Nearly a Lady (28 page)

Bemused, she looked at him, then the dog. “He’s been clipped. There isn’t much there to give him trouble.”

“That’s what I mean.” He gave the dog another scratch, then sat up. “I have a friend in London, Andrew Sykes. He lost his arm to amputation and says the pain of it no longer bothers him, but the itch will drive him mad.”

“I hadn’t realized amputation causes itching,” she commented, more than willing to encourage a silly conversation to make him feel better.

“It’s the part that’s gone that itches, only there’s nothing to scratch.”

“The part that’s gone? How is that possible?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“How awful.” She frowned at the dog and leaned down to scratch at his tail. “I always feel a mite guilty knowing our bull calves are turned into steers. Now I feel dreadful. Although, given the physical composition of cattle, I suppose they’d not be able scratch even if we left—”

He broke into a roll of deep laughter that took quite a while to fade. “Damn if you don’t do wonders for me, Winnefred.”

No other compliment could have given her more pleasure. She grinned at him and decided she didn’t care one jot that she’d not actually meant the comment to be funny.

“Delighted to be of service.”

He chuckled again and reached for his cane. “As much as I hate to cut short such a pleasant interlude, we should be off.”

“I’ll fetch Lilly this time.” She brushed her hands down the lavender skirts of her gown and rose. Then she hesitated and turned back.

“Gideon?” She spoke before she could talk herself out of it. “What’s a comedy . . . lar . . . larm . . .”

“Ah.” He grimaced and looked away. “Comédie larmoyante. It’s an old kind of theatrical production. A maudlin comedy, for lack of better description.”

“Oh. Well.” She thought about that. “That’s not so very bad. In the future, however, you might wish to confine your insults to terms readily understood by the intended recipient.”

He must have heard the amusement in her voice because he looked at her again, and his lips twitched. “And why is that?”

“To avoid the risk of finding yourself being treated in kind.” She gave him a sweet smile. “My knowledge of livestock physiology is quite extensive. Would you care to be called a lippet?”

“What is a lippet?”

A word she’d made up on the spot, but she wasn’t about to admit to that. She smiled instead, winked, and walked away.

 

T
he day of travel passed peacefully, as did the days following, but their journey to London was a long one, and the constant battle against illness left Winnefred a little more tired each day. By the morning of the last leg of their trip, she felt as if she’d been traveling for weeks and sick for half her life.

It didn’t help that the more weary she became, the more difficulty she had staying awake on the carriage, and the more she fell asleep on the carriage, the sicker she became, and the sicker she became, the wearier she grew . . .

“Vile, endless cycle.” She mumbled the words with her eyes closed. Gideon had nudged her a few moments before, and after countless naps against his shoulder, she no longer troubled to check if she had drooled on him. She was simply too tired to care.

Just as she was too tired to open her eyes at present. She needed to, she really did. Every second she waited was another second for the illness to grow, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate long enough to get the job done. Her mind wandered in and out of sleep until, finally, it wandered in and stayed.

She dreamt she was standing in a ballroom filled with people, only she wasn’t dressed for a ball. She was wearing her trousers, which made sense, really—she always put them on when there was work to do. And pulling Claire away from the refreshment table took a considerable amount of work. The other guests didn’t seem to appreciate her sensible attire, or her goat. They were laughing, and yelling, and pointing at her.

“There’s no need to
shout
at me.”

“What?” Gideon’s voice sounded in her ear. “Winnefred ?”

She woke with a start and might have toppled forward if Gideon hadn’t reached out and caught her. “Winnefred. What is it? What’s wrong?”

His words didn’t register. Nothing registered, in fact, except for the realization that she had fallen asleep in one world and woken up in another.

“Good heavens, where are we?”

“We’re in London. Have . . . I woke you ten minutes ago. Have you been sleeping sitting up?”

“Yes.” She was too stunned by the unfamiliar scene around her to bother trying to figure out if he was amused or appalled.

She was surrounded by buildings. They were pressed right up against each other, and separated from the street by only the thin ribbon of a sidewalk. There were no lawns, no trees, no green of any kind that she could see. Just house after house, shop after shop.

And all of it was filled with people. There were hordes of people going in and out of the buildings, calling to one another, laughing with one another.

“You need a full day’s rest,” she heard Gideon grumble.

“What? Oh, no I’m fine, really.” She wasn’t, really. Her stomach was a knot of nerves and nausea. “How long was I asleep?”

“Including the last ten minutes? A full three hours.”

“Good heavens.” It was a miracle she didn’t feel worse. “Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”

“It’s a steadier ride on cobblestone streets,” Gideon explained. “I wanted you to rest a bit longer. Are you certain you’re all right?”

“Yes, of course. I’m just overwhelmed, that’s all. I can’t believe we’re here. In London. Oh, Lilly must be in raptures. I wonder—” She broke off, sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. “What . . .” She sniffed again. “What
is
that?”

Gideon chuckled softly. “That, my dear, is the aroma of civilization.”

“Well, civilization could use a wash.”

“In more ways than one.” He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “Breathe through this. The smell will improve once we reach Mayfair, I promise.”

It didn’t take long for Winnefred to discover this was true. Within a half hour, the streets began to widen. The shops disappeared and the houses grew larger and further apart. Finally, there were lawns and trees and gardens. And the smell improved considerably. There were less people about as well. Well-dressed men and women strolled along the sidewalks in groups of twos and threes.

It wouldn’t be such a hardship to spend a few weeks in a place such as this, she thought.

The carriage began to slow, and for a moment she thought they were going to stop in front of a respectably sized house with cheerful green shutters on the front windows, but they turned instead and into yet another world.

The houses weren’t respectably sized and cheerful here; they were enormous and daunting. And the carriage stopped in front of the largest and most daunting of them all—a three-story brick building that looked to take up a third of the block.

“Your aunt lives
here
?” Her voice sounded weak even to her own ears.

Gideon climbed off the carriage, turned, and assisted her down. “It doesn’t meet with your approval?”

She honestly didn’t know how to answer that. Fortunately, Lilly’s emergence from the carriage meant she didn’t have to try.

Grinning from ear to ear, Lilly practically skipped over to take Winnefred’s hands in a viselike grip. “We are here. Can you believe it?”

“It does seem rather fantastical,” she admitted.

“It seems marvelous,” Lilly returned. She looped her arm through Winnefred’s and fell into step behind Gideon when he headed toward the house. “What do you think, Freddie? Will it do?”

“It is not what I had expected,” she hedged. It was all so much
more
. The house was bigger, the gardens more extensive—though they did not, she was relieved to note, appear to have any peacocks in residence—and the front door looked stout enough to keep out an army. When they were admitted into the house, she discovered that the front hall was large enough to fit the whole of Murdoch House, and quite possibly the gardener’s cottage.

She’d never been exposed to such wealth before. Even the country manor she had visited as a child with her father could not compare to the extravagance of Lady Gwen’s London home.

Even Lady Gwen herself wasn’t what Winnefred had expected. In an effort to quash her fears about staying with a stranger, Winnefred had begun to picture Gideon’s aunt as a short, plump woman with round, rosy cheeks and a friendly disposition. It seemed reasonable to assume she would have to be at least a little friendly to have agreed to sponsor two young women who were completely unknown to her.

Unfortunately, Winnefred’s assumptions turned out to be so far off they would have been laughable, had they been at all funny.

Lady Gwen descended the wide stairs into the front hall with the physical bearing of a fair-haired Amazon and the dress and manner of royalty. She looked to stand somewhere near to six feet, and though Winnefred estimated a full three inches of that height was owed to the heavy mass of hair that had been pinned up in thick curls and fat ringlets, the woman was still undeniably tall. And severe . . . She looked to be very, very severe. Which is why Winnefred felt no desire to laugh.

Lady Gwen stopped before them, acknowledged their curtsies and her nephew’s greeting with a regal nod of her head, and then proceeded to walk a slow circle around her two new charges, eyeing them down the length of her rather prominent nose in the same manner Mr. McGregor eyed their yearly calf.

Winnefred glanced at Gideon, but he was too busy speaking with the butler to notice. Tired, irritated, and insulted, she clenched her jaw to keep from speaking out and stared straight ahead until Lady Gwen had completed her circle.

“Well, they certainly are not fresh misses, are they?” Lady Gwen gave a quick nod of her head in approval. “Thank heavens for that. Foolish business, wedding giggling infants before they have a chance to know their own minds.”

She stepped a little closer to Lilly. “The hair is too dark for fashion, but I daresay the rest is more than adequate. You are fortunate in your eyes, Miss Ilestone. That shade of blue is not often seen.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

Lady Gwen harrumphed by way of reply before turning sharp eyes on Winnefred.

“This one looks green.”

Gideon cast a look over his shoulder. “Winnefred? Didn’t I mention this is her first season?”

“Not green, you buffoon.
Green
.”

He lifted one dark brow. “Of course,
green
. What was I thinking?”

“I believe she means ill,” Winnefred informed him and immediately regretted having unclenched her jaw, because now that she had allowed herself to speak, she found she couldn’t stop. She turned a haughty face toward Lady Gwen. “I’ve ears, a mouth, and a reasonable grasp of the English language, my lady. I’ll thank you not to speak of me as if I’m deaf, mute, and stupid.”

Lilly gasped. “Winnefred!”

“Ha! The gel has spine!” To Winnefred’s shock, Lady Gwen nodded once more in approval. Then, somewhat less surprisingly, she immediately narrowed her eyes. “See that you do not confuse it with insolence, child.”

Gideon stepped forward and grinned. “The sort of insolence that results in the daughter of a marquess marrying a mere baronet rather than the viscount picked out for her?”

“That was not insolence,” Lady Gwen replied with a sniff. “That was shrewdness, which is always to be commended.”

Gideon merely winked at Lady Gwen’s glare. “Be merciful, aunt. The journey was a taxing one. Winnefred needs to rest.”

“
Miss Blythe
,” Lady Gwen said with enough emphasis to show her displeasure with Gideon’s use of first names, “shall be shown up to her chambers directly.”

“Excellent.” Gideon slapped his gloves against his leg. “Then if you ladies need nothing further, I’ll beg your leave.”

“Where are you going?” Lady Gwen demanded.

“Home.”

“When will you return?”

“I am at your disposal, naturally,” Gideon said easily. “Send one of your footmen with word when you have need of me.”

“A waste of time and staff. You shall stay here.”

If it hadn’t been unforgivably rude, Winnefred would have laughed outright at the appalled expression on Gideon’s face. “I will not.”

“Would you have the ton say Lord Gideon Haverston cares so little for his wards that he could not stand to be under the same roof with them?”

“They are my brother’s wards,” Gideon argued.

“I’m not anyone’s ward,” Lilly pointed out.

“I certainly don’t want to be,” Winnefred muttered.

Lady Gwen ignored all three statements. “Have your man bring what . . . You haven’t a man, have you? I keep forgetting your propensity for living as a savage.”

“A house in Mayfair and a day maid is hardly—”

“Never mind, a few of my staff can be spared this once to fetch what you need.”

“Generous of you,” Gideon drawled. “Aunt—”

“It is settled then.” She motioned for a pair of maids to step forward. “Sarah and Rebecca shall show the ladies to their chambers.”