by Carola Dunn
“I haven’t warmed it yet, my lord.” The valet crossed to the washstand.
“Never mind that. I’m warm now, and this fire is burning well.”
“That’s odd, there’s no towel here. I could swear I put out a clean one this very morning. I’ll have to go to the linen cupboard, my lord.”
Justin scowled. “Hurry. This water isn’t growing any hotter.”
Tebbutt was away an age. The water rapidly cooled. At last the valet came back, and Justin jumped out of the bath before he noticed the desperation in the man’s face.
“I can’t find any, my lord. There’s not a one in the cupboard, nor in any of the bedchambers, neither. Not a bloody one.”
“For pity’s sake, bring something,” Justin shouted, crouching close to the fire.
A haze seeped into the dressing-room as Tebbutt dashed into the chamber and returned with the counterpane. Swathed in woodsmoke-impregnated brocade, Justin contemplated murder.
A slightly less-smoky sheet proved a more adequate substitute for a towel. Dry at last, Justin put on his dressing-gown and strode through to the bedchamber. With Tebbutt looking on, wringing his hands, he thrust his arm up the chimney and pulled down an interwoven mass of twigs, dried grass, and feathers.
“A bird’s nest.”
“Birds do nest in chimneys, my lord,” said Tebbutt doubtfully, his unhappy gaze on the soot-blackened sleeve of the dressing-gown.
“No bird built this nest here since I informed my father of my return to England.” Too high up the chimney to have been put there by the twins; unlikely to be the classical scholar or the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth seamstress. Justin would have bet on Colin, the outdoorsman. “It is time I confronted Lady Wooburn,” he announced.
“Not in your dressing-gown, my lord!” exclaimed the horrified valet.
“No, I have not quite yet taken leave of my senses. I shall dress for dinner and hope to catch her before she goes to change.”
Regarding his elegant reflection in the looking-glass a short time later, he decided no one could possibly guess the disasters he had just suffered through. He appeared the cool, collected gentleman equally at home in county, London, or St. Petersburg Society. This was the imperturbable Lord Amis who was courting the beautiful, sophisticated Lady Amabel Fellowes, the Toast of the Town.
Nothing, he vowed, would make him lose his temper with Lady Wooburn.
He found her in the drawing room. Though she was not alone, as he had hoped, only Lydia was with her. Lace cap and gold ringlets bowed over their eternal sewing. His aunt, too, always had a piece of embroidery about her without ever producing anything of use.
Both ladies glanced up and smiled as be entered, but Lydia’s smile was suddenly snuffed out as she recalled that he was the enemy. She frowned at him.
Lady Wooburn continued to smile. “Why, Lord Amis,” she said, “you are already changed for dinner. I did not realize it was so late. Lydia, we must go up.” She stuck her needle into her work and started to fold it.
“I am early, ma’am. Pray wait a little, I have something to say to you.” He crossed the room and leaned on the back of a chair, looking down at her sternly.
She cocked her head in enquiry, her blue eyes guileless. Lydia’s frown deepened and she took her mother’s hand.
“Madam, your offspring are the most disgracefully ill-bred, malicious rapscallions it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.” His tone admirably even, he was about to embark upon a recital of their misdeeds when she turned to Lydia.
“Dearest,” she said in a trembling voice, “does he mean he does not like you and your brothers and sisters?”
“I think so. Mama, but he will use such long words.”
Tears spilling over. Lady Wooburn wailed, “But you are quite the best children anyone could ask for!”
Lydia took her in her arms and, looking back over her shoulder, said fiercely to Justin, “Go away!”
Nonplussed, he obeyed. He didn’t think the girl capable of dissimulation, so her protectiveness of her mother must be genuine. That, together with his father’s evident affection for the woman, and her own apparent naivety, gave Justin a lowering feeling that he was in the wrong.
Not wrong about the situation in general, he hastened to reassure himself, but in believing Lady Wooburn the perpetrator. A memory returned to him:
Virginia Webster facing him with flashing eyes and announcing, “It was not Mama but I who promoted the match, by every means in my power.”
At the time, fighting in vain his urgent desire to kiss her, he had taken little note of her words. Had her mother been her cat’s-paw, as well as his father?
“Where is Miss Webster?” he demanded of a passing footman.
Taken aback by his abruptness, the man stammered, “Miss Webster, my lord? I don’t know for sure, my lord, but if miss ben’t in the drawing room, likely she’s in the schoolroom.”
Justin took the stairs two at a time. No one was in the schoolroom, but he heard voices from the day nursery beyond. He flung open the door. Half a dozen young Websters were seated around the table, about to eat. Seven pairs of eyes turned to stare.
A tall, sturdy lad who must be Colin; a flaxen-haired girl of twelve or so he hadn’t seen before; the twins; the small girl and little boy who had been by the lake: all regarded him with hostile defiance. Beside the table stood Virginia, damnably desirable, damnably devious, and faintly amused.
Ginnie saw that Colin was about to speak and hushed him with a gesture. She had deliberately avoided hearing of their mischief in expectation of this moment. Whatever they had done, Lord Amis, complete to a shade in his modish evening dress, appeared to be in control of his emotions for once. Unfortunately, the chief emotion he was in control of was undoubtedly animosity. His handsome face was composed. Only his burning eyes gave him away.
She stepped forward. “My lord?”
“Miss Webster, you and your siblings have been playing childish tricks on me. I—”
“Tricks, my lord?” She widened her eyes. “What sort of tricks?”
He looked past her at the unfriendly ranks of her brothers and sisters, and suddenly she felt sorry for his discomfort.
“We can speak privately in the schoolroom,” she suggested, and he stood aside to let her pass. Following, he closed the door behind him. Ginnie prudently put the scratched, ink-stained table between them. “Tricks?” she repeated.
“Burrs in my boots,” he commenced.
It was the only prank she knew of, so she hastened to distract him. “Surely when you ride through the fields you are bound to pick up a burr or two sooner or later.”
“Not, however, a dozen in the toe of each boot,” he said sarcastically, and continued, “A bird’s nest up the chimney, causing my chamber to fill with smoke. My hot shaving water replaced with cold.”
“Perhaps your man set your water down for some reason and let it grow cold,” Ginnie improvised, her lips beginning to twitch. What an inventive family she bad! A bird’s nest? That sounded like Judith, in collusion with Colin. “And birds do nest in chimneys,” she pointed out.
“However, nettles do not grow between bed-sheets,” he said through gritted teeth. “Nor do the necks and wrists of shirts sew themselves together.”
“No,” she admitted. So that was what Lydia and Gilbert had been up to. Nettles must be the twins’ notion, and on the edge of acceptability; she’d have to have a word with them.
“Furthermore, this afternoon while I was taking a bath, every towel in the house miraculously vanished. How do you propose to explain that away?”
“Oh dear, I hope you have not caught cold!” Her immediate concern for his health faded as an indecorous vision of his plight as he emerged towelless from his bath rose in her mind, and heat in her cheeks. One way or another, she was put to the blush every time she spoke to him! She was glad of the table between them.
He, too, was flushed, whether because he wished he had not incautiously voiced
his last complaint or simply with anger. Probably the latter, for his voice was cold as he said, “I await your explanation of these petty annoyances.”
Ginnie matched his hauteur. “I shall endeavour to discover the culprits. Lord Amis.” Not that she had any intention of chastising them. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must go and change for dinner.”
With an ironic bow, he opened the door to the passage. She swept past him with her nose in the air.
On the way to her chamber, she seriously considered putting an end to the harassment. He had been quite reasonable this time, for once not letting fly with insults and unwarranted accusations, though now he had cause for reproach. He had not even demanded punishment of the offenders—possibly because he believed her one of them.
She hated being at daggers drawn with anyone, let alone a member of the household whom she must see every day. Let alone, she confessed to herself, a well-favoured, virile young gentleman.
Surely reconciliation was not impossible.
Entering her chamber, she heard Lydia moving about next door and went through. “We have no guests tonight, Lyddie. What shall you wear?”
Lydia turned to her with an utterly uncharacteristic bellicose expression. “I am sure I am too overset to care what I wear,” she said dramatically. “That horrid man has made Mama cry again.”
She had only the vaguest notion of what exactly Lord Amis had said, but on one point she was firm: he had made Mama cry. If Gilbert were to bring her every item in his lordship’s wardrobe, she’d gladly sew up every opening, buttonholes included. Ginnie sighed. So much for reconciliation!
* * *
Chapter 7
“My lord!” Near tears, Tebbutt flung down an armful of white muslin. “Every single neckcloth we possess!”
Justin frowned down at the heap. “What is wrong with them?” he asked.
“Someone’s gone and washed the starch out of ’em. They’ve been pressed and folded neat-like, but they’re limp as dishrags, every one.”
So yesterday’s complaints to Lady Wooburn and her daughter had had precisely no effect. Well, it scarcely mattered if he wore a drooping cravat among such an unfashionable crew. He had noticed that Virginia and Lydia wore plain muslin gowns of the simplest cut, unadorned with ruffles and bows, in a style long since outdated. They were utterly ignorant of London modes, which now called for fuller skirts, often made of silks and sarcenets, and decorated with all sorts of fancy fal-lals.
A capital notion came to him. He’d invite Lady Amabel, and several other fashionable London friends, to stay at Wooburn for a week or two. They would help him depress the pretensions of the shabby-genteel interlopers. They’d put the Websters in their place, make them realize how far beneath the standards of the Ton they fell.
Better still, Lady Amabel’s stylish beauty was bound to distract him from Virginia’s rustic charms.
Absently, pondering possible guests for his house party, Justin picked up one of the limp neckcloths. As Tebbutt watched in anguish, he wound it round his neck and tied it in a sad parody of the Osbaldeston knot.
Lady Amabel, however dashing, was too proper to accept a gentleman’s invitation without her mother for chaperon. At present, he recalled, she was staying with the Parringales, a sophisticated youngish couple always bang up to the mark. He might as well invite them, too.
Alfred Bascom, a school friend and fellow member of White’s, the epitome of the Bond Street Beau, could bring his Society-butterfly sister and her dandy husband.
Sally Jersey and Countess Lieven were high sticklers who would look down their noses at the Websters, and amusing company besides. They might be persuaded to come—but Justin did not want to give Virginia and Lydia the impression that he was trying to smooth their entrée into Almack’s. No, it was best to cross the patronesses of that exclusive club off his list.
The person he really wanted to see, after his two years abroad, was George Medford; yet George was a modest fellow who was quite likely to treat the Websters as his equals. Still, Justin needed someone to confide in. And George had a sister who must be of an age to make her come-out. Let the Webster girls learn the difference between the prospects of a well-born, well-dowered sister of a marquis and a pair of dowdy social climbers.
After galloping the fidgets out of Prince Rurik, under cloudy but dry skies, Justin repaired to the breakfast room. A footman brought him buttered eggs, fried ham, muffins, and ale, and departed. Hungrily, Justin set to.
The first mouthful of eggs was somewhat over-seasoned with pepper. The second took away his breath, brought tears to his eyes, and ended in a violent sneeze. Another sneeze followed, and another. Justin felt for his handkerchief, but his pockets were empty. He clapped his napkin to his face and dashed for the stairs.
Between paroxysms, he wondered by what devilish stratagem they had succeeded in waylaying his eggs between kitchen and table.
His course to his chamber was punctuated with explosions. Half blinded, he yanked open his handkerchief drawer and plunged his hand into it.
“Oweeaaahtchoo!” It was like picking up a handful of pins. Hastily he dropped whatever it was, mopped at his eyes, and peered into the drawer.
Two tiny, frightened black eyes peered back. A little black nose twitched at him. His own nose twitched in sympathy and another sneeze emerged, but at last the convulsions were decreasing to manageable proportions. Cautiously, he extracted a handkerchief from beneath the brown-speckled hedgehog and blew the remains of the pepper into it.
Justin studied the unhappy creature and it studied him. One of its rear legs was splinted, which had doubtless prevented its rolling into a protective ball.
“Eek,” said the hedgehog anxiously.
“I shan’t hurt you. What I shall do to whoever put you here and caused me to rush to discover you is another matter.”
“My lord?” It was, of course, Tebbutt, not the hedgehog, who spoke. “Mr. Reynolds said you... My lord! What is that dirty animal doing in your drawer?”
Closing his eyes, Justin counted swiftly to ten, then said with ironic calm, “Nothing in particular. He is as little pleased to be here as I am to find him, I collect.”
“Miss Judith,” said the valet with certainty. “He didn’t get here on his own four legs, that’s for sure, and it’s Miss Judith as keeps the beasties.”
“Miss Judith keeps hedgehogs?” Justin asked, incredulous.
“All manner of beasties, my lord. Down in the stables.”
“Does she, indeed? I believe I shall pay a visit to the stables. Give me a neckcloth.”
“A neckcloth, my lord?” Tebbutt glanced with distaste at his master’s sagging cravat. “Right, my lord. I just restarched the lot, not that I suppose Miss Judith’d notice.”
“For the animal! You don’t think I mean to carry him in my bare hands?”
Gently cautious, he placed the little beast in the centre of the square of muslin, picked it up by the comers, and headed for the stables.
“Miss Judith?” he said curtly to the groom who came to attend him as he entered the paved yard.
The man looked alarmed. “In the loose box along aside the harness room, m’lord. Mr. Duffy, he lets miss use it for her creeturs, seeing as the stables ben’t full, m’lord, an’ meaning no harm. Will I fetch Mr. Duffy?”
Denying any wish to speak to the head groom, Justin strode on in the indicated direction. Most of the white-painted Dutch doors of the red brick buildings were closed, but Prince Rurik stuck his nose out of his stall and whickered a greeting.
Both top and bottom halves of the last door in the row hung open. As Justin approached, he heard the sound of muffled sobs.
He looked in. On one side of the loose box, a long trestle table held a motley assortment of crates, baskets and tin pails, from which came squeaks, snorts, chirps, caws, yowls, and the odd croak. The sobs came from a girl with a long, flaxen pigtail tied with a violet ribbon that failed to match her brown cambric gown. Her back to Justin, she was
trying to shift a heavy wooden box.
“I have something of yours, I believe,” he drawled.
Startled, she spun round. Her eyes were red and swollen. “You’ve got Prickles?” she asked eagerly.
Though he was indeed feeling decidedly prickly, he just held out the neckcloth, forbearing comment. Taking it, she knelt on the floor and opened it with great care. The hedgehog snuffled and snorted at her as she delicately stroked its spines back from head to tail.
“Oh, Prickles!” She looked up at Justin, smiling through fresh tears, then scowled and demanded, “Did you hurt him?”
“I don’t think so. If I did, it was inadvertently—by accident. You should have thought of that before hiding him in my drawer.”
“Oh, but that wasn’t me, it was... someone else. I told him not to. I told him you might hurt Prickles. He wouldn’t listen. He must have taken him when I went to collect snails.”
“Snails!” Visions of drawers full of snails floated through his mind. Tebbutt would be fit for Bedlam.
“Yes, Prickles was missing when I came back. I hoped he’d just got out. I was moving things to hunt for him.”
“He’d not have gone far with his leg splinted. Tell me. Miss Judith, do you doctor snails, too?”
“Heavens, no.” She pulled a face. “They are for food. I hate to do it, ’cause after all I don’t s’pose they care for being eaten, but Prickles likes them and so does Polyhymnia, my thrush.”
“Polyhymnia? Your brother Gilbert’s idea, no doubt.”
“He said she was the Greek Muse of song.”
“I dare say he is right. What other animals have you in your menagerie?” he asked, crossing to the table.
“It’s not a menagerie.” She picked up the hedgehog, put him in a decrepit basket lined with leaves, and gave him a couple of snails to crunch. “I don’t keep them for people to look at. They are all sick or hurt.”
“A hospital, then. Do many of your patients recover?”
“Yes, but more would if I had proper cages that let in more light and air and were easier to clean.” She turned on him a steady, questioning regard from blue-grey eyes very like her eldest sister’s.
