Had We Never Loved (23 page)

The maid departed, urged on by a sly pinch on her plump person, her squeal turning to a giggle when a handsome douceur was slipped down the front of her blouse. Glendenning met Amy's dancing eyes and lifted his shoulders helplessly. She chuckled, tied the knot on the bandage and gave it a little pat, then turned her attention to the teapot.

Mr. Falcon pressed a glass of wine upon the viscount, telling him he needed it. Glendenning said wryly, “Egad, sir. What further disasters have you to impart?”

Mr. Falcon's bland smile masked the thought that Horatio looked properly wrung out. “I think there's a deal more to your activities these past days than you've told me,” he said shrewdly. “What I have to say will keep while you rest for a minute or two after your little—ah, lady's surgery.”

Amy took up the plate of sliced currant cake and lemon tarts, carried it to Falcon's chair, and presented it with a curtsy. He patted her cheek, and told her she'd a most fetching way with her lashes. From the corner of her eye she saw Glendenning's frown, and said
sotto voce,
“Best grab a couple quick, Mr. Falcon. His lordship kills people when he turns cross.”

Falcon sat straighter. “Eh? What's all this?”

“Nonsense talk,” said Glendenning, slanting an irked glance at Amy.

“Was it Farrier?” asked Falcon. “Has that wart come up with you?”

Glendenning drew in his breath sharply and lost all his colour, but his hand was steady as he set his glass aside. “Do you say that Burton Farrier has been asking for me? He was hounding a young gypsy at the races in Epsom, and I snatched his prey from his nasty claws. Threatened to knock him down, as I recall. A wart, indeed.”

“A wart it don't do to threaten, you madman! 'Ware of him, Tio. He's nosing around families suspected to have Jacobite sympathies and—”

Glendenning's eyes narrowed. He asked in a voice of steel, “Has he dared to pester my mama?”

“'Pon my soul, I hope that was not why she came to us. I'd feared it might be so, but when she started jabbering something about Templeby, I fancied he'd fallen prey to the cents-per-centers. Never say the young fool was
also
out for Prince Charlie? No! Do not answer! I'd as lief not know.”

“My brother had nothing whatsoever to do with the Uprising.” Glendenning pushed back his chair. “Still, I must go to my mama as fast as possible.”

“Commendable, dear boy. But let us be sensible. You cannot rush about England in that repulsive shirt, and we must find you another coat. Also, how d'ye propose to get to Windsor? Have you a coach?”

Glendenning bit his lip.

Amy said with a twinkle, “We've a donkey cart, y'r honour.”

CHAPTER IX

The brown coat was a surprisingly good fit, it was a joy to be wearing clean linen again, his buckskins had been well brushed, and he wore a new pair of top-boots. Leaning from the window of the carriage, Glendenning gripped Mr. Falcon's hand, and said fervently that he scarcely knew how to thank him for going to so much trouble in his behalf. “I wish to heaven I'd my purse with me, so I'd not have had to impose. But I shall repay—”

“Pish! I have done so little, dear boy. Our delightful Miss Amy was clever enough to know how to take your measurements, and all my servant had to do was go out and procure suitable apparel.
Vraiment!
”

“What we'd have done without your help, sir, I dare not think. And I have even purloined your coach!”

“I shall have no difficulty in hiring one. Besides, your unpleasant acquaintances may still be seeking you, and they'll not expect to find you in a private carriage with liveried servants.”

“You have my heartfelt thanks. Do you wish that your people return the carriage to you at Falcon House? Or at Ashleigh?”

“Heaven forfend I should rusticate in Sussex again! The Town house, if you please, Tio. Now have done with your thanks! You'd do as much for me or my family, and well I know it. Besides, 'tis I should be thanking you. Your pretty miss will brighten my lonely day, I'm assured.”

With his cherubic countenance and guileless grin Falcon looked like a beneficent clergyman. He wasn't. Horatio said cautiously, “She's a good little chit, sir. I'd take her with me, but—”

“Take her
with
you?” echoed Falcon, awed. “To Glendenning Abbey? Egad, but you're a braver man than I! Only picture your mama's reaction! And as for Bowers-Malden…!” He shuddered. “Ah, but you quiz me, of course. I shall enjoy amusing the pretty, never fear. I'll buy her some decent clothes, take her to your flat, and pass her off as a lady, if—”

“No, sir! I'd sooner she was with someone not remotely connected with all this.” The viscount ran his female relations through his mind's eye, and rejected them hurriedly. “It must be a lady who'll not be horrified by some of the things Amy says, yet who will see that she comes to no harm.” He frowned, worrying at it, then exclaimed triumphantly, “I have it! My sister's governess—the very person! She's retired to Portsmouth nowadays, and keeps house for her nephew, who's a ship's captain. If you've a piece of paper, sir, I'll give you her direction.”

Neville provided a small notepad and a pencil. Having written out the worthy lady's address and again thanked Mr. Falcon for his efforts, the viscount waved as the carriage jolted and started off, sat back on the seat, and with a weary sigh closed his eyes.

If Burton Farrier was haunting the abbey the chances were that he wasn't after Michael at all, but was setting some kind of trap for—

“So you thinks I couldn't be passed off as a lady, does ye?”

Glendenning's eyes flew open as the words were snarled in his ear. Amy's wrathful face was inches away. “Oh, my God!” he moaned. “What the—”

“There ain't no cause to call on the Lord, young man! Thought you'd be rid of me, didn't ye? Thought as you'd traded me to that—that rascally old rake, in exchange fer this here carriage and yer fancy new—”

“No such thing! How dare you suppose I would— And it has nothing to say to the case, at all events! Where the deuce did you spring from? I'd thought you were safely—”

“Safely dumped into that there gent's hands! And a fine time I'd have had, trying to keep 'em off me for the rest of the night! But you didn't give a button fer that! Anything to be rid o' the worthless gyppo, once she'd served her purpose! Well, I see what he was, quick as quick, so I slipped out and hided under the seat, and you was so eager to be off, you never even noticed!”

She was flushed with wrath, her eyes sparking, her white teeth fairly gnashing. And because, being aware of Neville Falcon's reputation, he had indeed suffered some uneasy qualms, Glendenning said in a calmer voice, “Of course I worried about you, Amy. But I knew you could control Falcon. Lord, anybody could! He's all show and no go most of the time, and a kinder gentleman you'd never wish to—”

“Ah, but what does the likes of
me
know about
gentlemen?
I be only a cheap trollop as you thinks couldn't no ways be ‘passed off' as a lady!”

“You are not a trollop,” he said angrily. “Nor did Falcon say—”

“Ho, yus he did! And he says as he could imagine yer mama's
reaction.
Swound away, I 'spect, poor old gal, and—”

He seized her by the arms. “The word is ‘swoon'—not ‘swound.' And my mother is a great lady who would receive you with kindness, so you may stop being silly. You know very well—”

Tears sparkled on her lashes, but she interrupted with hissing fury, “I knows very well I were all right so long as I were cooking and washing and caring for ye, and—”

“And saving my life, and fighting beside me like a regular Trojan.” He smiled fondly and wiped a tear from her smooth cheek. “Now pray do not cry. For your own sake you would have been better advised to stay with Falcon, but— Good Gad! What about poor Lot?”

“I told the ostler Mr. Falcon wants him took good care of. You owe the poor moke that much.”

“Assuredly. And I've a greater debt. Now do not fly into the boughs, but since you're here I shall take you home with me, and my mama will—”

“Will be
evah
so charmed to meet of her son's fine lady, the gypsy mort,” she mocked.

He looked at her tangled hair, grubby blouse, and torn skirt, and hesitated. Mama would be polite and kind, and in a hundred ways Amy, with her fierce pride, would be affronted. He said, “There's a hamlet a few miles up the road. I'm sure we can find a shop, and with the money I borrowed from Falcon I'll buy you new clothes. Never fear, Mistress Consett, you'll look as fine as any fine lady when I present you to the countess.”

“Well, I might look it,” she muttered sullenly, “But I won't
be
it. She'll know what I is the minute she rests her high and mighty ogles on me.”

The thought that his beloved stepmother had “high and mighty ogles” so wrought upon Glendenning that he forgot his worries for a moment, and laughed heartily.

“I don't see what's so funny,” said Amy sulkily, drawing as far from him as possible, and glowering out of the window.

“Perhaps not. But when you meet my mama…” He chuckled again and, winning no response, said coaxingly, “Don't pout, child. We've so much to be thankful for. We're safe, and—”

“
You're
safe, ye means,” she said, rounding on him. “It don't never occur to you that me pal ain't, do it?”

He said ruefully, “Since you are choosing to forget your grammar, I take it you're really overset. But I'm afraid I cannot answer sensibly, because I don't know what ‘pal' means. Is a foreign word?”

“Romany, does ye mean?” she retaliated sharply. “Don't be afraid to say it, mate. I ain't ashamed o' what I am!”

“You don't know what you are, so—”

“Well, I ain't too iggerant to know what ‘pal' means! Cor! Don't you know nothing?”

He said in his humblest voice, “I have more than my share of ignorance, alas. Enlighten me, Miss Consett, I beg.”

“Crumbs! Pal means friend. More'n friend—more like brother; sorta like you took loyal, and faithful, and—and someone what you'd risk yer own skin to help, same as he would for you, and wrapped it all up in three letters. P-a-l.”

“Thank you. I'd say it's a jolly good word. Now, what can we do to help Absalom?”

“Nought.” She resumed her contemplation of the rain. “He knows what he's about, and he's got your gry, so he'll be all right.”

“But I thought you were worrying—”

“And I knowed
you
wasn't.”

“Is that why you were so angry with me?”

She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, leave me be!”

Instead, he kept up a steady flow of chatter, trying to make her respond, or to win a smile, but nothing he said could coax her out of her sulks, so that at last he said in exasperation, “If you are so very cross with me, why did you insist upon coming?”

“Reasons … And 'sides, when I got in this spanking ready-fer-marriage, I didn't know as you'd turn inside out when yer silly old friend said he'd take me to yer flat. Cor! What a shameful thing
that
would've been fer yer noble lor—”

“And that will be sufficient of your foolishness,” he interrupted, losing patience. “In the first place, this ready-for-marriage, as you call it, belongs to Mr. Falcon, and without his kindness in lending it to us we'd have had a far less comfortable ride to Windsor. In the second place, he is neither silly nor old, and if he enjoys to flirt with a pretty girl now and then, he means no harm by it. And in the third place, I didn't want you taken to my flat because—”

“Who cares?” she interrupted rudely. “Not this gypsy mort, so stow yer clack, young man!”

“
I
care! So you may stop talking like a coster-monger, and listen! The reason I—”

“Oh, there was a young coal-heaver, down Brixton way,” sang Amy lustily.

“—didn't want you taken to—” shouted Glendenning.

“Who stayed up all night, and slept during the day,” shrilled Amy.

“—my flat—” howled Glendenning.

“He liked nothing more than a roll in—”

Glendenning gave a gasp and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Do you want to demoralize Falcon's coachman, you wretch?” he hissed. “Where did you learn that naughty song?”

Amy bit his palm sufficiently hard that he jerked his hand away.

“Well, it weren't from no hoity-toity countess, mate,” said she.

*   *   *

“It wasn't enough that I must be dragged through half the clubs in town last night!” Swinging from the saddle, August Falcon stepped ankle deep into a muddy puddle and swore vigorously. An ostler splashed up to commandeer his mount, and he went on, “Why I should have allowed myself to be bamboozled into this forlorn venture, is beyond me! I care nothing for Glendenning and his problems.”

Morris gave the ostler instructions, then ducked his head against the wind-driven rain, and hurried to catch up with Falcon. “Any fool knows you're a care-for-nobody,” he agreed. “Thing is, old Tio's your second, and the southland ain't exactly littered with bosom bows willing to act for you, so if you want to fight me, we've first got to find him. Besides, must warn him about the Terrier. Only decent thing to do for a friend.”

Splashing along the cobblestone path, Falcon shot him a withering look and lengthened his stride. “You speak for yourself, I trust.”

“Waste of money,” panted Morris, almost running so as to keep up, “to have your chimney swept after … the house has burned down.”

Having reached the step, Falcon gritted his teeth, came to an abrupt halt, and turned. Blinking through the raindrops he said, “The murky processes of your mind, my good clod, are seldom penetrable, and I shouldn't dignify this one with a comment. But—what in hell have I to do with chimney sweeps?”