Greetings of the Season and Other Stories (6 page)

If not, Belinda and her family would be off for the ducal seat in Dorset in a day or two; from there they’d travel on to Montravan Hall to wait for the earl’s offer, an offer that he couldn’t, wouldn’t make. Zeus, what a house party that should be! What a damnable coil.

And he couldn’t stay drunk for the rest of the century either. His innards were already protesting. Besides, he had to hire a new secretary. An old, ugly secretary. Vincent had seen to the Christmas gifts, heaven be praised, but there was new mail every day that needed answering: invitations, bills, and personal letters, to say nothing of the household accounts and all of the correspondence appurtenant to Montravan’s vast and varied holdings. The first man the agency sent over was so old, he could have transcribed the Ten Commandments. Bevin was afraid he’d expire before the sennight.

The second smelled so bad, the earl knew he couldn’t share the library with this man, much less his personal life.

When the third man spoke, he whistled through ill-fitting false teeth, and the fourth took a coughing fit and nearly fell off the chair. Bevin felt guilty over not hiring one of the decrepit oldsters, but he sent each home with hackney fare after a snack in the kitchen.

And he canceled his previous specifications for prospective employees, this time requesting a middle-aged misogynist. The first man smelled of lavender, and the second man lisped.

What about a scribe who was happily married? the hiring agent wanted to know. Bevin doubted that there was such a thing, but he said he would consider the applicants, who would have to be paid more, living out. Mr. Browne blanched at the idea of handling love-nest leases, and Mr. Faraday was newly wed; he couldn’t leave his bride alone in the evenings. Stedly had shifty eyes and four sons who were willing to do any manner of work, most likely including purse snatching and housebreaking. The earl made sure Tuttle escorted this last applicant out the door.

“Damn and blast,” Lord Montravan exclaimed when Tuttle returned, this time alone. “This should be Vincent’s job.”

“Ahem.” Tuttle stood in the doorway of the library, looking more disapproving than ever.

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. There must be hundreds of other employment services, or I can put an advertisement in the newspapers.”

Tuttle cleared his throat again. “If I might be so bold, my lord, may I suggest you ask Miss Sinclaire?”

“What, ask Petra to move into Montford House and become my secretary? Have your wits gone begging altogether, old man? You mustn’t go senile on me quite yet, Tuttle. I couldn’t face having to hire a new butler, too.”

“What I meant, my lord,” Tuttle continued as if Lord Montravan had not spoken, “was that Miss Sinclaire most probably knows of some likely lad from Wiltshire, a young man on the scholarship lists at Oxford that you support, or perhaps one of the tenants’ sons returning from the war. You must already have their gratitude and loyalty, and knowing their families have roots in your holdings should keep the young men from overstepping the boundaries.”

“Tuttle, you are brilliant!”

“Thank you, my lord. I find that younger men are easier to deal with, more comfortable about taking advice.”

“I am convinced, Tuttle. Petra will know just the right man, and if not, her brother-in-law, the curate, might. He’s not that long out of university.” Lord Montravan was delighted. His problem was as good as solved, once he dumped it into Petra’s lap. Not that he was ungrateful, nor that he thought Petra would consider his difficulty another burden. Petra would see the situation as a welcome opportunity to help some worthy lad. She was just like that. And he’d make it up to her. Why, he’d find her the finest gentleman in town to wed, not one of his own rakish friends.

“That’s what I’ll do, Tuttle. I might even travel to the Hall a day or two early. There’s nothing pressing here, after all, so close to the holidays.” And it just might be politic to stay out of Johnny Coulton’s proximity for a while, and to give the gabble-grinders a chance to find another juicy morsel. Devil take it, soon enough after New Year’s they’d be talking about the ring that was not on Belinda’s hand. Perhaps, the earl mused when Tuttle went to advise the agency that no more applicants would be interviewed, he could stay on at Montravan after his mother and sister left for Bath, sit by the fire, read books, ride around the countryside, and talk to Petra. He was tired of this drinking, wagering, and wenching. Then again, Petra would travel to Bath with the others, and Bibi would be waiting for him here in London. Country pursuits palled so quickly. Still, the sooner he left, the sooner he’d have a competent secretary. He almost rang for Vincent to make all the arrangements. Hell and confound it!

Then Tuttle came back wearing a censorious frown and bearing a letter on a silver salver. The smell of jasmine wafted halfway across the room, identifying the sender even before Montravan recognized the curling script on the address. He waited for Tuttle to remove his condemnatory but curious phiz before slitting the wafer to see what Marina had to say.

“What the bloody hell?”

The second reading made no more sense than the first. Marina was effusively grateful for his gift and his note. What had he written? Montravan tried to recall. Something like “Thank you for our past association and the pleasant times, and best Wishes in your future relations.” How could that send her in alt unless she was happy to be shut of him? But, no, she wrote that she couldn’t wait to see him, just knew he’d be calling on her after the theater tonight since they had so much to discuss. For the life of him, Montravan couldn’t think of one thing a cove discussed with his discarded mistress.

He went anyway. He was too much the gentleman to keep a lady waiting, and too curious. Marina met him at the door of the neat row house in Kensington and instantly threw her arms around him. One of those arms wore the multigemmed bracelet he had picked as her Christmas-cum-parting gift, and it looked even more garish by the candlelight. Marina must have liked it, because she wore a diaphanous red robe with matching multicolored ruffles at the hem. That gown, what there was of it above the ruffles, could have made the devil blush. She also must have liked the bracelet, he deduced, from the enthusiasm of her greeting. “Darling,” she gushed, “I cannot wait.”

With her lush curves pressed against him, Bevin’s body was stirred despite his loftier intentions. “I can’t wait either,” he whispered in her ear, trying to free his arm to remove his coat.

“No, silly, I mean I cannot wait for the wedding.”

“The wedding?” Those two words had more effect on Britain’s population than any number of cold baths. He took a step back. “What wedding?”

“Why, ours, of course. Your card made me the happiest of women, darling. I mean, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I never would have guessed. I never dared let myself hope.”

Bevin wiped at a nonexistent smudge on the sleeve of his bottle green coat. “Ah, what exactly did the card say, my sweet? I cannot seem to recall.”

Marina chewed on her lower lip in a well-rehearsed seductive pout. “Now isn’t that just like a man, forgetting something so important. The card is already tucked into my Bible, but I swear I’ll remember the exact words to my dying day. I always did have a mind for memorizing, you know. That’s real helpful in the theater. Anyway, ‘Greetings of the season,’ it said, only that was inscribed. And then: ‘To a real lady, with respect and affection,’” she quoted with enough timbre for Lady Macbeth. “And then you wrote, “‘’Ware, I hear wedding bells in your future.’”

Which was, of course, the note he’d written to Petra, concerning her Season with Allissa on the Marriage Mart. Oh, God.

“I never thought you’d do it,” Marina was going on, “so starchy you always seemed and all. The other girls said you were too toplofty by half, and here you’ve gone and proved them wrong in the most wonderful way. Respect and affection,” she intoned as if they were her passport into heaven, “and a real lady. Just think, Mary Corby, a real lady. And not just a plain lady. I’ll be a countess.”

When hell froze over. Obviously there had been a horrible mistake. Obviously there was going to be a horrible scene.

Bevin could feel a droplet of sweat trickle down between his shoulder blades. He despised disordered freaks and disputations, so he damned the decamped secretary for the hundredth time. The chawbacon must have been so rattled at being found out that he mixed the cards by mistake. If Vincent wasn’t already dismissed, he’d be turned off for the atrocious lapse. “May he rot in purgatory for the rest of eternity.”

“My lord?”

Bevin took a deep breath. Following the hunting maxims of riding quickly over rough ground and throwing one’s heart over the hurdle, he opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was the whoosh of the same deep breath.

“Darling?” Marina—Mary—was ready to soothe his agitation the way she knew best.

Oh, no. Montravan couldn’t let himself get distracted. Fully aroused, he might promise anything. He put more distance between her ample charms and his traitorous body. “No, my dear Marina, er, Mary. There isn’t going to be any wedding, at least not yours and mine. I am afraid there’s been an error with the cards.”

Then he was afraid there’d be a visit from the watch, the constable, and the local magistrate, so piercing were her shrieks, so loud was the sound of shattering bric-a-brac and furniture bouncing off walls.

Marina threw everything at him but the sofa, which was too heavy, and the bracelet, which was too valuable. She was too downy to act the fool twice in one day.

Montravan tried to appease her with cash, which was a foredoomed effort, since what he had in his pocket couldn’t possibly compare to what he had in the bank, all of which would have been hers along with that title. “But, Marina, you must have known the Earl of Montravan couldn’t marry a wh—an actress.”

“Stranger things have happened,” she insisted, emphasizing her point with a china shepherdess that missed his head by scant inches.

Not in his family, not in his lifetime, Bevin vowed, but was wise enough to keep that thought to himself. He gave up trying to placate the raging woman when she dashed for her little kitchen and returned with a carving knife. The heretofore dauntless earl daunted himself right out the window onto a bare-branched rosebush.

Shredding his inexpressibles away from the prickers, Bevin had time to think about the second half of the disaster. If Marina had Petra’s note, then come Christmas morning, Petra would be receiving that tripe about past attachments and future plans. Petra was needle-witted enough to recognize the note for what it was—and what type of woman it was meant for—but she was a trump. She’d not fly into the boughs like some others. He’d explain about the mix-up, they’d have a good laugh, and that would be the end of it, except that he’d look the fool in Petra’s eyes. No, things never need come to such a pass that he had to explain about errant secretaries and discarded mistresses to an innocent girl. He’d simply travel to Montravan a bit earlier, as he’d planned anyway, intercept the gifts, and write a new card to his mother’s companion. No one would ever be the wiser, except Bevin, who had instantly learned not to leave everything up to the servants.

7

White’s was more a habit than a destination. Bevin’s fuddled brain just took him there, not in hopes of having a convivial evening—it was too late for convivial, convenient, or comfortable—but just a way to pass this wretched night until he could set out for Montravan Hall in the morning.

The majordomo kept his usual imperturbable expression, but some of the members visibly started to see the earl’s condition. The black look on his face kept any from commenting, however. A few of his usual associates, in fact, suddenly started yawning with the need to make an early night of it, with their own journeys to the country soon to commence.

Bevin walked through the rooms until he spotted his friend Coulton, who looked as if an ale barrel had rolled across his face. The earl winced but gamely took a seat next to the viscount. Johnny raised his quizzing glass and painstakingly surveyed the porcelain shards on Bevin’s shoulder, the pillow feathers in his hair, and the scratches on his cheek, scratches the earl was only now beginning to feel.

The viscount held out a clean handkerchief. “I’d beat you to a pulp, my erstwhile friend, but it appears someone has been there before me.”

“No one up to your weight, so go ahead, take your shot. You’re entitled.” Bevin held up his bandaged hand. “I won’t put up much of a fight.”

Coulton nodded toward the bandage. “My nose do that?”

“Your nose or Haskell’s teeth. Makes no nevermind which. You’ve got my apologies, for what they are worth.”

“’Twas a flush hit.”

Bevin lifted one corner of his mouth. “That it was.” He waited to see if the big man smiled back, or if it was to be pistols for two and breakfast for one, unless Johnny decided on more immediate, brutal, and bloody retribution. Bevin was debating whether he should throw the first blow or just go down quietly, when the Duke of Harleigh walked into the room, leaning on his cane.

Bevin stood to offer his gouty grace a seat, pleased that Coulton’s revenge would at least be postponed by the presence of the august peer. The duke looked at Montravan, then through Montravan, and limped on to greet an acquaintance at the next table without even a nod for Montravan.

The cut was direct, and right in front of half of White’s members. Now that was sure to set the cat among the pigeons. A few of the gambling men were already scrambling for the betting book to change their wagers. The earl shrugged. He wasn’t the one whose daughter was playing fast and loose with the servants.