Barbara Metzger (8 page)

She called for tea, hoping Cook had managed to prepare something, between cooking for the sickroom, for heroically proportioned gentlemen, and for their horses. Clarence would eat the rugs, otherwise. Clarence was not running to fat; he had outdistanced it years ago. Gwen, who was perpetually watching her weight—watching it increase with every sugarplum she popped in her mouth—was sure to disdain whatever appeared from Faircroft’s country kitchens.

She’d been wrong, Delia realized as she waited for the tea cart to be brought. Her relations had not sacrificed their scruples to come here in order to fawn over the viscount for the afternoon. They came to complain that they could not move in, to fawn over him for as long as he stayed. A viscount, a wounded hero, Cousin Clarence declared at his wife’s prompting, ought to be entertained as befitted his stature.

No matter that his stature was laid out on a makeshift bed in the room next door, Gwen wanted to hold a dinner party in his honor, here at Faircroft. The neighbors would expect it.

“What,” Delia asked, “you’d throw a celebratory party in George’s house, with him barely cold in his grave?”

Gwen was wearing a rose carriage dress under her furs, with a black ribbon wound through the ecru lace at the straining neckline. Clarence had on a puce and primrose striped waistcoat that did not button across his girth, a black armband his only sop to mourning.

Gwen pulled her fur tippet closer to her ample bosom, like a ferret on a shelf. “Unlike others I could mention, we are well aware of the proprieties. We would not have dancing, of course.”

“I am afraid that is impossible. His lordship is too ill”—Delia crossed her fingers behind her back, to make sure she did not jinx the viscount’s recovery—”and the staff cannot possibly manage a gathering at this time, with invalids in the house.” Aunt Eliza nodded her agreement from the stiff-backed chair she’d chosen, as far from the sofa the usurpers shared as possible. They, in turn, ignored Delia’s aunt completely. Delia continued: “As for your rooms, you agreed about Belinda.”

“We agreed on a temporary visit. You said you were going to do something about That Person.”

Clarence’s voice was taking on the same petulant tone he always had as a child, when the macaroons were gone. Delia prayed Mindle would hurry with the refreshments. “Yes, I was making plans for Belinda,” she told her cousins, full knowing all her ideas had expired with George. If her fingers were crossed any tighter, she would not be able to pour out the tea when it finally arrived. “But now she is too ill to move. I explained that in my letter.”

Gwen sniffed. “I am sure she is not too ill to remove to the attics. I bore all three of my children without inconveniencing anyone. She belongs in the attics, if not the stables. Not,” she said with another sniff and another twitch to the beady-eyed beastie dead on her breast, “in the baronet’s suite.”

“But then Nanny, Aunt Eliza, Mags, and I would be climbing those narrow stairs constantly. No, it will not fadge. Furthermore, it would be unnecessary. His lordship is most likely leaving on the morrow.”

Gwen screeched, “What, before we get to meet him?” She jumped up and began rearranging the figurines on the mantel. “No, if he was as ill as we heard, then he must stay on at least a sennight. And we must be here as hosts.”

Delia supposed moving the furniture around was Gwen’s right now, but the collection of china dogs on the mantel had been her mother’s, not part of the entailment at all. So she answered a bit more caustically than she ought, perhaps, knowing how sensitive Gwen was to her roots in trade. “Tyverne
must?
Who are you to give orders to an earl’s son?”

“Pish-tosh, he will enjoy the attention. Every man does.”

Tyverne did not seem the sort to enjoy being fussed over, but Delia held her tongue. Gwen did not. “And what are you thinking of, anyway, my girl? You need us here to lend you countenance. Consider your reputation, for once, and how it reflects on us.”

“What reputation?” Delia asked. “You swore mine was destroyed when I gave Belinda comfort after her father threw her out of his house.”

“But George was alive then, and we had no say in the matter.”

They had said a great deal, however, all of it ugly, unfair, and unhelpful.

Gwen paused in her assessment of the knickknacks to resume her seat next to Clarence, and next to the dish of sherried ginger biscuits Mindle had brought in. Delia hoped they enjoyed them. The horse had not.

Gwen wrinkled her long nose at the biscuits, but deigned to try one, before Clarence could devour them all. “Still, that was then, and you promised it was a temporary arrangement. Your reputation might have recovered. But now we say–” She pinched Clarence’s arm, so he put down the second pastry he was holding and said, “Right. Now we say
...
what?”

“That a single gentleman in the house of an unmarried female is shocking.”

Clarence took another bite. “Quite. Dallsworth complained to me when he got wind of it.”

Delia started to point to Aunt Eliza as chaperone enough, when another thought struck her. “Dallsworth? What does that old reprobate’s opinion matter?”

Clarence puffed out his cheeks. Likely so he could stuff more biscuits in. “Fine gentleman, Dallsworth. Well respected, don’t you know.”

Delia knew he pinched the housemaids every chance he got. She busied herself fixing the tea Mindle finally brought. She thought of asking Gwen to pour, since Clarence’s wife was nominally hostess. But that was Delia’s mother’s Wedgwood on the tray, and Delia’s temper under the thinnest control. She poured.

Gwen examined the slices of bread and butter presented, looked down her long nose, and refused. “Dallsworth is the highest-ranking gentleman of the neighborhood,” she reminded Delia, as if Delia had ever been allowed to forget. He also had the rankest breath in the neighborhood, Tom Burdock’s prize hog notwithstanding.

His mouth full, and both of his hands, Clarence managed to say, “He’s agreed to renew his suit.”

Delia almost spilled her tea. “He is taking you to court?”

“Haw!” Clarence guffawed crumbs across his vividly striped waistcoat, and the damask sofa. “Told you our Dilly was a right ‘un. Still, it don’t look good, my girl,” he admonished, waving a finger of toast at her, “entertaining another gent.”

Delia put down her mother’s teacup before she was tempted to toss it at her cousin’s head. “The viscount is ill, as you well know, so I am not entertaining anyone. Furthermore, I am absolutely not entertaining Dallsworth’s suit. Not now, not ever. We have been over this before, cousin, with the same results.”

“But that was when you had other choices,” Clarence said, deliberating between the bread and butter or the ginger biscuits. “You’ve got none left, Dilly. Asides, we gave you time to get over your grief, and this other do-good nonsense. Now you have to marry. You must see that.”

“I do not see that at all.” Delia could see where Clarence and Gwen would not want her in their home, but that did not mean she had to wed.

“Well, I am in charge now,” Clarence insisted. “And I say you will accept Dallsworth.”

She tried to make light of his command. Her cousin, after all, was her legal guardian, trustee of her funds. “What, Clarence, are you going to drag me, kicking and screaming, to the altar? That’s the only way I would get there, you know, and I still would not repeat my vows. What, to honor and obey a man who picks his teeth in public?”

Clarence sputtered, and put his penknife back in his pocket.

“But why are you two so keen on Dallsworth’s suit,” Delia wondered out loud, “especially with another eligible gentleman so suddenly in our midst?”

“Dash it, girl,” Clarence shouted. “It ain’t for you to question me.”

“What, did he promise you a patronage position in exchange for my dowry? An apartment in his London town house? Are you to profit by the marriage settlements?” Delia’s own voice was raised now. “What is it, Clarence, that you have to gain by my wedding that wantwit?”

Clarence turned an unattractive shade of purple, especially next to his lurid waistcoat, and Gwen said, “Nonsense. Remember your place, girl.”

“I have no place, remember? But I will not help you, whatever your self-serving motives. I am not going to marry that—”

“Of course you are not going to marry Mr. Dallsworth, my dear Miss Croft” came in firm tones from the doorway. “You are going to marry me.”

Two teacups—and Gwen—hit the rug at the same time.

Chapter 10

After Miss Croft left him, Ty sank back on his pillows, exhausted. Twenty minutes in the female’s company was like a month of fevers. He must have drowsed, for he awoke to weeping and moaning again. Lud, was his proposal so offensive? No, he recalled, both sounds seemed perpetual in this house. He would have gone to investigate except that most of the noises seemed to be coming from the family rooms, above, where he had no possible excuse for exploring.

Then he heard shouting, from much closer by. The argument was going on in the next room, in fact, unless he missed his guess. The words were coming so clearly, Ty did not consider himself an eavesdropper as much as an unwilling audience—until he heard his name mentioned.

Someone was yelling at Ty’s Miss Croft, for that was how he considered her. He also considered that, while he might wish to shake some sense into Delia’s pretty red head, no one else had the right to disturb one of those bright curls. From what he could gather, Clarence, the cousin mentioned in George’s letters, was decidedly disturbing her peace of mind.

Ty jumped out of bed, then steadied himself and his reeling senses against a side table. Still unsteady, he grabbed his pantaloons from the back of a chair and pulled them on. He tucked George’s nightshirt down the waist as best he could, then struggled into his uniform coat. His boots were missing, taken off by Mindle and Dover so the boy could learn how a gentleman’s footwear was properly polished. He missed his sword more than the boots as he followed the sound of the angry voices. Blasted civilian life!

Sir Clarence’s speech was growing louder as he threatened Miss Croft with Dallsworth. Ty was truly beginning to despise the merest mention of that man’s name, and he did not think much of the new baronet, either. Even Ty knew that planting him a facer in the lady’s parlor could not be considered polite, so there was only one thing for him to do. He threw open the parlor door and announced, “Of course you are not going to marry Dallsworth, my dear Miss Croft. You are going to marry me.”

Brilliant tactics, Ty congratulated himself, spiking the enemy’s guns and reinforcing his own position at the same time. Ty was particularly proud of remembering to put in the “my dear” to appeal to Miss Croft’s romantical bent.

Perhaps he should have considered his strategy a bit more, he thought, when he saw the effect of his statement. Hell, he should have drawn Clarence’s claret—if the tub of lard now gaping at him like a landed trout was indeed George’s cousin—and been done with it. Lud knew no one would have noticed, against that waistcoat.

Miss Croft, it seemed, was not impressed with Ty’s battle plan. “I am not going to marry anyone!” she shouted as she bent first to pick up the crockery, and then find Gwen’s smelling salts in her reticule.

Delicate dishes and fainting females were two of Ty’s terrors. He stayed rooted by the door, as horror-stricken as the chaw-bacon Clarence, if for different reasons.

Delia glared at both of them as she had to drag a barely revived Gwen back onto the sofa by herself. After she’d placed a fresh cup of tea in the woman’s hand—in a fresh, unchipped teacup—and another in Aunt Eliza’s, who was quietly weeping in the corner, possibly out of joy, she stormed at Tyverne. “Now see what you have done.”

What had he done? Saved her from being browbeaten into matrimony with a man she evidently despised? Or worse, from a life of shame and scrimping? Worst yet, having to live with these mushrooms and their undoubtedly spore-like offspring? Ty shrugged. “I announced our engagement a bit prematurely, is all.”

“We had no engagement, you big oaf!”

“I heard him say it, Dilly,” Clarence put in, flapping his handkerchief in Gwen’s face until she slapped it away.

The viscount examined his fingers. “Do you know, I am not fond of pet names. I suppose that’s natural, with an appellation like Archimedes, but I find they remind me of pets, or little brothers.”

Miss Croft looked at Ty as if he were insane. “What has that to do with anything, for heaven’s sake?”

But Clarence understood. “Why do you not introduce us, uh, Delia?”

So she did, and Gwen even managed a simper, before Delia impatiently told them to ignore anything Lord Tyverne said. “The man is obviously ranting, out of his mind with fever. Why, he even forgot his shoes.”

Ty looked down at his bare feet and wiggled his toes in the carpet. “No, Mindle has my boots for polishing.”

“I doubt that old relic will know the proper way to go about it,” Clarence began. “Now my valet has a secret formula—”

Ty studied the older man’s overstuffed ensemble. He wished, for once, that he had a quizzing glass, a London dandy’s affectation, so he could raise it now, to depress this toadstool’s pretensions. He made do with saying, “Yes, I can see that your man is a dab hand at dressing a gentleman.”

Miss Croft made an unladylike noise, but Gwen had revived enough after the tea to pinch her husband’s arm and whisper in his ear.

Ty was wishing someone would offer him tea or, better, a brandy. His head was beginning to ache again, and his legs were still not steady.

“What? What? Oh, yes, Dilly. I mean Delia. That is, you cannot be engaged to our cousin, Tyverne. I never gave permission.”

“Ah, but I had it from her guardian.” He reached into his pocket for a folded paper, which he held out to Delia. “I have it here, in Lieutenant Croft’s last letter, which he never got to post. I meant to give it to you earlier, my dear, but forgot while I was on my sickbed.”

Clarence heaved himself off the sofa. “Here, I’ll take that.”

“What, you’d read Miss Croft’s personal mail, the last she will have from her beloved brother?” Ty asked, swearing to himself to purchase a quizzing glass at the next opportunity. “I think not.”