Mr. Sutton laughed, turning his attention back to his nieces. “Forgive me.”
“We love you, Uncle Rafe!” Anne announced. “Even if you cannot tell us apart, you are one of our favoritest uncles.”
“Favorite, girls,” Persephone felt obliged to correct. “Favoritest is not a word.”
“Ought to be,” he commented. “I’m deuced proud to be a favoritest uncle.”
“We love Uncle Hart and Uncle Damian and Uncle Wolf, too,” Elizabeth said.
“There’s the way to make a cove feel special.”
“You are special!” decreed one twin.
“Wonderfully so,” agreed the other.
“If only your enthusiasm for my charms were extended to Miss Wren,” he said to the girls before casting another glance in Persephone’s direction.
She would not willingly divulge enthusiasm of any sort for his charms. To her shame, she could likely list each one. However, she had no place taking notice. This was her life now. She was a governess. She had to be a governess, at least until she no longer required a guardian to decide what she did with her funds. And even then, she shuddered to think what would happen should she emerge from hiding.
She forced herself back to the present, where a handsome, quick-to-smile scoundrel was awaiting her answer. “I am enthusiastic about a great many things, Mr. Sutton. The progress Anne and Elizabeth are making with their reading, for instance. Your dubious charms, however, are not among them.”
His lips twitched, almost as if he found amusement in her less-than-subtle reprimand. “’Tis a shame. I have many to offer.”
And she had seen more than her fair share of them.
“Mr. Sutton, this conversation is quite improper,” she told him coolly.
Although it was not done to reprimand her employer’s family member, there was something about Rafe Sutton that ruffled every last one of her feathers.
“What’s unproper?” Anne asked, sounding curious.
Oh dear.
It would not do for the children to run to their parents with tales of the new governess telling their beloved Uncle Rafe he had been unproper. She had only just secured this position. Finding herself settled and in a good situation such as this one had been an impossible feat until now.
“Never mind that, you thimble full of trouble,” he told Anne, the easy tenderness in his voice chipping away at the block of ice that had formed around Persephone’s heart. “I still do not believe you are quick enough to run about the gardens fifteen times each before my pocket watch tells me it is half past two in the afternoon. Neither you, nor your sister.”
“We are,” the girls declared simultaneously.
Mr. Sutton sighed. “I do not think you ought to dare try.”
He spoke so smoothly that one could almost confuse him for a true gentleman. The son of a duke or earl.
Almost.
Here and there, his accent slipped. When he had been deep in his cups and under the influence of the laudanum she had secreted in his glass, he had lost quite a bit of his polish, his East End origins showing.
The girls jumped up and down. “We must try! We must!
Persephone compressed her lips to keep from smiling. Curse him, he was charming. He seemed to know just what to say to prompt a response in Anne and Elizabeth.
“Off you go, then,” he said with a benevolent wave of his hand.
He did not need to offer further encouragement. The twins raced away, grasping fistfuls of their skirts and laughing. Persephone watched them go with a grudging sense of admiration for Rafe Sutton’s subtle skills with children. Perhaps she could employ the same tactic to persuade the girls to practice their needlepoint.
“That was quite clever of you,” she said, turning back to him only to find he had moved.
He was nearer now, bringing with him all the intensity of the magnetism he exuded. And his scent on the breeze, ruffling the hair at her temple, poorly trapped by her bonnet.