“Oh, piffle!” Miss DeWitt set aside the tiny scissors she’d been using to fashion her creations. “I’m so clumsy.” She tucked the pad of her index finger against her lips. “One wants the scissors to be sharp, but then one fails to exercise adequate care.”
Madeline passed her a scrap of cloth from her workbox. “I’ve done the same thing countless times. Wrap it snugly, and the bleeding will soon stop.” Madeline’s mishaps had been with kitchen knives, not parlor scissors.
“The woman who takes this house in hand will have a great challenge before her,” Mrs. Fanning said, resting a hand on the mantel as if starting over on a scene at a theatrical rehearsal. “Jack must be made to see that his bachelor ways no longer serve him. He should be entertaining, riding out to the local meets, spending the Season in London, and donating to the Oxford charities. The lady of the house will have to guide him in these undertakings without being seen to influence his choices.”
Lucy Anne’s cutwork lay in her lap, a spot of blood marring the white paper she’d been snipping at.
No help from that quarter, but then, Lucy Anne was shrewd.
“Why not simply explain to your son that he’s neglecting the responsibilities of his station?” Madeline asked.
She respected Jack for choosing the magistrate’s responsibilities over weeks of waltzing in London. She understood why a soldier who’d seen too much violence would eschew fox hunting, and she grasped why lavish meals intended to impress the local gentry would hold no appeal for Jack.
Jack Fanning was not a boy, not a lordling playing at life. He was a man who’d spent months with death as his cellmate, and he need not impress anybody by appeasing appearances.
“Do you think I haven’t tried to show Jack the error of his ways, Miss Hennessey?” On an indignant swish of skirts, Mrs. Fanning took the place on the sofa beside Lucy Anne. “He’s as stubborn as his father. Thank God for Jeremy, who has become my sole comfort, despite his unimpressive demeanor.”
Madeline leaned across the low table, plucked Lucy Anne’s ruined attempt from her lap, and pitched it into the fire.
“I enjoy Reverend Fanning’s company very much,” Madeline said. “He is cheerful, kind, honest, and a credit to you in every way, Mrs. Fanning.” Also a very attractive man, who like Jack, had not a vain bone in his body.
“I quite agree,” Lucy Anne said, examining her injured finger. “You have two fine sons, Mrs. Fanning. Very different, but both remarkable gentlemen.”
Lucy Anne shot Madeline a glance from beneath lowered lashes. Let the old besom argue with that, her expression seemed to say.
Madeline winked at her, while Mrs. Fanning marched off to the escritoire by the window. “I have tried so hard with those boys, and what thanks do I get? Jeremy can’t be bothered to curry favor with the bishop. Jack insists on keeping relics of his Indian adventures under my very nose. It’s endlessly trying, if you must know. A mother has hopes, and can endure only so much.”
Jack and Jeremy were sons to be proud of. Each man, in his way, was making a meaningful contribution to society, while Mrs. Fanning…
Mrs. Fanning was what every young woman should aspire to be. Well-provided-for, socially secure, respected by her family… also bored to tears, lonely, and meddlesome as a result.
“I hate to add to your burdens,” Madeline said, “but Mrs. Abernathy’s decision to leave her post has created a problem that ought not to be overlooked, one I’m sure neither Sir Jack nor Pahdi can address.”
Mrs. Abernathy had chosen to leave her post, a point Madeline wanted to emphasize.
“I will never deny my boys what aid I can give them,” Mrs. Fanning said, gazing out into the night. “Ungrateful though they might be.”
Nagged though they might be.
“The herbal was in disarray,” Madeline said, “and I’ve organized it as best I can, but I have no store of recipes for tisanes, poultices, or decoctions. Mrs. Abernathy either took them with her, or relied exclusively on memory and the efforts of the staff.”
“That’s not good,” Lucy Anne said. “My mama has a book—a whole shelf of books—for home remedies, stain removers, cleaning mixtures, and so forth. If somebody should fall ill…”
“Precisely,” Madeline said. “Then it will be too late to assemble the knowledge that should be guarded in any household, but so often isn’t.”
Mrs. Fanning perched on the gilt chair at the escritoire. “You’ve looked about for the simples and tisanes and found nothing?”
“I’ve looked. I’ve asked Cook and Pahdi, and they refer me to the stable master, who has excellent recipes for liniments.”
“Horse liniment won’t aid a putrid sore throat.” Lucy Anne had begun another creation, using the tiny scissors on a round of paper.
“That it will not,” Mrs. Fanning said, taking a sheet of foolscap from a drawer. “We must make a list, ladies. The health of the household is imperiled, and it’s up to us to repair the oversight.”
For another hour, while Lucy Anne littered paper trimmings all over the carpet, and Madeline painstakingly added flowers to her doves’ bower, Mrs. Fanning made her list.
The evening tea tray with biscuits arrived at ten of the clock, and the footman tarried long enough to build up the fire. All was snug and cozy, and Mrs. Fanning was gleefully absorbed in her task.
Madeline took a moment to appreciate the sheer luxury she enjoyed on a cold winter night.
Not far away, her aunts were likely shivering and hungry in their beds. How did a woman who had neither Mrs. Fanning’s security of station, nor Lucy Anne’s determination to find a good match, save two lonely old women from a fate they’d done nothing to deserve?
Chapter Ten
* * *
“Forgive the interruption, most esteemed sir,” Pahdi said with a bow. “I must report an irregular occurrence.”
Jack put aside his pen, because Pahdi determined on a report would not be deterred, and an afternoon with the Teak House ledgers had left Jack irritable.
“Out with it. If Apollo has got the tweenie with child, you needn’t pretty it up. They’ll be married by St. David’s Day, if I have to have Jeremy perform the service at gunpoint.”
Pahdi lifted the lid of the teapot growing cold at Jack’s elbow. “I do not pretend to fathom the subtleties of courting among the sophisticated Englishmen whom it is my honor to serve, but what purpose does a firearm serve at a celebration of nuptial love?”
“I spoke figuratively. I would inspire Apollo to a responsible attitude toward his offspring by any means necessary.”
“Of course. Inspiration about parental duties is ever wise, and in a tangential fashion, it’s about that very topic upon which I must report.”
Pahdi had been a youth when Jack had come home to England, but the late-afternoon light slanting through the windows showed him to be a man in his prime—a damned good-looking man.
What did he do for female companionship, or was his friendship with James his sole source of affection? Why, in ten years, had Jack never pondered this mystery about the person he’d known longest among his staff, somebody was family to him by marriage?
“Say your piece,” Jack replied, rising from his cushions. That Pahdi would make this report in the privacy of Jack’s chambers suggested the matter was delicate.
“I am the butler of Teak House,” Pahdi said, setting the tea tray on the sideboard. “The security of the premises and its people are my first concerns, because worrying about the owner of this handsome establishment is a cause lost to all sentient beings.”
“Your ability to deliver a sermon is entirely wasted outside the church.”
“In your unending generosity, you have conveyed that sentiment to me previously.” Pahdi took a spill from the jar on the mantel, used the fire in the hearth to light it, and lit the wall sconces one by one. “The matter I must bring to your attention concerns the morale and conduct of the household, and yet at least one of the parties involved does not answe
r to me. Your guidance is therefore required, lest I misstep in my ignorance of—”
“I will petition the crown to add circumlocution to the already impressive list of felonies under English law.”
“Several nights ago I was making my final tour of the premises before seeking my bed,” Pahdi said, tossing the burning taper into the fireplace. “Every night, I secure each lock and walk each floor with an eye toward an unlatched window, a candle set too close to the holiday greenery.”
Everything Pahdi did, he did quietly, and yet, trouble lurked at the end of the recitation as obviously as a lovesick elephant called to his mate.
“My gratitude for your vigilance is without limit. I don’t tell you that often enough.”
Pahdi’s glance was fleeting and disapproving. His notions of proper English behavior could fill a book, most of it based on Jack’s disappointing example.
“I perform duties for which I am generously compensated. My nightly inspection finishes up below stairs. I ensure the pantries are locked, the main kitchen fire banked, and that all is secure. The herbal is typically left unlocked, however, because anybody can wake with a need for a cup of chamomile tea, or a ginger tisane to settle the belly.”
Well, damn.
“Has somebody plundered the stores in the herbal?” Jack’s wits had been plundered there. Thoroughly, generously, repeatedly.
“Are you aware that Miss Hennessey took it upon herself to organize the herbal after the departure of that disgrace to domestic service whom it was your great misfortune to employ as a housekeeper?”
Pahdi was a gentleman. That he’d refer to Mrs. Abernathy so disparagingly was proof that the situation had been worse than Jack knew.
“My mother has decided to take up where Miss Hennessey left off,” Jack said. “She’s writing a recipe book for the herbal, which is a complete waste of time. Axel Belmont is among the most learned botanical authorities in the realm, and I need only—”
Pahdi gave him another disapproving look, though the butler had an entire arsenal of sighs, silences, and glances intended to reprove without a word.
“What?” Jack said, for this reproach included a hint of exasperation.
“Your mother will know remedies of which the learned and much-respected Mr. Belmont will have never heard.”
Possibly true. Mama’s memory was prodigious. “Then I’m glad she’s decided to memorialize her knowledge.”
“I was doubtless a robber of temples in a past life; a despoiler of shy, pious virgins; a sorrow to my mother and her mother too, for your response tempts me to imprudent speech.”
“And in the next life, you will be butler to Old Scratch if you don’t get ’round to your point.”
“Old—?”
“You will be a butler in hell,” Jack said. “Shy, pious Anglican fellow that you are.”
“Those who disrespect their mothers can look forward to emptying chamber pots during cholera epidemics in many subsequent lives. My own sainted father assured me of this, and he would not lie to his beloved son.”
“Pahdi, what is the problem? I’m the magistrate, you’ll recall, and the essence of that dubious honor is that I solve problems, such as the law allows.”
Pahdi picked up the quilt at the foot of Jack’s bed and refolded it so the edges matched exactly.
“I have reason to believe somebody was making in appropriate use of the privacy afforded by the herbal several nights ago. Miss Hennessey had been working in there, and thus the fire was lit. I included the herbal on my final inspection as a result. The door was locked, so the identities of the happy couple remain unknown to me, and while my personal opinion is of no moment whatsoever, Mrs. Fanning would likely frown on copulation among the medicinals.”
Mama would have eighteen varieties of hysterics. Thank God that Madeline had reminded Jack to lock the door.
“You have no idea who might have been enjoying themselves at such an hour of the night?”
Pahdi rarely made eye contact with his social superiors, and yet, he missed nothing. Jack admired the red brilliance of the sun setting beyond the window rather than meet Pahdi’s gaze.
“I have no idea, honored sir, who would so disrespect your household with such goings-on.”
“If you did know,” Jack said, rearranging the tassel holding the curtain back, “what would you tell the wayward couple?”
Pahdi knew. He knew very well who’d been behind that locked door, and he’d taken several days to consider how he’d raise the matter with the male half of that couple.
“The couple is not wayward,” Pahdi said. “The fellow involved is the wayward party. First, he does not bother to pleasure his lady in one of the many beds in this fine house, or even to favor her with a bed of fragrant hay in a private corner of the stable. Second, he avails himself of the lady’s charms at an hour when the servants are not all abed, thus jeopardizing her good name among the help. Third, there being no married men on this property, the fellow is in a position to offer the lady the protection of his name, but he instead plucks for himself the momentary pleasure of a blossom that ought to be cultivated as the rarest of blooms —”
This was the sermon Jack had been flagellating himself through long, sleepless nights. The pleasure of making love with Madeline Hennessey had been remarkable, like visiting a scene from memory and finding it even lovelier than he’d recalled.
But the guilt… Jack had forgotten the corrosive, half-acknowledged abrasion of guilt that scraped the chains of conscience across even beautiful memories when a man strayed from the rules. A young man could drink, fight, or march that guilt away.
A mature man dealt in honesty. “She doesn’t want me, Pahdi.”
“Then you are to be severely condemned,” Pahdi said, taking a stray tea cup from the desk and adding it to the tray. “A woman’s willingness is hers alone to give. You taught me that.”
“She was willing,” Jack said. “She was ferociously willing—insistent, even—but my hand in marriage was not her objective.”
And that was… bewildering, annoying, baffling. For the first time in Jack’s life, he grasped the frustration women experienced unrelentingly. They waited for a man to propose, waited for him to tire of the charms of foreign shores, waited for him to take an interest in his own children, waited for him to decide on which night he’d pay a call to their bedroom.
How did the ladies endure such powerlessness? The notion that a fellow was worth waiting for paled compared to the actual experience of being… disregarded.
Marrying Madeline Hennessey would be problematic, but that Jack was prohibited from even considering the idea bothered him. He—the knighted hero of Parrakan, master of the house, the king’s man, and all-around decent-if-charmless fellow—wasn’t worth marrying.
“The lady does not regard you as a suitable party?” Pahdi asked, oh so carefully.
“Apparently not.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve allowed an impertinent rascal the position of butler.”
The joke fell flat. Pahdi’s expression shuttered. He bowed and lifted the tray.
“Pahdi, Madeline defends you at every turn. She’s the last woman who’d take exception to my choice of butler. The problem is me.”
Pahdi set the tray back down. “She is a wise woman, for you are a problem, if I might speak honestly without risking durance vile.”
Thank God, Pahdi always managed to speak honestly—in his way. “If you have wisdom to share, you must not withhold it.”
“The lady does not regard you as a suitable party. You must change her mind. Did Saras teach you nothing?”
Saras had taught Jack a great deal, some of it involving feathers, potions, toys…. “She taught me to listen to her brother, when that worthy deigns to speak in something clearer than Delphic mutterings.”
“You have great wealth. Bah, many have wealth. You have a knighthood. Your Regent has created hundreds of knights. Why should Miss Hennessey look with favor on
your suit?”
Jack sat on the windowsill, putting cold air at his back, the better to force the gears of his mind to turn.
“Because being my wife should be preferable for Madeline to a life of stepping and fetching, waiting on others, and doing as she’s told.”
“Should it? Should it really? The uncompensated and unending joys of matrimony, with the attendant risk of death in childbed, the surrender of all of a woman’s possessions to her husband, the loss of a right to spend even her own wages or hire her own servants, is preferable to earning a salary and the occasional half-day off in service?”
The questions were rhetorical and maddening as hell. “Or course marriage is preferable to service.” If the woman married a good fellow.
A very good fellow. A rarity among fellows. A damned saint with a fortune to spare.
Maybe. Childbirth killed women every day, and it was an awful death.
Pahdi cast forth a sigh that would have done God proud on the occasion of Adam and Eve dooming humanity to life outside the garden.
“I leave you to reflect on your faultless convictions,” Pahdi said, bowing, then taking up the tray.
He closed the door quietly—a trick, that, when a heavy tray had to be balanced—and Jack made himself count to ten before he snatched the nearest pillow from the bed and hurled it against the wall.
* * *
“Excuse me, Pahdi,” Madeline said. “I’m looking for Sir Jack.”
The butler held a silver tea tray, which had to be heavy. Though he was a slight fellow, the weight didn’t seem to burden him.
“Sir Jack has sought the privacy of his chambers to review ledgers, Miss Hennessey. If you like, I can send a footman—”
“No need,” Madeline said. “I’ll find him myself.”
Pahdi’s expression never wavered. In his eyes, Madeline saw unspoken warning nonetheless.
Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) Page 18
