The Waltzing Widow/Smith (2 page)

His uncle provided a startling contrast. His coal-black hair was severely barbered and as straight as straw. Beneath that jetty cap, a pair of brilliant blue eyes stared from a rugged, swarthy face. Angles of nose, chin, and jaw lent a geometric air to the whole.

Lord Avedon, being even richer than his nephew, was accustomed to hearing his appearance described as “striking.” He did not suffer fools gladly, which made it difficult for his nephew.

“The balance goes to pay your gambling debts,” Avedon replied. “How you managed to get into the hands of the moneylenders for eight thousand pounds is beyond me, with the size of your allowance.”

“Only borrowed five thousand,” Tony excused himself. “The rest is interest.”

“I hope those two sums tell you something, Tony.”

“Yes, they tell me I need an increase in my allowance.”

“If you had an atom of brains beneath those guinea curls, they would tell you to stay away from the cent percenters. If you want more income, earn it.”

Tony straightened up from his lounging posture and said indignantly, “I hope you don’t expect a man in my position to sell turnips from a barrow at the side of the road.”

“No, I would expect a cattle raiser to sell milk.”

Tony just looked blank. Irony, jokes, insults—they none of them meant much to him. “You’re always telling me to be dignified. How can I be dignified with my pockets to let?”

“Oh, dignity! I’ve given up on that,” Avedon scoffed. “To see you dawdle through the village with one of Mrs. Lacey’s brats on either hand, dripping ice all over your trousers.”

“You can’t use that old excuse. Mrs. Lacey’s gone away.”

“Yes, and a good part of your income is gone with her and her brood to Tunbridge Wells, where they belong.”

Tony looked infinitely bored. “How can I earn some money, then?” he asked.

“Use your head,” Avedon said impatiently. “There are a dozen ways. Keep a sharper eye on your steward. Make better use of your farms. You have a lovely cottage on that little triangle of land where our two properties meet. Rose Cottage has been standing idle these three years since Cousin Hanna died. Bring it into shape and rent it. It would bring five hundred a year easily.”

“Pooh, five hundred. What good is that? Cost more than that to fix it up.”

“It wouldn’t cost five. It only wants cleaning and weeding.”

“Anyway, it’s half yours. Mean to say, Papa built it on your land. I don’t consider it mine in the least. Often wondered why you don’t let it.”

“Because it is yours, ninnyhammer!” Avedon’s patience broke at this lack of interest in important estate matters. “The land was not signed over to your father, but he built the house, and it is yours to do with as you wish. Send Jobber down to clean it up, and rent it.”

“You might have told me!” Bigelow said with an injured air. But as the realization that there was money to be had sunk in, he cheered up. “By Jove, I’ll do it. I saw the dandiest little curricle-hung rig, Uncle. Yellow, with straw seats and backs. All the crack for summer.”

“Grow up, Tony. You have a curricle, a gig, and a whiskey, along with your traveling coach and your town carriage and over two dozen horses. What do you want with another rig?”

“I wager I could get it for a hundred pounds. It’s a summer carriage.”

“We don’t have summer in England,” Avedon said comprehensively, though it struck him that he was feeling excessively warm at the moment. “You can console yourself with the thought that the money will help to finance Mrs. Lacey’s sojourn at Tunbridge Wells.”

“That’s small consolation to me. She was a fine-looking woman. Nice red curls.” A fond smile hung on Tony’s lips.

“And rouged cheeks to go with them, vulgar creature! Next you will be calling her a lady. When you rent Rose Cottage, make demmed sure it is not to a widow with a dozen screaming brats to destroy our peace. The place is nearer to my house than yours. In fact, I shall put the advertisement in the paper myself. We’ll advertise in London and hope to get some genteel retired couple.”

“Excellent. And about the rattan curricle—”

Avedon speared him with a sharp stare. “If you must have a straw carriage for summer, use the hay wain. Now I’m busy—”

“I’m practically gone.”

Avedon said, “Good day,” pulled a sheaf of papers toward him, and batted his hand to indicate the meeting was over.

Bigelow unfolded his slender frame from the petit point chair and stalked from the room in a state of high dudgeon. Avedon, glancing in the mirror, thought his nephew strongly resembled an irate rooster.

Left alone, Avedon put his head into his hands and sighed. Beyond the window the trees were in full leaf. It seemed only yesterday he had been looking out at blossoms. How quickly the time flew by. He hadn’t really minded missing the season. At one and thirty, he had ceased to find much amusement in it, though he knew he ought to be finding a wife and starting a nursery. His remaining at home had led Lady Beatrice Buckley to hope she might grab him. An unappetizing vision of her spreading girth, invariably robed in outlandish peacock colors, and topped with her black hair arranged in convoluted masses, floated into his mind. He shuddered.

Yet he had no difficulty setting her down when she came calling. A worse outcome of staying at home was that his sister, Sally—Lady Sara to the rest of the world—came pouncing down on him. By some freak of chance, the worldly Lady Sara had married Dr. Rutledge, a minor ecclesiastic. Over the years he had risen to deacon of St. Giles. Archdeacon Nivens had recently died, leaving the way open for promotion. The difficulty was that there were four other deacons of equal eligibility in the running. She wanted Avedon to secure the place for her husband, but Dr. Rutledge was domiciled in Hampshire, where his own connections were restricted.

In any case, everyone knew those appointments were political. The Tories would choose, and Avedon prided himself on being one of the more liberal Whigs. He didn’t know just what Sal expected him to do, but her visit was certainly for the purpose of making him do something. She mentioned a dozen times a day that he should “put in a word,” as though his being an earl made him automatically a power in the church.

Lady Beatrice and Lady Sara were only petty annoyances. The real mischief was Tony. The boy was hopeless. Sally hoped to wed him and his estates to her eldest girl, Prissy, but that was a vain hope. A pity he couldn’t get Tony married off to someone, but the boy always succumbed to the most ineligible women in the parish.

He’d have to make sure Rose Cottage didn’t fall into the hands of some jaded fortune hunter. How would he word the advertisement to weed out that sort? “Secluded country cottage, suitable for retired couple.” He jotted down the rent and other details and requested a box number to avoid the use of any name or title. When he was satisfied that he had described a cottage that would suit no one but nuns and octogenarians, he sealed the letter up and directed it to the
London Observer.

* * * *

“Here is one that sounds just the thing,” Mrs. Percy pointed out to her niece. “ ‘Secluded country cottage, suitable for retired couple.’ It is so difficult to find just what we require. It is in beautiful Kent, quiet location, all conveniences. Servants not provided. That is interesting, for I shall want to take at least some of my servants with me. It is quiet and out of the way, just as we want, love.”

“Yes, I’ll answer it,” Lucy said with no great interest.

As her heart mended over the passing days, she was beginning to wonder if such total retirement would suit her. On the other hand the solicitude of her friends was wearying. Perhaps she would find someone who loved her for herself in Kent. And the best way to insure that was to go as someone other than an heiress. If she met the right man, he would not be too disconcerted to learn she was unmarried and wealthy.

Several other replies to the advertisement were received by Avedon as well. He consulted with his sister regarding which to accept. “Here is one from an officer’s wife, Avedon,” she said, picking up Lucy’s letter. “She is suffering from a lung complaint, poor thing. She would come with her husband’s sister— that sounds very respectable. We ought to do what we can for an officer’s wife, don’t you think?”

Avedon cast a wary glance at his sister. He always suspected any pious utterance from Sally. They were her stock in trade, but at bottom she was moved only by self-interest. Her sweetly smiling face could revert to an expression of sly cunning or mulish obstinacy in the blink of an eye. It had taken him years to figure her out, for she was nearly a decade older than Avedon. She was ostensibly here “to bear him company during his rustication,” but he actually saw little of her and would not have complained had he seen even less.

Lady Sally had once passed for a beauty, but as she advanced into motherhood, whatever physical charms she had once possessed had been larded over by weight. She disliked physical activity nearly as much as she disliked to spend a penny or waste one.

The pleasure of her life was to advance the welfare of her family. Her two goals that summer were the promotion for her husband and a rich husband for her eldest daughter. Both could be achieved better at her ancestral home than with her husband, so she had torn herself away, to give him peace and quiet for preparing his sermons, while she endured weeks of grinding leisure at Chenely.

“I don’t like the sound of a soldier’s wife. She might get Tony after her,” Avedon objected.

“No, no. She comes with her husband’s sister. That precludes any sort of flirtatious behavior, and if she has a lung complaint, she will want the ass’s milk that is going to waste every day. Such a shame. When I was at home, Papa always gave me the money from the ass’s milk,” she added with a sharp shot from her gimlet eyes.

So that was it, Avedon decided. It was the couple of shillings from the ass’s milk that had turned Sal into a patriot. “There is one here from a retired vicar and his wife,” he mentioned. “They might be company for you.”

“Oh, no, Adrian, that is exactly the kind of people I most wish to avoid. They would expect to be invited to Chenely, you know, and you would not like that. They would look for special treatment because I am a clergyman’s wife, depend upon it. And the lady with lung trouble will want the ass’s milk. We must not forget that. Waste not, want not.”

“The decision ought not to hinge on a quart of ass’s milk a day,” he pointed out with a tolerant smile at her clutch-fisted ways.

“No indeed, but her husband is out defending the country while she is all alone—except for her chaperon. See what a nice genteel hand she writes. Very fine pressed paper, too. She doesn’t mention her husband’s rank, only that he is an officer. He cannot be a colonel, or she would have said. Perhaps a captain. She might be an elderly woman for all we know. And in any case, with her husband’s sister along, there will be no trouble with Tony. She will pay cash in advance—that is a point to consider. The interest on five hundred over the year comes to twenty-five pounds. The vicar mentions terms, you see. They would likely accept a reduction when they find out John is a deacon. Let us accept the officer’s wife.”

“Very well.”

The letter of acceptance was sent out, the Percys’ traveling carriage was loaded up, and they were off to Kent to hide themselves in Baron Bigelow’s secluded cottage, for Lucy to lick her wounds and throw the neighborhood into a tizzy that would make the Lacey affair look tame in comparison.

“We will not be so very secluded,” Lucy said when the carriage turned in at the proper road. “The last signpost said Canterbury twenty miles, but Ashford is only five.”

Mrs. Percy strained her neck out the window to see their new temporary home. In June the garden was at its peak. The flower that gave the cottage its name grew in profusion. A tumble of pretty pink roses climbed up the lower brick walls of a half-timbered house. Newly cleaned leaded windows gleamed in the sunlight. The honey-colored oak door caught the rays and shone a welcome.

When the ladies alit, Mrs. Percy’s first destination was the garden behind the house. Here she was disappointed. Jobber’s hasty refurbishing had not extended to the rear. A tangle of toadflax competed with ivy on the wall that partially surrounded the garden, nearly hiding the stone. She entered the rounded arch and stared in dismay at what had once been a cultivated area.

Mushrooms sprouted amidst the rank grass, and even nettles, those harbingers of wilderness, had established a foothold around the edges. But amidst the jungle her keen eye discerned the bloom of cultivated flowers. The wilted leaves of daffodil and tulip showed where spring’s glory had bloomed unseen. Phlox and delphiniums and roses vied with the hardier weeds.

“There is work to be done here,” she said with some satisfaction. Bringing order from chaos was a challenge and the very thing to help pass a long summer of isolation. “Look at the rabbits!” she exclaimed as a pair of cottontails stopped and gave her a cool stare.

“And the squirrels,” Lucy added. “The place is a regular jungle.” She lifted her eyes and beheld in the distance a soaring mass of gray stone. Chenely was built on a prominence that overlooked Avedon’s domain. “That must be a noble house,” she mentioned to her aunt. “Perhaps there will be balls....”

Mrs. Percy disliked the interest in Lucy’s voice and spoke on to distract her. “Are those ravens on the battlements? It reminds one of the Tower of London.” As she spoke, a large black bird took wing and soared down from its perch. “Let us go and see if the key is in the door, as the letter said.” She had not been able to make out the signature on the letter, for the very good reason that Avedon had made it illegible.

They returned to the front of the house, where the servants had already opened the door and were busy taking in the luggage. For the next half hour the ladies wandered from room to room, admiring and disparaging various features. The furnishings were respectable without being distinguished. They both liked the saloon, which was made cozy by the sparkling leaded windows, and both found the bedroom walls slanted a little more than was comfortable.