Miss Lindel's Love (20 page)

He retained one in his clasp a moment to look at her most searchingly. She had almost to tug it free so that she could indicate he might be seated again.

“I need not ask if you find yourself well, Miss Lin-del. Your pink cheeks tell me that tale.”

She threw him a quizzical glance. “They lie. We have been but an hour out of the coach.”

“Was it a difficult journey?”

“Not difficult, no. But long and slow. Ladies cannot tear about the countryside as you gentlemen do in your curricles and phaetons.”

“I think you would look very dashing in a curricle, Miss Lindel. Shall I take you up in mine one morning? I should very much like to show you my cattle’s paces.”

“I should like that above all things, my lord.” She rose and went to the bell. “We are about to partake of some supper, if you would care to join us?”

Kenton raised his hand to stop her. “I cannot stay. I merely came to assure myself that all was well. You like the house?”

“Very much, though the servants are rather grand personages.”

With a sigh of relief, Kenton noted that her conversation had begun to take a much more “Maris” trend than the series of polite society nothings offered by every maiden. He’d realized at Finchley that only her appearance there had been unconventional. Once she returned from sponging the mud from her dress, she’d been impeccably correct.

When she had begun to pursue interesting side issues, she had pulled herself up, as if someone had whispered “propriety and dignity” in her ear. It had worried him. He did not want her to lose her espieglerie, that sense of the ridiculous that made her such a darling.

“I can’t imagine your going in terror of servants,” he said, encouraging her.

“Oh, but you don’t know how terrifying a very superior lady’s maid can be.”

“No, I don’t. Though I remember taking great care around my mother’s dresser. Selby was her name and her air of consequence would have been excessive in a bishop.”

She came back to sit down, leaning toward him. “I’ve seen such women in the drapers’ in town. One would think their opinion of the dress lengths were more important than their mistress’s.”

“At least you are spared the hauteur of the average gentleman’s valet. I believe my man is generally known as ‘Napoleon the Second’ below stairs.”

She laughed softly, that delightful sound that haunted his dreams. Yet, flatter himself to the top of his bent, he could not persuade himself he saw anything in her eyes but friendship. She showed not the slightest consciousness that he was a man and she a woman, the appreciation of which was keeping him awake nights. Kenton longed to seize her in his arms, but to slake selfishly his own need might destroy the only good fortune he had—her liking of him. He dared not risk a kiss, even though the gamble might win him all.

Miss Menthrip entered before his conversational skills broke down all together. After fifteen minutes, during which they each took the other’s fair measure, Kenton excused himself. “Nonsense; you’ll stay to dinner. I’ve already told that high-nosed butler.”

Controlling his smile at this description of his servant, Kenton made his apologies. “I mustn’t stay. Another time, perhaps.”

Miss Menthrip nodded, the edges of the lace square pinned to her head fluttering. “You’d better go tell him, Maris, or he’ll be in a taking.”

“Yes, ma’am. Good evening, my lord. Thank you again for coming to see how we are.”

Kenton had not for one moment assumed he’d leave this house without a private word from Miss Menthrip. She was no fluffy-minded spinster, easily charmed by a title and polished address. For that reason alone, he was glad it was she chaperoning Maris. There were not many young men in Bath at this season but there were a few dancing attendance on invalid relations or
malade imaginaires
with fortunes to leave. Let them catch a glimpse of a beauty like Maris and they’d cluster around. He was glad Miss Menthrip would be there to ward off even the most lustrous among them. Or would she?

“I’m not to call? Ever?”

“I’m sorry, my lord, but I think it’s wisest. If Maris is ever to have a chance at a husband, Mrs. Lindel and I think it best if she no longer associates with a man so involved in her near ruination. We know, of course, that it wasn’t your fault, nor hers.”

“Surely, however, if I’m not allowed to speak with her, that will give rise to more rumors than if we continue to meet socially.” Kenton tried to keep from revealing his emotions, something no proper Englishman should have had any trouble repressing. This sharp-eyed spinster seemed to have some sympathy, though for whom, Maris or himself, he could not tell.

“Well, I shan’t throw myself in front of her if you choose to speak to her at an assembly or even dance with her. But for Maris’s sake, for the sake of her future, she must have the chance to meet other men. Men who have not been found alone with her in a bedchamber in the middle of the night.”

Put that way, “for Maris’s sake,” he could find no objection. The idea of Maris finding another man, however, brought out all his objections, cut and long-tail. “In time, I assure you, this half-born scandal will be forgotten. Worse sins have been forgotten in no time at all. Another scandal arises and the details of the former one become indistinct to the point of vanishment.”

“As the sister of a history scholar, I am aware of the temporary nature of scandal. The matter takes on a different cast when the focus of the defamation is a girl one has known from her childhood. I would have nothing further touch her happiness.”

Kenton nodded. This he not only understood but endorsed completely. “Very well. I shall not visit here again.”

Maris returned to them. He saw her smile tremble and fade as she sensed the tension between her friend and ... her other friend. Kenton wanted to bring the pleasurable light back to her face. He excused himself and stepped out into the hall.

When he came back, he bore in his hands the welcome present he’d brought for her. Maris came close to him, her eyes fixed on the glossy green leaves, the edges tinged with soft red. With one finger, she caressed the half-furled petals of the single bud. She smiled up into his eyes. “You shouldn’t give me this. You said you only received twelve plants from Mr. Chavez.”

“It’s terribly tiny,” Miss Menthrip said. “I’m sure it will be a fine specimen when it grows.”

“It’s a miniature rosebush,” Maris answered. “From Monserrat. Isn’t it beautiful? It came so far and now it’s mine.” Ken ton looked into Maris’s eyes and saw the glint of a rose fancier being born. “Will you tell me how to care for it?”

“I wrote down some instructions,” he said, pulling them from his pocket. The papers had ruined the fit of his coat but he hadn’t minded. “Keep it the same temperature as you yourself find comfortable and it should thrive.”

She nodded. Looking over her shoulder at her friend, she said, “Tremlow tells me our dinner is ready. Won’t you precede me? I should like his lordship to explain the care of this plant.”

“Another time,” Ken ton said, obedient to the indulgent but warning glance of her preceptress.

“Tomorrow?”

“
You
mustn’t tease his lordship,” Miss Menthrip said, and Maris at once acquiesced.

“No. You’ve been far too kind already.”

He could have stayed and disputed his kindness if their dinner had not been waiting. Kenton took his leave. Maris went with him to the door and shook hands in a most friendly fashion. The only comfort he took from this good-bye was that at least she didn’t treat him like an uncle.

* * * *

“That went well,” Miss Menthrip said briskly. Maris listened for the closing of the door, the rosebush in its diminutive terra-cotta pot still in her hands. “What did he say when you told him my mother’s wishes?”

“Nothing very much. He seemed to understand the necessity and to approve of her caution.”

Maris longed to ask for every detail of the conversation she had missed. Not in any infatuated way but only because his lordship had been kind to her often and she did not wish to offend him. She doubted he would feel any loss at being forbidden to call on a girl who, in addition to nearly trapping him into marriage, had a fatal tendency to say the wrong thing. “He didn’t seem offended? I shouldn’t wish him to feel that his company is repugnant.”

“No, he showed no particular feeling at all. He behaved just as a gentleman ought. It is not their way to suffer from an excess of emotion. My brother used to say a man should know neither the heights nor the depths of emotion, that all that should be left to the women.”

“Do you agree?” Maris asked, putting the rosebush down on a crocheted doily on the pianoforte.

“Agree?” Miss Menthrip echoed blankly.

“Yes. Do you agree with your late brother’s assessment of men and women?”

“I’m sure he must have been correct. He was a most notable scholar, you know.”

“So I have heard. Come, we had better go to dinner now or we shall be in great disgrace with our new servants.” Maris cast a last glance back at the jaunty little rosebush, its single bud standing up proudly. She wondered what the last Professor Menthrip would have made of such a gift. She wondered what Lord Danesby meant by it—friendship, admiration, or farewell?

Miss Menthrip showed no reluctance when it came to following her doctor’s orders. As soon as she was dressed, she wanted Maris to accompany her to the Pump Room, where glasses of the hot water were served out by liveried footmen. The water itself hardly deserved the sumptuous early Georgian surroundings or the black-patined dolphin fountains from which it flowed. Murky, scummed, and smelling like a mad alchemist’s favorite preservative for alligator, the water may have done little for a laundry list of complaints, but it certainly built fortitude.

After writing her name and address in the book kept for that purpose, Miss Menthrip resolutely gulped down a glassful, declaring, “I can feel it having a powerful effect already.”

Another lady, hardly in her first youth despite her foaming muslin gown, overheard. “It’s remarkably fine water,” she said in a breathless voice. “Better than Malvern or Leamington.”

“Have you been to those places?” Miss Menthrip asked with interest.

“Oh, yes, indeed. My mother is a sad invalid, you see, and I have grown accustomed to attending her at the various spas. Is this your daughter?” she asked, turning a pair of pale blue, vaguely curious eyes toward Maris.

Miss Menthrip denied it and the two ladies fell into a natural conversation. Maris, bored but resigned, began observing the others present. A string quartet played quietly in one corner. The Pump Room was quite sunny this morning, though it had been raining off and on all night, giving even the oldest patients the illusion of warmth and health. Maris was looking on in considerable amusement as one tiny but imperious lady in a wheeled chair ordered no less than three hulking attendants about like so many chess pieces, when she thought she heard her name called.

Miss Menthrip, still deep in conversation with the faded lady, hadn’t called her. Maris looked around, a small hope kindling in her heart that it might be Lord Danesby. Surely, however, he’d not wish to see her after receiving her mother’s ruling last night. Maris knew it was for her own good not to see his lordship, though that made it no easier to have refused a friend.

“Miss Lindel, isn’t it?” A young man bowed before her, his coat a trifle too tight around his middle. A good-humored round face smiled up at her, waiting for recognition. A memory stirred.

“Sir Rigby Barrington, is it not? What brings you to Bath, sir?”

He nodded down the room. “M’mother’s taken a fancy to drink the waters, though myself I think it’s more the whist and the theater that drew her.”

“Which lady is your mother, sir?” She followed the direction of his gaze and hid a smile as she realized it was the tiny empress all in inky black.

“That’s her. The Holy Terror.” Sir Rigby was smiling fondly as he said it. “Indomitable Irene.”

“You shouldn’t speak of her so to me,” Maris said, choking a little on a laugh.

Sir Rigby grinned, rendering himself even more youthful. “You’ll like her. She’s corking.”

“I’m sure I would.”

“Come and meet her.”

“Thank you, Sir Rigby, but I am with a friend.”

“You wouldn’t send me back alone, Miss Lindel? She sent me to ask you to be introduced, you know, and I daren’t for my life go back without you.”

“Yes,” Maris said, smiling at him. “I can see you go about in a perfect panic of her displeasure.”

She remembered Sir Rigby in town as being someone who aped the manners and dress of more notable gentlemen, running through the catalog from starched shirt points at his eye, too many fobs across a round stomach, and extremely dressy boots. He had sent her flowers, she recalled, after her first ball, though she had not danced with him. Later, they had met on several occasions. He’d proved to be remarkably light on his feet, one of the best dancers she’d ever stood up with.

In Bath, his desire to take the wind out of every dandy’s eye had been checked. He wore the plain but neat dress of a gentleman who was not yet top o’ the trees and who might yet resign himself to never gaining that pinnacle. Yet his natural good humor, which had shone through even extravagant dress, seemed even more evident now.

Maris introduced Sir Rigby to Miss Menthrip, who raised no objection to her charge going the length of the Pump Room with a young man.

“Is this your first visit to Bath, Miss Lindel?” he asked.

“Yes, my friend was ill for a time and we have hopes the water may aid her in recovering her strength.”

“It’s a wonder to me how these venerable folks come back here year and year. Look, there’s old General Sir Ogden Macafeeny making a beeline for Mama. Ninety-two if he’s a day and still the most desperate flirt in town.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Maris said.

“Ha, you laugh now. But I’ve seen the old dog woo and win too many times. I wish I might study his strategy.”

“If he wishes to speak with your mother, perhaps we should not intrude.”