Lady in Green (18 page)

Annalise ignored the flummery and Henny’s cough. “A lady?”

He found himself coloring. “Her name is Bess. She’s from the theater.”

Annie stood. “Well, then, there’s a lot to be done. If you are finished, my lord?” And she took his plate away before he could protest. He had not gone halfway through the excellent steak, cooked precisely the way he liked it, and now she was feeding it to the ugliest little dog he had ever seen. It figured.

*

Mignon was tearfully thankful when Annalise told her of the plan. Those were her very favorite things: fashions and sewing, music and speaking French! How could she not be happy, with five young ladies to teach how to flirt! “And I shall do such a fine job of it, they will all marry dukes, no? But not so soon, I think, that I find myself with no position. Ah,
mademoiselle
,
I owe you such a debt!” Annalise was annoyed with the earl, to put it mildly. Still, she had to give him the proper credit. “You owe me nothing. It is Lord Gardiner you must be sure to thank.”

“Milord is the true
gentilhomme,
no? Yet I think he would never have come to help Mignon without you. Please, what may I do to repay your kindness? I would do anything for you.”

“Anything? Very well, you may tell your friends in the cast, especially the one called Bessie, that his lordship has the pox!”

Mignon’s eyes grew round. “The pox?
Mon Dieu
!
That is better than the other thing, I suppose. But milord has been so good to me,
n’est-ce pas
,
how can I play
him
such a trick?” She studied Annalise, tugging the spectacles and the awful cap away. “You pull the lamb over his eyes, no?”

“The wool, Mignon. Yes, but you mustn’t tell. There are good reasons.”

“My lips, they are sealed. But how can I tell such lies about the
grand monsieur
?”

“It’s for his own good, I swear! You’d be saving him from a life of sin, the way he saved you.” Mignon looked doubtful, a world of wisdom in her young eyes. “I don’t think it is the same,
mademoiselle.
I don’t think it is the same at all.”

Chapter Nineteen

Bessie came prepared. When Annie led her upstairs to show her where she might wait, the bleached and painted actress plucked two sausage casings out of her reticule. At least they looked something like sausage casings to Annalise. She averted her eyes.

“In case that rumor is true,” Bessie said with a loud laugh, noticing where Annie couldn’t look.

“His lordship…that is…” Annalise began, forcing herself.

“That other muckle rumor? A brae, lusty lad like himself? Don’t worry, m’dear, Bessie’s never lost a patient yet.” She slapped her knee and laughed herself into a coughing fit.

Between trying not to glance at the items on the nightstand and trying not to stare at Bessie’s expansive figure, wondering how a scrap of lace at the neckline could keep all that quivering flesh restrained, Annalise had nowhere to focus her eyes. So she looked under the bed. And behind the dresser, in the water closet, beneath the chintz-covered boudoir chair.

“What’s that you’re after, dearie?” Bessie wanted to know.

Annalise’s muffled reply came from inside the wardrobe. “Mice. We’re overrun with the pesky beasts. You’re not afraid, are you?”

“Bessie O’Neill, afeared of a wee rodent? No, we have them in and out of the dressing rooms all the time. Takes more than that to send me scurrying. Now, snakes is another thing. I cannot abide the slimy things. Can’t even be in the same room with a picture of one. Makes my skin crawl.”

Snakes? Where was Annalise to get a snake in the middle of the night? In the middle of London? She might be able to locate an eel, perhaps, if she could bear to handle it. Somehow she doubted that Lord Gardiner would believe that one just happened to appear in his bed chamber, like the plagues falling on Egypt. If he ever suspected—no, that did not bear thinking on. She’d seen the man in a temper, and it was bad enough, thank you. One of his rages would be nothing compared to what would happen if he discovered her conniving against him. But this vulgar woman was taking her shoes off and sprawling on the bed, appendages bobbling about like melons in a basket.

“You know his lordship might be very late, don’t you? Surely you’ll have to get back for rehearsal.”

“Not to worry. Rehearsal’s not till three tomorrow, and I know my part so well, I can skip it. Now, beauty sleep is another matter. I’ll just catch me a little nap while I wait, dearie. Be a pet and blow out some of the candles, won’t you?”

“Ah, miss, you wouldn’t by chance believe in ghosts, would you?” It was worth a try.

“Nary a bit, dearie. Old Bess believes in two things: having a good time and getting paid for it.”

So Annalise paid her. She always hated that bracelet anyway.

*

The earl strode up to the door with a jaunty tread, a large pad under one arm and a box of charcoal drawing crayons in the other. He’d made a special trip to the art supply dealers on New Bond Street to find just the right shade of yellow for Bessie’s hair. He also purchased a new pencil of emerald green.

Annie opened the door to his eager face, wiping the smile right away with her words: “I am sorry, my lord. Miss O’Neill was called away. A sick relative, I believe.”

Gard looked at the pad in his hand, then he turned and pounded his head on the open door. He never even got to touch this one!

“My lord?”

He straightened up and adjusted his neckcloth. “Yes, Annie. Thank you.”

“Mrs. Tuthill is fixing supper. Buttered crab, vol-au-vents of veal, braised duckling, and one of her special custard puddings. Will you be staying?”

It was better fare than he’d get at his club, and the temperamental master chef he kept at Grosvenor Square would resign if Gard woke him to cook a late-night snack. It did occur to the earl, and not for the first time, that in some ways he was more at home here than he was at home. Of course, he’d never spent the night upstairs in that bed which looked so inviting, but there wasn’t all that kowtowing and ceremonial toadying, either. Even the outrageous tirades from his ill-behaved housekeeper were more mentally challenging than his mother’s nagging harangues. At least Annie never dragged forth his father’s ghost. At Laurel Street Ross could eat in the kitchen if he wanted—which was what he decided, in fact—instead of dining in state at Gardiner House. He ruefully acknowledged that if he kept eating instead of partaking of his usual exercise, he’d be fat as a flawn in no time.

He sketched Mrs. Tuthill while she bustled around the kitchen.

“Why, it’s me to the inch! What a gift you have indeed, my lord. My Robbie will think it’s a treat! Why, you could be one of those fancy portrait artists, I swear.”

“Most likely no one would pose for me, either,” he mumbled under his breath, not realizing
Anni
e was beside him, setting the table for his meal. She camouflaged a giggle with a cough. The earl looked up. “Should you like me to do your portrait, too, Annie?”

Her exultation fled. She did not want him staring at her. Even his quick glances made her uncomfortable, and not just because he might see through her disguise. He was so handsome; she was homely. She slammed the plate down in front of him so hard, the sturdy table shook. “What for? I know what I look like, and no one else cares to look at an ugly old hag.”

“I think your face might show a great deal of character, Annie, if you removed the spectacles. At least consider it.”

“Mrs. Tuthill will serve your dinner, my lord. I have accounts to look over.”

“I didn’t mean to insult her,” the earl told a frowning Mrs. Tuthill after Annie left.

“She’s sensitive about her looks,” the older woman replied, banging pans together.

“I suppose it cannot be easy, seeing beautiful women come and go”—mostly go, he mused—“in a place like this. I wonder if that’s why she’s so prickly, if it’s not jealousy instead of moral indignation after all.”

“Beauty is as beauty does,” Mrs. Tuthill advised tersely, then exclaimed, “Oh, drat, the custard burned. You weren’t waiting for dessert, were you?”

Then again, in Grosvenor Square he wasn’t sent to his room without dessert for being naughty. The earl sighed and got up. “Thank you for an excellent dinner, Mrs. Tuthill. I think I’ll have my port in the front parlor, by the fire.”

He
thought
she grumbled, “You’ll do as you please and be damned for it,” but he had to be mistaken. Servants just did not behave that way, not even in Bloomsbury.

Gard lounged on the sofa. He was comfortable, warm, moderately well-fed, and bored. He was restless—hell, he was frustrated! He felt like a stallion who knows there’s a mare in season somewhere, if he could just get out of the blasted stable. Staring at the flames, drumming his fingers on the inlaid table next to him, the earl contemplated a visit to Mother Ignace’s after all.

“Your port, my lord,” Annie said, putting the tray down with an audible thud that startled Ross into wondering if the witch could read his mind. He sat up and caught himself reaching to check his cravat. No, no deuced servant was going to reduce
him
to schoolboy status once more, in his manners or his morals. He sprawled back again, satisfied. Except that she was leaving, and he’d have no one to talk to at all, blast it. Even her viperish tongue was better company than his own unsatisfied thoughts.

“Have you finished the accounts? That is, must you go?”

“My lord?” If bats had established residence in his belfry, she couldn’t look more surprised, glasses or no.

He stared around in desperation, till his eyes alighted on the pianoforte. Sheets of music were unfolded on the stand, sheets that had not been there the last time he looked. “Did, ah, Bessie play the instrument?”

“No, my lord,” Annie replied, cursing herself for being a skitter-witted noddy, leaving the music out that way. She knew what was coming next.

“Then it was you,” he stated, not asking a question at all, and not the least astonished that his housekeeper could play, no matter that no servant in his experience had ever done so. Annie hadn’t done the expected yet. “Will you play for me?” Annalise surprised even herself by agreeing. Why give his suspicions more foundation? Why spend one instant more in the skirter’s company than she had to? Possibly, she answered herself while sorting through the music, because he looked so pathetically forlorn there on a couch made for two, and so devastatingly handsome with his collar loosened and his dark hair tousled. As she struck the first tentative chords, she told herself
this
was the only charitable thing to do, since she had bought off his evening’s entertainment.

“I am out of practice, my lord,” she apologized beforehand.

“I am no expert, to be criticizing your technique, Annie. I just like to listen.”

She nodded and started off with a few country ballads, a delicate Irish air. He relaxed against the cushions, shutting his eyes in quiet enjoyment of her pleasant competency. Then she switched to Mozart and Handel, and played well. Better than well. Better than any servant with a few hours of free time to practice. He sat up and studied Annie, even as she became lost in the intricacies of the piece she played so masterfully.

Gard quietly took up his pad and a pencil without disturbing her concentration. The pencil stayed poised in air. From his angle the flaps on her cap hid most of her face, whatever the rims of the spectacles did not cover. And the sagging black gown only emphasized her figure’s deficiencies. So he focused on her hands as they flowed over the keys.

The fingers were long and elegant, easily reaching the spread of ivories, not the bony talons they used to resemble. Her hands were not as red or work-roughened as he recalled, nor were they the cracked and lined and spotted hands of an older woman. Annie Lee was not old enough to have been in service for twenty-one years. He doubted if she’d worked very long at all, since she definitely had not managed to acquire a servile attitude. Most likely her soldier had left her in dun territory. How long since Corunna? “Do you miss James very much?” he asked when she reached the end of a piece.

Annalise was caught up in her music, the first time she’d really had to play in ages. And she was trying to play her best, for him. “Hmm? James who?”

“Your husband. James Jacob.”

Her fingers hit a discordant note. “Oh, yes, him. Of course. Um, yes. That is, not so much anymore. Why?”

“No reason in particular. I was just wondering if the redoubtable Annie Lee ever got lonely like us poor mortals. Then, too, you don’t appear quite
settled
in your life of servitude.”

Annie shrugged. “I’ll do.” And she immediately swept into a piece by Beethoven, playing louder than necessary, eliminating the possibility of conversation. He sketched.

When she reached the final deafening crescendo, Lord Gardiner applauded. “Excellent, Annie, excellent. Rest awhile,” he told her, placing a glass of wine in her hand, then sitting back down, his legs crossed in front of him. “I had a visit from the real estate agent,” he mentioned casually, then paused as she choked on her wine. “He wanted to know if everything was satisfactory here.”