Read Online Persistent Earl : Signet Regency Romance (9781101578841) by Gail Eastwood - Free Book Online

heroics had been called for.
    â€œWhy were they pointing off into the bushes?” Phoebe persevered.
    â€œOh, no reason.”
    â€œThey were just showing us some places to watch out for—you know, if we lost the ball again.”
    Satisfied, Phoebe squinted up at the sun and consulted the watch she always wore pinned to her bodice. “Well, I think it may be just as well you were interrupted,” she said, “for it is getting to be time to head home.”
    She waited patiently through the chorus of protests that met her remark. “If we had spent the entire day here, you would still think it too soon to go home, you know,” she pointed out reasonably. She supervised the process of packing up the assortment of things they had brought with them, and led the way as they left the park. She did not notice the boys looking back at the clump of shrubbery that had been the object of their earlier interest.
    ***
    The significance of the escaped ball incident was not revealed to Phoebe until dinner. Contrary to the fashion, Judith and Edward often dined early with their children at table in the absence of guests. Judith staunchly maintained that there was no better opportunity for them to practice their manners free from the critical eyes of society. Phoebe wholeheartedly supported this practice, agreeing that the loving eyes of their parents were far more merciful, although watching little William trying to sip milk out of a crystal goblet sometimes lent an element of suspense to the proceedings.
    The children had happily recounted their earlier adventures, detailing every item to be seen along Oxford Street quite as if neither they nor their parents had ever set foot there before. They lingered hopefully over their descriptions of the spaniel puppies, to no avail. Finally they had reached the point in their narrative where the straying ball had to be retrieved in the park.
    â€œIt rolled right into the midst of some rather rough-looking boys playing Fox and Geese,” David announced, pausing with a dramatic flair worthy of Dorrie. As he surveyed his audience to let the tension build, William jumped into what he clearly took for a breach in the flow of the story.
    â€œI was afraid they would not give it back,” he said, his little face solemn. “They were
dirty
, and they looked mean. But David and Thomas weren’t scared,” he added with an appreciative look at his brothers. “They marched right up to the biggest boy. And he turned out to be nice. He gave us back the ball, and he even told us about the man in the—”
    â€œSh-h, idiot!” David rolled his eyes in despair. Thomas covered his face with his hands and very slowly shook his head. William clamped a hand over his own mouth and turned anxious eyes toward his mother.
    â€œDavid, you will not call your brother an idiot.”
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œWe will not have our dining room mistaken for a nursery, children. No names, no games, and no secrets. Now, what is all this to-do about a man?”
    The boys exchanged looks and silently appointed David spokesman, since he was the eldest of the three. He immediately looked at Judith. “Mamma, may I have a word with you in private—please?”
    Judith might not have relented except for the agonized expression on David’s face, and the unusual amount of emphasis he had managed to give the last word. When she nodded, the lad fairly bounded out of his chair to go to her.
    Phoebe felt extremely uneasy. Obviously something had occurred at the park of which she had been entirely unaware. Had she been too distracted by her own thoughts to exercise appropriate vigilance? What bothered her most was that, whatever had happened, the children obviously had not felt they could confide in her. She felt far more shaken by that than anything else that had occurred all day, including her encounter with Lord Devenham.
    â€œAll right, I understand,” Judith