Quennel had been a model son, if a bit dour for someone of his tender years, while Quentin had seemed to be the spawn of the devil, forever landing in scrapes from which his beleaguered father would have to extricate him. The only constant about Quentin was his devotion to Wilhelmina Flint, daughter of the local innkeeper, who was the most beautiful girl in the village, save Elizabeth, the squire’s daughter.
“We were close as inkle-weavers once, Willie and me, if you take my meanin’, your lordship.” Quentin had told Patrick, giving the Earl a broad wink that caused a bit of pink to steal into Victoria’s pale cheeks. “But I was a frisky colt, always on the go and wanting to see a bit of the world before I was ready to work in harness. So when Quennel and Elizabeth married, Willie went with them to London, leaving while I was gone from the village doing—well, it doesn’t matter what I was doing, does it? After all, my niece is present, isn’t she?”
Quentin was not very forthcoming on the courtship of Quennel and Elizabeth, merely saying, “There’s no accounting for tastes, is there?” even if he himself did think it was “a rum business all around.” But the squire had a disky heart and probably wanted his only child settled before he was taken off, and heaven only knew Quennel wanted her. “Quennel always took a shine to what he knew he shouldn’t have,” Quentin had told Victoria, who had not responded, but only sat on the settee in shocked silence.
“Well,” Quentin had gone on jovially, as he had taken recourse to his flask more than a few times during his little talk and was feeling quite relaxed and at his ease, “when I came home from one of my jaunts, m’father met me at the door with the news of Quennel’s marriage and Willie’s departure and wouldn’t even so much as let me across his threshold. Told me I’d end in the workhouse, or worse, what with my feckless, adventuring ways, and sent me about my business without so much as a civil goodbye. Let me tell you, I went away a crushed man—forsaken by all I loved—and it took me more than a half dozen years before I even tried hunting down Willie and m’brother here in the city.”
“And by that time Elizabeth was dead and Willie refused to leave the young Victoria?” Patrick had ventured, gaining himself a vigorous nod from Quentin, who was just then wiping a tear from his eye with a large white handkerchief.
Feeling a bit overset, Quentin had ended his story only a few moments later, and the trio had sat in silence for some minutes, each thinking his own thoughts.
Suddenly Victoria came out of the near trance she had been in since Quentin had begun speaking. “Of course! That miniature the Professor left Willie in his will. It wasn’t of him—it was of you!”
“Sent it to her from India along with a proposal of marriage and enough blunt for a one-way fare to join me,” Quentin confirmed, looking confused. “Shipped it all off right after I made my first fortune. Why did Quennel have it?”
Patrick got to his feet and walked slowly across the room to look out the window that faced Ablemarle Street. “You know,” he said reflectively to no one in particular, “I do believe it begins to look like Professor Quennel Quinton was not a particularly nice man. Mr. Quinton,” he went on slowly, turning to face the other man, “I think it might be safe to suppose that your beloved Mrs. Flint never received your proposal—or the money for her fare to India.”
“No! That’s utterly preposterous, even for the Professor! I will not have you, a veritable stranger, speak so about him,” Victoria objected quickly, hopping to her feet to glare accusingly at the Earl. “How dare you! You’re an abominable, arrogant, and thoroughly odious man to suggest such a thing.”
“On the contrary, Miss Quinton,” Patrick corrected silkily, smiling at her in such a maddeningly sympathetic way that she longed to box his ears. “Being abominable, arrogant, and—what was that last brick you tossed at me?—oh yes, and odious, I am in the perfect position to recognize one of my own. Your father, you poor lamb, seems to have been a rotter of the first water. Keeping a man away from his true love, tsk, tsk. I do believe I might weep.”
“You have no proof—”
Quentin raised a hand to place it soothingly on Victoria’s forearm, gently pushing her back onto the settee. “Tell me, my dear,” he asked quietly, “did you enjoy the books I sent you from Rome? And the lace and perfume I had shipped from France? Perhaps the ivory-sticked fan from Spain was your favorite? No? There were more gifts over the years, many more, but I can see from the look on your face that you never saw them. Wickford,” he called softly, “do you think you could hunt up another glass? I do believe my niece here could use a swallow or two from my flask.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
VICTORIA DIDN’T KNOW if she was on her head or on her heels. One moment she had been a penniless orphan, soon to be cast into the street with nowhere to go, no one to turn to, and the next she had been somehow transformed into the fortunate niece of one Quentin Quinton (late of the East India Company), a truly extraordinary man who wore pigeon-egg-sized diamonds in his cravat and prattled about presenting Victoria to Society as a well-dowered (if slightly long in the tooth) debutante.
Now, lying in her bed at the end of a most trying day, she thought back to the conversation that had taken place in the drawing room just before the Earl of Wickford had at last taken his leave of the premises.
“I believe the two of you should be alone to discuss these family matters,” he had said once he had procured a glass for Victoria, filled it to the brim, and placed it into her trembling hand. “Although it has been heart-warming in the extreme to witness this joyous meeting, I begin to feel somewhat de trop. Quinton, it was a pleasure to meet you—a true pleasure—and I can only hope that you will bid me welcome if I chance to find myself in Ablemarle Street in the future.”
Sherbourne, Victoria remembered now with a grimace, had then bowed to the both of them and taken his leave, lingering only long enough to toss a verbal bomb into the room by saying, “I suggest you have your intrepid niece tell you about her plans to collar the Professor’s murderer, dear sir. It makes, I vow, for very interesting listening.”
Victoria sat up in bed and reached behind herself for her pillow, which she punched a time or two with her fist before laying both it and herself down once more. “Oh, what a thoroughly insufferable man!” she said feelingly. “It wasn’t enough for him to have been privy to the fact that the Professor kept me ignorant of my uncle’s very existence. It wasn’t sufficient revenge for him to have the satisfaction of learning that the Professor was not only an uncaring father but a mean one into the bargain. Oh no. He had to make it a point to disclose my plans to Uncle Quentin, as if to show the depths of my seemingly endless capacity for foolishness in trying to avenge a man not worth avenging.”
Then a small, satisfied smile lit Victoria’s woebegone countenance, as she remembered her uncle’s reaction once she had shown him the snuffbox and repeated for him the Professor’s last words. She could actually see the light of mischief creep into his bright blue eyes as Uncle Quentin’s love of adventure quickly overrode the little bit of good sense the passing of the years had granted him.
“You’d have to go about in Society if you wanted to catch the murderer,” Quentin had pointed out, still holding the snuffbox in one pudgy hand and lifting it to the light, the better to see the workmanship of the script engraving on its lid. “The Season’s already started but, given enough money—which, as I figure it, is where I come in—I see no reason why we can’t have you rigged out in fine style in time for you to hobnob with the lords and ladies at most of the festivities. Right, Willie?”
Victoria’s smile faded as she remembered the battle that had taken place once Willie had entered the room to immediately put forth objections to Quentin’s outlandish suggestion. “The girl’s in mourning, you over-stuffed dolt!” she had protested hotly, earning for herself naught but an amused chuckle and an “As if anyone gives a fig for dead professors these days,” before Quentin demanded paper and pen be brought to him posthaste so that he could start making a list o
f every last item that was necessary for a “prime come-out, slap up to the echo or I’m a Dutchman!”
Her temples pounding, Victoria had taken refuge in the glass that her uncle had already refilled twice, drinking deeply until she chanced to look up and realized that Willie had somehow grown an extra head. Carefully setting her glass down on a side table, she had closed her eyes and counted to ten, opening them to find that, while the housekeeper’s anatomy had returned to normal, her own stomach was beginning to feel decidedly unbalanced.
When Quentin had stopped for breath—he had been chattering nineteen to the dozen about ball gowns and modistes and jewelers, knowing that Wilhelmina would be hard-pressed to withhold her approval of anything that would serve to improve her dear Victoria’s position in the world—Victoria had said thickly (for her tongue seemed to have grown two sizes in her mouth), “I doubt I’ll take in Society.”
And that, Victoria remembered now as she buried her face in her pillow, was when her dearest Wilhelmina and her newly discovered uncle had turned on her as one, united in their resolution to not only present Victoria to Society, but to make her its queen.
“Fresh air and vegetables,” Wilhelmina had pronounced importantly, crossing her arms across her ample bosom as she looked to Quentin for confirmation.
“And red meat,” Quentin had added, nodding his head in the affirmative. “And plenty of cow’s milk. I’ll have a cow brought to the door every morning. You can do that, you know, if you have the blunt.”
“We’ll have to do somethin’ with that hair,” the housekeeper had gone on, her eyes narrowing as she assessed her mistress. “There’s just too much of it. Quentin, do you think you could—”
“Done!” he had promised warmly. “Then the child needs rigging out from head to toe. Burn everything she owns, Willie my dear, and—”
“Stop it!” Victoria remembered she had then screeched hysterically, clapping her hands to her ears as she had run from the room to hide in her chamber, where she still lay, desperately trying to discover some small bit of sanity still remaining in a world suddenly run mad.
“How I loathe and detest that odious Patrick Sherbourne!” she said fervently into the darkness surrounding her bed. “This is all his fault. Willie and Uncle Quentin will push me…and prod me…and dress me up like—like a plum pudding—and then push me into Society, just so people like Wickford can giggle up their sleeves at someone like me, the veriest nobody, trying to peacock about like I belong there. How on earth will I ever bear it?”
Her outburst over, Victoria took several deep breaths and closed her eyes, intent on taking refuge, at least for a little while, in sleep. But her eyes opened wide as yet another horrible thought invaded her weary brain. Sitting up straight in her bed once more, she wailed, “My spectacles! What does it matter how I shall bear Society? Since I absolutely refuse to wear my horrid spectacles in public, what is more to the point is—how will I ever see it!”
CHAPTER NINE
“HAVE ANOTHER ONE of those muffins, Missy, and be sure to put a dollop or two of that nice honey Quentin brought home on top. And drink up all your milk,” Wilhelmina prodded as she slipped a warmed plate holding two rashers of thick bacon in front of her mistress. “Your Uncle Quentin’s payin’ a pretty penny for it, you know.”
Waiting only until she had chewed her piece of buttered toast sufficiently in order to swallow it without choking, Victoria complained, as she had at every meal for the past two weeks. “Couldn’t you at least be a little more subtle, Willie? I feel like I’m being fattened up for Christmas dinner.”
The housekeeper only sniffed dismissively, while covertly edging the muffin dish closer to Victoria’s elbow. “Don’t be silly, Missy.”
“Silly, is it?” Victoria exclaimed. “I’ve already gained so much weight that none of my gowns feel comfortable, and still you and Uncle Quentin persist in force feeding me hourly from dawn till midnight. Confess, Willie, Uncle’s out in the back garden right now, sharpening his axe. Do you plan to serve me up with an apple in my mouth? Heaven knows I’ve already been stuffed.”
“Here now, Puddin’, is that any way to talk to my poor, darling Willie?” Quentin Quinton admonished fondly as he entered the room, stopping only to ruffle the short cap of dark brown curls that were all that remained of Victoria’s long tresses before snatching up a warm muffin and lowering his ample form into a chair.
“Dear Uncle,” Victoria admonished after giving out a long-suffering sigh, “if you would please desist in addressing me by that ridiculous appellation, I should be most sincerely grateful.”
Quentin wrinkled up his snub nose and turned to Wilhelmina for assistance. “Apple…what? What did she say, dearest? I love the little girl more than I can say—after all, she’s m’only living relative—but I’ll be dashed if I can understand her worth a groat when she starts in to spouting those jawbreaking words.”
Wilhelmina paused in the act of clearing away the empty egg platter long enough to notice that Quentin had poured honey all over his muffin and was now in danger of dribbling some of the sweet confection onto his cravat. Snatching up a large white linen serviette, she began tucking it firmly around his neck as she informed him sharply, “Miss Victoria says to stop calling her Puddin’, just like I keep tellin’ you to leave off callin’ me dearest. I’m not your dearest, and I haven’t been for more than twenty years. Here now, lift that mess of chins you call a neck and let me stuff this down under your collar.”
Quentin leaned forward in his chair to give Victoria a broad wink. “She’s crazy with love for me, Puddin’; always has been.” Then, looking up at Wilhelmina, whose cheeks had turned bright pink as she realized what she had just done—being so familiar with the master of the house, even if he had been her childhood sweetheart—he smiled and said, “That’s real Dresden lace on m’cuffs too, my dearest. Perhaps you’d like to have a go at tucking them up too?”
Prudently putting a hand to her mouth to hide her smile, Victoria shook her head, still able to marvel at the easy way Quentin had of disconcerting the usually unflappable Wilhelmina. In the two weeks since Quentin Quinton had moved his considerable baggage into the Professor’s old bedroom, the one-time sweethearts had kept up a running battle—most of the skirmishes ending with the housekeeper fleeing the room in confusion.
Wilhelmina may have called Quentin a randy old goat when he snuck up behind her to deliver a quick pinch to her ample bottom, but Victoria could not help noticing that the woman had been taking even more than her usual care with her appearance of late, arranging her beautiful hair in a most becoming style—her white aprons starched and pressed to within an inch of their lives—while her accelerated housecleaning had more than once reduced the kitchen maid to tears.
Then there was the matter of their meals, expanded in quality and quantity since his arrival, but also predominantly comprised of Quentin’s favorite foods, personally prepared by the housekeeper herself. The large bowls of succulent sweetmeats—Quentin’s particular favorites—that now sat on tables in nearly every room also gave mute proof to Wilhelmina’s true feelings about the man who had deserted her all those years ago.
If these changes had been all that had occurred since she first discovered she had chanced to acquire a wealthy uncle, Victoria would have been a happy woman; watching Wilhelmina’s courting had proved to be most amusing. But, as she already knew to her great despair, this was not the only change to have taken place in the tall, narrow house on Ablemarle Street.
Victoria had spent the last fortnight being stuck with pins jabbed at her by a small army of seamstresses, attacked by a scissors-wielding Frenchman with a heavy scent of garlic on his breath, marched up and down the narrow drawing room by a red-faced, puffing Italian dance-master who stood a full foot shorter than she, and drilled in the proper way to curtsy to a countess by a wizened old crone who had the best breeding, the smallest pension, and the least teeth of anyone Victoria had ever encountered.
Victoria cr
awled into bed every evening, exhausted, to dream of milliners and modistes and glovers, all pursuing her down dark alleyways, trying their best to catch her and measure every inch of her, from her nearly denuded head to her ludicrously painted toes, only to wake in the morning in time to face another day packed with unending struggles to maintain some control over her own body.
Now, looking down at the carefully sculpted nails on the tips of fingers that had been dipped into cucumber juice and massaged with crushed strawberries and cream until the ink stains had faded and the calluses had disappeared, Victoria wished yet again that she had had the good sense to deny even so much as ever thinking about discovering the identity of the Professor’s murderer.
There were, she admitted to herself, certain things about her new situation that appealed to her, such as her twice daily airings in the small park nearby and the soft, silky feel of her new undergarments. But no matter how much of his vast fortune Uncle Quentin was willing to pour into the eager, waiting hands of London’s merchants—and it appeared that his bounty, as well as his purse, was extremely generous—Victoria knew that mere window dressing was not enough to have her accepted with open arms by the ton.
Her background was unexceptionable enough, with no smell of the shop clinging to her, and once word of the ridiculously extravagant dowry Quentin had settled on her got round, Victoria was sure she would find at least a few invitations thrown her way; but she was likewise convinced that none of these invitations would put her within a hundred miles of any social gathering frequented by such exalted personages as the Earl of Wick-ford or Mr. Pierre Standish, her two most likely suspects.
Victoria bit down sharply on another thick piece of bacon as the thought of Patrick Sherbourne engendered in her a swift desire to indulge in some sort of physical exertion, and since Wilhelmina had threatened dire consequences if her young mistress were even to entertain the thought of lifting a finger to help with any domestic chores, chewing seemed to be the most exercise she was allowed.
The questioning Miss Quinton Page 7
