The Butler Did It (12 page)

Later she would have a private word with her grandmother, for she wasn't such a widgeon that she believed the marquis had given in because of some sense of honor, or Lady Jersey, or any other farradiddle. She wasn't the heroine who had saved them all from an ignominious retreat back to the country. She hadn't gotten to him; her grandmother had gotten to him. How lowering. Ah, well, a victory was a victory.

“Miss Clifford?

Emma blinked herself back to the matter at hand. “Yes, yes, my lord. We are to sing your praises to the skies, polish your reputation like a shiny red apple, and in return you will graciously allow us to remain here, with the use of some of the house, except when we are to lock ourselves in our rooms, because you will be entertaining friends. Do you have friends, my lord? And all
because you don't know how to get rid of us. It's very clear. You're a vain man, not concerned a whit that we might have been left with nowhere to go, and it is only your reputation or well-being that means anything to you.”

Morgan smiled. “Ah, you have been paying attention, Miss Clifford. Yes, I think that just about covers everything. You may notice that I'm ignoring that slap about the number of my friends. And it would be beneath me to point out that you are an ungrateful brat.”

“Touché, my lord.” Maybe there was still a victory left for her to claim as her own, and not her grandmother's—who Emma could not envision as ever putting herself out to help Olive Norbert. “But what about Sir Edgar? And the so estimable Mrs. Norbert? I must insist that they, too, be allowed to remain here.”

“Thornley assures me that Mrs. Norbert never strays from the house.”

“She barely strays from the table,” Emma said quietly, for she really couldn't like Mrs. Norbert, no matter how diligently she tried. There was just something…something sinister about her. “And Sir Edgar?”

“Your mother's distant relation,” Morgan said, having just decided on that explanation. “I have already learned—via the so-ambitious Thornley—that you and your family were not previously acquainted with the gentleman. However, as I do not consider it my duty to include him in any social events, if he is seen stumbling
through the halls and remarked upon, that will be our story. Agreed?”

“It's not up to me to agree, it's up to Sir Edgar. He may have some objection.”

“He also may object to finding himself on the street, Miss Clifford. I am being magnanimous, believe me. Now, as to your brother.”

“Cliff? What about him? You haven't even met him.”

“Oh, I've met him, or his like, several times, Miss Clifford. He will not go into Society with us, not until he loses that painfully green side of himself. As you say, I do consider my reputation. Keep him in the nursery, where he belongs.”

“Cliff left the nursery ages ago. He's all of nineteen.”

“My, quite aged. He probably enjoys only tame pursuits, like chess, and holding your mama's yarn while she rolls it, without a thought to complicating my life by being beaten into a jelly by cardsharps or running about the city, propping coffins at doors and the like.”

“You speak from experience, my lord?” Emma asked, secretly believing that the safest place to keep Cliff would be in his rooms, one ankle firmly shackled to the bedpost.

“Just keep him away from me,” Morgan said, looking into his wineglass, then depositing it on the table. “Now, about Almack's. I will graciously escort you ladies this evening, introduce you to the remainder of the patronesses, and even lead you into your first dance of
the evening. This gesture, magnanimous in the extreme, will earn you no small measure of cachet.”

He held out a hand to her, not that it appeared she was about to speak. “No, please, don't thank me, Miss Clifford. My indulgence knows no bounds. Kindly behave yourself, don't waltz until one of the patronesses has given permission, then please tumble madly into love with some half-pay officer and elope to Gretna Green by the end of the week, will you? That will be thanks enough, I assure you.”

Well, that tore it! If he was going to be insulting, then she could goad him more about his seeming change of heart. “Why?” she asked, looking up at him. “Only a short while ago you were demanding that we leave. Why are you doing this? It can't all be your reputation, because I cannot believe you want us all running tame in your household for the next two months just to keep tongues from wagging. My grandmother, for one, will want an explanation.”

“Startling as this may be to you, Miss Clifford, I really don't care what you think. And I've already spoken to your grandmother, and she has by now informed everyone that I am allowing you to remain here, in residence.”

Emma sat back, bit her lips between her teeth. Men. They were
so
easy to manipulate. He probably didn't even realize what he'd just admitted. “So you have spoken to my grandmother.”

“That's what I said, yes,” Morgan said, avoiding her eyes.

“But just a minute ago, you said you hadn't spoken with her.”

Morgan gave himself a mental slap. He hadn't realized it would be so difficult to keep his lies straight while half his mind was recording the curve of Miss Clifford's lovely cheek, the disconcerting way she had of looking up at him through those long, dark lashes. He attempted to regroup. “I meant not at any length, Miss Clifford. I have not spoken with your grandmother at any length.”

“No, you doubtless didn't speak with her at any length, my lord. She spoke to
you.
” Emma folded her arms across her midsection, letting him know without words that she would not be fobbed off; she would hear it
all.
“What did she say?”

Morgan felt an insane urge to bolt from the room. The grandmother wasn't the only formidable woman in the Clifford menagerie. “As I told you, I spoke with her and—”

“No. No, no, no. Please listen, my lord. I didn't ask what you said to her. I asked what she said to you. She threatened you, didn't she? With that horrible story about writing her memoirs. You said I should say she knew your father, and it was she who put that idea into your head, along with her threat.”

She jumped to her feet, not feeling triumphant at all,
but thoroughly ashamed. “That pernicious old woman! Oh, I'm
so
sorry, my lord. We'll leave at once.”

“Miss Clifford, wait,” Morgan said as Emma headed for the hallway. “You
know
what your grandmother is planning?”

Emma stopped, turned around. “I found the stack of letters she wanted Riley to send out yesterday,” she told him. “For a penny, he let me have them for a few minutes and…and I opened one of them.”

“I see,” Morgan said, but he didn't really see at all. “So, you know what she's about, and you condone it?”

“I most certainly do not!”

“Then you burned the letters?”

Emma looked at the floor. Oh, why had she started this? Why hadn't she just left well enough alone? “No. I gave them back to Riley.”

“Because you're here to find a husband, and you don't mind if your grandmother blackmails someone into handing one over to you? That's not very attractive of you, Miss Clifford.”

Emma attempted to defend herself, knowing it was a losing battle. “I would only have been delaying the inevitable, my lord, as my grandmother would have merely penned new notes. Or worse, she might have confronted the poor gentlemen in public.”

“No. Those are good reasons, but they aren't the real reason. Are they?”

Emma lifted her gaze and glared straight at him, remem
bering her grandmother saying, more than once over the years: “May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

“I'm nearly one and twenty, my lord. I have a dowry that would fit in that thimble, leaving room for all your
thoughts.
My father left us near to penniless and my brother wants me to buy him a set of colors in the army. Did I really have a choice? But…but now that I see the power Grandmama has, enough to bring even such a mighty peer as you to your knees, my lord…I…well, yes, I'm ashamed.”

“As well you should be, Miss Clifford,” Morgan said, but his heart wasn't really in the rebuke. “Does your mother know? Your brother?”

“Goodness, no. Mama would have a fit of the vapors. And Clifford? I wouldn't care to think what he might do with any such dangerous knowledge. Nothing good, I'm sure. As I said, my lord, we'll be leaving. Do not concern yourself that my grandmother will say one word about your father, not to anyone.”

Not even if I have to sit on her for the next six months, Emma added to herself.

“Very well,” Morgan said, seeing his chance to be free of the Cliffords and the other two uninvited guests. All he had to do was to pick up his cane and hat, his cape if it was still cool, take himself off for a few hours, and he would return to blessed peace, tranquility, and no houseguests.

No lovely gray eyes.

Emma dropped into a curtsy. “Thank you, my lord.”

“Although,” he heard himself saying, “as long as we both know that I am no longer constrained to be your host. In that case, I can just be magnanimous, can't I? I admit to liking that much better than being blackmailed by a little old lady who has lived, by her report, a much fuller life than I could ever hope to do.”

“I…I don't understand. You want us to stay?”

“I admit that I do not understand, either, but, yes, I rather think I do want you to stay, Miss Clifford. But,” he added as a small bit of sanity bit him in the brainbox, “only as long as you can convince Mrs. Norbert to take her meals in her rooms.”

“Do you really want to make my grandmother
that
happy, my lord? I think not.” Emma grinned, curtsied again and ran from the room before he could change his mind.

 

“S
O WHAT IS IT
you'll be doing now that you're tossed out on your ear, Mr. Clifford?” Riley asked as he walked alongside the young man, on their way to Piccadilly.

No two sadder young men were to be seen. One a well-dressed lad with a handsome face marred by a profound sulk, the other a liveried footman with bowed legs, his powdered wig stuck half into his coat pocket.

“I'm not going home, if that's what you mean,” Cliff told him after a few moments, kicking at a loose cobblestone in his path.

Riley shuffled along, hands dug deep into his pockets. “No, sir. It's not going back I'm thinking about, neither. Mr. Thornley had a
face
on him.”

“You only say that because you didn't see my sister,” Cliff said, rolling his eyes. “I'll bet she can make Thornley run to pull the covers over his head. But it was nothing like the look on the marquis's face back there in the drawing room. He came bursting in searching for someone to kill.”

Riley nodded. “Nope. Not going back there, just to be told to take myself off again.”

“At least Thornley's a man. How'd you like to be led around by a gaggle of women? Cliff, do this. Cliff, don't do that. What did you do with the half crown I gave you last month, Cliff?”

Riley pulled a pilfered plum from his pocket, and bit into it. “A bleedin' pity, ain't it. Mrs. Timon boxed m'ears last week, she did, just for slicing m'self a bit of ham. Women are the very devil in petticoats, that's what they are. I'd be haring off to m'sister's, excepting she'll just want to know what I did wrong, what briar I'd landed m'self in now, and similar. Women always think we men did something wrong, don't you know.”

“You know what we need to do, don't you?” Cliff said, jingling the few coins in his pocket. “We need to find a way to get ourselves rich. Then we wouldn't have to answer to anybody. Not Thornley, not the marquis, and most certainly not any women. Here we are, in London.
Got to be thousands of ways to make money in London. We just need to think of one.”

They walked along in silence again for a while, two young men bonded by their mutual misery, before Riley said, “I saw a hanged man the once, I did. Highwayman. He might have lived good, but he died with his neck stretched. Then they dipped him in tar or something and hanged him up for everyone to see. Crows were pecking at him when my mam took me to see him.”

“I didn't say we'd become highwaymen. But there must be something we can do that wouldn't get us hanged.”

Riley chewed on this for a while, along with the plum. Finally he said, “Well, I do know this fella…”

 

T
HE KNOCKER BEGAN
going at one. Morgan was in the drawing room at the time. He ended up passing insipid remarks about the weather and the King's latest expensive bit of ridiculousness meant to tip the entire empire into bankruptcy before Fanny Clifford came to join them and Morgan could escape, to wonder what on earth Lord Boswick could have done to be worried about the woman's threat.

At eighty, because the man was that if he was a day, you'd think he'd be happy to have it known he was once a rutting dog, or whatever it was he had been before his gout had him walking with two canes, and unnerving white hair had begun sprouting out of both his ears.

Morgan made it only as far as the landing before Sir
Willard climbed the stairs, the ever-patient Thornley pushing him from behind, and he was forced to spend another quarter hour waxing poetic over the weather that hadn't changed since Lord Boswick had first mentioned it. Worse, Sir Willard had been grinning at Mrs. Clifford the whole time, leering actually, and Morgan had been caught between wanting to flee the room screaming, his hands clapped over his eyes, and believing he should stay, and act as chaperon.

He'd actually made good his escape to the upper floor when the knocker went again, and he peered over the railing to see Thornley accepting a hat and cane from—good lord, the new head of the Admiralty!

“They've begun to arrive? All the penitents?”