Rules for Being a Mistress (11 page)

“Of course. And your father is the colonel of the regiment?”

“Aye. And that changeling in the window is my sister, Allegra.”

“My Italian is not very good,” said Benedict. “But I think that means ‘lively’?”

“And doesn’t she look lively too!” Cosima snorted. “Have you even
looked
at your lessons today, Allie?”

Miss Allegra Vaughn was outraged. “I’m doing my fifteen puzzle!”

“You’re going to be the most ignorant girl in that school,” Cosy warned. “Sure, the English girls will all be laughing at you and your fifteen puzzle.”

Allie scowled. “I don’t care what you say! I’m not going back to there.”

Cosima laughed mirthlessly. “My sister was enrolled at Miss Bulstrode’s Seminary for Young Ladies, Sir Benedict, but we had a tiny little problem with the fee.”

“We couldn’t pay it,” Allie explained. “And so Miss Bulstrode turfed me out. We still can’t afford it,” she said happily.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Cosima. “We’ve come into some money. Sir Benedict has agreed to pay all your school fees. Now, isn’t that nice of him?”

“I beg your pardon!” said Benedict in a cold and withdrawn voice.

“I know you wanted to keep it a secret,” she said. “But I don’t keep secrets from my family. Besides, my mother would worry if I suddenly turned up with, say, a thousand pounds?”

Benedict glared at her. He understood that he was receiving a veiled threat. If he didn’t pay Miss Vaughn what she wanted, there was going to be a scandal the likes of which Bath had not seen since Miss Linley ran off with Mr. Sheridan. He would have to pay, too; she was so lovely anything she said would be instantly believed. It was blackmail, pure and simple.

“Of course,” he said coldly. “We would not want your mother to worry.”

Snakes and bastards,
she thought.
I should have asked for more money.

“I am sure, Sir Benedict,” said Lady Agatha, “that you could not ask for a better wife than Cosima. Not only is she the prettiest girl you will ever see, but she is the dearest, kindest girl, with the sweetest disposition I ever met with.”

“Indeed!” said the gentleman, indulging himself in a short laugh.

Miss Allegra looked up from her puzzle game. “You’re getting married?”

Cosy felt her cheeks go hot. “Of course not! Mother, you misunderstand. Sir Benedict doesn’t want anything in return for his benevolence. Besides, he’s too old for me,” she said brutally. “What on earth would we have to talk about in the evenings?”

“I was on the ark with Noah,” Benedict said grimly. “I could tell you all about it.”

“But, dearest, we can’t accept money from a stranger,” Lady Agatha protested weakly. “Not unless he marries you, Cosima. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“If you were her husband, you could beat her,” Allegra offered enticingly.

“I could indeed, Miss Allegra.”

“And he could beat
you,
too, miss,” Cosy snapped. “Or send you to the North Pole.
And
he could put Mother in the hospital or God knows where. So be careful what you wish for.”

“Oh, no!” wheezed Lady Agatha.

“He wouldn’t do that to
us,
” said Allegra. “He likes
us.
”

“Nobody’s getting married,” said Cosy.

“Then we really shouldn’t take the money, my dear,” said Lady Agatha. “I may be poor, Sir Benedict, but I don’t like charity.”

“He’s a relative, Mother,” Cosy said patiently. “There’s no harm in taking assistance from a relative, is there? Besides, he’s stinking rich. He’ll never miss it.”

Lady Agatha giggled suddenly like a schoolgirl. Her scruples vanished without a trace. “A thousand pounds,” she cried. “Sir! How can we ever thank you? That would just about set us up for life! You can get your pianoforte back now, Cosima! I was so sorry for her, Sir Benedict, when we had to sell it. If only you’d come last week.”

Cosy frowned. She did not want the odious Sir Benedict to know that she had been obliged to sell her precious piano. Somehow, his knowing just how miserable poor they were spoiled the triumph of having lifted a thousand pounds from him.

“That old thing,” she sneered. “Sure it was so old and cranky and slow there was no playing it anyway. My father won it at cards. I’ve my eye on a sweet new Clementi with
eight
octaves.”

“I want a French lady’s maid and a pony,” said Allegra. “And all new clothes.”

“You do, do you?” her sister retorted.

“You must let us do something to show our appreciation. Could we not invite Sir Benedict to dine, Cosima?” Lady Agatha pleaded. “Cosima is an excellent cook, Sir Benedict.”

“Miss Vaughn does the cooking?” he said, startled.

“Why?” Cosy said angrily. “Don’t your English girls cook?”

“My sister, the duchess, used to make a sort of salmon mayonnaise,” he said. “Her adventures in the kitchen were never due to necessity, however. We always had more servants than we knew what to do with at Wayborn Hall.”

“Good for you.”

“We were obliged to dismiss all the servants here except for Nora and Jackson when the letter came from the bank,” Lady Agatha said.

“You were?” he said frowning. “Usually these houses come with servants in place. The landlord pays their wages.”

“You mean we might have kept our servants?” Allie said furiously. “You had me in the kitchen scrubbing pots like a slavey!” she accused her sister.

“Well,” said Benedict. “It would hardly be gallant of me to accept an invitation to dine. That would only make more work for Miss Vaughn and Miss Allegra.”

“How very thoughtful of you,” Cosy said, gritting her teeth.

“They are ruining their hands in the kitchen, I know it,” cried Lady Agatha. “How are they going to find husbands with burned and calloused hands?”

“It’s a kitchen, Mother. Not a smithy.”

“I wish with all my heart that Cosima could go out and enjoy herself, Sir Benedict. It’s no life for a young girl to be trapped indoors all day looking after a stupid old woman.”

“It wasn’t so bad when Lady Dalrymple finally left us,” Cosy said, trying to laugh.

“I meant
myself,
dearest,” Lady Agatha said earnestly. “Our subscription to the Upper Rooms is paid, Sir Benedict, but Mr. King told Cosima she could not go to any of the balls without a chaperone. And I am simply too ill to accompany her. No sooner do I go out, but my knees shake, and the world swims before my eyes. Do you think it would be all right if I used some of the money to hire a chaperone?”

“That won’t be necessary, ma’am. As a relative, it would be my honor to escort Miss Vaughn to the various entertainments.”

Cosima glared at him suspiciously.

“Yes, my dear, you must go!” cried Lady Agatha with growing excitement. “You must have all new gowns. You must go to all the balls, and dance with all the young men. Who knows but that one of them will marry you, and then you will be settled and secure. I worry about my girls so, Sir Benedict.”

“Why does she get new gowns?” cried Allie. “What about me?”

“I couldn’t leave you here on your own, Mother,” Cosy objected.

“Nonsense,” said Lady Agatha. “Nora will be here, and I can send Jackson to fetch you home at once should anything serious take place. Do it for me, Cosima. I hate to see you wasting the best years of your life in the sickroom. The subscription is paid. It’s only going to waste. Mr. King won’t give us our money back. Please, dearest. For me?”

Cosy chewed her bottom lip for a moment. True, he was an untrustworthy bastard but, after all, there was no such thing as a perfect man. If she sat around waiting for Mr. Perfect to come along and escort her to the Upper Rooms, she’d never go anywhere. It would be a waste of money hiring a chaperone, when she could get one for free.

“No balls,” she said firmly.

“Excuse me?” said Benedict.

“I’d like to go to the concert on Tuesday, but I’ve no interest in balls,” she explained.

“But you love to dance,” said Lady Agatha.

“
Irish
balls are an entirely different matter. English balls are all about pomp and circumstance, but Irish balls are fun.”

“Tuesday?” said Benedict. “Some songs in Italian, I believe.”

“You are always saying that you are Italian in your heart, my dear,” said Lady Agatha.

“I’ve never said that in my life,” Cosy muttered, embarrassed.

“What about me?” Allegra Vaughn demanded angrily. “May I go to the concert, Mama?”

“It is not an entertainment for young people,” Benedict told her. “You would not want to sit still for two hours and listen to a large woman singing in a foreign language.”

“I would not,” she admitted. “I want to go up in a balloon and see fireworks. Also, acrobats on the high tropics.”

“Trapeze. You will have to go to London for that, I’m afraid,” he replied.

“Will you take me to London?” Allie demanded.

“Certainly not!” said Cosy and Benedict at once.

“London,” Cosy added severely, “is a black den of iniquity.”

Glancing up at the clock on the mantel, Benedict was startled to discover that he had been sitting with them for four hours. Then he realized the clock had stopped. He stood up.

Allegra Vaughn let out a gasp. When he had come into the room, she had been engrossed with her puzzle. She had not noticed that their visitor was an amputee.

“What happened to your arm?” she blurted out.

“Allie!” Cosy gasped, appalled.

Benedict was startled by the direct question, but not offended. “It’s quite all right.”

“I’m sure Sir Benedict doesn’t like to talk about the war,” said Cosy, glaring at her sister.

“The war?” he repeated, puzzled.

“You said you were at Waterloo,” Cosy reminded him.

“As an observer.” It dawned on him suddenly that she must think he had lost his arm in battle. “I am not a war hero, Miss Vaughn, if that is what you think.”

“Oh! You were in the Navy, then?” she said, sniffing.

“No, I was not in the Navy, Miss Vaughn,” he said irritably. “I was attacked by a dog when I was about your sister’s age.”

Cosy and Allie spoke at once. “What did you do to the dog?”

Benedict sighed. “The dog had to be destroyed, of course.”

“No! What did you do to the dog to make it attack you? Dogs don’t just attack people.”

“Did you poke its eye out with a stick?” Allie asked eagerly.

There was a slight pause as Benedict gave Lady Agatha the opportunity to constrain her curious daughters. But her ladyship seemed to have drifted off to sleep. “Certainly not,” he said. “The dog was attacking someone else, and I intervened.”

“Were you awake when they cut it off?”

“That’s enough, Allie!” Cosy said firmly. “I think Mother’s had enough excitement for one day. She needs her rest. I’ll walk you out, Sir Benedict.”

“This is blackmail, of course,” he murmured as she walked him down the stairs to the front hall. “I realize you are poor, but that is no excuse.”

“Blackmail? Is that what you call it in England? In Ireland we call it fair play.”

“Fair play?” he repeated in astonishment as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “You took everything I had, including the clothes off my back. Was that also fair play?”

“You had it coming,” said Cosima. “You said yourself your behavior was atrocious.”

“When I woke up I thought I had been robbed!”

“So you would have been,” she said primly, “if
I
hadn’t taken everything.”

“Oh, yes?”

“For safekeeping!” she clarified. “You should be thanking me.”

The gentleman did not share her opinion. “Thanking you! And, I suppose, I should also thank you for tying me to a tree!”

“Aye. You were drunk, and in no condition to be staggering around town.”

His mouth twitched. “So that was for safekeeping also?”

“You made it home all right, didn’t you?”

“The Watch brought me home!”

“So what are you complaining about?”

“And now you are blackmailing me for a thousand pounds!” he accused her.

“I am not blackmailing you,” she said, annoyed. “You offered a reward. I’m just collecting it.”

He stopped and stared at her. “I offered no reward.”

“Didn’t you?” Marching down the hall, she threw open the door to a small book room with flowered chintz curtains. Benedict followed her.

Picking up a newspaper from the small writing desk, she showed it to him. “Did you not put this advertisement in the paper?” she demanded.