by Danice Allen
Genevieve shook her head, a rueful, regretful smile on her lips. “Then you will not be keeping your promise to her.”
“I refuse to discuss this any longer, Madame DuBois,” Julian stately firmly, assuming his most toplofty pose … back rigid, chin up, lips compressed, eyes narrowed. “Before the conversation wandered quite off the subject, we were debating whether or not to tell Sam that you are her mother. You did not think it a good idea. Do you still hold firm to that opinion?”
“No, I’ve changed my mind completely,” Genevieve said, surprising Julian considerably. “My main objection to telling Sam about me was the fear … indeed, the hope … that she and I might become friends and that such a friendship would be unacceptable to a respectable man who might seek her hand in marriage. I didn’t want to ruin her chances for happiness. But now I am convinced that I needn’t fear for Sam’s happiness in the least. After all, as you said yourself, she has you, hasn’t she?”
Julian was completely exasperated. Like mother, like daughter, he thought to himself. Genevieve DuBois seemed determined to believe him besotted with Sam. But he had not the time or the patience at the moment to convince her otherwise. It was enough that she did not object to his telling Sam that she was her long-lost mother.
“Thank you, Madame DuBois, for your cooperation,” Julian said with a deep, formal bow. “I will let you know how my interview goes with Samantha.”
But when Julian would have quitted the room and gone away in stiff civility, Genevieve hastily rose from the chair and moved to stand in front of him. She caught his hand and squeezed it tightly. She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes and said with a great deal of feeling in her voice, “No, I must thank you, Lord Serling, for demolishing a terrible memory, for restoring a horrible loss that I’ve felt every day of my life since I woke up and was told my child … my little girl … was gone forever. Perhaps I don’t deserve it … but I’m very, very happy.”
Julian was no proof against such sincere and open emotion. His icy facade melted like snow in April. He returned her squeeze and answered gruffly, “I’m glad. Good day, Madame DuBois. I’m sure we’ll meet again very soon.”
As Sam followed Lady Wentworth’s butler, Pigeon, to the parlor, she tugged Madison, Louie, and George by their leading strings behind her. She hoped that the pups would play their part well and support her confidence in them by behaving abominably. Certainly Madison could be depended on to be noisy and disruptive, but George seemed always to be on his good behavior. And Louie was too lazy to be very naughty.
Case in point, Madison had barked at the butler and was busily sniffing every corner and every piece of furniture en route to the parlor. Pigeon eyed the pup nervously, undoubtedly fearful that the animal would lift his leg on a priceless antique. George was looking curiously at everything, but briskly kept up with his mistress, and Louie, as usual, lagged behind and acted blasé.
But even if Madison was the only truly disobedient of her canine entourage, Sam reasoned that the sheer number of dogs would accomplish her purpose for bringing them in the first place.
Pigeon opened the parlor door and stepped inside, announcing as he made way for Sam and her furry companions to move past him, “Your tea guest, my lady. Miss Darlington and … er … company!”
Lady Wentworth, who was stretched out on a peach-colored chaise longue by the fire, turned with a smile on her face. But the smile instantly fell away and was replaced by a look of utter dismay when she observed Sam’s “company.” Ninian was standing behind his mother’s chaise longue, barely succeeding in suppressing a laugh.
“How do you do, Lady Wentworth?” Sam said cheerfully, approaching her hostess with a bright smile. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought my pets along. I’m sure you’ve longed for an age to see the pup Ninian gave me, and I couldn’t very well leave the others behind, now could I?”
“Well … I … I…” Lady Wentworth stuttered.
“With all the rain recently,” Sam continued gaily, “they’ve had so little exercise, and they enjoyed the walk from Montgomery House excessively. We go past the park, you know, and there’s so many trees!”
“I … I suppose I don’t mind,” Lady Wentworth conceded doubtfully, “as long as they’re house-broken and well behaved. They have been taught not to chase cats, haven’t they?”
Not until that moment had Sam observed that Lady Wentworth held a large, white, very fat cat in her lap. She had not reckoned on Lady Wentworth having a pet cat, but, although she would never have planned to inflict such a traumatic experience on an innocent animal, Sam knew the cat’s presence would do a great deal toward exciting the dogs and causing a desirable amount of instant mayhem.
Sam assumed a look of chagrin and alarm and said, “Well, actually, Lady Wentworth, my dogs have not—” But, just as she expected, her words were interrupted by a barrage of barking. The cat had been spotted. Madison howled as if he were baying at the moon, and even lazy Louie and obedient George were yapping their heads off.
To no one’s surprise, the cat reared up its head in terror and exited its mistress’s lap immediately, racing across the room toward the closed door of the parlor. Lady Wentworth turned white and exclaimed, “Oh, no! My precious Snowflake! They’ll eat her alive!”
Intending no such outcome, Sam held tight to the leading strings of all three pups and sent a speaking look across the room to Ninian. Stifling a stronger-than-ever urge to break out in the giggles, Ninian hurried to open the parlor door, allowing the terrified cat to escape.
The cat was gone and the parlor door closed, but the agitated dogs still strained at their leashes and continued to bark. “I do apologize, Lady Wentworth,” Sam shouted over the din, finding herself twined in the dogs’ leashes and struggling to unravel herself. “I did not know you had a cat, or I shouldn’t have brought the dogs along. Truth to tell, they’re much happier outside than in, but I daren’t give them over to your servants as they are too often tempted to snap at strangers. Oh, if only we could have tea in the park!”
Clutching her throat, her face still ghostly pale, Lady Wentworth simply stared and said nothing.
“By Jupiter, that’s a capital idea, Sam,” Ninian said with enthusiasm, placing himself halfway between his mother and Sam and turning this way and that as the conversation warranted. “Let’s have our tea al fresco, Mama. Pigeon can have the necessaries packed up in no time. While we lounge and dine on a blanket thrown on the grass, the pups can romp to their hearts’ content.”
Lady Wentworth finally recollected herself and threw Sam a thin, nervous smile. Then she turned to Ninian to say through gritted teeth, “But, Ninian, the tea will be cold. You must recollect, dearest, that there’s nothing worse for my digestion than tepid tea!”
Ninian shrugged. “Pigeon can swaddle the pot in towels. I daresay it will stay positively toasty.”
“But I wasn’t planning on going out today,” she persisted, trying to preserve a veneer of politeness while still stubbornly pushing to get her own way. “The weather has been so unpredictable of late.”
“The day is fair,” Ninian replied with an affable but steely smile.
Lady Wentworth raised an imperious brow. “But my darling boy, the grass will surely still be wet from yesterday’s storm.”
Ninian, no doubt bolstered by Sam’s supporting presence and his earnest desire for her plan to work, stood firm. “The sun has been shining so strongly all morning, as long as we do not put up camp under a tree, I’m certain there will be large patches of dry grass to be found.”
Lady Wentworth looked a bit nonplussed by Ninian’s uncharacteristic firmness. She decided to change tactics. In a peevish, pathetic tone, she said, “But you know how my skin breaks out in spots if I sit in the sun, and how decidedly swoonish I get when overly warm.”
He sniffed. “You have a parasol.”
She pouted. “My arm gets tired holding it up.”
“Then I will hold it for you, Mama.”
�
��But I don’t want to drink my tea outside!”
Ninian clasped his hands behind his back, struck a pose with his nose in the air, and rocked diplomatically on his heels. “Very well, madam,” he clipped out. “I see I must explain the dilemma so that you perfectly understand. We either drink tea inside, sharing close quarters with Miss Darlington’s pups, or we drink tea outside where the pups might … er … sniff each other, drool, wrangle over scraps, and … er … relieve themselves at will. It is your house, after all, so I leave the final decision up to you.”
As Lady Wentworth’s dismayed gaze shifted to her, Sam attempted to look embarrassed and apologetic. Then, luckily, Madison chose just that moment to vigorously sniff a sofa leg, his hindquarters wriggling suspiciously. While Sam had no fears of the pups making puddles in the house—Hedley had done an excellent job of terrifying them into being house-broken—Lady Wentworth had no such knowledge to reassure her.
“Oh, but of course we can take our tea al fresco today,” she exclaimed suddenly, rising quickly to her feet and rushing over to gingerly nudge Madison away from her Egyptian-style sofa. “It is a charming idea! A delightful idea! Now why don’t you order the curricle brought round, Ninian, and you and Miss Darlington and the pups can wait for me outside. I’ll instruct Pigeon to pack us a basket, then I’ll run upstairs to put on something warmer. I’ll just be a moment. Now, hurry along, my dears. Hurry along!”
Lady Wentworth, showing a great deal of stamina for a female of purportedly delicate constitution, corralled them all into the hall and out the front door in a matter of seconds.
Standing outside on the front steps of the Wentworth town house, situated on a modest but genteel square, Sam and Ninian exchanged glances, then burst into laughter.
“Why didn’t you tell me your mother had a cat?” Sam presently demanded, her voice thick from laughing, her eyes watery.
“There wasn’t any time,” Ninian replied with an answering smile. “As it was, I had only a half hour to read and thoroughly commit to memory that hideously long note of instructions you sent over! I hope we shall be able to pull off this little charade without Mama getting suspicious.”
“Well, we have done all right so far. Thanks to the cat’s effect on the pups, we managed to lure her out of the house much sooner than I anticipated.”
“But the hard part is yet to come,” said Ninian, sobering.
Sam squeezed Ninian’s arm. “You can do it. I know you can!”
Ninian put his hand over Sam’s and smiled weakly. “Lord, Sam, she must really be determined to make you her daughter-in-law, because I’d have never made her back down like that on my own.”
“Nonsense, Ninian,” Sam replied bracingly. “You don’t know your own abilities. Mark my words, before the night is over your mother will consent to any scheme you propose. Soon I’ll be calling you ‘Captain’ Wentworth.”
A few minutes later, Ninian tooled the curricle down a northerly country road, flanked on either side by Sam and his mother. Madison hung over Sam’s arm, his ears flapping in the light breeze created by the movement of the curricle, his tongue lolling happily. Louie lounged on the floorboards, fast asleep at Sam’s feet. And George sat quietly, his ears submissively flat, on Lady Wentworth’s lap.
“I thought we were only going to the park,” Lady Wentworth complained, drawing her shawl more closely about her while George glanced up nervously to make sure he wasn’t the source of the lady’s irritation.
“You saw yourself, Mama, that the park was far too crowded for comfort,” Ninian replied, turning down a narrow, rutted road through a grove of tall, overhanging oak trees.
“But why are we turning here? The road is muddy,” Mrs. Wentworth observed peevishly. “The grass will be wet.”
“I know this area, Lady Wentworth. There is a large open field just ahead. The ground will be quite dry, I promise you,” Sam assured her.
But, as planned, they never made it to the open field. Whether or not the grass was dry would remain forever a moot point, because while they were still in the cool, dark shadows of the grove, a figure jumped out from behind a bush and aimed a pistol at them.
“Whoa!” cried Ninian, pulling on the reins and stopping the horses in their tracks. “What the deuce…?”
Lady Wentworth’s eyes grew enormous at the sight of a tall, masked man, dressed entirely in black, with a handkerchief tied round his head, brandishing a firearm.
All three dogs started barking, and it was all Sam could do to keep them from jumping over the sides and charging to the attack. She looped the leading strings around her wrists till their length was quite short, then held tight with all the strength she could muster.
“Don’t worry, Lady Wentworth,” Sam whispered fervently. “Ninian will protect us!”
“Ninian? Protect us? Oh, no! I knew we should have brought a servant along … and a pistol, too,” she choked out in a strangled voice. “But I thought we were only going to the park!”
At this point, Ninian shocked Lady Wentworth within an inch of her life by standing up in the carriage, puffing out his chest, and bellowing, as bold as brass, “What the devil do you want? Put down that gun and let us through!”
Horrified, Lady Wentworth tugged on Ninian’s coattail and quavered, “Sit down, you foolish boy! He’ll shoot you!”
“Better listen to yer mum,” snarled the man. “If’n ye don’t hand over all yer valuables, I’m blastin’ a hole through yer bloody heart.”
Sam buried her face in Madison’s furry neck to hide her smile. Jean-Luc had the most ridiculous accent! He sounded like a gravel-voiced pirate!
“We’re not giving over our valuables, you-you blackguard!” Ninian blustered.
“Then prepare t’ meet yer maker, laddy,” threatened the robber, leveling his gun at Ninian.
“Only a craven coward would point a gun at defenseless females and an unarmed gentleman,” Ninian declared in a superior tone. “A real man would engage in hand-to-hand battle.”
“Hand-to-hand battle?” growled the highwayman, squinting menacingly through the eyeholes of his black mask.
“Yes,” Ninian affirmed. “Fisticuffs! That’s the ticket! Put down your pistol and fight me with your bare fists … if you dare! Only if you knock me unconscious shall I submit to your outrageous demands. Come on, put up your dukes! Or are you afraid?”
“Ninian, oh, do consider to whom you are speaking!” Lady Wentworth begged. “He’s a brute, and he looks prodigiously strong!”
“Trust me, Mama,” Ninian said in heroic accents. “I’ll win this fight. You wait and see!”
“Ye’re a fancy talker,” snarled the robber. He threw down his pistol and lifted his fists in the classic pugilistic pose. “Let’s see if’n ye fight as well as ye jabber!”
His challenge accepted, Ninian leaped majestically from the carriage. Unfortunately, he wobbled on impact and stumbled to his knees, but he got up immediately and … with only a brief embarrassed glance over his shoulder at Sam … faced the robber with his fists at the ready. The two men circled each other, sneering viciously, but just as the robber pulled back his fist for the first punch, Lady Wentworth gave a loud gasp and fainted dead away.
“Stop! Stop, Ninian!” Sam cried, letting go of the pups and allowing them to jump out of the carriage. “Your mother has fainted! There’s no need to finish the charade.”
The pups charged Jean-Luc as he headed for the carriage, but as he completely ignored them, and since they soon ascertained by his familiar scent that he was no threat to their mistress, they turned their attention to the numerous surrounding trees.
Ninian hurried to the carriage, as well, and they all stared down at Lady Wentworth’s pale, unconscious face as she slumped against the cushions of the seat.
“It was too much for the old gal,” Jean-Luc suggested in his normal voice, peeling off his handkerchief and allowing his thick, dark hair to spring free.
“Seeing a large bug is too much for her,” Ninian ob
served mildly, laying the back of his hand against her parchment-thin cheek. “She’ll be all right. She faints two or three times a week. I should have expected her to swoon today of all days.”
“Aren’t you going to revive her, Sam?” Jean-Luc inquired.
“Not with you standing about,” Sam retorted. “If she had any suspicion that this was all an act to convince her that Ninian’s got gumption, she’d tan our hides!”
“Good lord,” Jean-Luc drawled. “Isn’t that one of Nathan’s crude American expressions? Tan our hides…? Conjures up a ghastly picture.”
“Never mind,” Sam said, exasperated. “It is too bad that Lady Wentworth fainted, but we can count ourselves lucky that you two didn’t have to fight. When she wakes up, I’ll just tell her how heroic Ninian was and how he beat the robber to a pulp. I must confess, I was a bit worried about that part of the plan! I knew it would be hard for you two to pretend to fight convincingly without hurting each other!”
“I wish she’d stayed conscious long enough to watch the fight,” Ninian declared, straightening his shoulders and swelling his chest. “I thought I was doing rather well.”
“Only because it was a farce,” Jean-Luc said dampeningly. “I’d have popped your cork if this had been a real mill!”
“Well, what makes you so sure of that, you braggart?” Ninian demanded to know, thrusting his face to within inches of Jean-Luc’s.
“You’re being ridiculous, Wentworth,” Jean-Luc said with a patronizing sniff. “You know I’m the better boxer.”
“Well, why don’t we just see about that!” Ninian challenged, thumbing his nose and rotating his fists in the air.
“You’re both being ridiculous!” Sam hissed, glancing nervously at Lady Wentworth as that lady’s eyelids began to flutter. “Go away, Jean-Luc! Now! And, Ninian, you go and fetch the dogs before they get lost or snag their leashes on a bush and strangle themselves!”
With a chagrined nod from Ninian, and a wink and a roguish smile from Jean-Luc—and a promise that he would see her that night at the Wilmots’ ball—the gentlemen obeyed. Once Jean-Luc was completely out of sight, Sam took out her smelling salts and waved them under Lady Wentworth’s nose.
