Chapter 14
On Monday morning the east wind was keen, and Josie went shiveringly downstairs to find Lady Godiva huddling by the bottom step, trying to keep warm.
“Poor little thing,” she said, bending to caress the pig. “We shall have to make you a coat, my dear, to keep out the cold.”
She glanced up as the door opened and an icy gust swept across the Great Hall. Devenish came in, the collar of his long riding coat turned high, and his cheeks aglow. He snatched off his high-crowned hat and flourished it at her, two cats and a kitten rushing past him and racing for the kitchens.
“Slugabed! I suppose now the last of your guests is gone, you mean to rest on your laurels while the rest of the world labours.”
“But of course,” she said, dimpling a smile as she tripped over to take his hat and coat and hand them to the lackey who was perfectly capable of performing that small task, and knew better than to attempt it. “Where have you been? And have you eaten breakfast?”
“I’ve been out with Little. We had a look at the access road and I think are agreed on a just sharing of more permanent repairs.”
“Oh, splendid!” She clung to his arm and accompanied him to the breakfast parlour, where a bright fire sent flames licking up the chimney and the air was fragrant with the smells of coffee and toast. The table was set, a footman sprang forward to assist with chairs, Wolfe lurched in, followed by a maid bearing a laden tray, and Josie busied herself with coffee and cups. When the servants left them alone, Devenish said with a sigh, “Jove, but it’s nice to have the old place to ourselves again.”
“Yes, I know. But—oh, it was a wonderful ball, wasn’t it, Dev? Everything went so well, and—” She saw his stupefied expression and laughed merrily. “Well—all things considered … No, really, the King was so kind, and—”
“Kind! Do you realize, my girl,” he said, waving a crumpet at her, “what we went through, getting everyone’s belongings moved, and rooms cleaned and ready for the royal crew, only to have Prinny say airily at the last moment that they ‘must be getting back to Berkeley now’? Good Gad!”
“Yes, dear, but the poor soul thoroughly enjoyed himself, and the musicians seemed fairly well recovered by the time they left. And only think how Guy was vindicated!”
Slicing some tender ham, Devenish grinned. “True. Our Guy became quite a cause célèbre, and well past due!”
“And Faith as proud as though they were already wed.”
He paused, slanting a quick glance at her, then went on carving.
She held out her plate and he deposited some fine slices upon it, then served himself, adding two eggs from the covered tureen.
“Well?” he said mildly. “Why scowl at me? I said not a word.”
“You looked a whole chapter! Dev, he is exonerated! Surely you can see he cares for her. Sir William can no longer object.”
“Can he not? Guy would object. And it is no use for you to try and trick me into quarrelling with you, because I don’t intend to do so. You’re much too pretty this morning.”
She tried, but could not restrain a smile. “How wicked of you to so efficiently spike my guns, sir.”
“Isn’t it. But I’ve done it and will now turn the conversation in another direction.” He laid down his knife and leaned to put his hand over hers. “Happy, little one?”
“Yes. Oh, Dev—so very happy. Thank you, thank you! I felt—like a princess!”
He smiled. “You looked like a princess. Winning every man’s heart, and—”
She leaned to him, her eyes like stars. “Did I, Dev? Every man’s?”
He took up another crumpet and began to butter it. “Well, not Prinny’s perhaps, but he is so besotted by Lady Conyngham, that—”
“Wretch,” she scolded. “I did not mean the King. Can you guess who—I did mean…? Before you take a third crumpet, that is.”
Startled, he looked at his plate and the crumpet still remaining. He felt his face become hot, and Josie said with a sigh, “I suppose it is asking a lot of you. At your advanced age.”
“To remember my manners and not be a glutton?” he asked, flustered.
“No. To guess whose heart I have won.”
“Oh,” he said, concentrating upon his abundant crumpets.
“Never mind, dear,” said Josie, watching him from under her lashes. “I will give you a hint. I received another offer at the ball.”
He began to butter his recent addition again. “Jeremy said he thought you might have. Young Drummond, eh? He’s a—er, jolly fine lad.”
“Lucinda Carden says that ‘lad’ is a word belonging in the stable.”
“Yes. Absolutely right. Well, then. I’d think John is—er, just what any girl would—ah, wish for.”
“But then,” she murmured, obligingly moving the rack of crumpets closer to his hand, “you know so pitifully little about my wishes, don’t you, Papa?”
“No. I mean—yes. That is to say—don’t you fancy him?”
She was silent. “He is, as you say, everything any girl would wish for.”
“Oh, absolutely.” He bit rather savagely into his first and neglected crumpet. “Salt of the earth.”
“And,” she mused, “he says he—cannot live without me. A girl likes to hear that. I tell you, so you’ll know.”
“Hum,” he said, eyeing her uncertainly. “I can understand that she might.” He sighed, saw her swift, bright glance, and blurted out, “Poor—Lyon. The boy adores you.”
“Yes. But—so does the man I have chosen.”
The man she had chosen. “He does,” he said. “I mean—he does? Well, he would, of course. Have you—er, told him? Of your decision?”
“You dropped a piece.” She pointed to a scrap of ham. “Thank you.” And having waited through an interval while she smiled so dreamily he could have strangled her, he said, “Well? Have you?”
“Have I what, dearest dodderer?”
“Told young Drummond.”
“Good gracious, of course not! A girl does not accept an offer the first time she’s asked.”
“No. I suppose not.” He smiled cheerily. “You pretty creatures love to keep a fellow dangling.”
“It is more than that, Dev. John must consider carefully. His papa will likely be difficult because I am such an—an unknown quantity.”
Rage blazed in his eyes, and the hand on the napkin he had just neatly deposited beside his plate clenched itself.
“Besides,” Josie said demurely, “I have to think of … you.”
He started. “Me?”
“Well, of course, you great silly. Who’s to look after you when I am off somewhere being a young matron?”
Staring at her, he thought, ‘My little Elf … a young matron…’ And he said in an automatic response, “Isabella.”
Her mischief routed, she said irritably, “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Do be serious!”
“I am perfectly serious. The fact that you do not admire the lady has kept me from—ah, declaring myself, but since you are in a way to being comfortably settled, I can now be frank.”
She snarled, “What a pity you cannot also be truthful!” His only response being a sigh, she enquired with malice aforethought, “Are you feeling not quite the thing? You look sick. Or sickening. I cannot be sure which.”
“Do you know,” he said with a dreamy look, “Isabella says my hair drives her to distraction?”
She glared at the fair, rather windblown curls. “I can see why it might. Perhaps did you have the grey streak dyed it would not so offend.”
“And that my eyes,” he went on, keeping them lowered so as not to reveal his mirth at her excellent riposte, “are blue as the Spanish skies.” He blinked at her soulfully.
“Does she so? Well, of course, I would not know, never having been to Spain. Is she Spanish, then? I’d fancied she might have gypsy blood. La, but with a scarf around her head and big gold earrings—”
Here, Devenish succumbing to shouts of laughter, s
he sprang up and ran around the table to tug at his hair until he begged for mercy.
She sank to her knees beside his chair and, laughing with him, said, “Wretched, most evil of men! You were teasing me. It was all a fudge, after all.” She took up his hand and held it to her cheek. “Own it, you villain. You have not the least interest in that predatory creature.”
His expression changed. Despite all his stern self-lectures, his hand seemed to turn of its own volition to caress her velvety skin. With a real effort, he said, “Bella cares for me, my Elf. She is beautiful and much admired, and is, besides, a sophisticated lady. I think we will deal very well together. And now that I—”
She jumped up and hissed, “Now that you are free! Is that it? You are rid of me at last!”
“No—never that.” He pushed back his chair and stood, reaching for her hands, but she jerked them behind her and faced him, breathing tempestuously.
He said, “I’m not getting any younger, Josie. It is past time I was setting up my nursery. And Isabella is—very much of a woman.”
She was breathlessly still for a moment. Then, “Only think,” she said with a bright smile, “we shall be starting married life at the same time—you and I. Whoever would have … dreamed it.” And she turned and walked quickly from the room, leaving him to sit down again and stare blankly at the coffee pot.
After some while, there came a new arrival. Cornish stood beside the table, his face wooden, and a silver salver in one muscular hand which he thrust out while gazing at the top of the curtain rod.
Devenish reached rather wearily for the card, then turned about, glancing up also. “What’re you looking at?”
“A ’igh point, guv.”
“What the deuce are you talking about? What high point?”
Cornish lowered his gaze. “Crikey! If it wasn’t giving me a crick in me perishin’ neck! But that’s what ’e says you gotta do. ‘Stare at a ’igh point,’ ’e says. Somethink to do with a cove called Dicky Rorum.”
A quirk disturbed the stern set of Devenish’s lips. “And who is your instructor in decorum?”
“That there lump o’ ice—Finlayson. ’Im what Mr. Wolfe brung in.”
Casting his mind back, Devenish recollected that Josie had said something about a very frigid footman. “Oh—is that the pale fellow with the light eyes?”
“Ar. Sticks out, they does. Like a perishin’ flounder.”
“Hum. Well, he’s gone, so forget him and do not be staring at my ceilings. It unnerves me.” He glanced down at the card in his hand, which contained the name of the vintners who had provided their vast quantities of champagne.
“No, ’e ain’t gone, Sir Guv. Young Mackey took ill with the grippe, so Wolfe kept ’im on. Finlayson treats the old duck like ’e was a bitta dirt, so Wolfe’s proper took with ’im. Cor!”
Frowning at the card, Devenish said, “Why am I given this?”
“Cos Wolfe’s proper doddipolled, poor old cock. Arst if you could see the cove.”
Devenish groaned. “Very well, Sir Elegance. Ask Wolfe and Mr.—er, Short to step into my study.”
Mr. Short, who was indeed short, was outraged. He could, and did, supply copies of the original orders and waybills in support of Mr. Wolfe’s orders. He was quite willing to take back any unused crates—or at least, he had been willing to do so, until Mr. Wolfe had “cast such a haspersion on the fair name of Messrs. Short and Brinkley!” The champagne, he averred, his square face becoming mottled with indignation, had been in perfect condition when it had left their warehouse, and furthermore, it was clear to see that the tainted bottles in Mr. Devenish’s cellars were not tainted at all, but had been deliberately tampered with after they had been delivered. “Hi do not know why, sir,” he said huffily. “Hi can only say has our company his one has serves the noblest of England’s families!”
This declaration reinforced the unease that had gripped Devenish since the apparent “spoilage” had first been detected. It was very likely, he thought grimly, that whoever had poisoned the champagne had also soured the cream. A nasty little plot to turn Josie’s party into a disaster. The tainted wine bottles had been put at the back of the cellar so that whoever was responsible could serve the ugly brew at the most effective moment, and to the most distinguished guests. The thought that the King would quite logically have been chosen to be made ill brought sweat starting onto his brow. He controlled his dismay, however, and set himself to placate the offended tradesman. Mr. Short, bristling, encountered the full force of an engaging grin, and was scuppered. The interview proceeded on a far more agreeable plane. By the time Mr. Short departed, having been plied with his own champagne and convinced a disgruntled servant must have been the culprit, he was in an extremely mellow mood, expressed his disgust at so heinous a crime, said he hoped Mr. Devenish would “go very ’ard on the villin,” and promised to take back as many crates as had not been tampered with and were not needed.
Wolfe returned, having handed the vintner over to Mrs. Robinson, to find the master leaning back in his chair, his riding boots irreverently propped on the littered desk top. Wringing his hands, the butler was near tears as he said he had feared just such a scheme, but had no least notion as to which of the servants would have done such a dreadful thing.
Devenish commanded that Josie was not to learn of it, and said he very much doubted it had been one of their own people. “Likely, one of the temporary servants,” he said grimly, “and I doubt we’ll ever know who it was.”
“But … but—why, sir? I can think of no one we have turned off these past years who might harbour a grudge. Should we have the constable in?”
He was so distraught that it became necessary for Devenish to invent a suspicion of a friend of Claude Sanguinet who had chosen this method of revenge, and sent the old man off, bristling with wrath that such evil schemes had been brought against his beloved master.
Left alone, Devenish stared frowningly at his boots. It was very possible that the little fantasy he had invented for Wolfe was the true answer. He was not without enemies, but he knew of few men who would resort to such dastardly means of exacting vengeance. Claude’s adherents would. His frown deepened as Elliot Fontaine’s face came to mind, but he had not really quarrelled with Fontaine until the ball itself, and the business of implanting an agent in the house and poisoning the champagne must have been planned in advance. Little certainly disliked him, but the very thought of someone as straightforward as the Squire resorting to such underhanded methods was laughable. Old Wolfe’s absentmindedness had saved the day, certainly, for without the extra order they would very likely have run short of usable bottles. And had the lackeys not crept back there to have their own party—! It did not bear thinking of! Josie’s ball might well have gone down as the disaster of the season. He could imagine how devastated the dear little soul would—
“Villain!” accused the “dear little soul,” sweeping into the study with a swish of taffeta and a whiff of Essence de Printemps.
With a guilty squawk, Devenish swung his legs from the desk top, thereby depositing a good half of the contents on the floor. He rubbed nervously at a scratch his spur had left on the mahogany, and jumped up. “I didn’t—” he began, but was quelled by one small hand tossed imperiously into the air.
“Didn’t me no didn’ts,” decreed Josie, with what he was wont to term her “Empress of Elves” air. “You most certainly did!”
“Did what, your Imperial Majesty?”
She fixed him with what she supposed to be a basilisk stare. “I heard a carriage.”
“Did you now?” he said admiringly.
She stamped closer, her brows drawn down, her eyes shooting sparks. Devenish retreated until he fell into the chair once more.
“Who?” she demanded, standing over him.
“You mean—whose.”
Her jaw set and her small hands lifted, fingers crooked.
“Now—Josie…!”
“Was it Elliot Fontaine?”
>
The laughter left his eyes and he stood again. “It was not. Won’t you sit down?”
“Are you and Elliot going to”—her great eyes searched his face—“to meet?”
“I sincerely hope not. Josie, if you will sit—”
She clasped her hands together. “Then, you did not call him out?”
“No such thing.”
“Thank heaven,” she breathed, and stretched out one hand. He took it and on the instant her grip had tightened and she was inspecting the skinned knuckles. “You told me you scraped this.”
“Ow!” Trying unsuccessfully to free himself from her clinging fingers, he mumbled, “I did.”
“On what, you wicked, deceitful creature?”
“Oh, I don’t know—some sort of thing. What matter? Now, if you—”
“Tell me! You attacked him, didn’t you?”
“I—er, wouldn’t say I—attacked him, exactly. One doesn’t attack a slug. One merely—”
Tears glistened in her eyes. “Dev—for heaven’s sake!”
“Now, don’t cloud up, for Lord’s sake. I sort of—ah, levelled him.” She threw her hands to her mouth, gazing at him with such tragedy that he added a feeble, “Just a little bit.”
She sank into his chair and, relieved, he sat against the edge of the desk, but almost immediately she sprang up again so that he had, perforce, to come to his feet once more.
“Why must you be forever rushing from one end of England to the other,” she demanded rather unjustly, “fighting and brawling and—”
“The deuce, Josie! I’ve scarce left these hallowed halls this past—”
“You couldn’t wait to ride off with Tris and Jeremy and the rest, to help Mitchell when—”
“Good Gad! Did you expect me to stay home and twiddle my thumbs while Claude slaughtered poor Mitch?”
“You could have let the others go, but—no!” With a wild gesture, she cried, “You know you are not as—as able to—”
His face bleak, he interjected a stiff “I am still—I hope—a man.”
Josie was extremely afraid, wherefore she ignored the danger signals and rushed on. “You are a child! A naughty, headstrong, undisciplined little boy who cannot be left an instant but what he is—”
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