Smitten by the Spinster (3 page)

“What does that mean?” she asked, turning to him and shaking his arm.

“Hell if I even know,” he admitted. “It’s why I’ve arranged for ye to have a chaperone. A proper English woman who has experience with brats like yourself. She shall know how to get around the gentry and all their rules.”

Catie grimaced at that pronouncement, and in truth, he’d been keeping it from her. Her mother’s sister had suggested it during their correspondence since she mostly lived at her country residence and admitted to being quite terrified to take Catie about the city on her own. She’d sent him a reference and offered to meet the young lady before he hired her, and now it was all set up.

“Ye’ll stay with me at my Aunt Amberly’s house?” she asked hopefully, clearly not liking the idea of staying alone with strangers.

He rolled his shoulders and looked out the window, unable to look her in the eye in case she started to tear up. He could not handle even the hint of a tear and she knew it. “No, I shall stay at an inn so I dinna embarrass ye,” he said, trying to keep his reasons light. He hadn’t in fact been invited to stay at the Amberly’s house.

“Ye could never embarrass me,” Catie said indignantly.

“That sounds like a challenge,” Quinn said. “It will be better if ye learn to be on your own. And ye’ll have the chaperone. Miss Burnet I think her name is.”

“Ugh, the chaperone. I’ll bet she’s a dried up spinster who hits me.”

Quinn didn’t know much about the lady he’d hired, only that she was well educated and had a solid reputation for her charges making good matches. He very much hoped she could hold her own against Catie’s strong willed ways. “Ye’ll be respectful to her or I shall be the one hitting ye. Poor lass, having to put up with the likes of ye to earn her bread.”

“How verra rich am I?” She bounced in her seat with fresh excitement about her new circumstance. “Can I buy a new bonnet straight away?”

He laughed at her innocence and decided not to tell her the amount. They didn’t often speak of money and she wouldn’t understand the large amount or what it meant to her future. And while she hadn’t been raised in a sumptuous lifestyle, they had all they needed, and she’d never gone without. Well, perhaps she’d gone without as many bonnets as she wanted, but Auntie Gwen would never have allowed her to be spoiled, and there wasn’t much use for finery on the farm.

“We shall see if ye behave,” he said, which earned him a smack on the arm.

“I should remind ye of the same,” she said, turning serious. “If I’m to attract someone proper, ye mustna be swearing the way ye so often do, and ye must be careful of your whiskey consumption. Ye shouldna gamble either. And no flirting, even if the lasses start with ye. And try to look smaller. Ye frighten everyone, ye’re so big.”

He blanched at her words. Of course he couldn’t have expected his reputation not to reach her. He just never thought his own behavior would ever affect her. “I shall be the finest gentleman in all of London,” he promised, meaning it. He didn’t want to lose his beloved sister to her English relations, but he wanted the best for her. “My great size notwithstanding,” he added with a smirk.

That very moment the carriage came to a jolting stop and listed sharply to the side. He hissed a string of curses as he looked out the window to see they’d thrown a wheel.

“Bugger, this is going to set us back another day,” he said, climbing over her to get out and help the driver.

“Ye didna even notice all the words that just came out of your mouth, did ye?” she asked. He paused, realized she was right, and frowned. “I think ye should promise to buy me something new every time ye swear. Ye’re so cheap that might get ye to think before ye open your mouth. And I shall have all the scarves and ribbons and bonnets I’ve ever wanted.” The greedy wee thing rubbed her hands together.

He raised an eyebrow dismissively. “We shall see about that.”

Lizzie stared at the man and staggered over to grab onto a bed post. Her mind struggled to fit together the puzzle pieces of what might have happened to her. Rubbing her aching head, she decided she must have fainted and someone moved her to another room. Before she could open her mouth to ask the man who he was, Lewellyn Hallifax introduced himself and continued to stand there shaking his head at her.

She peered at his costume, it was different from the other waiter/actor. He wasn’t much taller than her and he had a solemn air about him. Combined with his head full of silver hair and old fashioned clothes, he looked like a headmaster or a snooty butler. She held out her hand and told him her name.

“Did you try to follow Julian?” Lewellyn asked, ignoring her hand.

She blinked at him. “Is that the man dressed like Mr. Darcy?”

“I’m not acquainted with Mr. Darcy,” he said, completely seriously. “Are you saying you don’t know Lord Ashford? You’re not here on his orders?”

“Is he the waiter?” she asked. “I never gave him my order.”

His bizarre costume and his speaking in riddles, the room being different, her headache— all were conspiring to make her want to throw up. Trying to take a few steps toward the door, she swayed on her feet. She sat down on the edge of the bed, which was hard and lumpy.

“Please, Miss Burnet, tell me if you’ve come by accident or design. There may still be time.”

Lizzie groaned. “You’re speaking English, but I swear I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Listen, my boyfriend is one of the investors here tonight. Could you please tell him what happened?” She tried to stand up again and felt steadier this time. The name Lewellyn had said a moment before suddenly pinged in her memory. “Did you say Lord Ashford? That Julian? 2nd Earl of Ashford and …somethingham?” she asked.

“Happenham,” Lewellyn informed gravely.

“He used to own this place?” Her befuddlement took on a slight edge of anger. Was this some nutjob historical re-enactor trying to role play with her? After she’d had a head injury?

Lewellyn swallowed hard and grabbed her elbow, pulling her back to the corner of the room where she’d found herself on the floor.

“He will be, yes. In about sixty years,” he said, as he pushed her between the dresser and the wall. “Please try to get in the corner,” he said. “There may still be time.”

Her hip knocked into the edge of the dresser and she yelped in pain. She turned to push past him and find Trent on her own, get this crazy old man fired, but stopped at the look of pity on his face, which had completely leached of color.

“Oh, my dear,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry, but I believe you may be here for a while.”

***

Lizzie sighed and looked into her dusty mirror. The room she’d be occupying for the next couple of months was actually nicer than the last one, but still little more than an attic, a servant’s room hidden away on the upper floor of her most recent wealthy employer.

She snapped open her tiny pocket watch, the numbers and hands practically needing a magnifying glass to be seen. She had to get going if she was going to be able to meet Lewellyn at the appointed time. And the man was nothing if not a stickler for time. It turned out one of her initial assessments of him had been correct, and he was a snooty butler at the estate where she’d been tossed back in time.

It had taken poor Lew a good hour to convince her what had happened. Now more than a year had gone by and she still didn’t quite believe it. All the energy she didn’t use to survive was spent on trying to find that damn Lord Ashford so he could help her get back.

And though he tried, Lew didn’t understand half of what he explained to her. There was a portal or a window or somesuch nonsense (she still called it nonsense even though the corsets digging into her ribs the past year told her it was plainly true) in that house. The earl himself rarely showed up as the portal didn’t open very often, and when it did, you better hurry and you better pray, because if you managed to step precisely in the spot you needed to travel, you might end up in a time you didn’t expect.

Lew had assured her that was what must have happened to her, as Lord Ashford rarely came to this time. As for why she’d ended up here, he didn’t have any answers. He suspected it might have had something to do with the necklace she’d been holding onto. He’d given it a cursory look. It might have been from that time, but wasn’t special as far as he could tell, and certainly wasn’t valuable. All he could do for her was monitor the portal and try to get a message through so she could get back to her own time. It was all she wanted, all she thought about.

When she’d finally accepted what had happened to her, she’d wanted to curl up and die, just go to the neighborhood poorhouse and contract a deadly airborne disease and wither away, to be tossed into an unmarked communal grave. Thinking about what she’d left behind, all that she’d worked for, what everyone she knew must have gone through, tormented her.

Lew had hidden her away in a whorehouse, paid for a private room and made her swear to never leave it. He came twice a day and brought her food and an appropriate, homely outfit to wear and eventually secured her a position as a companion to a very spoiled young lady.

Deciding that she was being an ungrateful wretch, Lizzie threw herself into her new job. Having to believe she’d get back one day, she kept honing her acting skills by turning herself into the character of the proper Miss Burnet, who helped young ladies through their terrifying first social encounters and making sure they made good matches with other insipid, wealthy youths. After the first few weeks, when she came to the realization that none of the snobby, judgemental people around her were really real, it had been fun. They were just characters in the bizarre play she’d been thrust into, on which the curtain never came down.

The first time she’d been approached by an unscrupulous mother to help get her debt-riddled son in the good graces of Lizzie’s heiress charge in exchange for a healthy kickback, she agreed because it added a twist to the storyline. A way to stay sane until she could say sayonara to these people. She made it an adventure, as if she was an anthropologist living amongst a strange tribe. She never allowed herself to get attached. As soon as she was able to leave, they would be dust in the wind. A name on a page in a historical document if they were important enough, or a crumbling gravestone she’d never think to visit.

She smoothed her tidy bun and made sure her pale yellow morning dress was securely buttoned all the way to her chin. She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and made her way primly downstairs to beg leave of her newest employer before her latest charge showed up.

She tried not to grimace at the thought of the farm girl from Scotland. Thankfully the girl was loaded to the gills and her manners should be overlooked by most, blinded as they would be by her great heaps of gold

 It was the brother that Lizzie worried about. According to Lady Amberly, the fearsome Fergusons who stole away her beloved baby sister years ago were nothing but unwashed brutes, absolute savages.

Lizzie and Lady Amberly spent the last few evenings after they’d settled into the townhouse gossiping, with Lizzie subtly refilling her Madeira glass so she could wangle any useful information out of her that might help her find a match for the unfortunate child. She had a reputation to uphold and a purse to fill.

If, God forbid, she never made it back to her own time, she wanted to buy a little country house and board herself up in it, read and garden and drink herself to sleep every night, but most of all never have to pander to anyone again. She hated being beholden to the eighteenth century elite and their strict rules of decorum, most of which a good lot of them hypocritically ignored.

She found Lady Amberly in the sitting room. Her nose inches away from her needlework, she concentrated on a tablecloth for the minister at her country estate where she spent most of her time. Lizzie had seen the minister when she’d been invited out there for her initial interview, and he was hot. Twenty-five or thirty, with a neatly trimmed beard and broad shoulders, and soulful brown eyes. Lizzie was fairly certain Lady Amberly had a little crush on him, not that she blamed her. Her husband was a tyrant, and thankfully had declined to come to the city for their niece’s visit, or Lizzie might have turned down the job, heiress or no heiress.

She daintily cleared her throat and curtsied when her mistress looked up from the cloth.

“Yes, Miss Burnet?”

“Ma’am, I was to meet my uncle today. I shall return in ample time to greet Miss Ferguson when she arrives.” Lizzie smiled sweetly.

“Oh, Lizzie, must you go on this day? I’m so anxious they’ll arrive early.”

Lizzie smiled some more and went to sit down next to her. One of her greatest talents was getting her employers to trust her, befriend her. She patted Lady Amberly’s arm.

“I promised him I would, but rest assured I shall cut my visit short and be back well before they get here.” She sighed deeply and shook her head. “It would probably be just like them to come early, wouldn’t it?” she commiserated.

Lady Amberly nodded and made a face. “So right,” she said.

“If my poor uncle didn’t look forward so to my visits, I would indeed cancel and stay with you. Poor old man, he really has no one. And now he’s so ill.”

“I wouldn’t dream of him being disappointed. You have to go, but do come back as soon as you can get away.” Lady Amberly dismissed her and went back to her stitching.