The Captain's Christmas Family Read Online Free PDF

their furtive, petulant tone left Gideon in no doubt they were talking about him.
    “How long do you reckon we’ll have to put up with him?” asked one.
    The other snorted. “Too long to suit either of us, I can tell you that. With old Boney beaten at last, I’ll wager the navy won’t want him back.”
    Gideon told himself to keep walking and pay no heed to servants’ tattle. He knew this was the sort of talk that must be going on behind his back all the time. The last thing he needed was to have their exact words echoing in his thoughts, taunting and shaming him. But his steps slowed in spite of himself, and his ears strained to catch every word.
    Did part of him feel he deserved it?
    One of the footmen heaved a sigh. “So he’ll stay here to make our lives a misery instead of his crew’s. It’s not right.”
    “When did right ever come into it?” grumbled the other.
    Gideon had almost managed to edge himself out of earshot when a third voice joined the others—a woman’s voice he recognized as belonging to Miss Murray.
    “Wilbert, Frederick, have you no duties to be getting on with?” she inquired in a disapproving tone, as if they were a pair of naughty little boys in the nursery.
    “We just stopped for a quick word, miss. We’ve been run off our feet since the new master arrived.” They were obviously counting on the governess to sympathize with their disgruntled feelings.
    By now Gideon had given up trying to walk away. He braced to hear the governess join in abusing him.
    “Perhaps if you’d kept up with your duties during the past few months,” she reminded the young footmen instead, “you might not have to work quite so hard now to get the house back in decent order.”
    “Why should we run ourselves ragged for a master who’s done the things he has? They say he did away with a young sailor. If he wasn’t the captain of the ship they’d have called it plain murder.”
    As he waited for Miss Murray’s reply, Gideon wondered if he’d been wrong to assume her opinion of him had been tainted by the kind of gossip she was hearing now. Surely, she would not have wanted her young pupils to remain in the same house as a rumored killer. Perhaps this was the first time she’d heard the worst of the accusations being whispered against him.
    Though he tried to tell himself one unfavorable judgment more or less did not matter, Gideon shrank from the prospect of Miss Murray thinking even less of him.
    “I am sorely disappointed.” The gentle regret in her tone troubled Gideon worse than the harsher censure he’d expected. “I thought better of you both than to condemn your master on the basis of malicious rumors.”
    Had he heard her correctly? Gideon shook his head.
    The young footmen sputtered in protest, but Miss Murray refused to back down. “Has the captain mistreated either of you in any way since he arrived at Knightley Park?”
    “No…but he is very haughty and ill-humored. You must grant that, miss.”
    “And did you hear he threatened to give Mr. Dutton the sack?”
    “I have heard such a rumor, though that does not guarantee it is true. Besides, Wilbert, I have often heard you complain what a poor job Mr. Dutton has been doing of late. If you were in the captain’s place, would you have kept him on?”
    After an awkward pause, Wilbert muttered, “I reckon not, miss.”
    “And you, Frederick, would you be jovial and talkative in a place where you were made to feel as unwelcome as I fear we have made Captain Radcliffe?”
    Gideon did not catch the young footman’s muffled reply, but that scarcely mattered. What did matter was that someone had defended him against the whispered slurs he could not bring himself to acknowledge, let alone refute. What astonished him even more was to find a champion in Marian Murray, a woman he could have sworn detested him.
    And not altogether without reason, he was forced to admit. None of their encounters since his arrival hadbeen particularly