Those Endearing Young Charms (11 page)

At last Felice excused herself, saying she wished to go abovestairs to see to the unpacking of my lady's trunks.

"And I will take your little cat with me," Felice crooned, bending over Peter, who crouched away from her.

"Leave him," said Emily. "I will bring him up in a minute."

"But it is better to do it quietly, no?" urged Felice. "These landlords, often they not like animals in the bedchambers."

"Very well," said Emily. "I will join you shortly. Oh, do not be so _rough,_ Felice!" For Felice had seized the cat by the scruff of its neck.

Felice gave a sycophantic smile and exited, holding the cat firmly to her bosom.

The maid marched upstairs to the bedchamber where a fire was burning brightly. The room was as clean as a new pin. A shame to sully it with paw marks and hair.

Felice crossed to the window and tugged at the latch with one hand, holding firmly onto Peter who gave a _miaow_ of protest. The window swung open, letting in a flurry of snow. Felice threw the cat as far as she could, slammed the window, and set about mopping up the traces of melting snow from the floor.

"That's that," thought the maid, feeling more cheerful. "Good-bye cat! I will say it ran off."

But Felice felt less cheerful when her mistress entered the bedchamber, some ten minutes later, carrying a small dish of chopped liver.

"Peter!" said my lady. "Only look what I have for you. Here, puss, puss, puss!"

Felice compressed her lips and turned down the bedcovers.

"Where is the cat?" demanded Emily sharply.

"I do not know, my lady," said the maid, without turning around. "Perhaps he go away."

"Perhaps nothing," snapped Emily. "What have you done with him?"

"Me? But nothing, I assure you, my lady."

Emily got down on her hands and knees and searched under the bed and under the furniture. She found the still damp, recently cleaned patch under the window.

"What's this, Felice?" she cried. "Did you open the window?"

"As God is my witness," said the maid, folding her hands over the black silk of her gown and turning her eyes up so that the whites showed.

"I don't believe you," said Emily. "You wicked, wicked girl. You _smell_ of guilt."

Emily ran out of the room and down the stairs. The noise from the dining room was very cheerful and jolly. The servants were obviously relaxing, enjoying their own company. Emily hesitated, her hand on the door of the dining room. To summon the exhausted servants to help her look for a mere kitten would be a disgraceful thing to do. She simply must try to find Peter on her own. With a little sigh, she put the hood of her cloak up about her head, and, wrapping herself firmly in its folds, she let herself out of the inn into the howling white wilderness outside.

* * * *

The Earl of Devenham arrived some fifteen minutes later in a very bad temper indeed. He had lost his way in the storm several times. He was frozen to the bone. The landlord assured him that my lady was well, and this only added fuel to the earl's temper. To have risked the life of himself and his groom, not to mention the lives of two prime pieces of horseflesh to rescue a silly girl who did not need rescuing, was enough to try the patience of a saint.

He did not immediately go into the inn, having been assured of his wife's safety by the landlord, who had come outside to welcome him; instead, he went around to the stables to attend to his horse.

After he had rubbed down his horse and given it fodder and had seen it wrapped in a warm blanket that had been heated before the tack-room fire, the earl was feeling hungry and drowsy.

He decided to see Emily first. Would he kiss her? Perhaps he just might.

But the only person waiting in my lady's bedchamber was the maid, Felice.

"Where is your mistress?" demanded the earl.

"My lady go out."

"_Go out?_ Go out where?"

"She ... I mean, my lady have this little cat and she think it go out in the storm and so she go out."

"And you let your mistress go out in this storm alone?"

The maid spread her hands in a peculiarly Gallic gesture, absolving herself of responsibility or blame.

The earl strode back down the stairs and called loudly for his servants. "Not you, John," he said to his exhausted Swiss. "The rest of you, my lady is somewhere outside looking for a _cat._ I do not like to send you all out in the snow again, but you must help me in the search. She cannot have gone very far.

You wait here," he told John the coachman, "and tell the landlord he must send his own servants to hunt for her as well. Do not bunch together. We will go in different directions."

The earl plunged into the storm, noticing as he did so that the visibility was becoming better, although the wind still howled.

"Is this going to be the pattern of my days?" he wondered savagely. "Running around in the worst weather this country has to offer, trying to find a runaway wife?"

He called and shouted into the storm. If she had any sense, so he thought, she would keep close to the inn. A cat would not go very far from warmth on such a night.

But Emily had no sense, so he assumed she had probably plunged out of the inn yard and into the road.

He was stumbling waist-high into the road when the storm, with a great roar, left, as quickly as it had come. One minute he could hardly see a thing, and the next all was empty and white, stretching for miles.

He saw, in the distance, a small black dot against the snow and, shouting _Emily_ at the top of his voice, struggled toward it.

One minute she was so very far away. The next she was tottering forward into his arms.

He held her very close and then turned up her face and kissed her mouth, feeling her cold, frozen lips turn warm under the pressure of his own. The world became a magic place, a white plain of passion, where they seemed to turn and turn and turn in each other's arms in slow, lingering ecstasy.

Then she drew back and sighed, "Oh, Peter," and he could have struck her to the ground. He had assumed there were no loves in her past. Who was this Peter whose name she cried after that long and passionate kiss?

Emily looked wonderingly up into his stern, angry face. His eyes were as cold as the landscape.

"I am very glad to see you, Peregrine," she said timidly. "I came out to look for my cat."

"Then I take leave to inform you that you have put me and my exhausted servants to a great deal of worry and unnecessary trouble. A cat will not go far from food and warmth. You should have searched about the inn. Pray return immediately and forget about the wretched animal."

"I cannot," wailed Emily, tears beginning to run down her face. "He is so small and..."

"God give me patience," the earl said between his teeth. "Let me carry you, and you can tell me about the cursed beast. Now, when did you last see the brute?"

"Felice took him up to our bedchamber, and, when I arrived, the cat was gone, and there was a damp spot on the floor under the window, although Felice swore she had not opened it...."

"She opened it," he interrupted, "and threw the cat out, which is what any servant in her right mind would do. You should have searched in the snowdrifts under the window."

"Oh, do hurry," begged Emily. "Even now he may be dead."

"With luck," muttered the earl. Once more, he found himself carrying her back to the inn. A great black wave of depression hit him. Not only was Mary Anstey in love with another man; now it seemed as if his wife were mourning for some fellow called Peter.

He set her down in the inn yard after calling out to the servants that she had been found. "I want to make one thing very plain, my lady," he said. "This precious cat, if you want to keep it, goes straight to the stables. The bedchamber is nowhere for a cat."

"It is only a kitten, Devenham," pleaded Emily. "Which is the bedroom, so that I may search underneath the window?"

The earl strode off to question the landlord. "The west side," he called. Emily ran after him, tripping and stumbling through the drifts of snow.

She followed in the earl's footsteps around the side of the inn. The earl was already bending over, digging with his bare hands in the snow.

At last, he gave a yelp and withdrew his hand. "I believe I have found your cat, madam," he said coldly, showing her a long, bleeding scratch across the back.

"Let me," said Emily eagerly. She gently brushed away the snow until a little cave was revealed, and, in the cave, one small, cold, angry kitten.

"Oh, _Peter_!" cried Emily, laughing. "I was so worried. My poor, poor Peter." The kitten purred and snuggled up under her chin.

"Peter?" said the earl sharply. "why do you call the cat Peter? After someone?"

"No." Emily laughed. "The only Peter I know is Peter Cummings. I called him Peter because he's like a little rock. Very brave, are you not, my darling."

The earl felt suddenly quite lightheaded. "Well, bring Peter into the inn," he said. He felt he loved the world, he felt he could even bear the cat.

"Good Peter." The earl laughed, reaching out a hand to the cat. The cat seized his thumb and bit it.

"Oh, I am sorry," said Emily anxiously. "He did not bite you very hard, I trust. You see, he is very young and playful."

"I think that animal is possessed by the devil," said the earl, glaring at the cat, who glared back. "But let us get indoors. I have had enough of this snow to last me a lifetime."

* * * *

After the earl had eaten a hearty supper, he went upstairs to the bedroom, to find his wife asleep. He had not told her that he had not ordered a separate room for himself. He sat on the edge of the bed and studied her sleeping face. Well, no one could call Emily missish, he thought. She seemed able to go through the most dreadful weather without even catching a chill. She looked very young and innocent with her gold hair streaming out across the pillow. He must go easy with her, he decided. Perhaps if he wooed her gently, he might find a passionate and loving wife like the Emily he had held in his arms out in the snow. He must make her _want_ to come to his bed.

He undressed and slipped between the sheets. He turned on his side to blow out the bed candle, and five sharp little claws sank through his nightshirt, into his bottom.

"What the deuce!" The earl leaped from the bed and ripped back the sheets, while Emily mumbled and protested in her sleep. A small bundle of raised fur and glaring green eyes challenged him from the middle of the bed.

"Oh, no, my friend," said the earl softly. "I am not going to have a mangy cat as a rival." He scooped the cat up with one quick movement and placed it on the floor. "I must ask Emily not to be too harsh with Felice," he thought sleepily. "It is an eminently throwable cat."

* * * *

Mary's council of war did not go as she had expected. Mr. and Mrs. Anstey said she was making a to-do about nothing. Yes, Mary could throw herself away on Mr. Cummings if she wished, but that was no reason why Mary should be jealous of Emily's being such a great countess. In vain did Mary and Mr.

Cummings plead that Emily was unhappy. Mr. and Mrs. Anstey refused to listen. Mr. Cummings shrewdly realized that if he continued to protest, then perhaps his chances of marrying Mary would diminish again, and so he signaled to his love to be silent and confided to her in the hall, when the door was closed on Mr. and Mrs. Anstey, that it would be more politic to try again on the morrow.

For three days the snow kept the Anstey family housebound. But on the fourth day, when the roads were once again clear, Mary received allies from an unexpected quarter. Sir James and Lady Harrison, together with their ill-favored son, Billy, came to call.

The Harrisons, Mary was well aware, had suffered much from Emily's grand manner, so she set herself to please, wondering all the while why the Harrisons looked so _triumphant._

"You will be visiting your daughter soon?" said Lady Harrison, exchanging a sly look with her husband. "She will no doubt be in sore need of your help."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Anstey, fat face agoggle. "Our Emily is so taken up with being a countess and all, it will be a bit before she has time for her old parents. Ah, yes, she's gone far above us _all,_" added Mrs. Anstey, with a malicious look at Lady Harrison.

Billy Harrison was slouched in his chair, picking at his teeth with a goose quill and making ugly sucking noises. He affected the Corinthian mode of dress, or what he fondly thought was the Corinthian mode, a belcher handkerchief tied round his throat instead of a cravat, and a great many whip points thrust in his buttonhole. His boots were muddy and his leather breeches creaked every time he shifted his bulk in his chair.

"Ah, poor dear Emily," sighed Lady Harrison, applying a wisp of handkerchief to one dry eye. "I was just saying to Mr. Cummings this morning that all one can do is pray."

Mr. Anstey sat bolt upright. "Speak plain, my lady," he said. "Is there something about our Emily you know that we don't?"

Lady Harrison gave a genteel cough. "Really, I don't know quite how to begin."

Billy Harrison removed the quill from his mouth and grinned. "'S all over London," he said.

"Devenham's been seen everywhere with his ladylove, Cordelia Haddington. Was with her all over Christmas. Told her he was tricked into marrying Emily and he wishes he were out o' it."

Mary turned quite white. "I do not believe a word of this," she cried. "Malicious gossip."

"My dear," said Lady Harrison, leaning forward and giving Mary's hand a squeeze. "Your loyalty does you credit. But, ah me, what Billy says is the way of it. It's the talk of the town."

Mrs. Anstey struggled for composure. "We'll find it's all a hum," she said comfortably. "My lord would not cheat on a girl he had just wed."

"Unless he thought _himself_ cheated," said Sir James with a great horse laugh. "He was supposed to marry Mary, wasn't he? Aye, and why was Emily, if she was supposed to be the one he was marrying, wearing a brown wig in church, heh?"

"I have never heard of such rubbish," said Mary hotly. "My sister is very happily married. I am surprised, nay _shocked,_ to find you the bearers of such malicious gossip."