What a Gentleman Desires (9 page)

“Prettier than you,” the child announced matter-of-factly, bending over another drawing. Clearly not all had been forgiven.

Daisy laughed again. It had been long months since she’d laughed; she’d nearly forgotten how. Yet now, in the midst of hearing proof of her greatest sorrow, somehow she seemed to be coming back to life.
...

CHAPTER SIX

P
IFFKIN
HELD
OUT
a small folded scrap of paper as Valentine frowned into the mirror atop the dressing chest, attempting to get his hair to behave.

“Your resignation, Piffkin?” he asked, amusing himself but clearly not Piffkin.

“Found it slipped under your door, sir.”

Valentine glanced at it, one eyebrow raised. “Under the door? My, my, such dark intrigue. What does it say?”

The valet brought his posture up stiffly. “As if I would ever be so unaware of the confidentiality of my employer’s correspondence as to— Oh, the devil with it.
Located. All’s fine.
I’m certain you know what that means?”

“I do. It means we won’t be getting rid of Miss Marchant just yet.”

“You’ll pardon me, sir, but I do not believe I can remember you having such limited influence with a member of the fairer sex. In fact, the mind fairly boggles.”

Valentine made one last spread-finger stab at pushing errant locks from his forehead, and abandoned the mirror. “Yes, I can see where I’m a sad disappointment to you. I’m all but too ashamed to look you square in the eye.”

Piffkin held up Valentine’s coat so that he could slip into it, adjust his cravat and shirt cuffs. “I understand there will be additional guests at dinner, sir.”

Valentine returned to the high dressing table to select a ring from the box Piffkin opened for him. “Well, that took you long enough. Or perhaps you didn’t think I’d be interested?”

“That is rather open to question, yes. What with all these distractions.”

“Have you ever thought of retirement, Piffkin?” Valentine asked, heading for the door. “You’ve a sister in Shropshire who’d love to have you, I believe.”

“Millicent, yes. But first I’d have to find you another keeper, else I’d simply worry myself into a frazzle. Do you think you might apply to Miss Marchant? She seems to hold you in line very nicely.”

The door to the hallway had closed before Piffkin could finish, actually, but Valentine could still hear the valet’s laughter through the thick wood.

He entered the drawing room just as the first gong rang, calling everyone downstairs. Mailer was the single other person in evidence, striking a relaxed pose with one arm resting negligently on the mantel, a glass of wine dangling from his fingers. He might have pulled off the deception if his complexion wasn’t unattractively splotchy, his other hand closed into a tight fist.

Valentine didn’t subscribe to poking sticks at hornets’ nests, but couldn’t seem to refrain from taking a jab at Mailer.

“Good evening, mine host, good evening!” he called out cheerily. “What a glorious day I’ve had, Charles. A fine, refreshing ride on a singular mount, a delightful if necessarily short tour of your stunning, simply stunning, estate. So enjoyable. You’re a stellar host, my friend, leaving your guest to his own devices. I do so loathe organized outings, insipid picnics and the like. Are you going to offer me wine, or continue to stand there like a...well, a statue of Bacchus, I would imagine?”

By now Valentine was close enough to the man to see that his eyes looked much too blue, because his pupils were tightly contracted. He’d seen this phenomenon before; the man had been eating, drinking or smoking opium. Everyone should have his little hobbies, he supposed.

In his checkered youth (that Piffkin, if applied to, would probably attest persisted to this day), Valentine had been coaxed into sampling an opium pipe. But he hadn’t liked the sensation that came with it: the loss of control over his own thoughts, his speech, even the movements and imagined needs of his own body. Yet some, he knew, enjoyed all of those feelings, and sought them out to soothe, to excite the imagination, to empower—whatever excuse they could find at the moment the pipe called to them.

Mailer waved the hand holding the wineglass, stumbling as the move had his arm slipping off the mantel. “Drinks table’s over there. Help yourself.”

Valentine put out a hand to steady the man. “Careful there, Charles. Already had your share, did you? I’ve been told more guests have arrived?”

“Oh, they don’t all stay here. Visited and gone. Off to a party.” He leaned closer. “
Private
party. And m’wife knows she is to remain in her rooms, as you demanded.”

“Suggested, Charles. I never demand.”

“Good evening, gentlemen. Am I tardy-
hee-ee?
” The question had come from somewhere behind Valentine.

“
Shhh,
he’s not invited,” Mailer whispered.

Apparently, neither had Mailer or Valentine himself been invited. And didn’t
that
raise a few disturbing questions in his head. Had an unhappy Mailer been left behind—again, thanks to Piffkin’s earlier suggestion—to act as chaperone while the others met and the new guests were considered for...for what? Membership? Blackmail? Elimination? It didn’t help to be fanciful, but Valentine knew he had to consider any of those possibilities.

He turned toward the doorway, to see a tall, thin, rather awkwardly put together man of about his own age sauntering into the room, tugging at his cuffs. His rigout bordered on the ridiculous, his shirtpoints high and sharp...although the man’s sad lack of chin would probably keep him from slicing himself as he turned his head.

“Frappton,” he muttered under his breath, recognizing the man from the last time he’d attempted to visit Spencer Perceval. Frappton was the clerk to some minor undersecretary, and the man charged with denying Valentine access to his superior. That man was still three levels below the undersecretary who had the final word on who saw the prime minister. No wonder nothing was ever accomplished; everyone was too busy guarding the gates. Worse, Frappton couldn’t seem to say more than three words without tagging on a giggle at the end. He was the sort of man other men just naturally longed to toss into a cupboard.

Most importantly, things could get sticky if Frappton said something inappropriate right now, such as
did you ever get to see the Prime Ministerhee-ee-ee?

“Introduce us, Charles,” Valentine prodded when Mailer said nothing, only leaving Frappton to stand in grinning discomfort in the center of the room, probably wondering if he’d left one of his most strategic buttons unanchored.

Mailer blinked, as if coming out of a dream. “Oh, yes, yes. Mr. Valentine Redgrave, I introduce to you—what was your name again?”

Valentine thought:
Caught between a pair of fools, with the initiative clearly up to me.

“Frappton, my lord. Cecil Frappton. But known mostly as Frappton, sir-
hee-ee
. Don’t you remember me, Mr. Red—”

“Frappton, Frappton,” Valentine cut in quickly, walking toward the man, his right hand extended. The idiot took it, and Valentine gave the bony appendage a squeeze. A very
tight
squeeze, the sort that put a man’s knuckles in much closer proximity to each other than is generally considered desirable. And he kept squeezing, even as he sent the man dire messages of worse to come with his eyes. But when he spoke again, his voice was light, friendly. “Do I remember you? I believe we’ve met, yes. Perhaps at one of the more tame balls last season? Is your lovely wife with you?”

Even an idiot can climb to some low threshold of understanding...or else Frappton decided he might one day wish to use his right hand again.

“Couldn’t have been me, sir,” he said, attempting not to grimace, which in a chinless man saddled with a prodigious overbite is not a sight to be encouraged. Valentine rather thought he most resembled a constipated rabbit. “No, I can’t think we’ve ever met. Not ever, sir. And...and alas, I have no wife-
hee-ee
.
Ow,
sir?” he then whispered hopefully.

“Good man,” Valentine confided, at last releasing Frappton’s paw. Were rabbits’ feet called paws? He’d have to remember to ask Daisy.

More loudly, he said, “Too bad, Frappton. But I’m convinced you’ll make a grand prize in the matrimonial stakes. Charles, don’t you agree?”

“What?” Mailer was in the process of seating himself, but halted with his backside in a state of limbo between upright and nicely cushioned when the gong rang a second time. “I suppose we have to eat now. Lady Caroline is sadly indisposed, so it will be only us gentlemen...and you, Frapworth. Shall we?”

Just in case Frappton couldn’t open his mouth twice without landing Valentine’s head on the chopping block, and as Mailer seemed most interested in the level of wine in his glass, Valentine took over the role of host, keeping the conversational ball in the air, and amusing himself by telling some fairly ribald jokes learned at his grandmother’s knee or when she thought none of the children were within earshot (Trixie was never without a stack of dinner invitations heaped on her mantel).

Mailer roused at these witticisms, adding a few of his own that nearly put Valentine to the blush, most notably a trio of limericks that had Frappton giggling like a prepubescent schoolboy.

“No entertainment tonight, Charles?” Valentine asked after what had seemed an interminable dinner, as they lingered over brandy and cigars. Frappton puffed too frequently on his, in an amateur effort to keep it lit, and his complexion was turning visibly green, prompting Valentine to
hee-ee
silently. “I thought you had mentioned something about a party? That is why we’re here, isn’t it, Frappton?”

“Oh, not me-
hee-ee,
” the man said, gratefully resting the cigar on the plate in front of him. “I’m only here at the request of my superior, the Honorable Mr. Harold Charfield. I fear he took ill on the journey here, and has retired for the evening-
hee-ee
.”

“Really? Charles—I say,
Charles?
Is your household now a hotbed of sickness? Perhaps I should leave.”

‘You know damn full well m’wife—
Wright!
More brandy.”

The butler stepped forward to refill his master’s snifter from the decanter warming on a table near the fire.

“Ah, that’s better,” Mailer said, seemingly having had sufficient time to collect his wits and thus guard his tongue. “Now, what was it you asked, my friend? Something about sickness? No, no. Caro’s riding the rags again. Takes to her bed like clockwork, every time. I doubt Charfield suffers the same complaint.”

“Hee-ee-ee,”
Frappton tittered. That was excusable, for the fellow was an irreclaimable twit.

Charles Mailer, however, had all the sensitivity of a cockroach, and Valentine added yet another check mark to the list of reasons he would so enjoy breaking the man.

“In any event,” he said, dropping his serviette onto the table, “please convey my wishes to Lady Caroline for a rapid recovery.”

“Small chance of that. Women are of no use to a man when they’re unclean. She’ll reemerge once she’s decent again.”

Another check mark
.

“Frappton? Is there any chance your Mr. Charfield will rise from his sickbed by tomorrow? Otherwise, Charles, I will have to make good my intention to depart this sad excuse for a holiday in the country. I’ve seen what there is of your quaint little estate, Frappton here is a dead bore—many pardons, Cecil—there’s no one present from the gentler, more interesting sex and you’re drunk. You promised witty conversation—again, Cecil, my apologies—and entertainment I would enjoy to the top of my bent. Thus far, Charles, I’ve had better times at the tooth-drawer.”

Mailer opened his mouth to speak, but Valentine stood up, holding out his hand to stop him. “Frappton? What do you say we leave our host to slopping up his brandy, and take a refreshing stroll in the gardens? According to my
Calendar Ivmperpetuum,
sunset is no more than an hour from now.”

The man perked up his ears, his nose nearly twitching with excitement. He looked no better as an excited rabbit than he’d done as a grimacing one. “I—I should like that above all things. May...may I leave the cigar here-
hee-ee?
”

“I would, it’s inferior in any case. Charles,” Valentine said, bowing, “by your leave?”

“Yes, yes, I’m off to bed soon m’self, if you two are settled. You are settled, aren’t you? But I swear, Redgrave, you’ll meet the remainder of the party tomorrow night. You, too, Frapply.”

“Frappton, sir-
hee-ee
.”

“Whatever. It was Harold who invited you, not me.”

“Come along, Cecil,” Valentine encouraged, smiling at the hurt expression on the man’s face. “You probably need some air to rid yourself of the effects of that cigar.”
And a polite grilling about your Mr. Charfield. First the wife and kiddies, then Daisy and now Cecil-rabbit. He’d soon be rescuing whole villages, rather like Robin Hood.

* * *

V
ALENTINE
,
CLAD
IN
black from head to toe, waved a cheeky goodbye to Piffkin, who was wearing a concealing nightcap as he maneuvered himself beneath the covers of his master’s bed.

“Back facing the door to the hallway, Piffkin. There’s a good fellow. Don’t forget to say your evening prayers.”