Carola Dunn (3 page)

A faint smile lightened his lordship’s grim expression. “Good evening, Master Findlay,” he responded.

Peter started, glanced at Lissa, and said quickly, “Thank you for bringing my sister home, sir.”

“Lissa?” Rubbing his eyes, nightcap awry and dark hair tousled, Michael stumbled through from the inner room, little more than a closet, where the boys slept. “Did Peter give you your bun? It’s just a little bit. I had more’n my fair share,” he confessed guiltily, “‘cause I got so hungry I had a pain in my pudding-house.”

“You had
what
?” Lissa enquired, laughing.

“A tummy-ache.”

“Oh dear! Well, make your bow to Lord Ashe and then you shall have a treat. I have brought home a midnight supper for the two of you.”

She took off her bonnet and cloak and hung them on nails behind the door as Lord Ashe set the basket on the table and the boys delved into it, exclaiming.

“Now don’t eat too much,” she warned, “or you will get another tummy-ache and there will be none left for tomorrow. And eat first the things in sauces that will not be so nice when they grow quite cold. Lord Ashe, may I show you out? I am sure you are anxious to leave, and I must bolt the front door.”

He made an odd grimace. “I daresay I had best not keep my cattle standing,” he admitted. “Good night to you, gentlemen.”

“Good night, sir,” said Peter. Michael, his mouth stuffed with a puit d’amour, waved cheerfully.

Lissa lit a stub of candle for them and took the other with her to light the way down the stairs. Lord Ashe trod unspeaking behind her, whether out of consideration for slumbering lodgers or because he had nothing to say. At the bottom, she stood the candle on the stained table in the front passage and turned to thank him.

“My lord, you have been more than kind....”

Stepping forward, he took her in his arms. His lips sought hers. Taken by surprise, she did not think to turn her head until his mouth crushed her own--and then it was too late. Her bones and her will turned to jelly, melting in the fire that swept through her veins. The hardness of his body pressed against her set every nerve atingle.

Abruptly he released her and moved back, regarding her with a strange look. Gasping, she slapped his face.

He raised his hand to his cheek, startled. Then he laughed softly. “Very good, Lissa,” he congratulated her in a low voice, “but that will not deter a determined seducer. Indeed, there are those whom it would excite.”

Breathless with indignation, and perhaps some less comprehensible feeling she did not care to dwell on, Lissa snapped, “I care not, my lord, so it deters you.”

“Then you waste your effort,” he said with heightened colour. “I kissed you merely to demonstrate your danger. Promise me you will not accept any further invitations, nor allow anyone to know where you live.”

“I thank you for the lesson, sir,” she said doubtfully. Her shoulders slumped as she turned away to open the door. “Yet maybe I but struggle against the inevitable. I must feed the children.”

“Can you find no respectable occupation?”

“Seamstresses and milliners earn even less than actresses, and who would hire a governess or companion without references and with two dependents?”

“I had not considered.” He paused. “You are right. But be careful, I beg of you, Miss Findlay, and should you change your mind, pray consider my offer open.”

He laid a visiting card upon the table, bowed without looking at her, and left.

Lissa slowly closed, locked, and bolted the door. She picked up his card and scanned it unseeingly through a haze of inexplicable tears.

Later, when the boys were asleep, she hid it away under the loose floorboard with her mama’s pearl necklace. She took out the necklace and contemplated the sheen as she turned it in the dim, flickering light of the dying candle. It was her last resort. Only in desperation would she attempt to sell it, for so fine a string of perfectly matched pearls was bound to lead to suspicion of theft, to probing questions.

And questions could only lead to discovery and disaster.

* * * *

In the middle of the delicate business of knotting his cravat, Ashe paused, his eyebrows raised at the sight of a lady’s handkerchief lying neatly folded on his dressing-table. “Where did this come from, Mills?”

“I found it in the pocket of your evening coat, my lord,” his valet informed him stolidly, “the one you wore last night. It being all crumpled up, I had it washed and ironed. I hope I did right, my lord.”

“Yes, of course.”

Ashe picked up the small cambric square, edged with inexpertly tatted lace. Lissa Findlay’s; now he recalled retrieving it from the floor as they left the private parlour. It was monogrammed in white on white, he saw, also by inexpert fingers. FM? No, MF--she had said her christian name was Melissa. She had stitched the wrong letter first.   Low wages were not the only reason she had not sought work as a seamstress, he thought with a smile.

He ought to return it. In her poverty, even so insignificant a scrap of material represented an asset, to be sold for a penny, perhaps, to buy a currant bun for her brothers.

But instead he found himself opening the small centre drawer of his dressing-table. Into it he dropped the handkerchief, amongst his keepsakes: a bundle of letters; ribbons; a glove; a withered rosebud and one of pink crepe; three locks of hair, each wrapped in tissue paper; a silk stocking; and half a dozen other handkerchiefs, embroidered, trimmed with genuine Valenciennes lace, still faintly redolent of sensuous perfumes.

The drawer shut with a click. Ashe frowned at his reflection in the looking-glass.

“Damnation, I’ve ruined this neckcloth.” Wresting the offending length of starched white muslin from his throat, he reached for the fresh cravat the patient Mills had waiting for him.

Having achieved a neat Osbaldeston knot, Ashe allowed Mills to assist him into a close-fitting morning coat of blue Bath superfine. His dark hair brushed into the fashionable Windswept style, he descended the stairs to the breakfast room.

And all the time that handkerchief nagged at the back of his mind.

It was absurd, he told himself, to feel the damn thing did not belong with the mementoes of his amorous conquests. To be sure, it represented a defeat, but after all it was only a bit of cloth, incapable of sensing the affront of its present company. Why the devil did he keep all those odds and ends anyway? He’d tell Mills to dispose of them.

“Good morning, my lord,” his stout butler greeted him in the vestibule.

“Morning, Halsey. Another fine day, do you think, or are we to expect rain?”

“Fine but chilly again, I believe, my lord. Your lordship will find Lord Quentin in the breakfast room.”

“Teague? What the deuce...?”

“I understand his lordship has an appointment to drive out with Lady Orton, my lord.”

“At this hour? He’s mistaken the time, depend upon it. My sister won’t show her face for hours.” Striding into the breakfast parlour, a small, sunny room at the front of the house, Ashe repeated his query to the blond head half hidden by the Morning Post. “At this hour, Teague?”

“What?” The paper dropped, revealing shirt-points of extraordinary height, an intricate neckcloth, a green coat with padded shoulders and wasp-waist, and a sunshine yellow waistcoat. “Oh, beg your pardon for intruding so early, Ashe. Lady Orton desires my advice on a gown she wishes to wear to the Jerseys’ ball tonight. I’m to accompany her to the modiste as soon as she comes down.”

“Rather you than me. I hope she won’t keep you waiting too long. She breakfasts in bed. Have you broken your fast?”

“Yes, yes, thank you, before I came out. Your butler provided coffee. Pray go ahead and don’t mind me.”

Annoyed by the unwanted company at his breakfast table, Ashe filled a plate at the sideboard. At least Teague had the grace to bury himself in the Post again rather than demand conversation or watch his reluctant host eat. Taking his seat, Ashe opened the Times.

For a few minutes he ate and read without interruption. Then Teague again lowered the Post, folded it, and set it aside.

“Must congratulate you on your conquest,” he said, suavely but with a hint of disgruntlement. “Your personal charms certainly carried the day--or the night, I should say. The chit didn’t even wait to find out which of us would make her a better offer.”

Ashe swallowed a sharp retort along with a mouthful of buttered eggs. If he admitted that Lissa had been conquered by his offer of food, not by his charms, and that he had let her get away with it, he’d be a laughing-stock. Teague was no scandalmonger, but the story was too good to resist.

What was more, knowing Ashe had no further interest in Lissa, Lord Quentin would be encouraged to pursue her, to persecute her with his attentions. Nor, when it came to the test, was he likely to take no for an answer.

“Miss Findlay was delightful company,” Ashe said noncommittally.

“You came to an arrangement, then?”

“What, you still have an eye on her?”

“She has that untouched, virginal look I admire.”

“Well, nothing lasts forever.”

“No,” Teague agreed with regret. “Expect it will be gone by the time you discard her, but let me know when the moment comes, will you?”

“By all means. Ah, Daphne, good morning!” Ashe rose to his feet as his widowed sister floated into the room.

At twenty-nine, a year older than Ashe, Daphne Lady Orton was still a beauty. The white satin lining her violet-plumed lilac bonnet showed off the glossy raven curls framing her unlined face, and a snug violet spencer over the high-waisted, beruffled lilac walking dress displayed her elegant figure to advantage.

“Very fetching, my dear,” Ashe said appreciatively. “You are in looks today, as always.”

“Thank you, Rob,” she said in her soft, light, rather fluttery voice, “you always know how to make one feel better, but I assure you I have hardly slept a wink for worrying.... Oh, Lord Quentin, good morning! I hope I have not kept you waiting long?”

“No more than a minute or two, Lady Orton.” Bowing as low as his high collar-points and ridiculously tight coat permitted, Teague raised her hand to his lips in a gesture of studied grace. “And such a vision of loveliness would more than compensate for a wait of a thousand years.”

To Ashe’s amusement, Daphne swallowed this extravagant twaddle with a complacent smile. Turning her head, she said, “Colin,... Where are you hiding? Colin, come in here and make your bow to Lord Quentin and your uncle.”

“Don’t want to,” responded a fretful voice from the hallway.

“Please, darling! Oh, Rob, I am in such a worry. Since Miss Prescott gave her notice--it was too bad of her mother to fall ill when I need her so!--I have interviewed a dozen governesses and they are all quite impossible. I am at my wits’ end, for I cannot always be taking Colin about with me.”

“Hear, hear,” muttered Teague.

“The excitement is not good for the child.” To do her justice, Daphne possessed none of the sort of vanity which might suggest to her that a ten-year-old son at her side was too revealing of her own age.

“London is no place for a small boy,” Ashe pointed out, not for the first time, “even with a good governess. I wish you will send him to Mama and Nurse Bessemer. Country air will do him a world of good.”

“But Mama is too frail and Nurse too old to take proper care of him. No, I cannot send him to Ashmead. Colin, darling, do come in. Just think, you shall have a nice ride in the barouche with Lord Quentin.”

“Don’t want to.”

Ashe, the remains of his breakfast rapidly congealing on his plate, put his foot down. “Colin, obey your mama at once,” he ordered.

Feet dragging, Colin appeared. The young Viscount Orton was a pale, skinny boy, with mousy hair and a sulky expression. He was about the same age as Lissa Findlay’s brothers, Ashe thought, but what a difference!

His nephew, with every advantage of birth and wealth, was a sickly, discontented brat. They--Michael and Peter, wasn’t it? --had displayed even in Ashe’s brief meeting with them a natural courtesy, a sturdy independence, and an admirable unselfishness. Hungry as they were, they had saved a scrap of their unexpected treat for their sister. The little one had even apologized for eating more than his share of the bounty purchased with his own penny.

A pain in his “pudding-house,” poor child. Ashe felt a pang of sympathy in his own...stomach. Surely not in his heart? His heart had nothing to do with the case.

“Good morning, Uncle Robert.” Colin bowed to him listlessly, then turned to his mother. “Mama, must I go with you? It is very dull at the dressmaker’s.”

“You may sit and look at the pictures of pretty ladies in the pattern-books, darling.”

Ashe discovered a sudden sympathy with his nephew.

“Don’t want to! Anyway, they’re none of them as pretty as you.”

“Darling child!” Daphne swooped upon her son with a kiss. “But I cannot leave you at home with no governess, my love. Come, make your bow to Lord Quentin and let us be off.”

Colin glowered at Teague, his mouth set in a mutinous pout.

“Well, never mind that,” Teague said with uneasy joviality. “By all means, let us be on our way.”

But Colin caught his uncle’s eye and at last performed a grudging obeisance.

“Tell you what,” said Ashe impulsively, “I’ll take you to the park this afternoon, old chap.”

The boy’s face lit up, making Ashe at once glad he had made the offer and guilty that he did not spend more time with his nephew. But he knew the visit to the park would be hedged about with restrictions. No running with hoop or hobby-horse lest Colin grow breathless or overheated. No playing with chance-met children lest he catch an infection. No feeding the ducks lest he go too near the water, fall in, and take a chill.

Which left a sedate stroll as the only possible activity. Ashe might have defied the prohibitions but that he knew all too well how easily Colin succumbed to every ailment under the sun. A healthy country life was what he needed.

Yet however indecisive and persuadable on every other question, on that point Daphne stood firm. She would not entrust her precious son to the dowager Lady Ashe and old Nanny Bessemer, nor to any mere hired governess, however competent, except under her own eye. And one might as well expect Daphne to fly as to rusticate.