Country Flirt (3 page)

Lady Monteith looked with annoyance at her lovely table. She’d have to do the pretty all over again when Howard took it into his head to come. No matter, with Monty home, the house would be full of company. She was of a quiet disposition, without being an actual hermit. There wasn’t much she enjoyed more than a quiet evening alone, or with Clifford, who wasn’t a roisterous sort of man.

Dinner proceeded quietly for two courses. The roast of lamb was just being placed on the board when there was a raucous hollering heard in the front hall. “Holloa, boy! Boy!” The sound reverberated through the house, followed by a rattle as of a box falling.

“Good gracious! What is that?” Lady Monteith demanded.

Her son smiled at the assembled party. “It sounds as though Uncle Howard has come to dinner after all. No need to disturb yourself, Mama,” he said to his motionless parent. “I’ll do the pretty and welcome him.” He rose languorously and glided from the room.

Chapter 3

A moment later Lord Monteith reappeared with his uncle, Lord Howard. Every eye in the room gleamed with avid curiosity as it turned to see the infamous black sheep. Samantha looked, and felt a nearly overwhelming urge to laugh at the striking similarity between nephew and uncle. Lord Howard looked as if someone had taken Monty into a tanning factory and treated him. The general face and figures were similar, but the uncle’s skin was darker and coarser. He was obviously older, more dissipated, more wrinkled, and heavier than Monteith. His hairline had receded an inch or so, but the eyes that surveyed the room had the same youthful gleam. The head sat at the same proud angle. Lord Howard’s toilette lacked the elegance of the younger man’s; Stultz had padded his shoulder wider than necessary and nipped the waist in too tightly.

When Lord Howard spoke, the strange feeling of similarity faded. His accents were not the cultured ones of his nephew, nor were his words as polite, though they showed some concern for the company. “Good evening, all. I’m Lord Howard, the nabob. Don’t interrupt your eating on my account. I’ll just slide into any empty chair and will soon catch up with you.”

As he spoke, he glanced around the table and spotted the vacant chair. Before taking up his seat, he turned to one of the hovering footmen. “I’m ravenous as a lion. I haven’t had a bite since noon. Bring me a platter of meat, lad. Hop, hop.”

Then he sat down and began a perusal of the female faces that surrounded the table. The sharp-eyed dame at the head of the table
—that would be Irene, of course. She used to be a good-looking lass when she married Ernie. The ladies lasted a little better here than in the tropics. She didn’t look over fifty, which she must be. She’d married Ernest thirty-six years ago.

“Lord Howard, I’m happy you could make it for dinner,” Lady Monteith said, through thin lips.

“Ho, I’d forgotten you keep country hours. We dine after nine in India. The heat, you know. We live half our lives in the dark. It’s that or be parboiled. I’d have been here hours ago if that demmed
dubash
I left off at John Company’s office in London hadn’t detained me by getting himself lost. I brought him along to England to handle my affairs with the company, to save me from pelting off to the city. Well, Irene, you’re holding up well for a lady of your years.” He smiled.

Lady Monteith ignored this two-edged compliment. “Pray allow me to introduce you to my guests,” she said stiffly, and ran around the table, mentioning everyone’s name. While she performed this thankless job, Lord Howard reached out and grabbed a piece of bread, which he buttered and ate in great bites. He glanced up from time to time to acknowledge introductions with a brief nod.

Then a plate of mutton was placed before him. He squared his elbows, lowered his head, and tore into it. The sight reminded Lady Monteith of nothing so much as a wild animal at a carcass. She winced and shook her head at her son, that paragon of suavity, who smiled blandly.

Other than making a spectacle of himself, Lord Howard proved a bore while at his meal. He conversed little. Any question was answered curtly, often with no more than a nod or shake of his head. When he had cleaned two plates, he sat back, patted his stomach, and said to Lady Monteith, “That’s more like it! Your
sircar
sets a very decent table, Sis.”

“Thank you,” she said, in icy accents,

The man was impossible. She would not submit her guests to the sight of him gobbling his food again. He must be hinted away at once. “That fellow you left in London handling your business, Lord Howard
—”

“Call me Howard, Sis. Now that I am home in the bosom of my family, we may leave off with titles. I may be a burra sahib, but plain Howard is good enough for me. That would be Rangi you’re talking about. My
dubash.”

The words “bosom of my family” smote her with grim forebodings. “He’s arranging your pension with the East India Company, is he?” she asked.

“Oh, I have no pension. I left John Company eons ago.”

“No pension! But
—”

“Nay, I’ve been working for the nawabs. Rangi will be spending some time at the
hoppo,
getting my goods through customs, but we should see him within the week.”

She ignored the annoying and unnecessary use of foreign words and tried to ignore that “within the week.” “Would it not have gone more quickly if you had done it yourself?” she asked tartly.

“A burra sahib must learn to delegate authority, or he’d spend his days looking over piddling invoices and bills. Rangi is a sharp lad. I trained him up myself.”

“But still,” she persisted, “I think you ought to go back to London, at once.”

Lord Monteith looked from mother to uncle and smiled a languid smile. “Why, Mama, you will be giving Howard the notion he isn’t welcome in the bosom of his family.”

She glared down the table at her son and said nothing. Monteith accepted a piece of fruit from the footman and turned his attention once again to his uncle. “We would be most interested to hear something of your sojourn in India, Uncle,” he said.

Looking at Monty, Samantha saw the glitter of mischief in his dark eyes. What an obstinate man he was, encouraging this farouche relative, when it was as clear as water his mother disapproved.

Lord Howard said, “It was hot and crowded and dirty.” Then he accepted a piece of melon and attacked it with his knife. “You couldn’t get a decent melon in India. They were all watery and tasteless
—like this one, Sis,” he added, and pushed it away. He beckoned to the footman and took up an orange to try his luck with it.

“Mind you,” he ran on, “they have a fruit there called mangosteen that beats anything here in England all hollow. The most exquisite thing I ever tasted. The table fare was tolerable, once I taught my lads not to douse everything in oil. The fish and poultry were excellent.”

“How did you find the ladies, Uncle?” Monteith asked leadingly.

Lord Howard frowned, for he took this subject even more seriously than his food, and that is saying a good deal. “A trifle dusky, of course,” he said. His glance slid to Samantha and rested a moment on her blond curls. “They were well enough. The color of a hen is irrelevant, so long as she produces eggs.
My
woman
—”

Lady Monteith paled visibly, and when she spoke, her voice was hollow. “You didn’t
marry
one of them! You didn’t bring her home!”

“I didn’t marry Jemdanee,” he said sadly. “I gave some thought to it. She was as gentle and affectionate a girl as ever lived. I might have married her, but then when our son died, she went off on her looks.”

The vicar’s fork fell to the table with a clatter, which helped to cover the sound of strangled gasps from the Sutton ladies.

Lord Howard threw up his shoulders and sighed. “I set Jemdanee and her family up in a house before I left. Not a
cutcha
either, but a proper
chunam,
built with mortar in place of mud. I had a rattan veranda thrown up to block the sun and all. I had an eye for her little sister, but her papa was asking five hundred sicca rupees for her. That would be over fifty pounds.”

The vicar cleared his throat, and his wife fanned herself vigorously. Lord Howard noticed and said, “You need not fear I’ve returned a Hindu. I’m still a Christian, Reverend. You’ll see me decorating the family pew come Sunday.”

At every mention of future dates, Lady Monteith squirmed visibly.

“A man who has a taste for feminine companionship would do well to consider marriage,” Reverend Russel felt obliged to say.

“Women are much on my mind,” Lord Howard assured him. “I will be looking sharp about me for a replacement for Jemdanee.”

“Howard!” Lady Monteith objected. All the other guests looked extremely uncomfortable.

“Now what has set you to gasping like a bunch of stuck pigs?” Lord Howard demanded. “We are talking about
marriage,
ain’t we?” As he spoke, he turned his gaze to examine the specimens of English womanhood around the table.

The Sutton ladies stared at him as if he were a yahoo, and were very thankful they had the protection of their husbands. Mrs. Bright was the next to fall under his gaze. Samantha’s mother was a pretty, delicate lady, bright of eye, dainty in her movements. She was plenty young enough for Lord Howard. Indeed, she considered his fifty-plus years too old to be of interest to her. “Your name was Nora something, if I ain’t mistaken?” he asked.

“Yes, Nora Bright.”

“I made sure I recognized those eyes, but I can’t quite recall
—are you married?” he asked.

“I am a widow,” she answered with tolerable composure.

“Ah, well, that lets you out,” he said bluntly. “And this pretty little lassie is your girl, is she?” he asked, turning to examine Samantha.

“My daughter, Samantha.” She nodded.

“A blonde is a welcome change to me after India,” he said, and studied Samantha as if she were a painting. “A nice full cheek, teeth in good repair
—a fine buxom lass. Nay, don’t blush, missie.” He laughed. “I shan’t say a word about your figure, though between you and me and the milk jug, I haven’t seen one finer since I left the theater last night.”

Bewildered, she said, “Thank you,” and looked helplessly around the table.

“High praise, Uncle,” Monty said. “Can I offer you some wine to kill the taste of that sour orange?”

Lord Howard shook his head. “It would take more than wine. I’ve brought some mangosteen seeds back with me. We’ll plant them in our conservatory tomorrow.”

Lady Monteith girded her loins for battle. “The conservatory is full.”

“You may root out these tasteless melons, if that is where they came from.” Howard reached for a handful of nuts and began cracking them with his bare hands. Between cracking and popping them into his mouth, he turned his attention to the Sutton ladies. “You two girls have managed to trap a husband before now, I daresay?” he asked.

They were extremely relieved to be able to point to their respective spouses. “There is no accounting for taste,” Lord Howard mumbled, and made four new enemies.

Reverend Russel felt severe qualms about having this rake loose in his village. “We have several nice widows in Lambrook,” he said.

Lord Howard shook his head sadly. “Christian though I am, I must say I admire the Hindu’s custom of suttee. Once a woman’s husband is dead, what is left for her? She’s fulfilled the role she was put on the earth for. She is nothing but a weight on the rest of society having to support her. No woman should have to suffer such degradation as that.”

“Lord Howard!” Mr. Sutton gasped, and looked to the love of his life, the widowed Lady Monteith. “I never heard anything so barbaric in my life! It was my understanding the English are eliminating that savage custom of incinerating widows on the funeral pyre!”

“Trying to, but the ladies keep leaping into the flames despite our efforts. It is wrong for us to try to impose our customs on them. They have their own religion. There’s nothing left for those widows, when all is said and done. Who would want another man’s leavings?”

“Surely the widows don’t go
willingly?”
Samantha asked.

“They’re raring to be grilled
—some of them.”

“What about the others?” she asked, staring in disbelief.

“They take a little persuading.”

“But what happens to their children?” Mrs. Bright asked.

“The family takes care of them. It is a family’s duty to care for all its members, in India as here in England.”

Lady Monteith found this idea even more distasteful than suttee. “As you just pointed out, Lord Howard, one must not try to impose foreign customs on another land. Here in England, it is
chacun pour soi.
A fully grown man would hardly expect to batten himself on his family.”

“I’m sure Lord Howard is referring to helpless family members, largely women and children,” the reverend mentioned. “You will find most civilized religions promote respect for the family.”

Lord Howard nodded. “Suttee is the widow’s means of showing respect for her late husband,” he explained. “And, of course, purdah is also practiced out of respect, but
—”

The reverend looked interested. “That is the custom of secluding the women from public observation, I believe? It seems a bit extreme to me, but there is no harm in it, I daresay, if it is a Hindu tradition.”

“They go too far with this purdah business.” Lord Howard scowled.

Samantha stared, and when she decided he was serious, she felt a laugh rise up in her throat. “I see,” she said, “killing ladies is fine, but hiding them from sight goes too far.”

“How are we expected to get a look at them, enshrouded with curtains as they are?” Lord Howard asked. “Mind you, there is something to be said for a pair of flashing dark eyes glimpsed over a veil. But they ain’t one, two, three with those sapphires in your face, missie.”

“My daughter is only twenty-six, Lord Howard,” Mrs. Bright felt obliged to tell him.

He examined her with interest. “I can see she ain’t over the hill. You don’t look over twenty, either, my dear. Still in the first flush of youth. I’m amazed Monteith here hasn’t nabbed you before now.”