Miss Delectable: Mischief in Mayfair Book One

by Burrowes, Grace

  Dorning listened more than he spoke, did justice to the steak, and kept his throwing knife out of sight. While Rye let Dylan and Alasdhair carry the conversation, he wondered if Ann would have enjoyed the haricots vert amandine and if she had a favorite recipe for steak gravy.

  Would she ever again doze off in Rye’s lap, and did she feel the same yearning that he did to share impossible pleasures?

  When drinks had been carried to the reading room and the door firmly closed, Dorning took up a pose leaning on the mantel.

  “Do I assume your cousins are in your confidence, Goddard?”

  “You had better,” Dylan replied amiably. “We are his cousins.”

  “Forgive Dorning,” Rye said. “He is so mobbed with siblings he has little experience of relatives beyond immediate family. Dylan and Alasdhair served with me. They know my circumstances.”

  “We also know,” Alasdhair said, sinking into a reading chair, “that Deschamps is underfoot in London, and if anybody is responsible for bringing misery upon your good name, it is he.”

  “Philippe Deschamps?” Dorning asked.

  “You know him?”

  “He’s stopped by the club a time or two. Gambles prudently, flirts outrageously. Did not care for Fournier’s champagne. Good-looking devil.”

  “Emphasis on the devil,” Dylan muttered.

  “You’re jealous because you’re dog-ugly,” Alasdhair replied, though without heat or humor.

  “Your cousins are like brothers,” Dorning said, as if considering a fact that contradicted a pet hypothesis. “Or maybe like sisters.”

  “Returning to the matter at hand,” Rye said, “Philippe Deschamps was the aide-de-camp charged with carrying messages between the French camp and our own.”

  “What sort of messages?” Dorning asked.

  “Prisoner lists, prisoner casualty lists,” Dylan said. “We’d spend all day Monday trying to kill each other and the rest of the week being exquisitely civilized about the aftermath. The French military is fanatical about organization, and they wanted to know who of their number had fallen in battle, who had deserted, who was waiting for death in our infirmary, who was likely to recover and be sent to a parole village in Sussex.”

  “We fudged a bit regarding the deserters,” Alasdhair said. “So did the French.”

  “Deschamps was doubtless keeping his eyes and ears open when he enjoyed a polite dinner with the commanding officer,” Rye said, “but that sort of white-flag reconnaissance was expected. We’d send him off with a fine bottle of port, he’d gift the commanding officer with some decent brandy, and hostilities resumed the next morning.”

  Dorning looked fascinated. “And this sort of thing went on throughout the war?”

  Dylan added a square of peat to the fire. “I was once tasked with negotiating access to a village whorehouse with my French counterpart. The French took Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We got Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The ladies had Sunday off to go to Mass, the whorehouse being Spanish.”

  “And you think Deschamps was your spy’s point of contact among the enemy?” Dorning asked.

  “We’re almost sure of it,” Rye replied, “but we cannot be nearly as certain who Deschamps’s source of information was on our side.”

  Dorning finished his drink and set the glass on the sideboard. “But somebody has found it excessively convenient to pin that dishonor on you, Goddard. We need only determine who and decide whether or not to kill him. Are we agreed?”

  “No,” Rye said, wishing—of all things—that he could discuss this whole mess with Ann. “We are not agreed, Dorning. Not at all.”

  * * *

  “I do not want to go to the Coventry today,” Ann informed an enormous fluffy gray cat. “This is a first for me.” A somewhat disconcerting first for a woman who’d risen each morning, year after year, with cooking on her mind.

  Boreas squinted at her from the side of the desk and went on rumbling like the autumn storms he was named for. Miss Diana and Miss Julia spoke to him freely and even invented replies from him. Ann was not quite that far gone.

  Yet.

  The day was brisk, the sky overcast, with no shift in light to delineate morning from afternoon. The colonel’s hip had portended cold weather, though the day wasn’t quite bitter. Worse, though, the weather was windy, giving the sullen air a bite that whistled beneath doors and rattled windowpanes.

  “This should be a perfect day to spend in the kitchen,” she said as the cat began licking his luxurious fur. “I don’t want to go near the kitchen.”

  Aunt Melisande’s note sat on the blotter, in this, the family parlor, not that Ann’s only family would ever think to call on her here. Aunt inquired rather directly as to when Ann would provide the next menu, and could Ann please offer a few suggestions for the brigadier’s quarterly officers’ dinner as well?

  “Time is of the essence,” Ann quoted softly. Why did that one line from Melisande’s little epistle rankle exceedingly? Not as much as the closing, though: You have your orders, my dear. Please do march out smartly! M.

  A single consonant, as if such correspondence would somehow damn any who knew the author’s identity.

  “As if I am the poor relation,” Ann said, running a hand over Boreas’s soft fur.

  The cat looked up sharply when a solid triple thump came from the direction of the front door.

  “Not Mrs. Becker,” Ann muttered. “Please not Mrs. Becker and her ailments.” Mrs. B was a widow, and she came around regularly to lord her bereaved status over Miss Julia and Miss Diana, who, in their own words, had been too sensible to get caught in parson’s mousetrap.

  Ann took up a thick wool shawl and made her way to the door, dredging up a smile of welcome.

  “Colonel Goddard.” Her smile became genuine. “What a lovely surprise. Do come in.”

  “Miss Pearson, I hope I am not presuming. The hour is early for a call, but I know your afternoons are spoken for.”

  He made no move to enter the house, and the sight of him—eye patch securely in place, bearing erect, breeze whipping his dark hair—was rendered even more dear by the fact that he held a half-dozen pinkish roses in a small bouquet. His free hand sheltered the flowers from the wind, but their perfume came to Ann nonetheless.

  “From your walled garden?”

  “The very last of the stragglers,” he said, still making no move to enter the house. “I thought you should have them. Their fragrance speaks more for them than does their appearance, and tonight would see them nipped, I’m sure.”

  “Please come in, Colonel. The day is too brisk to chat away the morning on the doorstep.”

  Humor lit his gaze, as if he knew that pragmatic speech for the sop to Ann’s dignity that it was. The scent of the flowers was luscious, even if they weren’t awash in glossy foliage, and that the colonel would bring them to her…

  “I’m supposed to declare that you shouldn’t have troubled to bring me flowers,” Ann said, taking the bouquet from him, “and pretend eight more such offerings are already wilting in my conservatory, but this was very sweet of you, Colonel.”

  “I have an ulterior motive.” He peered around, ever the reconnaissance officer, though Miss Julia’s and Miss Diana’s housekeeping exceeded even military standards.

  “Which you make it a point to once again announce. You have little talent for subterfuge. Come to the parlor with me, and we’ll find a vase for these blooms.”

  He accompanied her to the parlor, and Ann was glad that the older ladies were fanatical about the domestic arts. The room was warm, tidy, and as well lit as a parlor could be on such a dreary day. Though with Colonel Goddard on hand, the space seemed smaller, the ceiling lower.

  “You trimmed the thorns,” she said, filling a vase half full of water and setting the flowers on the windowsill. “Considerate of you.”

  He stroked the cat, who rose to encourage more such cosseting. “Who is this grand fellow?”

  “Boreas, named for the
Greek deity who brought the autumn storms. He offers us an expired rodent just often enough to maintain his credentials as a mouser. Shall I take your coat, Colonel?”

  He passed Ann a gray wool scarf of exceptional softness, then set about undoing his buttons. “My grandmother knitted that scarf. The wool is from Ouessant—Ushant, to the English. A delightful little breed of sheep has called that island home since antiquity. When I was in Spain, I might have misplaced my telescope or my flask, but I would never misplace that scarf.”

  Ann took a whiff, finding his signature lavender scent beneath the predictable aroma of wool. “And is your grandmother still knitting you scarves, Colonel?”

  “She went to her reward before the Hundred Days, and I considered that a mercy. Most of my French relatives were enthusiastic supporters of Bonaparte, until his mad venture to Moscow. Half a million soldiers killed in a single campaign rather put a damper on the populace’s interest in further warfare. Unlike the English army, which maintains itself mostly through recruitment, the Continental forces practice conscription, which has drawbacks.”

  Ann took his coat and arranged it over the back of the chair at the desk, inside out, the better to absorb the fire’s warmth.

  “Your hair,” she said, winnowing her fingers through his locks. “The wind has disarranged you.” That, and she wanted any excuse to touch him. Such a longing was novel and not entirely welcome—she had menus to plan—but she suspected her preoccupation with the colonel would not fade anytime soon either.

  The memory of a short nap cradled in his arms plagued her. He’d spoken honestly about having no untoward designs on her person, but when his affection was so generously given, he didn’t need untoward designs to put her into a complete muddle.

  Aren’t you ever lonely, Ann?

  All the time.

  Her admission had left her restless and discontent, also resentful of Aunt’s demand for menus. “Shall I put together a tea tray?” Ann asked.

  “Might we be seated?” came from the colonel in the same instant. “No tea,” he said. “You spend all day toiling in a kitchen for others, and I did not come here to add to your work.”

  She gestured him into one of the two wing chairs by the hearth. The sisters spent many an evening in those chairs, swaddled in shawls, reminiscing. Ann knew that only because one day a week the Coventry was closed, and thus she was free to join her housemates by the fire.

  “A tea tray is not work,” Ann said.

  “It’s not a frolic either.” Colonel Goddard filled the chair, his long legs reaching nearly to the hearth’s fender. “I had supper last night with your employer.”

  “Was that a frolic?”

  Again, the brief humor came and went in his gaze without touching his mouth. “Hardly. How well do you know Mr. Sycamore Dorning?”

  “This is your ulterior motive? To quiz me about my employer?” Drat and perdition. “I don’t tell tales out of school, Colonel.”

  The cat leaped down from the desk and appropriated a place on the colonel’s lap.

  “He’ll get hair all over you.”

  “Lending me protection from the elements. Have you ever considered the origin of that phrase, about telling tales out of school? I think of the boy who’s bullied, of which there are too many. He’s to value the privilege of being abused by his peers above the protection his elders might afford him if he tattled.”

  “Or he’s to refrain from gossip. Mr. Dorning bullies nobody, though he can be both charming and emphatic. Why do you ask?” Very charming and very emphatic, which was fortunate when somebody had to jolly Jules Delacourt out of a surly mood.

  “I put a matter to Dorning in confidence, and I am concerned he’ll nose about and make a bad situation worse. When I realized that trusting to his discretion might have been ill-advised, my next thought was, I wish I could discuss this matter with Miss Pearson. She is a woman of great good sense, and she will hear things at the Coventry that might bear on my circumstances.”

  Ann had been valued for her ability to concoct rich sauces, for her subtle use of spices, for her hard work, though not nearly often enough. To be valued for her great good sense called to the girl whose papa hadn’t valued her for anything.

  “What exactly is your situation, Colonel?”

  “Should we have left the parlor door open?”

  “Miss Julia and Miss Diana are off on their weekly trip to the lending library. They will stop at a tea shop and, if the weather stays dry, a yarn shop. This is their version of patrolling the perimeter, Colonel, for all the best tattle is to be had over books, tea, and knitting. You need not worry that we’ll be interrupted or overheard.”

  The cat arranged itself in a perfect feline circle of contentment, the tip of his tail resting over his pink nose. The colonel gently stroked the beast’s back, and Ann envied the idiot cat those caresses.

  Sorely.

  “I am not concerned about being overheard,” the colonel said. “I was more worried about the proprieties. When last we met, I took liberties with your person. I have been prattling away over here, burdening you with my business, and all the while trying to figure out if an apology is in order.”

  “The flowers were a peace offering?”

  “If a peace offering is needed.”

  “And if no such offering is required?”

  “They are a token of my sincere esteem.”

  Ann would have bet her best carving knives that Orion Goddard hadn’t brought flowers to any other woman, much less taken liberties with her person, for quite some time. That Ann had earned his esteem pleased her and sent all thoughts of menus, sauces, and spices right up the chimney.

  “Tell me of your situation,” she said, “and I will offer you as much good counsel as I can.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  He launched into a tale of military intrigue, gossip, and commerce that absorbed Ann’s full attention as the cat purred, the temperature dropped, and the morning eased its way into early afternoon, and still, Ann spared not a single thought for her duties at the Coventry.

  Chapter Nine

  Rye had missed the company of women, and his decision to bide in England rather than France was partly to blame. At the height of post-revolutionary zeal, the French had flirted with the notion of extending the vote to women, though nothing had come of it.

  Still, they had been able to entertain the idea, while even the most radical English reformer could not.

  Then the Corsican’s nearly two decades of warfare had seen hundreds of thousands of France’s adult males sent to their eternal reward, leaving the women to raise the children, farm the land, and run the shops. Between Napoleon’s democratizing influence and the realities of life with a deficit of men, French women enjoyed far more freedom and practical authority than did their proper English counterparts.

  Ann Pearson trod a curious path between the sheltered ornaments of Mayfair and the more enlightened French exponents of femininity. London was probably full of her ilk—the military had seen its share—but Rye did not meet them in the normal course.

  Lately, his normal course had been even more solitary than he preferred, consisting of the company of his minions, his horses, his cousins, and his diminishing list of customers.

  Aren’t you ever lonely, Ann?

  All the time.

  “Who benefits from keeping you in disgrace?” she asked when Rye had sketched out his situation for her. “Whose fortunes depend on your banishment from the best clubs, the ballrooms, the hunt meets?”

  “I do not engage in blood sport,” Rye said, “but your question merits an answer. Anybody selling champagne in London benefits from blotting my escutcheon, anybody seeking to discredit Fat George’s knighthoods, anybody who…”

  Ann glanced up from some piece of needlework she’d taken out half an hour ago. “Yes?”

  She occupied the second wing chair, the firelight creating flickering shadows against the curve of her cheek. One shawl was wrappe
d about her shoulders, another spread over her knees.

  The picture she made was cozy and domestic, and Rye wanted to haul her into his lap again, and this time not so she could doze off like a contented cat.

  “I told myself,” he said, “that nobody was selling any secrets to the French, that good and bad luck befell both sides, and coincidences are just that. That is precisely what the board of inquiry concluded, and they interviewed half the camp.”

  “But?”

  “But if somebody was selling secrets to the French, then pinning the blame for that treason on me makes perfect sense.”

  “Even now?” she asked. “The war has been over for some time.”

  “A few years are but a moment when the charge is treason.” Rye did not like to think that one of his fellow officers or—more likely—some disgruntled private, an artillery sergeant going deaf, or a laundress with a grudge had turned traitor. But conditions in Spain had been miserable, rations often short, and tensions high.

  “I was sent out on clandestine reconnaissance because my commanding officer sensed something was afoot. He had an instinct for such things, for when to observe protocol and when to look the other way. He never imparted the details of his suspicions, but he was worried.”

  Ann tucked her needle into the corner of her fabric and returned the project to a wicker basket. “Why not confide in you? Why not give you the benefit of his hunches and discuss them with you?”

  Rye had pondered that riddle too. “I asked him that, asked him what exactly I was to investigate, what rumors had reached his ears. His reply made sense: to share such information with me would have biased my observations. Out of loyalty to him, I’d see whatever supported his theories and be less likely to notice what refuted them. So I played the role assigned to me. I observed and reported, nothing more.”

  “And thus you fell under worse suspicion, because you had no real justification for your outings other than a superior officer’s hunches and could report nothing but general impressions.”