The Nanny's Rules: Forbidden Desires novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Twelve Rules
Carys arrives in the rain, signs the twelve rules and adds three of her own, then sees a man under Posy's window at midnight.
The contract had twelve rules, and I read all of them standing in a marble hall with rain running off my coat.
Conrad Wexcombe sat across the dining table from me and did not offer me a chair.
He was thirty-eight, tall, and dressed like a man who had never once been late.
His sister-in-law stood behind him with her arms folded, pearls at her ears, smiling.
"Rule one," Conrad said. "No visitors in the house."
"Okay," I said.
"Rule two. My daughter is in bed by eight."
"Sure."
"Rule ten." He tapped the paper. "No involvement with any Wexcombe brother."
I looked up.
"There are three of you?"
"There are three of us," he said. "You will see two of us. The third is not your concern."
"And rule eleven?"
"The boathouse is off limits."
"What's in the boathouse?"
"My brother," Conrad said.
Odette Beauregard laughed softly.
"The last nanny lasted nine days," she said. "She broke rule twelve."
"Which is?"
"Break any rule and the contract ends on the spot."
I turned the page over.
The back was blank, so I took the pen from Conrad's hand without asking.
He watched me do it.
I wrote three lines in my crooked handwriting, then slid the contract back across the table.
"Those are mine," I said.
He read them.
His jaw moved once.
"Posy eats pancakes whenever she asks," he read out loud. "Everyone in this house tells Posy the truth.
"Nobody tells me who I am allowed to want."
"Absurd," said Odette.
"I'm not done," I said.
I signed the front under all twelve of his rules.
Then I signed the back under mine.
"You sign both, or I go back out into that rain," I said. "I've had worse nights."
Conrad did not smile.
But he looked at the paper for a long time, and then he signed the back.
Odette's smile slipped.
"Conrad, you can't be serious."
"She's the only one who asked for pancakes," he said.
Behind him, the staircase creaked.
A little girl stood three steps from the top in cotton pajamas with feet, holding a crayon in her left hand.
She had dark curls, gray eyes, and a deep dimple in her chin.
She was five years old and she was staring at me.
"Posy," Conrad said, and his voice went gentle and strange. "This is Miss Holliday."
She did not say anything.
I crouched down on the marble and held out my hand.
"I'm Carys," I said. "I make pancakes. I'm told that's against the rules, so I'm very dangerous."
Her mouth twitched.
She did not take my hand.
But she held out the crayon.
It was a blue one, worn to a stub.
I took it like it was a diamond.
"Thank you," I said. "I'll keep it safe."
Posy turned and went back up the stairs without a sound.
Odette watched the place where she had been.
"She hasn't spoken since her mother died," she said. "Don't expect miracles."
"I don't," I said. "I expect pancakes."
My room was at the end of the nursery hall, with a window that faced the lawn.
I unpacked my one suitcase in ten minutes.
Rain beat on the glass until almost midnight.
When it stopped I went to the window to open it, and that was when I saw the boathouse down by the water.
One light was on in the flat above it.
And on the lawn, in the dark, under Posy's window, a man was standing completely still.
He was tall, broad in the shoulders, with his hands in his coat pockets and his face turned up to the glass.
He was not a burglar.
Burglars do not stand like that.
He stood.
I pulled on my boots and went down the back stairs.
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