“Meggie, you will surely beat out the Harker brothers in the creativity of your training methods. They’re entering three cats in this race.”
“Never underestimate their ingenuity, Alec. I hear that Jamie, the head stable lad at the Mountvale mews, has come up with a new limerick to sing to the Black Rocket. It’s so effective—all Jamie has to do is stand at the finish line and sing his heart out, and the Black Rocket will spead toward him like a bullet.”
“The Black Rocket has very mean eyes,” Alec said thoughtfully. “I think Mr. Cork needs to bring him down a peg. I need to think about this.”
Thomas Malcombe listened to brother and sister discuss the Black Rocket—whatever sort of racing cat that was. He liked that name, it was quite menacing. He’d seen Mr. Cork, his gold and white body stretched out, all muscled and long in the sun, with just a bit of shade over one leg from one of Mrs. Sherbrooke’s rosebushes.
He’d never had a cat, even when he’d been a boy. There were the barn cats, feral, all of them good mousers.
“Lord Lancaster, how nice to see you. Do you like thin ham slices? They’re Cook’s specialty. Do join us for luncheon.”
He turned to see Mrs. Sherbrooke coming around the side of the vicarage. “Good day, Mrs. Sherbrooke. I merely came to see if Rory was well enough yet to train with the racing cats. I have no wish to intrude.”
Mary Rose took his hand. “You saved my son’s life, my lord. I want you to intrude until you are quite tired of all of us. Do call me Mary Rose.”
Meggie overheard this and nodded vigorously as she joined the two of them. “Thomas, welcome. I’m delighted you could visit. The last time I saw Rory, he was climbing the trellis that divides Mary Rose’s hydrangeas from her daffodils, the one with the red climbing roses on it.”
Mary Rose’s eyes nearly crossed. “Oh no, tell me you made that up, Meggie! Oh goodness, he can’t. That trellis isn’t all that sturdy. I swear that as of right now, I will no longer look at him and thank God endlessly. No, I will pull my resolve together and swat his bottom. Well, perhaps if he is more than two feet from the ground I will swat him. My lord, I will see you in the dining room in no more than five minutes. Rory! Get down off that trellis!”
And Mary Rose was gone, holding her skirt up to her knees and running toward the east side of the vicarage.
Meggie grinned after her. “This is a good sign. She’s been hovering over him, so afraid he will stop breathing again.”
“Being hovered over doesn’t sound like a bad thing,” Thomas said.
Meggie grinned. “Hovering in this case means she’s always petting him, kissing him, squeezing him, stuffing food down his gullet, driving the little boy quite distracted, a very independent little boy, let me add.”
“You mean you made that trellis story up to get your mother back on an even keel?”
“I wouldn’t call it precisely a lie,” Meggie said. “Perhaps Rory was looking longingly at the trellis. Now, I am delighted you came to visit. Cook’s ham slices are so thin you can see yourself through them. No one knows how she manages it and everyone is always lurking about to watch when she slices the ham. Come along now. You needn’t worry that she will try to poison you. The only person she ever mutters about is Mr. Samuel Pritchert, my father’s curate.”
“The very dour man who never smiles even when he eats a bite of apple tart?”
“That’s the one.”
“He’s in a bad way.”
“Yes. But do you know, he has but to look at someone, and that someone will spill his innards to Samuel. My father thinks it’s amazing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She just laughed, took his hand, and pulled him toward the vicarage door. They heard Mary Rose yelling at Rory, who had, evidently, climbed the trellis, because she was telling him that she was going to swat him but good when she got him down from that great height. Goodness, he’d climbed at least eighteen inches and he deserved a good swat.