The Royal Nanny Read Online Free Page B

the new royal baby. Arms full, I walked right into the day nursery without the required knock.
    I thought Mrs. Peters had taken the boys outside in the spring air. Bertie wasn’t to be seen. But there she stood, leaning over David who was bent facedown over his bed. She was spanking his bare bum with the bristle side of a hairbrush!
    â€œYou’ll learn, you bad, bad boy,” the woman muttered. “You are my boy, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
    The child’s hysterical cries were muffled by a pillow pressed against his face. In that moment, all the strange and horrid pieces of the puzzle flew together for me. She must have pinched and scratched the child before taking him in to see his parents each afternoon, then carried him out in triumph as if he were hers alone to comfort and cuddle. Bertie and David both feared her, yet were coerced and groomed—like this—to think she loved them and they must love her. Love demanded by pain—so wrong.
    â€œStop it! Unhand that child!” I shouted, though I knew the moment I spoke that my time here was doomed. I dropped the nappies on the bed, ready to leap at her. I wanted to seize that brush and hit her, but she stopped and yanked the child, clad only in his shirt, to a sitting position on his bed.
    â€œYou, leave at once!” she cried, advancing on me, keeping her voice down as I had not. “He’s been naughty. He’s in my charge.”
    Her expression terrified me. Her gaze seemed askew; her features twisted, unnatural. Could she be not only cruel but demented to treat the future heir to the throne like this? And she had gotten away with it?
    â€œWhere’s Bertie?” I demanded.
    â€œNone of your business, which will soon be ended here,” shesnapped and threw the brush at me. It bounced off my shoulder onto the floor. I felt sick to my stomach, for the boys, and yes, for myself.
    Tears streaking down his face, behind her back, David pointed to the cabinet where we kept extra clothing and where I’d meant to put the nappies. I marched to the cabinet and pulled the door. Locked! The boy was locked in here? I grabbed the key from off the top shelf, unlocked the cabinet, and opened the door wide. Bertie was doubled up inside with his eyes screwed tight shut and his hands over his ears.
    â€œCome on, poppet,” I said and stooped to pull him out, but he’d gone rigid as a statue. “It’s Lala, come on now.” As I lifted him into my arms, he clung hard to me. I’d made some inroads with him at least.
    â€œYou’ll be out of here now,” Mrs. Peters said, propping her hands on her hips as if to keep me from seeing David, who peered around her. “My husband wouldn’t give me babies of my own, but these are mine.”
    â€œWe’ll see about that,” I told her. “I’m taking them outside for some fresh air as you were to do, and if you make a fuss, I’ll tell Her Grace what I saw. You have lost your mind and—”
    She began to make great, sucking sobs where she was standing. Her shoulders shook and heaved. “Three years . . . since he was born, not a day off . . .”
    â€œBut everyone has their time off here, so—”
    â€œI didn’t. Couldn’t leave him, not for a moment. He wants me, not them.” Hysteria convulsed her.
    â€œDavid, come here to me,” I told him, and he scrambled around her with his thin white legs sticking out the bottom of his shirt—legs with black and blue bruises. “Where are your trousers?” Iasked. He pointed to the floor where they’d been thrown. “Pick them up and bring them.” He still wore his shoes, so I grabbed a tweed coat for him and one for Bertie, who was hardly dressed to go out either. I took the washcloth from the bowl, dripping wet, and grabbed a jar of salve from medicines I’d recently arranged on top of the cupboard. My arms full, and without