“Then your Papa calls me out?” Philip’s chin quivered, but his voice remained impressively calm.
Caroline nodded with authority. Layton had to bite his lips closed to hold back the laugh ready to burst from him. He looked across the room to where Mary had slid and saw she held a hand over her mouth.
“Why would he do that, Miss Jonquil?” Philip’s eyes danced. “Surely he would understand my allowing you to keep the linen, even though you’d . . . ahem . . . scraped the junk off.”
“’Cause, Flip,” she said as though he were completely stupid, “I’m not supposed to keep linens from anyone but Papa. ’Cept I gave back the last one he gave me.”
“Did you scrape off the junk first?” Stanley asked, leaning casually against the mantel and watching Caroline with obvious enjoyment.
“’Course I did. Mary said a very grown-up girl never gives a junky handkerchief back to a gennleman. And she taught me how to be a good hostess.” She skipped to the sofa where Mater watched her with something like shock on her face. “You saw me curtsy, didn’t you, Grammy? Like this.” She bobbed again, grinning from ear to ear. “Mary showed me, and we practiced yesterday until we started laughing. It’s hard to curtsy when you laugh. I kept falling down, so Mary said I didn’t have to practice anymore. Then she told me how to say, ‘Welcome, Lord and Lady Lampton and Captain Jonquil.’ Like that. Only when she said it, she made a silly face like she’d ate a sour apple. And then I laughed again, and she said it was useforless. So we practiced making my hair grown-up and that was fun. Am I a good hostess, Grammy?”
“Oh, child.” Mater gave a watery smile and hugged Caroline to her, kissing the girl’s rosy cheek. She looked up at Layton. “She has so much to say,” Mater said in obvious disbelief. Caroline had always been quiet, even with her family.
“So this Mary is not only an excellent bower but a coiffeuse and a model of decorum as well?” Philip looked at Layton with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. “I must ask her opinion on my cravat pin. No doubt she has expertise in such matters also.”
“Caroline.” Layton stepped to the sofa, where Mater was still holding Caroline to her. “You must introduce your uncles and grandmother to our other guest.”
“Oh.” She popped off the sofa. “I forgot.”
Layton nodded his understanding and watched her bounce across the room. But she stopped only feet from Mary and spun back around to face him. “Why didn’t Mr. Sanders announce Mary?” she asked. “She’s a guest.”
“Miss Wood was already here, dear,” Layton explained.
“She should get announced too.” Caroline’s brow furrowed adorably, and she was obviously trying to make sense of the discrepancy. “She could stand outside the door and wait while he said all the ‘Honorable’ things.”
Layton looked at Mary just as she looked at him, her eyes wide with amusement.
“Honorable things?” she mouthed to him silently.
Layton nearly laughed out loud.
“Mr. Sanders is seeing to our dinner, Caroline,” Layton reminded her. “We cannot pull him away from his duties.”
“You could announce her, Papa!” Caroline said quite decisively. “Just pretend you’re the butler.”
“Pretend I’m the—” Layton sputtered out the ending.
“I think you would be an excellent butler, Layton.” Philip swung his quizzing glass on its long purple ribbon. “I daresay you could look every bit as starched up and self-important as Sanders.”
At that, everyone in the room laughed except Caroline, who didn’t understand the observation.
“Please, Papa?” Caroline pleaded with him, looking up with those enormous blue eyes that he knew would be the bane of his existence once she was old enough for young men to begin noticing them. “Announce Mary, please.”
“All right, poppet.” He motioned Mary on with his hand, cupping it behind her elbow once she was close enough. Gads, she smelled good: cinnamon, which fit her perfectly. “Did you put her up to this?” Layton asked under his breath as he walked her toward the door, trying to ignore the all-too-familiar frisson of energy that quaked through him whenever he touched her.
“Caroline invents enough mischief on her own without any help from me,” Mary said.
“She didn’t used to, you know.” Layton bit back a smile as he turned the doorknob and opened the door from the drawing room.
Mary looked back at him as she stepped through the doorway. “Is that a complaint, sir?” she asked with a saucy raise of her eyebrow.