The Nanny's Rules: Forbidden Desires novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Pancakes

Carys answers Odette's insults at breakfast and serves pancakes against the rules; Posy asks to visit the boathouse.

"Nothing," I said. "I was asking if she wanted eggs."

Odette crossed the kitchen in silk slippers and looked at Posy.

"Posy, darling, you know we don't talk before breakfast."

Posy's hand slid into mine.

It was a tiny, damp, fierce hand, and it held on.

"We do now," I said. "House rules got updated last night. Page two."

"Page two is not a rule."

"It's signed by your brother-in-law."

Odette's nostrils flared.

"Conrad signs things when he's tired."

"Then he'll be tired again at lunch," I said, and cracked an egg one-handed.

Posy watched the egg.

Odette set her teacup down very precisely.

"I looked you up this morning, Miss Holliday," she said. "Scranton. Community college.

"A mother in hospice nursing, no father listed, and a bank balance that would embarrass a student."

I kept stirring.

"You do your homework."

"I do my family's homework. The previous nanny had a degree in early childhood development and she was gone in nine days.

"Forgive me if I don't expect much from a girl who has never owned a passport."

It was the kind of insult that is meant to land in front of a witness, and the witness had just walked in.

Conrad stood in the doorway in shirt sleeves, buttoning a cuff.

He had heard every word.

I put the whisk down.

"I've never owned a passport," I said.

"I've also never lost a child, a house or a sister.

"And I've never had to be rude to a five-year-old at breakfast to feel like the grown-up."

The kitchen went silent.

Posy's grip on my hand got tighter.

Conrad looked at his sister-in-law for a long beat.

"Odette," he said. "The east wing has its own kitchen."

"I was only..."

"I know what you were only."

She left with her chin up and her slippers slapping.

I turned back to the stove with my heart beating in my ears.

"That was not on the list," Conrad said behind me.

"Neither was her, as far as I could tell."

I heard him almost laugh, then clear his throat to hide it.

"Pancakes are against rule three before dinner."

"Rule three is sugar," I said. "I'm using banana."

"There is syrup on the table."

"Then it's a very small breach."

"Miss Holliday."

"Mr. Wexcombe."

We stared at each other.

Then Posy let go of my hand, climbed onto a kitchen stool, and sat there with her feet swinging, waiting for her breakfast.

Conrad looked at his daughter.

"I'll be in my study," he said, rough.

He left without telling me off again.

The pancakes were terrible, because the pan was strange and the stove was strange.

Posy ate three anyway.

At the end of the third one she looked at the window, where the boathouse sat low and gray beside the water.

Then she slid off the stool and ran upstairs.

She came back with a piece of paper folded in four.

She put it in my hands.

I unfolded it.

It was a crayon drawing of a house, a lake, and three tall stick figures standing in a row.

One of them had been colored in dark blue, and Posy had drawn him standing alone away from the others, by a tiny brown box.

Underneath it, in a wobbly grown-up hand that was not hers, someone had printed a single line.

For Uncle Valen.

"Did someone help you with this?" I asked.

She shook her head, then pointed at herself, then at the boathouse.

Her eyes were enormous.

She wanted to take it to him.

The door opened behind me, and Jasper Wexcombe came in with a duffel bag on one shoulder.

He had a day of travel on his face and a grin he must have been born with.

"Sorry, I'm early," he said. "Is this the legendary nanny?"

"I'm the nanny," I said. "I don't know about legendary."

"The staff have been talking about you since dawn. You told Odette off over eggs.

"That is the most beautiful thing that has happened in this house in two years."

"Jasper," Conrad said from the corridor, in a tone I was already learning to read. "Do not encourage her."

"She doesn't need it."

Posy held up the drawing to her uncle, and then, with deadly seriousness, pointed through the window to the boathouse.

Jasper's grin faltered.

Conrad stepped into the doorway.

"No," he said, very quietly. "Rule eleven."

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