared so strictly ordered, she was quite sure no rat would find a home behind the woodwork.

      ‘Do you—’ the second twin took a deep breath ‘—do you like animals?’

      ‘Yes, I do.’

      He brightened up immediately, reached into his own jacket, and extracted the sinuous body of a ferret. ‘This is Tim. I use him for rabbitting.’

      Skip’s head shot up. He looked straight at Tim, pulled back his lips and snarled in the manner of one greeting an old adversary. The ferret shot out of the boy’s grasp, the dog bounded back onto the carpet, and for a few seconds, the floor about Midge’s feet was a blur of fur and teeth and tails.

      The ferret emerged from the mêlée first, streaking across the rug and straight up the curtains where it found a precarious perch on the curtain rod.

      The terrier started jumping up and down on the spot, yapping furiously for a few seconds, then, balked of its prey, sank its teeth into a fold of velvet and worried at the curtain as though killing a rat. The action made the curtain pole, on which the ferret was balancing, rattle in its moorings. Tim promptly abandoned it and ran along the picture rail, scattering items of pottery as he went.

      Uttering a cry of alarm, Midge flew across the room in time to catch a bud vase, a cup and a plate in rapid succession while Skip, who seemed to have temporarily forgotten that it was the ferret he had been after, redoubled his ferocious attack on the curtains.

      When the ferret reached the chimney breast, instead of swarming round its edges, it ran straight down the silk wallpaper, landing on the tea table, where it used the vase as a springboard to launch himself into his master’s waiting arms. The vase wobbled, rocked, then pivoted towards the edge of the table. Midge dived to catch it, at the exact same moment that Skip’s hind legs found purchase on the carpet and he finally managed to make some headway. Just as Midge’s hands closed round the vase, the curtain pole parted company from its moorings, bringing yards of green velvet slithering down on her.

      From within the smothering folds of the curtains, Midge heard the crash of breaking crockery, a yelp and the clang of the brass curtain pole landing on the floor.

      It was hard to breathe. Even harder to find a way out of the heavy curtaining wrapped round her body. Eventually, she found a chink, through which she saw that the sound of breaking crockery had come from the doorway, where a maid had dropped the promised tea tray. The vase, she noted with a feeling of triumph, was lying cushioned by a fold of velvet, the plate, cup and bud vase beside it. She pushed the curtain off her face and sat up.

      ‘Not a single thing broken!’ she crowed, flushed with success.

      There was no sign of the dog or the ferret, but the twins were standing before the hearth, clutching each other’s hands as they stared, aghast, at the slender, fair-haired gentleman who had paused just beyond the wreckage of the tea things.

      Monty was there, too, sauntering across from his own quarters, and bowing politely to the fair-haired gentleman.

      He cleared his throat, then waved one arm in the direction of the cascade of curtaining, from the depths of which Midge was still struggling to emerge.

      ‘Allow me,’ he said, ‘to present my wife.’

      The fair-haired gentleman’s eyes swept the length of Midge’s legs, which had emerged from the curtaining minus her skirts. Then, his nostrils flaring in a fastidious expression of distaste, he turned on his heel and stalked away.

      Chapter Eight

      ‘We didn’t mean any harm, Vern!’

      The twins were having a hard time keeping up with Monty as he strode out of the house and through the stable yard to the kennels.

      ‘We just wanted to see what she was like!’

      ‘That had better have been all it was,’ snapped Monty, as he produced Skip from inside his jacket. ‘I hope it was not the kind of devilment you have employed in the past, to rid yourself of every governess who has dared to set foot in your schoolroom.’

      ‘We never meant—’

      ‘Oh, didn’t you! Well, even if you did not humiliate her on purpose, that is what you have done, with your wilful disregard of the rules. You know you are not supposed to bring animals indoors! You were lucky I heard Skip barking and got to him before father came in,’ he growled, stuffing the wriggling bundle of fur firmly into his cage.

      ‘You ain’t…you ain’t gonna put Skip in a sack and drown him, are you?’

      Monty turned to his woebegone younger brother in surprise. ‘Why in God’s name should I do that?’

      ‘Piers would’ve,’ said the other sulkily, extracting the ferret from his own jacket, then thrusting his pet into his hutch.

      ‘I am not Piers!’ he grated, filled with loathing for the man who would have deliberately inflicted so much pain on two defenceless children. ‘I hope to God I am nothing like him.’

      The Earl of Corfe’s firstborn had been spoilt from birth, and grown into a cruel and selfish young man. Every time he had come home from school, Monty had been the butt of his sadistic sense of humour. As, in their turn, had these two.

      ‘The earl says you ain’t,’ declared Jeremiah.

      ‘Says it all the time,’ said Tobias.

      And Monty could just hear the tone of voice in which his father said it. With a rueful grin, he leaned down and ruffled the boys’ hair.

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