Lyon's Gate (Sherbrooke Brides 9)

His twin, Douglas, grabbed his mother’s skirt and yanked hard. Corrie, both hands trying to hold Everett still, crooned down to Douglas, “Just a moment, baby, just another moment, and Mama will pick you up too.”

Everett’s voice went up another octave. Douglas screwed up his face, opened his mouth and matched his twin’s volume. Martha patted their hands. “Heavenly groats, my lady, me own little brother niv—never—made so much racket as these little nits.”

Jason called out, “Who wants to waltz with me?”

There was an instant of complete silence, then, “I do!”

“I do!”

“Me first, Uncle Jason!”

Everett was trying to pull away from his mother and Douglas was jumping up and down, now pulling on Jason’s dirty pant leg.

Jason, laughing, picked up Douglas and gathered Everett to his other side, and called out, “I need some music, please.”

Hallie, who’d come running out of the house at Everett’s yells, didn’t hesitate. She started singing one of Duchess Wyndham’s ditties, written some twenty years before and still a favorite in the king’s navy. She sang it in three-quarter time to a popular waltz tune so the words fit the rhythm of a waltz, for the most part, making anyone listening laugh his head off.

Jason whirled and dipped and glided. The twins laughed and shrieked. Every adult within one hundred feet stopped working to watch, and listen.

“ ’E ain’t the man to shout ‘Please, my dear!’

’E’s only a lout who shouts ‘Bring me a beer!’

’E’s a bonny man wit’ a bonny lass

Who troves ’im a tippler right on ’is ass.

And to hove and to trove we go, my boys,

We’ll shout as we please till ship’s ahoy!”

Three of the workers knew the ditty and began singing along with Hallie. They were all swaying, then Mackie, a bricklayer, yelled to one of the women, “Meg, come dance wit’ me!”

Soon there were at least four couples waltzing, Martha herself doing very well with young Thomas the blacksmith’s son, who had just celebrated his tenth birthday. Alex heard her say, “She’s my mistress, she is. Jest listen to those beautiful pipes inside her purty self.”

The dowager countess, Lady Lydia, hummed and swayed in her chair, in blessed shade beside the front door, Angela Tewksbury at her side, laughing, trying to clap her hands in three-quarter waltz time.

Hollis stood in the doorway smiling benignly, foot tapping. He caught Jason’s eye and pointed to the platter and formed the words lemonade, biscuits. Jason whispered in Everett’s ear, then in Douglas’s. To his astonishment, both little boys grabbed him around the neck and yelled,

“Dance!”

“Dance!”

It required another full rendition of the sailor’s song before the twins decided they wanted

lemonade, all because Hollis was drinking a big glass, letting a dribble run down his chin, not three feet from them.

Soon they were seated on a blanket in the shade next to Lady Lydia and Mrs. Tewksbury, a plate of cakes and biscuits on the blanket between them. They were jabbering in twin talk, each trying to grab the most cakes.

“Give me water, Hollis,” Jason said, breathing hard. “Merciful heavens those two have more energy than Eliza Dickers. I don’t think even she wore me out as much as those two.”

One of his father’s eyebrows kicked up. “A Baltimore belle?”

Hallie sneered, her expression condemning as a nun’s. “Ah, yes, my lord. I understand that Jason’s belle, Eliza Dickers, could perhaps be considered something of a virtuous widow, once upon a time, before your son’s arrival to Baltimore.”

Jason stiffened straight as the new fence poles he’d hammered into the ground only an hour before. He gave her a look to curdle butter and a voice to freeze the outskirts of Hell. “Eliza Dickers is a lady who is one of Jessie Wyndham’s best friends. She, unlike you, Miss Carrick, is an adult. She hurts no one, either with actions or words.”

He turned on his heel and walked back to his brother.