And then, before Lord Selcrest could swallow the rest of the tart so he could speak up, young Miss Hutchison had rushed over and grabbed his arms over his head, shouting at her sister to remember what Dr. Browne had advised, too late. Her sister did remember, the whole nightmare of her husband’s sudden departure. So she drew back her fist and with all her might belted the viscount in the stomach, right below the ribs.
In the ordinary course of events, her fist would have bounced off his lordship’s rigid muscles. He worked out with Gentleman Jackson and fenced with Monsieur Lamartine. But he wasn’t sparring or parrying; he was sitting in an attractive female’s parlor, eating raspberry tarts. The impact of Johna’s fist sent the air straight out of him. It also sent the cane-back chair toppling over, with Merle in it, so his head struck the floor right where the thick carpet ended.
“My stars, Jo, you’ve killed him!”
Johna was on the floor beside the viscount, loosening his neckcloth, shaking his shoulders, and drenching him with tears. “You can’t die! Oh, please wake up, my lord. Please please please.” And she took to slapping his face. Merle was seeing a dozen Lady Ogdens and feeling a million slaps on his aching head. So he made a grab for her hands, which pulled her off balance and onto his chest. So he kissed her, which seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It certainly made his head feel better.
Johna pulled out of his arms with a gasp. Whether from relief that he was alive, humiliation at her actions, or indignation at his, Johna was incensed. She hauled back that same deadly right and punched the viscount in the jaw. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and made her feel a great deal better. Of course it bounced Merle’s head on the hardwood floor again.
This time when he awoke Lady Johna was sending her sister to fetch the brandy decanter, thank God. Merle slowly managed to drag himself to a sitting position while Phillipa poured a wavery stream into the tilting glass Johna held, their hands were shaking so badly. The viscount reached out to take the glass before they spilled the whole bottle, only to see the elegant widow down the shot in one swallow.
He had to laugh. “Mama’s going to love you.”
“Then you’ll do it? You’ll help?”
Phillipa handed him another glass. “He has to help; we saved his life.”
“Saved my life? Bloody hell, you damn near killed me.”
“You took liberties,” was all Johna said as she helped him to his feet and onto the sofa.
“It was a dying man’s last wish.”
“Fustian.”
He smiled. “Have you never heard of the kiss of life? It worked.”
“Rubbish.”
“But lovely rubbish, if I remember correctly. Of course I wasn’t in any position to truly appreciate your efforts at reviving me. Perhaps you’d care to—”
“I was not trying to revive you. That is, I was, but not then.” To hide her blushes Johna crossed to the bellpull.
Within minutes her efficient staff had the mess cleaned up and the brandy decanter refilled. The viscount had a full glass in his hand, a slab of raw meat on his jaw, and a sack of ice on his head. He also had his brother’s note of hand, rescued from the debris. “I owe you for this, if not my life.”
Johna reached for the marker and ripped it up. “No, I was wrong to hold that over you. I know what my husband was. He likely cheated your brother, the same way he cheated Papa. I was desperate, my lord.”
“For my mother’s approval?”
Johna gazed toward the pianoforte where Phillipa had resumed her playing. “I want my sister to have the chance I never did. She cannot help being Sir Otis Ogden’s sister-in-law, any more than I could help being Papa’s daughter. She deserves a decent husband, a true gentleman the likes of which we are not liable to come upon on our own, nor back in Berkshire. I found your brother’s voucher, but he is too young to lend any kind of countenance. And your escort…”
Merle finished for her “Would have been damning.”
Johna shrugged. “If you showed interest in Phillipa, no other gentleman would pay her attention, and if you paid me particular notice, they’d all assume I was your mistress. Either way, Phillipa would not get to meet any decent, worthy candidates for her hand and dowry. We have no female relations, no connections for all the three years we’ve spent in London. Your mother is known to be…eccentric. I’ve heard that she keeps rabbits in the drawing room and plays cards with her butler, but she is still good ton. She could lend us that veneer of respectability we so dreadfully need.”
“Higbee has been with us forever,” was Selcrest’s only comment. He leaned back to think, sipping his brandy. To call his mother an eccentric was like calling the Thames wet. It didn’t half describe the thing. Mama was downright attics-to-let. The reason Merle clung so firmly to his dignity was because he found so little of it at home. He’d had to fight his way through boarding school because it was public knowledge that he’d been born a scant six months after his parents’ wedding. A premature birth, hell; to this day he didn’t know if he was the rightful heir or the butler’s son! Mama would only answer that she was always faithful to the love of her life.
The rabbits were the least of his embarrassments, just another passing fancy like the seances in the munitions room and the mud baths in the backyard. Merle would not let it happen again, his name becoming a fixture in the on-dits columns. He spent his days keeping his mother from her wilder extravagances, like flying her own hot air balloon. When the viscount wasn’t scrambling to keep his mother from the brink of social and physical disaster, he was pulling his brother out of scrapes. He was not about to sacrifice years of holding them to the straight and narrow for the sake of these two outcasts.
Selcrest no longer believed that Lady Ogden had killed her husband. That was something, at least. If she weren’t quite the innocent her sister was, neither did she seem quite the mercenary baggage he’d assumed. Testing the waters, he asked, “Were there other outstanding loans among your husband’s papers?”
She nodded. “I’ll burn them tonight. I never intended to ask anyone for money.”
Were favors just as bad? Merle’s head was aching too much to decide and, deuce take it, the widow was too alluring to let slip away into rural obscurity. “I’ll put it to Mama. I’ll ask her to help sponsor you and your sister into polite society. But on one condition: if you cause one poor reflection on my mother’s good name, one misstep or least hint of impropriety, the deal is off. I’d rather pay my brother’s debt in cash, with interest, than let you stir the scandalbroth. Are we agreed?”
“Agreed,” she said, holding out her hand.
Merle was about to turn the slender wrist over and kiss her palm, or her fingers, or perhaps the pulse beating through the blue veins. But she wasn’t finished: “My sister and I are entirely capable of behaving like ladies.” Her eyes narrowed and her chin rose an inch. “Are you agreeing to act like a gentleman?”
Merle looked at that fragile hand and rubbed his aching jaw. He decided a firm handshake was the safer course. “Agreed.”
3
“Coo-ee, gov, wot ’appened to you?” The viscount’s tiger looked back down Albemarle Street for the gang of thugs that had attacked his master, perhaps a runaway carriage. But the midday sun was still shining on the quiet street. “I thought you was makin’ a mornin’ call, not goin’ to a mill.”
“Stubble it.” Lord Selcrest took up the reins and flicked his whip over the horses’ heads, forcing the tiger to scramble onto the back of the curricle, lest he be left behind. Merle drove around to the stable mews rather than getting down at the front door of Selcrest House as usual. He thought he could go in the back door, through the service entrance near the kitchens, without disturbing the household.
Unfortunately, one of the maids saw him and swooned dead away. Another started screaming, which brought his high-strung Welsh housekeeper, with the kitchen’s largest meat cleaver. What next? Merle thought as he tried to wrest the blade away bef
ore Mrs. Reese injured herself. The cooks and scullery maids were shrieking by now, knocking over buckets, barrels, and bowls of ingredients in their hysteria.
Of course Merle’s mother came to see what all the commotion was about. She loved a good riot, so joined Higbee the butler under the heavy pantry table. Once they’d placed their wagers, the dowager chirped into the mayhem: “Did you have a nice day, Merry dear?”
*
Once the viscount was cleaned up, and after Higbee had reassured Lady Selcrest that the stains on her son’s neckcloth were raspberry preserves, not blood, she wanted to know all the details. So did Higbee. Merle didn’t waste his time telling the old man to go polish the silver or something. Higbee wouldn’t do it anyway. Selcrest thought with envy of Lady Ogden’s so-correct butler. Then he tried to decide just which of the morning’s details he ought to relate to his fond parent. He didn’t think his mother would be impressed to hear what a handy set of fives the widow possessed. So instead of explaining how he got the purple bruise on his chin, or what the sticking plaster was doing on his head, the viscount asked: “Do you know the Hutchison family, Mother?”
Lady Selcrest knew everyone. If she didn’t, Higbee could find them in Debrett’s Peerage. “The Devon or the Berkshire Hutchisons?”
“Berkshire. The mother was a Whittaker, I believe.”
“Ah, those Hutchisons.” Lady Selcrest was intrigued. Her dry-as-dust eldest son came home looking like he’d been in a dockside tavern brawl, and mentioned two young females of questionable virtue. Maybe there was hope for the boy after all.
“I know there’s been a deal of conjecture about them, but they’re not as unacceptable as painted. The younger is a sweet little charmer, all round and rosy, the usual accomplishments. Handsome dowry, I understand.”
“And the elder? She’s the poor girl who was forced to marry that awful Ogden person, isn’t she? It wouldn’t have happened had her mother lived, of course. I understand Hutchison fell apart after that. It’s no excuse. The varlet should be boiled in oil for what he did to his own daughter.”
Higbee was standing by the door. “Lord Hutchison is dead, my lady.”
Lady Selcrest smiled over at him. “That’s right, he is. Thank you, Higbee.”
Merle gnashed his teeth. “Do you think you might give the sisters the occasional invite?”
“Do you mean for tea, dear? Of course, if they are friends of yours.”
“Well, I was thinking more in the order of dinner, an evening at the theater, a ride with you in the park.” Selcrest brushed at a gray rabbit hair on his burgundy coat sleeve. “We’re not friends, precisely. I, that is, we, stand somewhat in their debt. I thought to repay the obligation by helping them find their feet in the social waters.”
A debt? This was getting better and better. If there was one thing Lady Selcrest liked more than aggravating her son by creating a stir, it was matchmaking. So far, she’d had lamentably few successes. “Let me think. Whittaker’s eldest gel married a Babcock, and so did my brother’s wife’s aster. Not the same Babcock, of course, but yes, I think we can claim a connection that might explain your chicks under my wing.”
“They’re not my—”
Higbee cleared his throat. “Ahem. Lady Margaret Spenser was godmother to Clementine Whittaker, Baroness Hutchison.”
“Great-aunt Margaret?”
“The same. I am sure Lady Margaret would expect you to look after her loved ones.”
“If she hadn’t died two decades before they were born,” the viscount muttered, but his mother was delighted.
“Higbee, you are a genius. Merle, raise his salary.” The man already earned more than the Prime Minister, but Merle nodded, to get back to the issue at hand. “So you think we can do it? Bring Lady Ogden and her sister into fashion?”
“It’s quite a challenge, but not beyond my powers, of course. Don’t you agree, Higbee?”
“If anyone can reclaim two fallen sparrows, my lady, it is your gracious self.”
The viscountess was almost purring. The viscount was almost puking. He got up to leave, but his mother called him back. “I cannot perform miracles, Merle. If your protégées are hopeless rustics or of dubious character, the venture is doomed to failure. I doubt that even I could foist milkmaids, fortune-hunters, or Haymarket ware on the ton.”
“That’s what most of the young misses at Almack’s are, Mother, which is why your efforts at matchmaking always fail. Great-aunt Margaret’s grand-goddaughters will fit right in.”
“Ahem. May I suggest that my lady invite the two young females to tea before undertaking a public appearance? That way we might be certain of their suitability before committing the Selcrest name to their advancement.”
“Excellent, Higbee! What would I do without you?” Most likely find a lonely old duke or an eligible earl to marry, but Merle wasn’t that lucky.
*
“What do you mean, Mama says we have to show a united front of family approval?” Denton was proving more difficult to convince than Lady Selcrest, after the viscount managed to track down his errant brother in the billiards room. “Do the pretty with two harum-scarum females I’ve never met? Not for the price of that new hunter I saw at Tattersall’s.”
Merle reset the balls and waited for his brother to take aim. “How about for the price of your gaming debt to Otis Ogden?”
The balls scattered wildly, two landing on the floor. “My, ah, debt?”
“What, did you think a sum like that would never come to light?”
“But the man is dead!”
“So you thought you didn’t have to pay?” Merle had retrieved the balls and his own cue stick. He was calmly, methodically, sending his shots into the appropriate pockets. “I wonder, if I should die, would you feel you didn’t have to pay the coal-hauler or the vintner? Perhaps I had better be thinking harder about my successor.” Merle set his stick aside, leaving Denton an almost impossible shot.
Denton threw his stick down and faced his brother. “Dash it, this was different. I think the wine was tampered with.”
“Most likely it was. If you were fool enough to enter a snakepit like the Black Parrot, you should have expected to be stung in some fashion. Marked decks, uphill dice, or footpads in the alley when you left, should you have been unfortunate enough to win.”
“Exactly. But the fellows were going, so I went along.”
“And gambled away your patrimony and part of mine. It’s a debt of honor, you cloth-head. Play and pay. If you thought you were cheated, you should have called the blackguards out.”
“They would have killed me.”
“And I still might if you won’t help launch those two females. We owe them.”
“But, Merle, come-out balls and afternoon teas?” Denton shuddered. “I’d rather face Bonaparte’s cannons.” His face brightened. “In fact, you can reconsider and purchase my commission. That way you won’t have to keep bailing me out of these scrapes. I might even bring some glory to the family name, as you’re always lecturing about.”
“I don’t lecture and I’m not going to send you off to get blown apart in some act of bacon-brained bravado. You are still my heir.”
“I know the solution then. Why don’t you marry Miss Hutchison and beget your own heir? You said her mother was of decent lineage. That way her place in society would be guaranteed and I could go off to the Peninsula, instead of to perdition at Almack’s.”
The viscount was tossing a billiard ball from hand to hand. He stopped. “What, marry a chit from the infantry? I don’t recall Nurse dropping you on your head, but someone must have. She’s a sweet child, but I’d be bored within a week.”
“Then marry the widow.”
Merle placed the ball in the exact center of the table. “What, take Otis Ogden’s leavings? Pigs will fly first.”
*
The tea went well, Selcrest thought. He was relieved to note that the sisters were dressed in modish modesty, curtsied to the proper depths, a
nd didn’t sit mumchance like so many fledglings he’d seen, intimidated by their betters. He carefully suppressed the notion that Lady Ogden did not consider the Selcrests her betters. Restored to her cool elegance, she was remarkably unfazed by his mother’s current penchant for Gypsy attire, the peasant blouse, tiered skirts with billowy red petticoats, and chains of coins and hoops. Merle even thought she sounded sincere when she commented, “How gay you look, my lady,” as she took her seat. One would think the female used her fan daily to sweep rabbit pellets off damask chairs. No, he did not think the Hutchison sisters would embarrass his mother. The alternative was more likely, however. Merle refused to consider the possibility that Selcrest House and its inhabitants mightn’t pass muster, nor why the idea so distressed him. He ought to be feeling relieved that Lady Ogden might show them her heels. He wasn’t. Deuce take it, she was exquisite. If his mother could get the sister fired off in this fall’s Little Season, the widow just might be more amenable to dalliance before the ton left town for the holidays. Merle daydreamed of how he’d like his Christmas present unwrapped, while the ladies furthered their acquaintance.
Lady Selcrest was charmed. She declared that, had she known young women could be so enchanting, she’d have had daughters instead of sons. The younger girl read the viscountess’s favorite Gothic romance novels and the older one played cards. What could be more accommodating? Lady Selcrest delightedly announced that she couldn’t wait to introduce the girls to her circle of friends, to arrange parties in their honor, to take them shopping with her. Her stiff-rumped son may have cringed at this last item, Lady Selcrest observed, but Johna didn’t. Excellent female. She’d do, especially if Selcrest continued to watch the beautiful widow like a fox eyeing a particularly plump partridge. He was practically drooling, the gudgeon. Lady Selcrest had only to make sure that the bird stayed just out of reach until the clunch was well and truly caught. She’d have a grandchild before the cat could lick its ear, and before Higbee won their wager.
Greetings of the Season and Other Stories Page 9
