What an Earl Wants (16 page)
“That couldn’t have been an easy time for you,” Gideon said
softly.
“No, it wasn’t,” Trixie agreed, turning her head toward the
windows, clearly looking to the past. “I’d lost him by then, that much was
clear. My own son, my only child. It was all so long ago. Barry had always been
wild, impetuous, even as a young boy. When he found the journals...”
“Do they still exist? The ones my father found?”
She shrugged, turning back to him, her eyes lively once more.
“Yes, back to the present, please. I never saw them, so I can’t say they still
do or don’t exist. But as I said, Guy well might. He only returned to town a few
days ago after taking the waters in Bath, or some such hopeful nonsense.”
“You can’t make him suspicious.”
“I know what I’m about, pet. Lord knows I’ve been doing it long
enough. We’ll speak of past times, reminisce about ancient glories and
conquests, friends still aboveground and those now looking at the grass from the
wrong side, as it were. I’ll tease and pet and pat him as if my memories of
those days are fond, as he mostly likely needs to believe. I’ll flatter the
toothless old roué, pretend he is still capable of rising to what he most
patently is not. If he doesn’t fall asleep in his pudding, I’ll have some
information for you tomorrow.”
“And you’ll be careful?” Gideon knew he couldn’t dissuade her
from what she planned.
Trixie tipped her head and smiled. “Really, pet, there’s no
need for concern. What could possibly go wrong?”
J
ESSICA
DRESSED
FOR
DINNER
in one of her
new gowns, with both Mildred and Doreen fussing over her the entire time,
admiring her undergarments, squealing in delight when she at last chose the
dusky-rose over the sky-blue, saying one couldn’t possibly be better than the
other but wasn’t it a marvel how the rose went so well with Jessica’s red locks.
“And who would have thought any such thing?”
Gideon would,
Jessica answered
silently as she sat in front of the dressing table while Mildred, who was
proving a marvel (although not in the sense Adam would have meant), handled the
curling stick with flair, and not once did Jessica have to remind her that pins
were to be put into hair and not her scalp.
Her mind traveled back in time for a moment, recalling Alice,
her maid and friend of a lifetime ago. Jessica knew she had been a petted and
pampered child, lacking in nothing, at least in a material way. She’d had a
lovely roof over her head, had never known what it was like to worry about where
her next meal or bed would come from. She had missed her mother, loathed her
stepmother, enjoyed spoiling her half brother, could say she barely knew her
father...but she had been content. Indeed, she’d been looking forward to her
first Season, sure she’d be at least a moderate success. Fear had no place in
her life.
That she’d been through what she’d been forced to endure these
past five years and survived it all might be considered something of a miracle,
and to once again be sitting in the lap of luxury very nearly erased those sad
memories from her mind. Truly, it was amazing how adaptable a person could be.
Although it was much easier, she knew, to accustom oneself to luxury than to the
catch-as-catch-can existence of those five long years between her girlhood and
the woman she had been forced to become.
As Mildred fussed with the trio of curls she was arranging to
fall just so on Jessica’s left shoulder, Doreen gathered up mountains of tissue
and paper and string now that all of the new clothing had been carefully put
away in drawers and cupboards and armoires. Jessica’s own wardrobe, from shifts
to shoes to shawls, had been playfully argued over, with the shoes going to
Mildred, who said she could stuff tissue in the toes while Doreen couldn’t stuff
her toes into the toes. Doreen laid claim to the night rails, Mildred the
bonnets, and nobody begged to please be given the black gowns Jessica had worn
in the gaming room.
“His lordship asked to be informed as to your choice for the
evening, ma’am,” Doreen told her when she’d returned to the bedchamber after
disposing of the wrappings. “I was just running down that footman with the
Adam’s apple big as a lemon, to get him to help me carry everything down to the
kitchen fire, when one of that pair of blasted mongrels started jumping up at
me, trying to get a bit of trailing string, and I said to stop, and it wouldn’t,
and the lemon boy—”
“His name is Vernon,” Mildred interrupted. “And wouldn’t a
person with a hulking great Adam’s apple have one the size of an apple, not a
lemon?”
“Don’t interrupt her, Mildred,” Jessica warned, smiling. “She
might decide to start again at the beginning.”
Fortunately, the Irishwoman did not. “All right, then,
Vernon.
My goodness, Mildred, but you’re a stickler.
At any rate, as Mr. Borders says I should keep things from getting so long they
grow whiskers, I scolded that dog something terrible, but it still would
persist, and did so until his lordship himself called it to heel.
That’s
when he saw me and asked what it was that you
were thinking of wearing tonight, and I told him you were going back and forth
with the rose and the blue for the longest time, but in the end decided on the
rose, and he said to follow him, so I did. I followed him all the way to the
back of the house without once taking a turn or a back stair, and then he put
out his hand so graciouslike and had me
precede
him
into his study. That’s what he said. He said, ‘Doreen, please precede me into
the study whilst I fetch something.’”
“Now that’s a lie. Lordships don’t say fetch,” Mildred
protested as she stood behind her mistress, so that Jessica gave her a sharp
elbow in the thigh as the last curls were set in place.
Doreen sighed in exasperation. “They shouldn’t say
precede,
either, to my mind, because I didn’t know
what it meant for the life of me, but once he told me I did, so I
preceded
him into the study and then cooled me heels,
not touching a thing, I swear it, and not even so much as looking at anything
too hard, all those lovely things, until he came back with this.”
At last, finally, and not a moment too soon for the
consideration of Mildred’s and Jessica’s nerves, the maid produced a blue
velvet-covered oblong box from her apron pocket, all but tapping Jessica on the
nose with it. “I didn’t look. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I just curtsied, twice
over, and ran hotfoot back up here. Using the back stairs, as I knows my place,
even if his lordship don’t. Lemon boy, that is,
Vernon,
he’d already taken away the wrappings. And the dog. His name
is Brutus, which isn’t a very kindly name for a dog, is it? Call a thing a
brute, and it will be, just to make you happy. You mark my words on that
one!”
Jessica had stopped listening. She took the box from Doreen and
eyed it for some moments before daring to press on the round button clasp. The
lid sprang open to reveal a choker made up of four strands of perfectly matched
pearls, their ivory luster faintly shaded with pink. In the center of those
pearls was a circlet of much smaller pearls surrounding—
“Well, now, would you look at that,” Mildred said, leaning in
close. “It’s a lady’s face.”
“It’s a cameo, Mildred. Carved out of some sort of shell, I
believe, so that the lady’s profile is much lighter than the background. Many of
them are made in Italy. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes, ma’am, it is that. She looks like an angel, even if we
can only see half her face. But seeing as it looks like it cost the earth and
more, you’d think they’d carve the whole face.”
“She’s in profile, and I’m convinced that was done on purpose,”
Jessica said, handing the necklace to Mildred. Thank goodness the two women were
here; Jessica couldn’t dare to cry, or else they’d both fuss and wonder.
He’d chosen the perfect piece of jewelry to match a perfect
gown, one of nearly two dozen perfect gowns and riding habits and capes and
shawls and— Was there anything the man couldn’t do?
Mildred carefully aligned the necklace against the exact center
of Jessica’s throat and then squinted over the small clasp. “There! Now let’s go
see what all we’ve done.”
Jessica dutifully stood up, needlessly smoothing down the folds
of her gown, because it didn’t bunch when creased, as her black had done, but
simply flowed, as if a part of her.
Her reflection looked back at her from the pier glass, showing
her a wonderfully set-up looking young woman, complete to a shade, or at least
she was once Doreen unearthed the long, narrow rose-and-silver paisley shawl and
threaded it through Jessica’s elbows so that its fringed ends reached nearly to
the floor.
“That was the second gong that just went, ma’am,” Mildred said,
opening the door to the hallway as if she hoped to hear an echo confirming her
conclusion. “Ah, and here comes Mr. Borders down the hallway to fetch you.”
“You said
fetch,
” Doreen pointed
out, handing Jessica a small reticule fashioned of the same paisley, its slim
chain silver, its clasp fashioned of pink pearls. Was there no detail too small
for the man? When he made love to a woman, was he equally as interested in
detail? “See? Other people do so say it, not just me.”
“Just not earls, you fool,” Mildred muttered, pulling Doreen
back and signaling they were to drop into curtsies. They were both eager
learners, and with the gaming room now a thing of the past, they were bound and
determined to once again make themselves indispensable to their mistress. “We’ll
wait up, ma’am, to help you into bed.”
Jessica felt hot color run into her cheeks, probably clashing
badly with both her hair and her gown. The note on her pillow this morning, when
combined with the gown and the necklace, had her hopes rising that Gideon would
not be going out after dinner. Not tonight. “Oh. Oh, I don’t think you need
to... That is, I may be quite late. I’ll manage.”
“But—” Doreen began.
“She says she’ll manage,” Mildred cut in quickly. “Honestly,
Doreen, you’re thick as a plank sometimes.” The hostess-cum-lady’s maid curtsied
yet again. “I’ll just go lay out your night rail and dressing gown and turn down
the bed. Good night, ma’am.”
“Good night, Mildred. Doreen. And thank you. I don’t know what
I’d do without either one of you.”
Still keeping her head slightly averted, Jessica escaped to the
hallway and called out to Richard, who seemed to be pacing near the head of the
staircase. Gideon had seen to it Richard be outfitted with new clothes, and she
had been thrilled to see the older man’s pleasure in his wardrobe. He looked
distinguished now in some unexplainable way, and actually rather comfortable, as
if more used to fine things and lavish surroundings than she would have
imagined. Someday perhaps he’d tell her who he had been before he’d taken to
gaming. To date, he’d told her he was a bastard prince, a defrocked priest, a
pirate and a schoolteacher, which was as good as to say she should not ask him
again or else be prepared for another tall tale.
He turned about and smiled before he bowed in her direction,
his knees creaking audibly. “And who might you be, lovely lady?” he asked. “I
don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
Jessica held out her arms and turned about in a full circle.
“I’m magnificent, aren’t I? And all accomplished without sparkles. Adam will be
dumbfounded.”
“Your brother hasn’t the brains to be dumbfounded,” Richard
said, holding out his arm to her. “He’d rather believe he knows everything worth
knowing. You’re looking happy as well as beautiful this evening, Jess. Is that
because of the new gown, or the fact that his lordship awaits you
downstairs?”
“He awaits me downstairs each evening,” Jessica pointed out as
she lifted her hem slightly, to help her navigate the marble steps.
“Not with a pink rosebud pinned to his lapel. I wondered about
that earlier, when I went down. I only came back up to fetch my
handkerchief.”
“Uncles don’t say
fetch,
Richard. I
have it on good authority.” Her heart then heard what Richard had said and
decided to skip a beat. “A pink rosebud?”
“Yes, it shocked me, as well. He dresses fine as nine pence,
but no geegaws for the man, not in the usual run of things. So I didn’t comment
on it. And, we have a visitor.”
Jessica didn’t take that bit of information in immediately,
either. She was too busy wondering how Gideon would have managed to produce a
blue rose, if she had chosen the blue. Knowing the man, he’d probably have just
dipped its stem in an inkpot until he’d achieved the proper shade. “Oh?” she
said belatedly. “Who is he?”
“Not he, but she. And it’s Lady Katherine, his lordship’s
sister, come into town for new boots or some such thing, and if I were thirty
years younger, I’d be wearing rosebuds myself. Oops, nearly tripped there,
didn’t you? You have to be careful where you step, Jess.”
He was trying to tell her something but without really telling
her. “Yes, I suppose I do. In every way.”
They reached the first-floor foyer. Richard turned toward the
closed doors to the drawing room, but Jessica held him back. “What is she doing
here?” she whispered fiercely.
“I told you, something about new boots. Now come along.”
Jessica looked closely into her friend’s face. Saw the slight
twitch of his left eyelid. “What’s going on, Richard? What’s
really
going on?”
“Now why would you be asking that?”
“I’m asking that because you never forget your handkerchief.
I’m asking because Gideon doesn’t wear posies. I’m asking because nobody told me
Lady Katherine was expected. I’m asking because the doors to the drawing room
are closed. And I’m asking most of all because your eyelid is twitching.”
“It is not,” he said, and it twitched again, just as a small
bead of perspiration made its way down his temple.
“It does when you’re lying. You may bluff with impunity at
cards, but never with me. Something is awaiting me on the other side of those
doors, and that something is more than Gideon’s sister.”
“I told him to send somebody else upstairs to get you,” Richard
said, sighing, making use of his handkerchief to wipe at his brow. “Adam, for
one. I still don’t think he realizes what’s going on, he’s so busy making a
total ass of himself, running around tables and chairs in those bloody stupid
red heels of his, trying to avoid the dogs. I have to ask the cook for a
marrowbone for Brutus. He won’t let the fool alone. Just come along, Jess, won’t
you? You knew this was inevitable, in any case.”
“I knew what was—”
The double doors were flung open, and Brutus, closely followed
by Cleo, was escorted into the foyer by Thorndyke, who was holding some sort of
raw meat chop aloft with two fingers, his expression one of extreme distaste.
Jessica quickly bit her bottom lip until the butler and his tongue-lolling
admirers had disappeared behind the baize door at the end of the hallway, and
then released her delight in peals of laughter.
“Oh, good, she’s not a stickler. We can’t have one of
those.”
The voice was female, and it had come from inside the drawing
room.
“Lady Katherine?” Jessica whispered the question, as they were
still near the stairs and could not see into the drawing room.