Shall We Dance? (10 page)

“Never think it, Clivey! I'm still your Maryann Filbert, but who would hire a housekeeper who is not a missus, I ask you? No one, Clivey, as I soon found out.”

“There's no Mr. Fitzhugh? Never was no Mr. Fitzhugh?” Clive asked, the sort of man who needed to feel that his questions, answered twice, were necessary to ferret out any lingering lies or truth.

“No, Clivey, no Mr. Fitzhugh,” Maryann said, blushing. “I'm pure as you left me.”

Clive preened a little, smiled. “That weren't none too pure, Maryann, as I recall the thing.”

“Oh, stop it, Clivey,” Maryann said, batting the back of one hand against his chest. “You were leaving in the morning to follow the drum. What else could I do?”

Clive sighed, lost in memory. “Yer da woulda flayed me alive…”

“Da's dead and gone, Clivey, these past dozen years or more. I had to leave, as there was nothing there for me once he cocked up his toes. I couldn't stay, not if I
couldn't work for the duke, and he was so purse-pinched he wouldn't take me into the house.”

“So yer came ta London,” Clive said, stepping closer. “Ah, Dovey, it's been too long….”

“Oh, Clivey, if you only knew….”

“Oh, dear God, I've stumbled upon a scene of billing and cooing,” the Earl of Brentwood drawled, leaning on his cane. “Clive, my felicitations. I had no idea you were such a terror with the ladies.”

“Sir!” Clive said, nearly tipping off balance as he sprang to attention. “It's not…it ain't…I'd never—”

“Ah, you're laboring under the mistaken impression that I desire an explanation, my good fellow? Far be that from the case. However, as I'm leaving now, perhaps you'd wish to join me? After your fond farewells, of course.”

“Yes, sir,” Clive said, exhaling. He watched until His Lordship had turned a corner in the path, heading for the steps to the dock, then looked at Maryann. “He's a good'un, Maryann. Only a little daft.”

“Will I see you again, Clivey? I so hoped to see you again,” Maryann asked, touching her fingers to his cheek. To Clive's eyes she was still his Maryann; with no gray in her hair, no lines in her face. And he was still her Clivey.

“Tomorrow, Clive, tell her tomorrow,” came his answer, called out to him by the earl. “Miss Fredericks needs a chaperone when we go driving in the Promenade.”

“Thank you, sir!” Clive called back, not overly surprised that the earl had lingered out of sight to eavesdrop.
The man probably wanted to know if he was going to give the game away, tell Maryann why they were here.

Clive would have been insulted, if he was easily insulted. Instead, he was reassured that Sir Willard had not stuck him with a beetlehead.

“I've always wanted to drive in the Park, Clivey. You're so important now, aren't you?” Maryann asked him.

Clive drew himself up to his full height, which put the top of his head only two inches below that of Maryann's. “I've been places, Dovey, seen things that would burn your eyeballs straight outta your head.”

 

B
ERNARD
N
ESTOR
, clad in his ill-fitting black rescued from the attics, and smelling badly of camphor, rubbed his eyes a second time, still unable to believe what he could see through the window of his new quarters.

“The Earl of Brentwood,” he said aloud, then shook his head. “Sir Willard's heir, everyone knows that. Leaving by the back door? Sneaking about like a thief? Why?”

He nearly jumped out of his too-large shoes when the knock came at his door. What to do, what to do? He was the butler, correct? What could someone want from the butler? He was in charge; he gave the orders.

And solved the problems.

Oh, dear…

“Come, er, come in?”

“Mr. Nestor, sir?” Maryann Fitzhugh said, holding on to the door latch as if it were her only anchor in this world. “I thought you should know…that is, I think Mr. Carstairs would have wanted to know…I'll be accom
panying Mistress Fredericks to the Park tomorrow afternoon. But, but Esther will be here. That would be Mrs. Esther Pidgeon? She's, um, my assistant?”

Bernard fought down his nervousness. “Esther Pidgeon, you say?”

“Yes, oh yes, sir, Mr. Nestor. Good woman. I depend on her mightily, sir.”

“Very well. If she's, um, familiar with household routine, I cannot see a problem. Is there anything else, Mrs. Fitzhugh?”

“I could take a stitch or two to those drawers of yours? I sew a fine seam. Truly love the needle, I do. Oh! Begging pardon, Mr. Nestor. I never should have said…”

“Yes, yes, you're forgiven, Mrs. Fitzhugh. Now, perhaps you'll apprise me of daily routine under Mr. Carstairs? I…I believe in tailoring my…my butlering to each individual household, each individual need. It would not do to discommode Her Majesty in any way, now would it?”

 

“D
ID YOU SEE
Her Majesty, Natey? Did you, did you? Oh, sit down, sit down, tell me you saw her, tell me you warned her about what I saw in my—” Aunt Rowena cut herself off before she could say just where she had looked to “see” the queen's demise, and peered suspiciously at Georgiana. “Who're you? I don't know you. I distinctly remember who I know, and I know I don't know you.”

“Now, now, Aunt Rowena, we should remember our manners, even in times of great trial,” Nate soothed,
leading Georgiana into the drawing room of his parents' Mayfair mansion. “Aunt Rowena, please allow me to introduce to you Miss Georgiana Penrose, a most extraordinary young woman and good friend of the queen's companion, Miss Amelia Fredericks. Miss Penrose has agreed to help us save the queen. Haven't you, Miss Penrose?”

“I did no such—oh, yes, of course, of course,” Georgiana amended hastily, for she'd now had enough time to see that Aunt Rowena, bless her, was definitely a sweet old tabby who, as Nate had said, just happened to have misplaced several slates from her mental roof. “I am delighted to be of assistance, madam.”

“Yes, yes, good. You may call me Aunt Rowena. Definitely Aunt Rowena, as Natey brought you. Sit down, sit down. Tell me what happened. Everything. Every word. Oh, you're such a good boy, Natey.”

Georgina bit her lips together to keep from giggling as she visually inspected Aunt Rowena. She had rather suspected the older woman would dress in flowing clothes, lovely pinks and light blues. That she'd have girlish curls on her head, flutter her heavily ringed hands about nervously.

In fact, Aunt Rowena wore unremitting black that buttoned to halfway up her scrawny throat. Her hair was unfashionably short, and white as snow. Her thin hands were gnarled and blue veined. She looked rigid, austere. Until she opened her mouth, at which time she let out the rather appealing cuckoo bird inside the rather forbidding, blackbird exterior.

Above all else, she looked frail. Unhealthily frail, as if she could snap in two under any sort of anxiety. No wonder Nate had agreed to find a way to calm the woman's worries.

Aunt Rowena took a deep breath, sighed. “You know, Caroline and I—she was the Princess of Wales then—we were very good friends. Oh, not very good friends, I'm fibbing here, aren't I? Fibbing, yes. How can royalty be very good friends with a lowly commoner like myself? But we spoke, on several occasions, and she was quite kind each time. Sad but kind.” Her hands twisted together on her lap, she leaned forward, toward Georgiana. “He's going to kill her, you know. Kill her dead. Unless Natey here can save her.”

“Now, Aunt Rowena, you can't really know that,” Nate said kindly, only a hint of exasperation in his voice.

“I can't? I saw it, Natey. I saw it happen. Saw it.”

“In your tea leaves,” Nate said as he looked at Georgiana as if to add, “I warned you.”

“No, not my tea leaves. Never in my tea leaves, Natey. Tea leaves are for small things, little problems, tiny solutions. I saw this in my dream, Natey. And my dreams are never wrong.”

“I stand corrected,” Nate said, rising to fetch himself a glass of wine, even as a maid delivered the tea service in front of Georgiana, who knew it would be her job to do the honors, pour, as Aunt Rowena looked strong enough to lift a teacup, but nothing heavier.

“Sugar and milk, Aunt Rowena?” Georgiana asked,
then prepared the tea. “Tell me, what did you see in your dream? A knife? A pistol? Poison?”

Obviously delighted to have an interested audience, Aunt Rowena put down her teacup, patted her rather blue lips with a linen serviette and leaned forward. “Well,” she said, tossing Nate a smug look, “I saw this bird. Bad bird. Huge, yellow-eyed, orange-beaked monster of a bird. And then a crown, a golden crown, covered in glittering jewels. Pretty jewels. The bird saw it, swooped down and snatched it away. Snatched it, lifted it from the velvet pillow it rested on and carried it off. Flew off! To a graveyard. A dark, dreary, damp and cold graveyard. Dropped it to the ground and flew away. Dropped it into a bottomless grave.”

“I…I see,” Georgiana said, feeling new sympathy for Nate and his family. “And from that you deduced that the queen is in danger? Excuse me, but could it not have been the king, as well?”

Aunt Rowena blinked. “I did it again, didn't I? I did, yes, I did. I forgot to tell it all. The bird, the crown, the graveyard. All of it, all of it. And the laughing lion.”

Nate sat down once more, beside Georgiana. “Oh, well then, the laughing lion. Goodness, Miss Penrose. I don't know about you, but that last bit convinces me.”

“Stop it,” Georgiana said, almost jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow but stopping herself in time. “There is a lion on the royal crest, is there not, Aunt Rowena?”

The older woman openly preened. “Lions. Lions everywhere. Male lions. All that hair around their heads, you know. Manes? Watching it all, and laughing. Laugh
ing. Your own father said it, Natey. It would make the king very happy to have her dead. That's when my dream made sense. Makes sense. Yes?”

“My father was just speaking idly, Aunt Rowena. I doubt he really—but no matter. You're not to worry anymore, or pest my parents with those worries, promise? Mostly, you are not to worry. You know it isn't good for you to fret. Miss Penrose and I are…we're on the case. Aren't we Miss Penrose?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Georgiana said, her sympathies with the dotty old lady, and with the entire Rankin family, most especially Nate. He was a good man. Sweet. And so very handsome. She wouldn't lie to herself and say she was not attracted to the man.

Then again, when was the last time a man had even come into her orbit? A gentleman, that is, and not the silly boys she'd played with all those years she was left free to run wild in the country while her mother and her new husband forgot her existence.

“Oh!” she said, looking at the clock on the mantel. “I've been gone for hours! I…we really must be getting back to Half-Moon Street.”

“Yes, of course. Aunt Rowena? If you'll excuse us?”

Georgiana allowed Nate to help her to her feet, then gave in to impulse and went round the table to place a kiss on Aunt Rowena's papery cheek before they headed for the curricle once more, the old lady calling after them not to forget the bird, the bird of death.

“You were very kind to her,” Nate said as he tooled the ribbons through the growing traffic of a Mayfair afternoon.

“You expected me to be otherwise?”

Nate grinned at her. “You never say what I expect you to say. Plain speech, no maidenly simpering. I like that.”

“Thank you, I suppose,” Georgiana said, and fell into silence.

“And here we are, home again, home again, jiggity-jig,” Nate said as they turned onto Half-Moon Street. “Tell me, how dazzling do you want me to be? I want to keep up my end of the bargain, you know. Shall I sing your praises or just stare at you soulfully?”

Georgiana scrambled to collect her thoughts. “I…um…oh, for goodness sake, Nate, you know better than I. Enough to keep my mother from pushing any more linen merchants' sons on me, and not enough that she's ordering the bridal linens, I would suppose.”

Nate threw back his head and laughed. “I may have to rethink that drive in the Park tomorrow. I may end up beating away my friend with sticks, if I'm to have any time with you at all.”

 

“Y
OU'RE TO GO DRIVING
in the Park?
You?
While I stay here and molder? I won't have it! How can you even dare to come into my presence, you selfish girl!”

Amelia tried not to wince as a vase she particularly favored went spinning across the room, to shatter against the wall. She'd avoided the queen's chambers for as long as possible after the woman's nap, and now she understood why.

“I don't have to go, ma'am,” she told the queen, who had punctuated her outburst and vase flinging by stamp
ing her feet and pouting like a child denied a treat. “You had just but to say so earlier. I'll see to it that a note is sent round to the earl.”

Queen Caroline pressed her palms to her cheeks. “No! Go, go! Leave me! Desert me! Everyone else has. William. Pergami. All of them! Oh, I wish I were dead, dead like my poor Charlotte. At least then I might find some peace.”

Rosetta rolled her eyes as she walked past Amelia, on her way to the dressing room, to mix some laudanum with water in Her Royal Majesty's tooth glass.
“Non perdere i capelli.”

Don't lose your hair.
Rosetta was warning Amelia to hold on to her temper. Which was a good thing, Amelia realized as she unclenched her hands, which she had drawn up into impotent fists. Dealing with the queen was never easy, but sometimes balancing her compassion for the woman against the frequent absurdities and these increasingly high flights of hysteria was exceedingly difficult. And most exasperating.

“Ma'am,” she said as the queen threw herself onto a chaise, lifting her forearm to shield her eyes as she moaned. “Ma'am, please, you'll do yourself…injury.”