Free Linda Needham by My Wicked Earl

here?”
    Chip stuck out his legs, pointed to his bare feet, wriggling his toes. “On these things, sir.”
    Hollie nearly laughed. “He’s not bothering me at all, Mumberton.”
    But Chip had already zipped out of the room, leaving the butler to stare after him and swab his forehead with his sleeve.
    “As I’ve told his lordship every morning and every night for the last three, I’m not a nanny. The lad is wild, and there’s not time enough in the day to follow after him. I’m doing the best that I’m able.”
    “I’m sure you are.” He was a dear old man, with bristling eyebrows and cheeks that pinked and a mustache that flicked from side to side when he was flustered—which seemed a constant state, no thanks to Lord Everingham. “The house will adjust to Chip in no time.”
    “If he stays.”
    What a sad thought—for father and son. “I dearly hope he does.”
    “God love us all.” Mumberton rolled his eyes, righted himself from all this confessing, and stood at attention. “His lordship says you’re tohave this gown and apologizes for his absence.” He dropped a pale blue dress on the bench.
    “He’s gone?” Vanished in the night? Please God, dragged away to Westminster for a month.
    “He’s touring the grounds with his estate manager. Till noon, he said. I’m to inform you that it’ll be this afternoon before the wagons arrive with your belongings. Probably evening or later before someone named Stan Hope arrives.”
    “My Stanhope. It’s a printing press. And thank you, Mumberton.”
    Mumberton continued with his prepared speech. “In the meantime, his lordship says you’re to have breakfast and make use of the parlor, while he—” Mumberton rattled off a dozen instructions and injunctions from His Bloody Lordship, none of which mattered in the least.
    Staying out of Everingham’s clutches did matter, though. If that meant becoming a good little printer, the innocent wife of the infamous Captain Spindleshanks, then she’d do it up with bows and bunting and have him convinced that she was everything he imagined her to be.
    She’d start by arranging the gatehouse to her best advantage, her only refuge against Everingham’s prying. Ha! Let him keep her Stanhope under lock and key; there were dozens of ways to dodge around his wards and print whatever she wished.
    Mumberton finally left her to her bath, thepurest delight imaginable. The gown that Stirling had sent was a summer-weight spriggy blue, though outside her chamber window the morning was a drippy, foggy mess.
    No camisole, no stockings, no shoes. Leave it to a man to ignore everything but the obvious.
    She struggled to button her gown at the back but gave up after two buttons. She gulped down her tea, then snagged her breakfast from the tray, raiding Everingham’s dressing closet for socks and an oversized coat that smelled of his bay. Then she found a pair of boots in the greenhouse and set out to find her new home.
    The new headquarters for Captain Spindleshanks and his obedient wife.
    The gatehouse sat a few hundred yards below the manor and, oddly enough, a quarter-mile from the actual gate and the road.
    But it was in full view of Everingham Hall. No doubt that was the reason Everingham had suggested it: so that he could monitor her comings and goings.
    And the comings and goings of her husband.
    May the both of them meet a prickly end.
    It was a thoroughly charming little house from the outside: stone walls and a new slate roof, and a wide covered portico which her carriage must have passed beneath on her way in last night.
    The thick, iron-bound door was unlatched and swung easily into a small, richly paneled foyer which then emptied into a good-sized parlor,with plenty of windows to the southwest and a large hearth, and even a small kitchen beyond. She found an airy bedroom above stairs and plenty of light.
    Perfectly lovely in too many ways. The cottage was the most wonderful place she’d ever seen.
    Though the