“I’ve had mine already,” he said. “Have yours while I look for my skates. I think they must be in the cupboard under the back stairs, with the fishing tackle. We’ve not had a hard freeze like this in five years.”
“Your skates are hanging around your neck,” said Abigail, dropping her paintbox. The lid fell open, spilling tubes of paint onto the snow. She hastily began shoving everything back in.
“These are not my skates,” he told her, kneeling down to help her. “They’re yours.”
Abigail gulped. His face was just inches from hers and she was now certain she must have imagined that kiss. There was no possible way this beautiful man would ever kiss her again after her absurd behavior on the previous day. She imagined it would be quite a different experience if he did, now that his beard was gone. She could actually see his lips.
“My skates?” she stammered. “I haven’t any skates.”
He scowled at her. “You haven’t changed your mind about going skating with me? Look here, I deliberately postponed my morning business to take you skating.”
She stared at him in surprise. “I can’t think why. I never agreed to go skating with you.”
Cary began to laugh; the girl’s pretense was so outrageous. “You certainly did!”
Abigail summoned her dignity. Handsome or not, he wasn’t going to get away with lying and bullying. He was not her father, after all. “I said no, Mr. Wayborn,” she said, employing more icy civility than he thought strictly necessary. “By that I meant absolutely not, under no circumstances, and out of the question.”
“You may have said no, absolutely not, under no circumstances, and out of the question,” he conceded. “But then you whistled for my attention and tossed your shoes to me from the window! This is what’s known in the Royal Academy of Science as a contradiction.”
Abigail gaped at him, infuriated. “I think perhaps your vanity has caused you to hallucinate, Mr. Wayborn! You know perfectly well I did no such thing.”
Cary grimaced; in his dream, she’d been nothing but sweet, rational, and compliant. “I have the shoes to prove it,” he pointed out. “They hang about me like Mr. Coleridge’s albatross!”
“My shoes!” Abigail exclaimed in dismay. “You’ve put blades on them, too. How dare you go into my room and take my shoes! Who do you think you are?”
“Go into your room?” he repeated, his face growing hot. “You tossed them out of the window at me, you little…” He caught himself in time. “You led me to believe we had an appointment, then you dash all my hopes with buckets of cold water.”
“I daresay you will find someone else to go skating with you!”
“But I want you, cousin,” he said, in his best sincere manner.
“You’d be just as happy to escort Mrs. Nashe,” she accused him.
The justness of the charge caused him to lose his temper. “Possibly even happier,” he said coolly. “But I shouldn’t mind taking you instead.”
Abigail’s face turned red as a broiled tomato. She began to stammer. “You insufferable…conceited…vile…Shall I tell you what I really think of you?”
“Don’t I look interested?”
“If you were a painting,” said Abigail, her eyes flashing, “I could sit and stare at you all day long with the greatest of pleasure.”
“Thank you, Cousin. That is most gratifying.”
“But you are not a painting!”
“No, I’m not,” he politely agreed. “I never was.”
Silently fuming, Abigail grabbed her paintbox and stalked towards the house as fast as her long skirts and the snow would permit her to go, leaving her blanket behind on the rock. Cary did not deign to pick it up. Nor did he open the door for her when she achieved the portico; but he did whistle a pleasant tune as he waited for her to do so. Abigail tucked her box under one arm and stormed inside.
“I did not invite you in, sir,” said Abigail, already halfway to the staircase door as he made his way to the big fireplace in the entrance hall.
His lip curled. “I’m paying a morning call to my tenant, Mrs. Spurgeon. Besides,” he added, pointing to Angel as the corgi hopped onto one of the fireside chairs, “I have to collect my dog. Don’t let me keep you, Cousin.”
She didn’t. She closed the door firmly behind her and he could hear her heavy boots on the stairs. He sighed. Why he should want to kiss a girl who walked like a gouty Cumberland carriage horse was beyond him, but he could not deny that it was so.
He was joined shortly thereafter by Vera Nashe. The widow was looking extremely fetching in a clinging gown of sheer black muslin layered over white. He wanted to kiss her, too. She so graciously returned his pleasantries that he even entertained a short-lived hope of renewing their flirtation.
“Do please forgive my unseemly outburst of last night,” she said, looking at him through her dark lashes as he bent over her hand. “I’m quite ashamed of myself.”
“My dear Mrs. Nashe,” he began fervently.
She did not allow him to finish. “I’ll tell Miss Smith you’re here to take her skating,” she said, snatching her hand away. “She will be delighted, I’m sure.”
Cary grimaced. “I’ve already informed her myself, Mrs. Nashe. But she says she will not go. Could I not persuade you to go in her place?” He gave her his most charming smile.
Mrs. Nashe’s injured eyes reminded him that it was neither politic nor polite to ask one female to take the place of another, and he silently cursed himself. “I don’t mean to imply that you and Miss Smith are interchangeable,” he said, stumbling from one blunder into another.
She gave him an inscrutable smile. “No?”
“Rather, I would be as glad of your company as I would be of hers. Gladder still.”
The compliment seemed lost on Vera Nashe. “Can you not persuade Miss Smith to go?” she gently inquired. “It would do her good, I think, to be amongst other young people. She is shy, of course, but not timid. We cannot allow her to live like a hermit crab. I depend upon you, sir, to draw her out of her shell.”
No woman had ever fobbed Cary Wayborn off onto another, and he didn’t like it. His glorious morning was fast becoming a grim nightmare.
“I don’t know how to draw our hermit from her shell without being snapped in two by her claws,” he said, trying not to show Vera how much her rejection had stung his pride.
“I daresay you’ll manage,” Vera told him. “I quite consider I’ve done my part by tossing her shoes out of the window. I see you had blades put on. The rest is up to you, sir.”
Cary stared at her. “You tossed the shoes?”
Vera laughed softly. “Forgive me. I heard the two of you talking outside. I could tell the poor girl wanted to go skating with you, but she was determined to allow her pride to get in the way of a good thing. Poor Miss Smith. When she met you in London, I’m afraid she mistook you for Sir Galahad, the most gentle, perfect knight of the Round Table! It was quite a blow to her when she discovered her idol had feet of clay.”
“I perceive that Miss Smith has been confiding in you, madam,” Cary said stiffly.
She raised an eyebrow. “The kiss? Yes, she told me. Do go easy on the poor child, Mr. Wayborn! I daresay all she knows of men could be fitted into a nutshell, and when a girl is in a state of helpless innocence, a kiss is quite enough to sweep her away. As I’m sure you know.”
Cary frowned. If word got out that his kiss had been mistaken for a bat’s clumsy attack, he would very quickly become a laughingstock. Months of cursed celibacy would stretch into years, until, out of sheer desperation, he would be forced to wed one of the plump Mickleby girls.
Vera left him with a friendly warning. “You have about twenty minutes to make your escape, Mr. Wayborn, if you wish to do so without meeting my mistress. Mrs. Spurgeon is a puzzle Evans and I put together twice a day, and it takes us precisely twenty minutes to do it. She’s just getting out of bed now.”
The image of the Spurgeon’s Herculean proportions
climbing out of his bed caused Cary to shudder uncontrollably. He doubted he’d ever be able to sleep in that bed again without thinking of the lady’s manly shoulders and sweaty, powdered cleavage. Quickly, he rang the bell for a servant, and issued a summons for Miss Smith.
Once it was revealed that Mrs. Nashe was the shoe-throwing culprit, Miss Smith would be forced to ask his forgiveness for accusing him of taking her shoes. It would then be child’s play to convince her to go out with him. An inexperienced skater, she would naturally be forced to cling to him on the ice, which would afford him ample opportunity to make himself agreeable. In any case, he infinitely preferred Miss Smith’s scorn to Mrs. Spurgeon’s disgusting familiarity.
As he waited for the young woman, he became aware of a flurry of activity going on elsewhere in the house. At first the sounds were faint; he heard feet moving back and forth on the floor above him, going up and down various staircases. Voices mumbled behind this door and that. Finally, the hall door opened and Miss Smith came in wringing her hands. She had taken off her cloak. Her green plaid dress clashed resoundingly with her butterscotch hair, and her boots made a lot of noise. Angel ran to greet her.
Cary was struck again by his own physical reaction to her. She was not at all his usual sort of girl, and yet the attraction was inescapable. Not even her ugly dress could put him off. She glanced at him, looked away, and paced up the room, turning indecisively.
“May I be of some assistance to you, Cousin?” he inquired pleasantly.
Miss Smith looked at him. Clearly, she would have preferred eating a dog’s dinner to speaking to him. “Mr. Wayborn, sir,” she began haltingly, then halted altogether.
“I am listening, Miss Smith.” He smiled at her encouragingly.
She stumbled on. “I think we must—Do you suppose you could—?”
“Find it in my heart to forgive you? Well, perhaps, but where’s my incentive?”
Abigail was in too much distress to be baited. “Sir! I can’t find Paggles anywhere,” she said. “Would you be good enough to instigate a search of the house and grounds?”
“You would like me to instigate a search for Paggles?” he said slowly.
“Yes. Sir, I beg of you—”
“Certainly,” he replied, getting to his feet. “You had only to beg. It would be helpful, however, if you could tell me what a paggle is. And how many have you let loose in my house?”
Her face whitened. “Miss Paggles is my old nurse,” she said coldly.
“Just the one, then. And you have misplaced her? Pretty careless of you.”
He had misjudged the extent of her anxiety. “I have not misplaced her,” she shouted at him. “She was still abed when I went out. Now she’s nowhere to be found. None of the servants have seen her. If she has gone out, she hasn’t got her coat, nor her shoes. I wish you would take this seriously, Mr. Wayborn. She could be hurt, and it’s cold out.”
“Yes, all right. Steady on, Smith. Take me to her room.”
“She’s not in her room!” cried Abigail, maddened by his insouciant attitude. “I’ve searched the upstairs thoroughly. If she were in her room, I should not be here.”
“It seems reasonable to begin our search where the missing party was last seen,” he gently explained. “She can’t have gone far, and—forgive me—I think I know my own house better than you do. Take me to her room,” he repeated firmly, and this time Abigail meekly obeyed.
Paggles’s room was the mirror image of Abigail’s room next door, down to the red and white bed hangings and the Tudor roses on the ceiling. “Ah-ha!” Cary cried, as soon as Abigail had opened the door.
“What?” cried Abigail, her heart in her throat.
“Nothing. I do find it interesting, however, that you put your nurse in the room next to yours. Most people put their servants in the attics with the spiders. Do try to stay calm, Cousin. We’ve never lost a Paggles at Tanglewood Manor, and we never will.”
“Do you think she went through the wardrobe into my room?” Abigail inquired anxiously as he opened the big clothes press.
“Too full of clothes. A weasel couldn’t get through. Besides, if I can’t get it open—”
“But it’s really quite easy, if you touch it just so,” said Abigail, demonstrating how easily the back panel that separated Paggles’s clothes from her own could be made to disappear.
The sibilant hiss set Cary’s teeth on edge. Muttering under his breath, he went to the casement window. “Was this window open or closed?”
“Closed.” Abigail rushed to the window, pressing her forehead against the thick, leaded panes in an effort to see below. “Do you think she might have fallen out?”
“Not if it was closed. She could hardly fall out, then close the window behind her.”
“The wind might have blown it shut after,” Abigail said defensively.
“You’re right,” he said, opening the casement and looking down into the walled garden. The black stalks of the rosebushes were sheathed in ice, the fountain was frozen, and a gardener’s boy was shoveling snow from the path. “No sign of a broken nurse.”
Abigail leaned out of the window next to him. “Have you seen my nurse?” she called to the boy. “Older woman, white-haired, dressed in a nightgown?” The reply was negative.
“You know,” said Cary, closing the window, “she might have just slipped out the back door for a bit of a walk. How can you be sure she had neither coat nor shoes?”
“Because I hadn’t put them on her yet,” Abigail replied. “She was still in bed when I went out. She always waits for me.”
He hid a smile. “And do you always dress your old nurse?”
“She can no longer do it herself,” Abigail explained. “She’s rather special to me, you see. She was the only servant to come away with my mother from Westlands when she married my father. She’s been with me my whole life.”
He suddenly snapped his fingers. “I know just where she’s gone.”
“Where? Tell me, please.”
He caught her by the hand. “Where do old nurses go, after all?” he said, leading her down the hall to a door. “To the nursery, of course. Just as I thought,” he said, opening the door. The light was very dim, but Abigail could make out a set of narrow stairs clearly intended for use by the servants. “Footprints in the dust. You’re quite right, Cousin; she hasn’t got her shoes.”
Impatiently, Abigail pushed past him, running upstairs. The door to the nursery stood half-open. She went in, calling for her nurse. Carousel horses had been painted on the planked floor, but the light coming through the huge, cheerful windows had long since faded their bright colors. In a square of warm light, Paggles was seated in a rocking chair cradling a china-faced doll in her arms. Overwhelmed with relief, Abigail choked back a sob.
Paggles’s smile, though almost toothless, was lovely with contentment. “Good morning, Miss Abby. And Dickie-bird!” she added brightly as Cary came up behind Abigail. “How good of you to visit your old nursey. Such a good boy.”
“Dickie-bird?” Cary murmured in Abigail’s ear. “Cousin, I must protest.”
“She thinks you’re Lord Wayborn,” Abigail explained. “He’s called Richard, you know.”
“Evidently not. Evidently, he’s called Dickie-bird.” Cary strode forward, all charm, and took the old woman’s hands in his. “Dearest, loveliest Paggles. How good it is to see you again. Why don’t we take you back to your room now? Miss Smith, will you help me?”
“Who is Smith?” cried Paggles, horribly confused. “I keep hearing that name. Don’t let Smith take me to the poorhouse! Mayn’t I stay here with you, Dickie-bird?”
Cary looked at Abigail, puzzled.
“No one is sending you to the Poor House, darling,” cried Abigail, kneeling at the old woman’s feet. She felt horribly guilty; she had never expected that her assumption of a false name might frighten Paggles out of her wits. She turned to Cary. “Mrs. Spurgeon mentioned sending a servant to the—the P.H., sir, and now sh
e can’t get it out of her head.”
Paggles looked at her, her pale eyes clouded by confusion. “My lady?”
“My lady?” Cary murmured.
“She sometimes confuses me with my mother,” Abigail explained quickly, before turning to the old woman. “It’s Miss Abby, dear. And Dickie-bird is here, too. Don’t you want to go back to your room now? It’s nice and warm there.”
Paggles shook her head rapidly. “I must stay here in the nursery. Smith cannot get me here, not if Dickie-bird won’t let him,” she muttered, rocking back and forth. “Where is Smith now? Gone, I hope! Oh, I’m frightened, Miss Abby.”
Abigail covered her face with her hands.
“Don’t distress yourself, Miss Sm…Abby,” said Cary. “She’s perfectly welcome to stay in the nursery.” He found the bell-rope and gave it a firm tug. To Paggles he said quite forcefully, “No one is taking you to the poorhouse, Nurse Paggles. Dickie-bird won’t let them. You’re quite safe here. I shall have a fire lit, and your clothes brought to you. And, what’s more, you shall have a lovely breakfast on a tray.”
“With marmalade?” Paggles’s voice quivered with pleasure.
“With marmalade,” he promised.
“Such a good boy,” said Paggles. “I knew you would not send me to the poorhouse.” She squeezed Abigail’s hand. “Go out and play now, Annie-Fanny. It will be teatime before you know it.”
“Carpe diem,” Cary agreed, pulling Abigail to her feet. “As a matter of fact, Annie-Fanny and I were just about to go skating.”
“Ice skating!” cried Paggles in delight. “Do you remember, Miss Abby, when the Tsar of Russia came to London, and there was ice skating in the Park? And we rode down the slide in a toboggan. It was after the bad man was sent to Elba, but before he came back again.”
“Yes, of course, darling,” Abigail murmured, “but I would not dream of leaving you now. I never liked skating anyway. I’d much rather stay with you.”
Surrender to Sin Page 10
