Read Online Back in Service by Rosanna Challis - Free Book Online Page A

that moment had remained out of Sir Victor’s line of sight.
    He swivelled round abruptly to face her. ‘Ah, it is the shrew from France,’ he barked disdainfully. ‘She has airs, that one, but she is as much of a slut at heart as you are, Jane dear, and she loves to have her pretty rump smacked. Do you not, my dear?’
    ‘No, Sir Victor, I do not,’ Hetty replied coldly. ‘And as for putting on airs, I am the same woman I was when I left here.’
    ‘Dear me, then we shall have to watch our P’s and Q’s.’ He sneered and beckoned to Jane. ‘Come here, child, and let me whisper a few secrets in your ear. You will soon learn that Lady Muck is no better than you are.’
    Hetty feared she was about to be humiliated, but then Jane suddenly showed her mettle. ‘I beg your pardon, Sir Victor,’ she said coolly, ‘but Lady Alice is waiting for her lavender water. I dropped the stopper under here, so I must search for it, if you will excuse me.’
    He gave a low, animal growl but said nothing. Instead, he sat watching while she groped beneath the bench, her bottom thrust high in the air and her long black skirt riding about her slender calves.
    Loathing the lascivious look in his eye, Hetty tried to distract him with conversation. ‘I understand your nurse, Nanny Baines, used to be employed to look after my husband.’ She strove to keep her tone light and conversational. ‘It must be nice for you all to have her working at Longton Hall again.’
    ‘The woman is a harridan,’ he snapped, ‘so best beware of her. One day the pair of you shall get a tongue lashing from her, I dare say, and who knows what else. I would not like to argue with a woman of her size. Fortunately, I am exempt from the worst excesses of her temper, being a vulnerable invalid.’ He tossed her such a comic, self-pitying leer that Hetty almost laughed aloud. Yet the implications of his words were quite plain and gave her cause for concern. It seemed Nanny Baines was not averse to administering punishment of a corporal nature. If so, she would see to it Jane never bore the wrath of such a formidable woman. She had already appointed herself protector of the girl against Sir Victor, and if she had to take a similar position against his nurse, then so be it.
    Jane found the cork at last, scrambled to her feet, sealed the bottle and slipped it in her apron pocket. ‘Excuse me, Sir Victor, I need to return now,’ she said politely, but he moved the wheelchair only a grudging few inches out of her way, and Hetty realised what his game was the minute Jane tried to squeeze past him. There was no room for her to do so, so she was all but stuck with her body in close proximity to the man’s wandering fingers. She gazed in horror as his palm smoothed its way down Jane’s slim buttocks and gave her right bottom cheek a good hearty pinch through her skirt.
    ‘Ouch!’ she yelped.
    Hetty was beside herself with anger and loathing. ‘Leave her alone!’ she cried. ‘How dare you touch such an innocent girl?’
    ‘Ah, you see yourself in her.’ He leered. ‘Well, she has a prettier face and a nicer arse, you can be sure of that.’
    Sickened, Hetty took hold of the wheelchair and pushed it bodily out of Jane’s path. The girl squeezed past and hurried off without a backward glance, leaving Hetty to face her old tormentor alone. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she said tightly. ‘What will it take to cure you of your disgraceful ways? I should have thought immobilisation would have been enough, yet you seem as depraved as ever.’
    He looked straight up into her eyes with a kind of yearning expression that almost wrung pity from her heart. Then his hand, warm and heavy, clamped over hers where it rested on the arm of the chair. ‘My dear, such times we had, such times,’ he murmured wistfully. ‘It has not been the same since you left. I do what little I can to keep up appearances and delight my old friends, but as you see, I am a pale