by Judith Ivory
That would do it. Perfect. She reached in again. The little thing was frightened. So was she. She rubbed the back of her gloved knuckle along it, feeling the resistance of bone, possibly a little skull. She got her fingers under its belly and lifted, aware of its little bones, the way it braced its claws, fearing her, trusting her.
With her back to the room for shelter, Winnie pulled the little animal out into view—oh, ugh, she thought again and shivered. She looked it in its little animal face, and it made a little sound, a kind of hiss at the back of its throat. Its parted mouth, the view of its tiny teeth, made Winnie shudder again. Then the ferret took a good look at her and began to run its legs, wiggling its body. It didn't like her holding it any more than she liked having it in her hand.
She lost her grip of it. Freddie dropped into her skirts, a light plop, then slid down the silk, making Winnie squeal and step back from fright. The thing looked stunned for a second. She thought she'd killed it. Oh, God. A new dread. Mick would be furious. But the second Winnie reached for the ferret again, it skittered—straight into the coats and wraps, burrowing into them.
She dug through for a few moments.
Someone—the man who checked and watched over the coats—tapped her shoulder. "Miss, may I help you find the gentleman's cloak?"
She looked up and around. "No, I have it." Indeed, she still held Mick's evening cloak. Which left her with no excuse to keep digging.
"What are you looking for then?"
She didn't dare say. "Nothing." Out the corner of her eye she saw a little brown tail-thing skitter out the door and into the main reception room. "Oh, dear God."
She threw the cloak at him and ran after the ferret. The reception hall, though, was crowded. The last she saw of Mick's ferret was its tail as it disappeared between the trouser legs of a lordly secretary from the College of Arms.
* * *
A moment later, Mick appeared at the far end of the entry room. He spotted her, but it took a minute or more for him to make his way to her. A full minute to suffer over what she had done.
Oh, what to say, what to tell him? Her apprehension grew, spiraling into gigantic proportions.
As Mick came toward her, suavely excusing himself past people, smiling as he went, she wanted to shake him. She wanted to scream, Stop! Stop it! Stop being as I remember Xavier, only more so. Stop being so … frighteningly competent and polished, so damnably fearless.
Lord, he reminded her of Xavier's hauteur when he moved, of the cocksure way that Xavier had carried himself years ago. Mick was taller and more limber, but he had something like Xavier's bumptiousness to him, a manner that everyone had put up with in Xavier because, like Mick, he had somehow managed also to be charming—and because her cousin had been the most likely heir to a duchy. No, part of her wanted the ratcatcher revealed. This man, this Lord Bartonreed, made the hair on her neck stand on end.
As he came nearer, she shrank back, determined to say nothing about the ferret, like a miscreant under death-sentence, waiting for the axe. He'd find out. But until then, distraught at what she'd done, she would hide there inside her own quiet.
Yet Mick was wrong to have brought the animal, wasn't he? For a moment more, she felt confused: ashamed and fearful, but angry, too. The old terror didn't quite take hold. Worse than empty tins, she reprimanded herself. You look like a mantis and think like a mule.
Yet no. She hadn't meant for this to happen. Her original intent had been to safeguard them, not expose them further. She had meant to take good care of the ferret. And besides, a voice said, you needed to be a mule to survive your upbringing. Outwardly shy and retiring, a proper young lady; inwardly as strong as a donkey.
As Mick smiled and touched her shoulder, Winnie frowned, putting the tips of her gloved fingers to her mouth. Then she brought them down and told him, "I lost your ferret."
"You what?"
"Freddie. I thought I was sending her home, but she got away from me."
"What the hell—" He didn't like it.
"Don't be angry."
"She's ill."
"She certainly ran fast enough."
He scowled. "Where did you lose her?"
"Right here somewhere."
"Why did you do it?" he asked. He bent toward her, putting himself nose to nose with her.
She whispered, vehement, "Because at least two of the couples from the teahouse six weeks ago are right here—"
"It would have been fine—"
"It would have been odd beyond measure: A gentleman does not bring a ferret to a ball."
"You don't know that." He made a harsh, put-out face. "There could be a ferret in every cloak here: You didn't look. You expect everyone to play by the same rules you do."
And still she didn't crumble. It amazed her. "I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. I shouldn't have done it. I should have spoken my fears to you. But I didn't. Now help me find her."
They tried; they looked. They wandered through the crowd, communicating with each other through heads to ask by facial expression, Have you seen her yet?
The answer was always no. Then Winnie lost sight of Mick entirely. She could find neither. Not Mick. Nor Freddie.
Someone grabbed her elbow. Emile. He hissed. "He wants us now. We're late. Get going."
Oh, grand. Xavier. This was all she needed. Now of all times to have to face him. But there was no help for it. She would go and placate him till Emile or Jeremy were able to bring Mick along.
* * *
When Winnie walked into the study, Jeremy was already there. Emile came in a few minutes later. He'd spoken to Mick who was coming. Shortly, he hoped. On their way here, they'd been separated when an animal of some sort had attacked the Russian caviar and crème fraiche, then beat a path through the foie gras. Mick had gone berserk trying to catch the thing.
The ferret. Since it was just the three of them, she told them about the animal, two souls with whom to lament. They all groaned.
"And Xavier will make us wait at least half an hour," she told them. "He likes to keep people dangling."
So they sat, while her stomach churned.
She felt ill. Oh, and she thought she'd been embarrassed—shamed—before. Wait till everyone heard this. Winnie Bollash was thrown out of the Duke of Arles's ball for having brought a ratcatcher and a ferret to it. No one would ever bring their daughters to her again, no matter how good she was at phonetics.
They only waited a few minutes, however, before the duke's study door creaked open, and a stooped old man came through it, walking slowly with the use of a cane, a woman hovering behind him.
Xavier. He was thinner and more feeble than Winnie remembered. She lifted her pince-nez and had a good look.
He was himself, yet he wasn't. She could barely credit how he'd changed. Withered and bent, he had to have help—his wife attended him—all the way to the desk, where he sat like a bag of bones dropped into the chair.
"You let go too soon," he snapped at her, his voice raw. She stepped behind him, less the trophy than Winnie had imagined, more a nursemaid. Attentive, fussing, she reached for his arm, trying to take his cane. Imperiously, he snatched it out of her reach. Then from his chair, as from a throne, he settled the cane across the desk and stared about the room, glowering at everyone.
Oddly, he didn't seem powerful so much as crotchety. Though, no doubt, he had power. Just not the kind Winnie had always accorded him: He had no power over her.
His wizened body didn't keep him from quick words. The second his eyes settled on her, anger straightened him like a rod down his spine.
"You stubborn, obnoxious girl," he said. "Like all the rest, you come to play on an old man's pain. Well"—he looked around, speaking to them all—"where is he, this Michael?" He said the name with distaste.
"He's coming," Emile told him.
"I've seen him," the old man said directly. "I looked him over when he came down the ballroom stairway, then I left. That was enough. He's an imposter." He added, "Who
m I shall unmask with a few pointed questions, then have you all thrown in jail."
Jail. Winnie's heart sank. They were all going to jail.
Just then, footfalls outside the room made everyone's head turn. Just beyond the door, footsteps approached. They were Mick's; Winnie knew their confident rhythm. They tapped, separating out of the crowd in the anteroom, came closer, then paused, and the knob turned.
Mick stepped in, handsome, dashing, looking as if he could carry off anything. Ah, there was what she wanted. There was what she stood to lose that was greater still. How to have him? How to get out of all this somehow and run away with him somewhere?
He stared from one to the other, puzzled by the gathering. Then his eyes stopped on the old man behind the desk, and a look of surprise crossed his face.
After which a single word came out Mick's mouth, with his looking more surprised still, as if it came out on its own and he couldn't hold it back.
"Poppy," he said. The way someone might ask, Poppy, what are you doing here?
* * *
Chapter 28
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Xavier Bollash's chin tightened till it dimpled. He brought his lip up, mashing it against his teeth, while his glaucous, watery eyes grew fierce.
While he stared at Mick, he spoke under his breath with chilling quiet. "Get out." Then louder and firmer, "Get out." He lifted himself precariously to his feet, and, from here, he flew into rage. "Get out, get out, get out!" He pounded the desk. "Get out, all of you! He's not my grandson! This is a hoax. I won't have it!"
His pursed lips began to tremble until the movement was so violent he had to put his hand up over his mouth.
Winnie watched Mick take a step toward him, his brow furrowed in concern.
He seemed about to say something, when the old man swung his cane through the air. It cleared everything off the desk. Pens, a book, a pair of glasses moved with such force that they hit the bookcase to the side before they clattered to the floor.
Thumping his cane down, he hobble-pounded around the desk. "You! And her!" He swung his cane to point at Winnie. "Don't think I don't know what she does. This time she goes too far with her passing off her damned creations on me." To Mick, "I saw how you danced with her. The conniving witch is trying to regain her lost property through a man she's invented. Well, I'm not having it." To the room at large, "You're all pretenders, all of you, scoundrels. This is too much! All of you, get out!"
His wife cautiously approached him, trying to help him without being hit by the cane, while the old man was so unpredictable, no one else dared move. With shuffling steps that couldn't match his rancor, he made his way toward the door—"getting out" himself, since no one else seemed inclined to.
He seemed infuriated by his own slow progress, muttering as he went, "So what? So he looks like my son. My grandson wouldn't dress like that. He wouldn't wear a vest with such a loud lining." He looked from one person to the next, as if he didn't know to whom he was addressing the remark. He frowned at Mick, stared a moment, then looked away. "Though he might wear purple," he grumbled. "He loved purple." At the door, he glanced at them all again, issuing another fierce scowl, then asserted finally, as if it were proof positive: "But he wouldn't dance all night with Winnie Bollash, not when there was a roomful of prettier women. My grandson would have taste." He stabbed at the floor again with the walking stick as his wife opened the door.
He would no doubt have loved a clean, brisk exit. But physical feebleness dictated he scoot a step, Vivian Bollash taking his elbow, then scoot another step. She guided him as he stabbed at the floor for traction. Stab, step, stab, scoot. Shaking with age, infirmity, and a strong desire to deny what he obviously feared to believe, he made his feeble way out, his wife at his elbow.
After such an astounding departure, utter silence reigned in the room for at least ten seconds. No one had expected anything like this.
Then Emile Lamont looked at Mick and said, "That was cute. Where did you dig that up?"
"What?" Mick looked distracted: as if trying to grasp the meaning of a seemingly huge, unforeseen possibility.
Could he really be Xavier's grandson? Winnie wondered.
She stepped toward him, laying her hand on his arm as she tried to explain his use of the nickname away. "He must have learned the name downstairs when he went to talk to the cook's assistant." She changed the subject. To the Lamonts, she said, "You have attempted to trick my cousin, but it didn't work—"
"Oh, it worked," Emile said. He turned more fully toward her, folding his arms and leaning a hip on the desk. "He's shaken. But he'll come around and fairly soon." To Mick, "He believes you're his—"
"No," Mick said, stepping toward him. "No. You're finished now. So am I. I was coming up here to tell Arles the whole story. The bet, how you made me seem like the grandson he still longs for, and how"—he paused—"how it just isn't true."
Emile snorted. "Right. That's why you called him that name when you came in. Because you were going to tell him the truth." He snorted again. "Poppy. Nice touch, Tremore—"
Mick leaped at him, grabbing him by the front of his coat, walking—slamming—the man backward with the momentum of his anger. He rammed Emile's back into the bookcases against the wall.
"Mick—" Winnie called.
He didn't listen, but lifted the struggling, furious Lamont slightly onto his toes. Into his face, Mick said, "What I 'dug up,' arsehole, is you are conning this old man for a hundred thousand pounds and using me to do it. Well, you're finished; it didn't work." He glanced over his shoulder at Jeremy, who, now pale, had stepped toward the door. "You won the bet," he told him. "Everyone here thinks I'm a viscount. Your brother owes you money—"
Emile hissed vehemently, "There was no bet, you stupid—"
"Shut up." Mick shoved him harder, 'til the man let out an ooof of breath.
"Mick, don't be—"
"I'm not hurting him, Win. Not yet anyway." To Emile, he said, "My obligation to you was to fulfill my part in a bet. I did. You owe me a hundred pounds, because I pulled it off. And then you're leaving. You are not using me to milk money and heartache out of an old man, no matter how much he might deserve it. And you are not staying here to cause trouble."
He let the man go and stepped back so suddenly that Emile stumbled down the length of one bookshelf. His face, when he turned, though was livid. Leaning toward Mick, he whispered, furious, "The reason you don't want us to have the hundred thousand is you see it coming out of your pocket now: You intend to con him out of the entire duchy, you ungrateful, greedy son-of-a—"
Mick grabbed him by the back of the coat, moving him toward the doorway, escorting the two brothers out.
Winnie followed, frowning. So did Mick hear the nickname downstairs? Was he attempting to assume a duchy? By virtue of six weeks' instruction on how to be an English Lord? Her instruction? She wished for a moment that she didn't know him to be so … quick-witted, so adept at improvising and taking advantage of whatever came his way.
As Jeremy and Emile were handed their things from the cloak attendant, Jeremy stammered, "W-we'll call the police on you, Tremore. We won't let you get away with this."
"I've done nothing wrong." He pushed them toward the main front doors, then stepped out behind them into the night with Winnie following. "Have a good walk to London," he told them.
"You won't get away with this. I'll see that you—"
"You won't see that I'm anything. Tomorrow morning I'm turning over your counterfeit bills to the authorities. If you have any sense, you'll be as far from England as possible by then. Don't ever come back."
Jeremy let out a high, foolish laugh that came out in a giddy burst. He stood under the portico, silhouetted against the river torches, his hat in his hand, his cloak clutched to his chest. "You—you—" He struggled for words for a moment. "You ratcatcher." Rather prosaically, he added, "Who do you think you are?"
There in the odd light from the riverwalk, Mick blinked, frowned, then sh
ook his head. He looked down. "I don't know," he said, "I don't know."
* * *
In the entry alcove as they came back in, Winnie leaned toward Mick and asked, "Did the cook's assistant tell you the name?"
Mick bent his head to her, touching her back, her spine. "No," he said, "but I don't think that means anything." His voice grew more hushed as they whispered together. "She told me about the kidnapped grandson and the reward from years ago. I was going into Arles's study to tell him, to set the record straight from one end to the other. But when I saw him—" He broke off. "I can't explain it. He so reminded me of my own grandfather. That's what I used to call him. Poppy. The name isn't that unusual, is it?"
Winnie took his arm. Such a warm, muscular arm beneath his evening coat. Then he lifted it to put it around her shoulder, and they leaned into each other. They stood there almost as if consoling one another.
"I don't know how unusual it is," she told him. "I don't know what to think."
He brushed the crown of her head with his lips.
No, she didn't know what to think, except that she loved him, whoever he was.
* * *
When they returned to the ballroom, the most amazing thing happened. As they entered, a small commotion was already in progress. Winnie raised her pince-nez. And—egad!—she watched a small tail-thing scoot from the sidelines out among the dancers in the center of the ballroom floor.
Pandemonium. The dancing stopped. The orchestra faltered. Men called out as women screeched, lifting their skirts and trying to flee out of its way as it darted between feet and around dresses.
Winnie—Winnie herself—took off after it, leaving Mick behind. She ran straight out into the middle of the huge dance floor and held up her arms. "Don't anyone move," she said. "You'll frighten her. It's Mick's ferret. She's gotten loose."
She glanced at Mick and saw him, his head tilted at her, smiling the sweetest smile.
