Lady Whistledown Strikes Back (2 page)

It didn’t seem an unattainable goal. There were
plenty of men who’d be happy to marry their daughters to the son of a
baron, and a decorated soldier to boot. The fathers of the real
heiresses, of the girls with
Lady
or
the Honorable
in front of their names, would hold out for something better, but for the rest, he’d be considered quite a decent catch indeed.

He looked over at Tillie Howard—Lady Mathilda, he
reminded himself. She was exactly the sort he wouldn’t be marrying.
Wealthy beyond imagination, the only daughter of an earl. He probably
shouldn’t even be talking to her.

People would call him a fortune hunter, and even though that’s exactly what he was, he didn’t want the label.

But she was Harry’s sister, and he’d made a promise to Harry. And besides, standing there with Tillie… it
was strange. It should have made him miss Harry more, since she looked
so damned like him, right down to the leafy green eyes and the funny
little angle at which they held their heads when they were listening.

But instead, he just felt good. Relaxed, even, as if this was where he ought to be, if not with Harry, then with this girl.

He smiled at her, and she smiled back, and something tightened within him, something odd and good and …

“Here he is!” shrilled Lady Neeley.

Peter turned around to see what had precipitated
their hostess’s louder than normal screech. Tillie stepped to the
right—he had been blocking her view—and then let out a little gasp of,
“Oh.”

A large, green parrot sat perched on Lady Neeley’s shoulder, and it was squawking, “Martin! Martin!”

“Who’s Martin?” Peter asked Tillie.

“Miss Martin,” she corrected. “Her companion.”

“Martin! Martin!”

“I’d hide, were I her,” Peter murmured.

“I don’t think she can,” Tillie said. “Lord
Easterly was added to the guest list at the last minute, and Lady
Neeley pressed Miss Martin into service to even up the numbers.” She
looked up at him, a mischievous smile crossing her lips.

“Unless you decide to flee before dinner, poor Miss Martin is stuck here for the duration.”

Peter winced as he watched the parrot launch itself
off Lady Neeley’s shoulder and flutter across the room to a thin,
dark-haired woman who clearly wanted to be anywhere but where she was.
She batted at the bird, but the creature would not leave her alone.

“Poor thing,” Tillie said. “I hope it doesn’t peck her.”

“No,” Peter said, watching the scene with amazement. “I think it fancies itself in love.”

And sure enough, the parrot was nuzzling the poor
woman, cooing, “Martin, Martin,” as if it had just entered the gates of
heaven, “My lady,” Miss Martin pleaded, rubbing her increasingly
bloodshot eyes.

But Lady Neeley just laughed. “A hundred pounds I paid for that bird, and all he does is make love to Miss Martin.”

Peter looked at Tillie, whose mouth was clamped
into an angry line. “This is terrible,” she said. “That bird is making
the poor woman sick, and Lady Neeley doesn’t give a fig about it.”

Peter took this to mean that he was supposed to
play the knight in shining armor and save Lady Neeley’s poor,
beleaguered companion, but before he could take a step, Tillie had
moved across the room. He followed with interest, watching as she held
a finger out and encouraged the bird to leave Miss Martin’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” Miss Martin said. “I don’t know why he’s acting this way. He’s never paid me any mind before.”

“Lady Neeley should put him away,” Tillie said sternly.

Miss Martin said nothing. They all knew that that would never happen.

Tillie took the bird back to its owner. “Good evening, Lady Neeley,” she said.

“Have you a perch for your bird? Or perhaps we should put him back in his cage.”

“Isn’t he sweet?” Lady Neeley said.

Tillie just smiled. Peter bit his lip to keep from chuckling.

“His perch is over there,” Lady Neeley said, motioning with her head to a spot in the corner.

“The footmen filled his dish with seed; he won’t go anywhere.”

Tillie nodded and brought the parrot over to his perch. Sure enough, it began to peck furiously at its food.

“You must have birds,” Peter said.

Tillie shook her head. “No, but I’ve seen others handle them.”

“Lady Mathilda!” called Lady Neeley.

“You’ve been summoned, I’m afraid,” Peter murmured.

Tillie shot him a supremely irritated look. “Yes,
well, you seem to have fallen into the position of my escort, so you
will have to come along as well. Yes, Lady Neeley?” she finished, her
tone instantly transformed into pure sweetness and light.

“Come over here, gel, I want to show you something.”

Peter followed Tillie back across the room, maintaining a safe distance when his hostess stuck out her arm.

“D’you like it?” she asked, jingling her bracelet. “It’s new.”

“It’s lovely,” Tillie said. “Rubies?”

“Of course. It’s red. What else would it be?”

“Er…”

Peter smiled as he watched Tillie try to deduce
whether or not the question was rhetorical. With Lady Neeley, one never
could be sure.

“I’ve a matching necklace as well,” Lady Neeley continued blithely, “but I didn’t want to overdo it.”

She leaned forward and said in a tone that on anyone else would not have been described as quiet,

“Not everyone here is as plump in the pocket as we two.”

Peter could have sworn she looked at him, but he
decided to ignore the affront. One really couldn’t take offense at any
of Lady Neeley’s comments; to do so would ascribe too much importance
to her opinion, and besides, one would forever be running around
feeling insulted.

“Wore my earbobs, though!”

Tillie leaned in and dutifully admired her
hostess’s earrings, but then, just as she was straightening her
shoulders, Lady Neeley’s bracelet, about which she had made such a
fuss, slid right off her wrist and landed on the carpet with a delicate
thud.

While Lady Neeley shrieked with dismay, Tillie bent
down and retrieved the jewels. “It’s a lovely piece,” Tillie said,
admiring the rubies before handing them back to their owner.

“I can’t believe that happened,” Lady Neeley said. “Perhaps it is too big. My wrists are very delicate, you know.”

Peter coughed into his hand.

“May I examine it?” Tillie said, kicking him in the ankle.

“Of course,” the older woman said, handing it back to her. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

A small crowd had gathered, and everyone waited as Tillie squinted and fiddled with the shiny gold mechanism of the clasp.

“I think you will need to have it repaired,” Tillie finally said, returning the bracelet to Lady Neeley.

“The clasp is faulty. It will surely fall off again.”

“Nonsense,” Lady Neeley said, thrusting her arm out. “Miss Martin!” she bellowed.

Miss Martin rushed to her side and reaffixed the bracelet.

Lady Neeley let out a “hmmph” and brought her wrist
up to her face, examining the bracelet one more time before lowering
her arm. “I bought this at Asprey’s, and I assure you there is no finer
jeweler in London. They would not sell me a bracelet with a faulty
clasp.”

“I’m sure they didn’t mean to,” Tillie said, “but—”

She didn’t need to finish. Everyone stared down at the spot on the carpet where the bracelet landed for the second time.

“Definitely the clasp,” murmured Peter.

“This is an outrage,” Lady Neeley announced.

Peter rather agreed, especially since they’d now
wasted precious minutes on her shiny bracelet when all anyone wanted at
this point was to go into supper and eat. So many bellies were rumbling
he couldn’t tell whose was whose.

“What am I to do with this now?” Lady Neeley said,
after Miss Martin had retrieved the bracelet from the carpet and handed
it back to her.

A tall, dark-haired man whom Peter did not
recognize produced a small candy dish. “Perhaps this will suffice,” he
said, holding it out.

“Easterly,” Lady Neeley muttered, rather
grudgingly, actually, as if she didn’t particularly care to acknowledge
the gentleman’s aid. She set the bracelet in the dish, then placed it
on a nearby credenza. “There,” she said, arranging the bracelet in a
neat circle. “I suppose everyone can still admire it there.”

“Perhaps it could serve as a centerpiece on the table while we dine,” Peter suggested.

“Hmm, yes, excellent idea, Mr. Thompson. It’s nearly time to go in for supper, anyway.”

Peter could have sworn he heard someone whisper
“Nearly?”

“Oh, very well we’ll eat now,” Lady Neeley said. “Miss Martin!”

Miss Martin, who had somehow managed to put several yards between herself and her employer, returned.

“See to it that everything is ready for supper,” Lady Neeley said.

Miss Martin exited, and then, amid multiple sighs of relief, the party moved from the drawing room to the dining room.

To his delight, Peter found that he was seated next
to Tillie. Normally he wouldn’t find himself next to an earl’s
daughter, and in truth, he suspected that he was meant to be paired
with the woman on his right, but she had Robbie Dunlop on the other
side, and he seemed to be keeping her in conversation quite nicely.

The food was, as gossip had promised, exquisite,
and Peter was quite happily spooning lobster bisque into his mouth when
he heard a movement to his left, and when he turned, Tillie was looking
at him, her lips parted as if she were about to say his name.

She was lovely, he realized. Lovely in a way that
Harry could never have described, in a way that he, as her brother,
could never even have seen.

Harry would never have been able to see the woman
beyond the girl, would never have realized that the curve of her cheek
begged a caress, or that when she opened her mouth to speak, she
sometimes paused first, her lips pursing together slightly, as if
awaiting a kiss.

Harry would never have seen any of that, but Peter did, and it shook him to the core.

“Did you want to ask me something?” he asked, surprised that his voice came out sounding quite ordinary.

“I did,” she said, “although I’m not sure how … I don’t know …”

He waited for her to collect her thoughts.

After a moment, she leaned forward, glanced about
the table to ascertain if anyone was looking at them, and asked, “Were
you there?”

“Where?” he asked, even though he knew exactly what she meant.

“When he died,” she said quietly. “Were you there?”

He nodded. It wasn’t a memory he cared to revisit, but he owed her that much honesty.

Her lower lip trembled, and she whispered, “Did he suffer?”

For a moment Peter didn’t know what to say. Harry
had suffered. He’d spent three days in what had to have been tremendous
pain, both his legs broken, the right one so badly that the bone had
burst through the skin. He might’ve survived that, maybe even without
too much of a limp— their surgeon was quite adept at setting bones—but
then the fever had set in, and it hadn’t been long before Peter
realized that Harry would not win his battle. Two days later he was
dead.

But when he’d slipped from life, he’d been so
listless that Peter hadn’t been certain whether he’d felt pain or not,
especially with the laudanum he’d stolen from his commander and poured
down Harry’s throat. And so, when he finally answered Tillie’s
question, he just said, “Some. It wasn’t painless, but I think … at
the end … it was peaceful.”

She nodded. “Thank you. I’ve always wondered. I would have always wondered. I’m glad to know.”

He turned his attention back to his soup, hoping
that a bit of lobster and flour and broth could banish the memory of
Harry’s death, but then Tillie said, “It’s supposed to be easier
because he’s a hero, but I don’t think so.”

He looked back at her, his question in his eyes.

“Everyone keeps saying we must be so proud of him,”
she explained, “because he’s a hero, because he died on a battlefield
at Waterloo, bis bayonet in the body of a French soldier, but I don’t
think it makes it any easier.” Her lips quivered tremulously, the kind
of strange, helpless smile one makes when one realizes that some
questions have no answers. “We still miss him just as much as we would
have done had he fallen off his horse, or caught the measles, or choked
on a chicken bone.”

Peter felt his lips part as he digested her words. “Harry
was
a hero,” he heard himself say, and it was the truth. Harry had proven
himself a hero a dozen times over, fighting valiantly, and more than
once saving the life of another.

But Harry hadn’t died a hero, not in the way most people liked to think of it.

Harry was already dead by the time they fought the
French at Waterloo, his body hopelessly mangled in a stupid accident,
trapped for six hours beneath a supply wagon that someone had tried to
repair one time too many. The damn thing should have been chopped for
firewood weeks earlier, Peter thought savagely, but the army never had
enough of anything, including humble supply wagons, and his regiment
commander had refused to give it up for dead.

But clearly this wasn’t the story Tillie had been
told, and probably her parents as well. Someone had tried to soften the
blow of Harry’s death by painting his last minutes with the deep red
colors of the battlefield, in all its horrible glory.

“Harry was a hero,” Peter said again, because it
was true, and he’d long since learned that those who hadn’t experienced
war could never understand the truth of it. And if it brought comfort
to think that any death could be more noble than another, he wasn’t
about to pierce the illusion.

“You were a good friend to him,” Tillie said. “I’m glad he had you.”

“I made a promise to him,” he blurted out. He
hadn’t meant to tell her, but somehow he couldn’t help himself. “We
both made a promise, actually. It was a few months before he died, and
we’d both …