A Gentleman By Any Other Name by Kasey Michaels Read Free Book Online

her ear as she felt her cheeks begin to flush. Why on earth had she told him her age? “Where, sir, is the private dining room? I’m starved.”
    He gestured toward the hallway leading away from the small square foyer, and Julia had no choice but to precede him down the hall.
    â€œIn here,” Chance said, stepping ahead of her and pushing back the door that was already ajar. “Shall I leave it open—to ease an old maid’s sensibilities, I mean?”
    Julia blinked rapidly, for she was suddenly so stupidly missish that she actually believed she might cry. “Now you’re being facetious. I’m the nanny, a simple domestic servant. Just do sit down, sir, so that I may.”
    â€œYou are many things, Miss Carruthers,” Chance said as they sat down on either side of the narrow wooden table, “but I am afraid that the role of servant is not one of them, at least not by nature. Tell me, have you ever considered the occupation of despot? I do believe you’d excel at it.”
    Julia picked up a still-warm roll, ripped it into three pieces, then reached for a knife and the butter pot. It was time for a change of subject. “How long will you remain at Becket Hall before returning to London, sir? I had thought you had planned only to deliver us there, but the amount of luggage you’ve ordered brought with you seems to contradict that thought.”
    â€œOh, don’t pretty it all up with fine words, Miss Carruthers,” Chance said, using his fork to skewer a fat slab of pink ham and put it on his plate. “You poked about in my bedchamber, tallying up bits of luggage the way a headmaster counts noses. And you’re alarmed that I might actually remain at Becket Hall above a day, because nothing would make you happier than seeing the last of me. Oh, and I am a horrible parent to Alice. Correct?”
    Julia chewed on a piece of roll, swallowed, then smiled. “Correct, Mr. Becket. Except for that last little bit. I don’t think you are a horrible parent, because Alice seems to love you, and children are the very best judges of people. After dogs, I suppose. But you’re not very attentive or perceptive when it comes to your child, are you? Most of your gender aren’t, leaving such things to the females. My father, I believe, was an exception, as he was forced to raise me alone.”
    Chance leaned back on his chair, rather amused about her reference to dogs. “So following that thought—and having known you now for nearly four and twenty hours—I can conclude that it’s the mothers, then, who for the most part teach their children about tact and thinking before speaking and refraining from invading another’s privacy and the art of showing respect—that sort of thing?”
    Julia lowered her gaze to her plate to find that she’d loaded it with ham and cheese from the platter in the middle of the table. Yet suddenly she had lost her appetite.
    â€œCome, come now, Miss Carruthers. Consider this a necessarily delayed interview as to your qualifications to ride herd on my daughter, as the first was rather slapdash, to say the least. I begin to worry that, raised entirely by your father, as you say you were, you are not the one to help mold Alice to be a respectful, conformable child.”
    Clearly the man was now driving home his own point with the head of a hammer. She was being reminded just who she was—and who she was not. And the pity of it was, she could not afford to push him any further, unless she wanted to be left here, in Maidstone, to fend for herself. “I’m her nanny, sir, her nurse, and not her tutor or her governess. I believe you can safely leave her teachings to others. I’m here to…to hold the chamber pot.”
    â€œQuite,” Chance said, liking this woman better when she wasn’t keeping herself in check. He’d had seven years of society women, of women never saying what