Rules for Being a Mistress (2 page)

Cosy stuck her head back out and howled, “I’LL COME DOWN.”

“You’re too kind,” Benedict muttered, shivering, as she slammed the window shut.

Wet to the waist, Cosy ran to her wardrobe and opened the doors, her teeth chattering. “You’d not want to be left out in the rain yourself, Nora Murphy,” she snapped in response to Nora’s silent disapproval. “I daresay none of his
English
neighbors would let him in.”

“I’ll wake Jackson,” said Nora, naming the only other servant in the house.

“You will not,” Cosy said, toweling her hair into a damp, tangled mess. “He’s stocious, and I’ll not have Sir Benedict thinking all Irishmen are drunkards! Go and let his lordship in while I get dressed.” She threw off her dressing gown and pawed through the clothes in the wardrobe in search of something warm and modest to put on.

“I’ll not be seen by an Englishman in me shift,” Nora declared, shocked. “And a
ciotog
on top of it! He’ll be apt to make an atrocity out of me. You’d better go yourself, Miss Cosy.”

Cosy gurgled with laughter. “Ha! And be made an atrocity of?”

“Sure they never interfere with the gentlewomen,” Nora explained, pulling her shawl tightly around her crooked, spare body. “But he’d ravish
me
quick enough, and I am only a servant.”

Cosy grabbed an old riding skirt and pulled it on over her nightgown. The nightgown was of the finest French silk, but the skirt was of cheap green baize, the felt-like material used to cover gaming tables. Hardly fashionable; she usually wore it with a matching jacket when she cleaned house. “Let him in, you old wagon,” she insisted, hastily tucking her nightgown inside the skirt, “or I’ll tell Father Mallone of your un-Christianlike behavior!”

The threat had its effect on Nora. “I will, Miss Cosy,” she intoned in her sepulchral voice, her ropy limbs taut with offended dignity. “But when the
ciotog
murders us all, don’t come crying to me.”

Nora swept out, leaving her young lady to finish dressing in the dark. Downstairs, she opened the door so suddenly that she almost received a rap on the nose from the gentleman’s umbrella. “Good evening,” he said with crushing dignity. “How awfully kind of you to let me in. I do hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

He held out his umbrella to the little hunchback, but, to his astonishment, she let out a shriek and ran away. “Sure Miss Cosy will be down in a squeeze, your honor!” she squeaked as she ran. “’Tis only after jumping into her clothes she is!”

She took the candle with her.

Presumably, “Miss Cosy” was the housekeeper, probably the woman who had shouted at him from the window. Benedict disliked her already. Needless to say, he was not accustomed to being kept waiting in a cold, dark hall while the housekeeper
jumped
into her clothes. And why was she a
Miss
Cosy, anyway? Married or not, most housekeepers assumed the honorific of “Mrs.” when they achieved the rank of an upper servant. Obviously, Miss Cosy wanted every man she met to think of her as marriageable!

After pushing his valise inside the house with his foot, the baronet closed the door against the wind and the rain and wiped his wet face with his sleeve.

Where the devil was Pickering?
he thought angrily.

Since losing his right hand, he had learned to do everything with his left. Taking out his silver cheroot case, he lit a match, striking it on the underside of the hall table. After lighting the candles in a nearby sconce, he was able to see his surroundings a little better. The damask-covered walls and gilded sconces were in keeping with the elegance one expected from a Camden Place address, but the cheap tallow candles in the sconces cast a dirty, orange stain over everything. Benedict preferred the clean, white light of beeswax, a fact well-known to Pickering. Seriously displeased, he placed his umbrella in the stand just as a figure in skirts appeared at the top of the stairs. “Ah. Miss Cosy, I presume?”

Her Christian name was Cosima, but, as no one but her mother had ever called her that in her life, she saw nothing odd in this form of address. “Aye,” she answered, coming down the steps. “You said you were given the wrong key, Sir Benedict? You’re locked out?”

Miss Cosy was Irish, but, although she was obviously more genteel than the other servant, she made no attempt to speak with an English accent. “I rang the bell,” he complained.

“Ah, sure, we disconnected that jangly old bell,” she explained cheerfully.

“Indeed! Help me out of my coat,” he commanded brusquely, putting his back to her. As he turned, Cosy caught sight of his right side. His right arm ended abruptly at the elbow, and his coat sleeve had been pinned up. Poor man! He really was a
ciotog
.
He must be a war hero,
thought the colonel’s daughter, instantly claiming the stranger for the Army.

“I will, sir,” she said in a tone of great respect. Descending on him in a rush, she peeled the fine black wool from his shoulders. Wet through, the fabric stank of tobacco and perfume, which could only remind her of her own father, except that, being an incorrigible drunkard as well as a remorseless philanderer, Colonel Vaughn usually stank of whiskey, too. “I’ll hang it to dry in the kitchen, Sir Benedict,” she offered courteously.

“Certainly not,” he said harshly. “I won’t have my coat smelling of cooking.”

Cosy thought the smell of her cooking would have improved his musky coat, but she held her tongue. “I’ll hang it here so,” she said cheerfully, finding a hook for it above his umbrella.

“You will give my coat to Pickering, of course. Where in damnation
is
he, anyway?” Reserved with his own class, the baronet gave his irritation full reign with her. “I sent him ahead of me. I hate being looked after by strangers. This is an unforgivable lapse.”

A sheltered young lady might have been shocked and intimidated by his anger, but Cosy was used to the rough ways of fighting men. Her father and brothers all drank and smoked and swore routinely in her presence. Compared to them, Sir Benedict was the consummate gentleman. She went to the table and fumbled in the drawer for matches. “That’s the trouble with sending a man ahead of you,” she said in her creamy Irish voice. “Sure they don’t always wait for you to catch up.”

Benedict preferred to be served in silent awe by his subordinates. “I sent my valet ahead of me to Bath with my baggage,” he explained coldly and ponderously, as if addressing an idiot. “I take it he has not yet arrived in Camden Place. He must have been delayed by the weather.”

Miss Cosy’s cheekiness was not quelled in the least. “You weren’t delayed yourself,” she pointed out as she lit the three candles in a branched candlestick. “If he left before you, and he’s going at the same rate, I’d say your man is in Bristol this night.”

She held the candlestick up and, for the first time, he saw her face.

His worst fear was confirmed in spades. Miss Cosy was a stunning beauty.
How men must fawn over you,
he thought. In the dull, orange light he could not tell the true color of her eyes or hair, but there was no denying that satiny smooth skin, that heart-shaped face, that cupid’s bow mouth. True, her nose was a trifle short, but this only served to take the edge off a beauty that might otherwise have been intimidating.

Benedict searched in vain for some other flaw that might give him a disgust for her. Her impertinent little chin had a hint of a cleft in it, but he liked that. Her breasts were small, but, unfortunately, he had always preferred females with light, youthful figures, while at the same time deploring the light, youthful minds that usually went with such females. In desperation, he noted that her hair was a tangled mess, carroty in the candlelight, but who knew what color in the sunlight; her clothes were ugly, cheap, and wrinkled and she looked like an unmade bed.

Ah, bed…What would it be like to share the bed of a beautiful young woman? To kiss that plump, saucy, little mouth, to feel those long silken legs wrapped around one’s waist, and to hear that soft, creamy voice sighing exquisite nothings in one’s ear?

One was appalled by one’s thoughts. One savagely set them aside.

Housekeeper, my arse,
he thought. She looks more like a homewrecker.

Miss Cosy, if that was her real name, would have to be dismissed, of course. His sole purpose in coming to Bath was to make a respectable marriage. There could be no convincing the rude minds of the polite world that the ravishing Miss Cosy was not warming his bed as well as ordering his coal, and the inevitable gossip could only have a dampening effect on his marital aspirations, to say the least.

She would have to go, but how the devil was he supposed to get rid of her? Technically, she was Lord Skeldings’s servant, and his lordship now lived in London.

During this prolonged scrutiny, Cosy had been staring at him with ever-widening eyes. Finally, it was too much. “I’m sorry, sir,” she cried, fighting back a disrespectful giggle. “But your hair tonic is running down your face in black bars. You look like you’re in gaol.”

Humiliated, Benedict allowed her to lead him to the cupboard under the stairs.

When he came out with a clean face and neatly combed black hair, Cosy was pleasantly surprised. He was younger and better looking than she had expected. Naturally, she would have preferred a younger man with a spectacular physique, but he was taller than herself in an age when few men were.
’Tis always easier,
she thought forgivingly,
to fatten a man up than it is to slim him down.
She didn’t mind the scars on his right cheek at all and the cold, penetrating unfriendliness of his light gray eyes actually sent a pleasurable shiver down her spine. Of course! He was a battle-hardened officer. Her pulse quickened as she imagined him, gray-eyed and black-haired, mounted on a white steed, in the midst of an internecine battle, issuing his commands no one would dare disobey with cold, ruthless precision.

She had fetched his valise while he was in the cupboard washing up.

“Is there no manservant to take my bag?” he inquired angrily.

She looked surprised. Evidently, men were supposed to take one look at her and turn into spineless jellies. That most men probably did just that was completely beside the point.

“There’s Jackson,” she answered, “but I gave him leave to attend a funeral this morning, and the result is, he’s no use to anyone tonight. It’s nice and warm in the kitchen, though, if you’ll follow me.”

“No, indeed! Be good enough to light a fire in the drawing-room.” Benedict brushed past her toward the stairs. Startled, Cosy dropped his bag and caught at his arm without thinking, taking hold of his empty right sleeve. Instantly, he pulled away from her, and, instantly, she released his sleeve.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she stammered, truly horrified. “I meant no offense. There’s not enough coal for a fire in the drawing-room, I’m sorry to say.”

“Nonsense, Miss Cosy,” he said sharply. “I’m a member of Parliament. If there were a shortage of coal, I would have heard of it.”

It occurred to her that his severity might be masking a dry sense of humor. “I didn’t think to report it to the government, sir,” she said. “I didn’t think Lord Liverpool would be interested in the state of my coal scuttle,” she added, naming the prime minister.

Miss Cosy would have few options when she lost her position here, he was thinking. She belonged to the class meant to scurry about in the background, silent and invisible.
She
could never be invisible, not with that outlandishly lovely face. No sensible lady would hire her, and, if a gentleman lost his head and did so, the result would be only misery and disgrace, for what man could resist the constant temptation of sharing a house with such a beauty?

It would be wrong to dismiss her simply because she was young and beautiful.

And yet, she could not remain under his roof because she was young and beautiful.

Only one reasonable solution to this ethical dilemma presented itself. He could, of course, move her to a furnished apartment in London in the usual way, thereby averting any hint of scandal here in Bath. A charming mistress could only be an asset to him in his political career. In fact, if he meant to get on in politics, a charming mistress would be quite as necessary to him as a dull, respectable wife.

“You mean you failed to order enough coal,” he said aloud.

“I suppose I did bungle it,” she said. “I’m used to the turf we have at home, you see.”

“Home?” he repeated absently. “Oh, yes, of course; you’re Irish.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” she told him impishly. “I haven’t come to blow up Parliament.”

“I am glad to hear it,” he replied without a trace of humor.

Cosy gave him up as a lost cause. On the battlefield, he might well be a hero, but as a ladies’ man, he was a pure failure. “Will you come down to the kitchen, sir? It’s where the cat sleeps,” she added persuasively. “So you know it’s nice and warm.”