by Claudy Conn
He laughed. “Thank you, Molly.” He turned and walked into the headmistress’s office and was very aware of Miss Sallstone’s intake of breath and the hand that fluttered flirtatiously as she offered him a chair.
~ Ten ~
TIME PASSED SLOWLY, so slowly for Sassy as she looked at the clock. When she’d gone to the kitchen for a cup of tea and passed the headmistress’s office, she’d heard the marquis laugh out loud. She had cringed and hurried to her room.
Stupidly she had taken to her window to watch and see when he left. Twenty minutes! Twenty minutes had gone by, and he was still with Miss Sallstone. She felt a pinch of jealousy she could not rationally explain to herself. This was absurd.
She measured the window one more time and realized she did not have a pair of scissors. She’d seen a few in the crafts room belowstairs, and she quietly made her way there.
She heard the door open to the headmistress’s anteroom and then the marquis say, “What a great pleasure it has been to get acquainted with you, Miss Sallstone.”
“Now, my lord, did I not tell you to call me Bianca? We are about to become very good … friends,” she said with a flirtatious inflection.
Sassy heard the woman’s tone and felt steam rise between her ears that had no business being there. What was it to her if the man of her dreams—and that was all he was, someone in her dreams, nothing more—dallied with the headmistress? Yet, something deep inside told her otherwise.
She heard his steps as he walked the short distance to the front door and left. She sighed heavily and started for the sewing room when a voice at her back made her turn and smile a welcome.
“Hallo,” the doctor said, his eyes alive and lips curved into a grin. “I came just to see you and must compliment myself on my timing.”
She laughed. “You, I am persuaded, should have been a sleuth, for your timing and your knack for solving mysteries is unprecedented,” she teased and arched a look at him.
He laughed warmly and said, “I am curious about anything regarding you.”
He was teasing, but she suspected a truth behind the words and asked, “You have a question on your tongue—out with it.”
“Perceptive beauty, I do.”
“And …?
“I am presently consumed with the desire to know how you came to be friendly with the Marquis of Dartmour, who was just leaving when I arrived.”
“Snooping is very dangerous,” she warned, almost snorting.
“Is it? I shall take my chances. His reputation precedes him,” the good doctor said meaningfully.
She raised a brow. “I have no idea what you are referring to, but I do know that I never engage in that sort of gossip. Besides, what makes you think I am friendly with the marquis?”
“I was walking up from the stables when I saw him, er, help you from the Delleson carriage.”
Her chin went up. “I have no intention of discussing such a thing with you, sir.”
“You think me impertinent, I know, but Miss Winthrop, I assure you, I am acquainted with Miss Delleson and her set. If she has offered you a friendship of sorts I would be suspicious.”
“Because I am so far beneath her?” Sassy’s temper once again was on the rise.
“Because she would think so—not I,” he countered. “In fact, she could never compare with you, and you must not take it personally, for even an educated man, such as myself, though only a country doctor, would not be high enough company for Miss Delleson.”
She could not doubt the bitterness that tinged his every word. “Well, as to that, Miss Delleson, though it was her coach, was in the company of her Mr. Lutterel and the marquis when they saw me walking back to school from town, a bit laden with a package.” She shrugged. “I have a brief acquaintance with both the marquis and Mr. Lutterel, and they were kind enough to offer me a ride home.” She smiled. “You could say I was thrust upon Miss Delleson.”
The doctor ran his hand down her arm and took her hand to bow over it, when a draft caught their attention. They turned around quickly and found the marquis standing there, taking a quick observation. “Don’t let me intrude,” he said. “I had forgotten my gloves.” He took a few steps to a wall table, where he found them, shook them in their direction, and said, “Do,”—he seemed to pause for affect—“carry on.” A look in his blue eyes made Sassy shiver with something she didn’t want to contemplate as she watched him leave.
Sassy excused herself then, saying she had work to do, for her window wanted drapes, and hurried off.
The good doctor watched her departure thoughtfully before turning and making his way to the anteroom, where he went directly to Miss Sallstone’s private set of rooms and opened the door without knocking.
He found her there lounging on her settee with a book. She looked up and smiled hungrily. “James, my love, I have been waiting for you.”
* * *
The marquis was deep in thought as he sat back and leisurely enjoyed his brandy. Dinner had been a bore, watching Percy make a fool of himself over the Delleson chit. He heartily hoped that his good friend would see she simply was an addle-brained young woman who was both shallow and self-centered.
He sighed over it and eyed Percy, who had dozed off in his chair near the fire. At least they had a comfortable suite of rooms in the cozy cottage they had leased.
Bright green eyes flashed at him, and he wished he could reach for her black hair and undo its tight braids.
Her luscious lips formed a pout. He could almost taste her. The damned hard-on in his breeches made him damned uncomfortable. He could not remember ever being obsessed with a woman quite like this. Not ever, not even when he had been a lad and still naïve. Emotion was something he always controlled, but something quite threateningly out of control hovered over him, making him experience emotions he had never known were possible. What he felt for this damnable chit was impossible!
He tried to remember what she had looked like across his sheets in that strange hallucination he’d had when he first saw her in Sutton Village. Luscious full breasts with their hard pink nipples called to him, and he could taste them, as he could her silky flesh. Her scent was in his nostrils making him hungry, hungry for more of her. With his eyes tightly shut he could feel her reach for his cock and stroke it with her delicate fingers, and it felt so damn good!
“Bloody hell!” he said out loud, but Percy did not hear him and snored on. He got up and poked at the fire. Sitting next to her in the coach earlier had been torture. He wanted her alone.
He wanted to … what? Seduce her? Any fool could see she was an innocent, the daughter of a vicar; Sophy had told them both some of her background, which she had heard from her mother.
His affairs were always with widows, married women who knew how to please and had ‘understandings’ with their husbands, and occasionally serving wenches who also knew the game. That was the way of it—no complications.
But this one, this Miss Sassy Winthrop, drove his rules into the ground and buried them. He couldn’t think when he was near her. All he could do was feel.
He remembered the overpowering sensation he had felt seeing her in close conversation with Dr. Bankes. Jealousy and something else.
Netherby was not what it seemed, and part of his reason for bringing Percy to Delleson was to become acquainted with Netherby and what it offered in the dark.
One of the things he had already discovered was the rumor that Miss Sallstone and Dr. Bankes were lovers. In and of itself, that meant nothing to the marquis, but now, with Sassy in the picture, it meant all too much.
He should go out. The local tavern was a short walk, and the serving girls were pliable, but there was only one woman occupying his thoughts, one woman his cock pulsated for, and at the moment no other would do. He shook his head. He was in a damnable situation!
* * *
Sunday morning glowed through half of Sassy’s window, as she had completed one hanging of the soft green material the night before.
&n
bsp; With a stretch and a squeak, she pushed the covers away and hunched herself up on her elbows. A yawn forced itself out of her mouth, and she shook off her sleepiness as she faced the coolness of her room and made ready to bathe.
She then saw the wall clock and exclaimed out loud, “Goodness! Seven-thirty? I have slept right through services!”
Miss Graves had informed her in an offhand manner that they were spared the necessity of trudging with the girls to the town chapel because a kindly parson, known as a ‘field minister’, traveled from Bath and volunteered his services every Sunday morning promptly at six-thirty, before continuing on the open road to the open fields to offer service for the poor who had no easy way to get to church.
Sassy scrambled about her room, poured cold water into her bowl, and shivered as she washed up before throwing on her undergarments. It was Sunday, and she chose one of her better gowns, a peacock-blue velvet trimmed around the low scooped neckline with cream-colored lace. The gown was high-waisted and long-sleeved. The skirt fell in a straight line to the scalloped hem at her ankles.
She brushed her long hair and tied it back with a ribbon, allowing wisps of curls to trim her forehead and ears.
She managed the few buttons at her back and with a harried exclamation peeped out of her door in the hope of finding a stray girl about. She was in luck; Molly was coming up the stairs with an armful of sheets.
“Molly, thank goodness you are here! I am having a frightful time with these back buttons—would you mind terribly?”
“Oh, Miss, how grand you look! Oh, but you should always wear colors. What a shame that you are hidden here at Netherby.” Molly sighed as she put down her load on a wall table and buttoned Sassy’s gown.
Sassy laughed and said, “Molly, your father mentioned that you were enjoying lessons with Miss Saunders before she left, and I thought, if you liked, we—you and I—could continue those lessons.”
Molly’s face lit up. “Ye don’t have to do that.”
“I know, so that proves it, doesn’t it? That I want to.” Sassy touched the girl’s shoulder. “We could start this evening, after dinner.”
“Oh thankee, Miss, but she won’t like it if she hears of it.”
“Well, my time is my own, isn’t it?” Sassy smiled at her, hesitated, and finally made up her mind to ask, “Molly, did Miss Saunders have drapes?”
Molly’s face went stern. “Papa says I am not to go on about her, and I don’t want to cause him trouble, which is what he says my mouth will bring him if I don’t stop going on about Miss Saunders.”
“Rest assured that what you tell me will be confidential, but why should a question about drapes elicit all this mystery?”
“’Tis not so simple as it seems, Miss, as you will soon hear,” Molly whispered after looking over her shoulder. “It took Miss Saunders the better part of a month to save up and buy some fine pink cloth—real pretty it was. Bought it the day she vanished, in fact.”
“How do you know this?” Sassy felt a cold chill wiggle up her spine.
“She showed the cloth to me. I even offered to help her make them up, but she wouldn’t have it. Said I worked hard enough around here already. Does that sound like she was planning to run off?”
“No, it doesn’t, and what happened to the fabric?”
“Well …” Molly hesitated.
“Good gracious, Molly! Well what? Do you think she has come to some harm?”
“I will tell ye this—something had Miss Saunders spooked. She wouldn’t speak of it. I asked her if something was wrong, and she told me not to worry my young head over it and would say no more.”
“Then maybe her trouble called her away, and she took the cloth with her?”
“No, Miss Winthrop, so I’ll tell ye that in the end I made her give me the fabric. I did and told her I would work on them. She would not have let me do that if she meant to leave, I just know it.”
Sassy frowned. “I shall have to give this some thought, but for now, I must rush if I am to make it for the service in town.”
“That be at nine, Miss, and Mistress Sallstone drives there in her carriage. She won’t like having to take you up, but there ain’t any way she can refuse you a ride if you was to ask her,” Molly said, smiling impishly.
“I think I would rather walk,” Sassy said and smiled back at the girl ruefully.
Molly chuckled. “She’d like that even less. Why, what a figure she would cut, letting one of her teachers walk all the way to parish while she drove in comfort?” Molly shook her head. “Neither one of ye will enjoy it, but there it is.”
Molly had told Sassy that the headmistress was in her office. Sucking in air and picking up her blue redingote and chip bonnet, she went and knocked firmly at Miss Sallstone’s office door.
“Y-es?” Miss Sallstone called out irritably.
Disheartened, Sassy’s shoulders drooped at the thought of having to endure even a twenty-minute ride beside the woman. She identified herself, and a moment later, Miss Sallstone appeared before her looking somewhat haggard. She wore an ensemble of brown and yellow, complete with a dark brown velvet bonnet trimmed with enormous yellow flowers and a yellow bird.
Sassy could not help the blink but restrained the giggle as Miss Sallstone said, “Miss Winthrop, what is it you wish?”
“I am so very sorry to inconvenience you, ma’am, but I have missed the school chapel service and was hopeful of accompanying you to the parish church, which I am told you attend every Sunday.”
The headmistress’s eyes narrowed, but she managed an insincere smile. “Ah, I see. Well, I suppose I have no choice, do I? However, I should like to caution you that this is not something I shall look on with compliance in the future.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Sassy dryly. “It is something I shall try to avoid, I do assure you.”
The angle to which Miss Sallstone put up her chin told Sassy that her meaning was not lost on the headmistress. “Come along then, Miss Winthrop … don’t dawdle.”
Sassy neither dawdled or hurried but walked at a decorous pace some ten feet behind the headmistress until they reached the front courtyard, where a small and well-sprung, if somewhat dated, carriage awaited them.
An elderly groom held the door of the carriage open wide, and Sassy followed the headmistress into the carriage and sat opposite her.
Facing Miss Sallstone was not something Sassy relished, but the knowledge that the headmistress was just as uncomfortable made her sense of humor tickle her sense of the ridiculous.
They rode in silence until Miss Sallstone picked an imaginary speck off her skirt and said, “Dr. Bankes advises me that you have already made some very notable acquaintances in the vicinity.”
“Oh?” Sassy returned, careful to maintain a non-committed tone and expression.
“Now, what sort of reply is ‘oh’, Miss Winthrop?”
“Simply the sort of reply your statement required, ma’am,” Sassy said quietly.
“It wasn’t a statement, it was a question,” Miss Sallstone returned, frowning.
“I mistook it for a statement.”
“For the love of—you are the most exasperating young woman, Miss Winthrop. Are you deliberately avoiding the question?”
“Of course not, ma’am. I hadn’t realized you were questioning Dr. Bankes’s word.”
“I was not!” the headmistress returned, a scratch away from a shout. “I was merely …” She took a deep breath and calmed herself with obvious restraint. “I was merely trying to make idle conversation with you, as you must admit having made a conquest of the Marquis of Dartmour is a topic of conversation.”
“Conquest?” Sassy shrugged her shoulders with a short laugh. “Fustian! Oh, do excuse me, ma’am, but really! The marquis is not the sort one makes a conquest of. He is far too hardened a flirt.”
“The doctor seemed to think the marquis looked as though he were interested in you.”
“Did he? Things are rarely what they appear,�
�� said Sassy.
They sat in busy-minded silence, and Sassy felt as though the air they shared were peppered and difficult to swallow. At long last, their driver pulled up to the church.
Sassy alighted after Miss Sallstone was helped out of the coach by the driver, and no sooner had her dark boots touched the sandy earth than a musical voice brought both their heads around to Miss Delleson’s pink and white prettiness.
“Miss Winthrop—how delightful. Oh, Percy, do look who is here,” Sophia Delleson said, taking up Sassy’s gloved hands in her own and squeezing them as though they had been friends forever.
Mr. Lutterel tipped his hat, and although Sassy smiled a welcome, she found her gaze shifting past him in search of a certain marquis.
What sounded like a very unladylike, albeit very quiet, oath brought Sassy’s attention back to the woman at her side. Miss Sallstone’s face was a storm of emotions, and Sassy would have at that point introduced her to Miss Delleson had she not turned on her heels and stomped off towards the church’s open doors.
“Miss Winthrop, allow me to introduce you to Lord Grey,” Sophia continued, drawing forward a young man whom Sassy judged to be no more than twenty years of age though he looked fifteen.
Lord Grey swept Sassy an exaggerated bow, both practiced and overdone, but as he came up from this, he looked towards Sophia and saw that not only had she placed her gloved hand on Percy’s arm, but that her twinkling eyes were looking up at Percy’s face. He sought to repair that situation and thrust himself with some force between the couple.
This struck Sassy as so comical it was all she could do to stifle the giggles that rose to her throat. It was at that moment her eyes found the marquis’s blue and laughing orbs. They exchanged a ‘look’ and silently laughed together.
“Miss Winthrop.” Sophia escaped both suitors, took Sassy’s arm, and sighed. “What is your given name, for it is nonsense for us to continue to be formal when I know we shall be great friends.”
“Shall we?” Sassy teased.
“Yes, for I know I was horrid to you yesterday early on, but I was in a terrible mood, and you are not the sort to hold a grudge. You must call me Sophy, what shall I call you?”
