How I Met My Countess (7 page)

Malcolm and Clifton exchanged a glance, then both began to laugh.

“Very resourceful, madam,” Malcolm managed to say. “But I thought Mr. Moggs was the victim in all this?”

“Oh, he is,” Mariana added. “Once she was convinced the curate wasn’t going to get up, she made sure Mr. Moggs wasn’t going to come calling ever again.”

“So then you hit Mr. Moggs?” Clifton asked.

“I only—”

“Oh, it was a muffler, my lord!” Mariana exclaimed, cutting off her sister’s response. “A stunning blow.”

Lucy let out a loud sigh, as if her accomplishment hardly warranted the retelling. “He was very drunk, so it wasn’t all that hard,” she said, crossing the room and shaking out her skirts as she went. “It was that or end up Mrs. Monday Moggs.” She shuddered from head to toe.

“Poor Mr. Moggs! He’s had to endure the shame ever since,” Mariana told them. “Of being bested by Lucy.”

“And what of me?” her sister demanded. “Everyone is in such a flutter over poor Mr. Moggs.”

Malcolm leaned forward. “But Lucy, no man likes being bested by a mere slip of a girl. I daresay Mr. Moggs has had to endure much.”

“I believe my brother makes a good point,” Clifton hastened to add. “No man likes being bested.”

“Then they shouldn’t arrogantly assume to know what is best for a lady. There is such a thing as
asking
.”

Her hands went to her hips. This, he should have realized by now, was the first warning, but when she stood thusly, she challenged him. He’d never met a lady who just out and out defied him, and it left him unsettled and determined to put the world back to rights.

Besides, she wasn’t talking about Monday Moggs any longer. But about him. And the kiss he’d nearly stolen this afternoon.

No, Clifton wasn’t about to be bowled over like this Moggs fellow. “And if this gentleman had asked, would you have granted him the favor?”

Her brow furrowed. “Certainly not!”

“Ah, but love will make a man do things he would never have considered. Even take without asking.”

“Then he is no gentleman,” she declared as if she had him cornered. “Besides, a lady knows when a man is truly in love with her and when he is just toying with her.”

Touché.
Point to Miss Lucy.

But Clifton wasn’t about to yield the field to her just yet. “And you think Mr. Moggs was just toying with you?”

Her brows drew into a stern line. “Monday Moggs was not in love with me. He was merely pot valiant and full of his own worth, which, I might note, is a leaky cottage, a wobbly wagon that he uses for his carting business—when he is sober enough to know the difference between north and south—and an old nag of a horse who has the good sense to nip at him regularly to remind him who is the smarter of the two.”

Clifton smiled. “So if he’d had a title, estates, an income and a stable full of well-mannered horses, you wouldn’t have floored him? You’d have let him carry out his nefarious plans?”

She pressed her lips together, for now she could see he had her right where he wanted.

Because they both knew that while he’d been about to steal a kiss from her this afternoon, knocking out his daylights had been the last thing on Lucy Ellyson’s agenda.

“Come now, Lord Clifton,” Mariana declared. “That is hardly a fair comparison. What woman wouldn’t marry such a fellow? Even Lucy would be hard-pressed to refuse.”

“I would,” she said, but she hardly sounded convincing. Certainly not to his ears.

“Well, it isn’t like it is apt to happen,” Mariana said, turning to the table and filling the bowls and plates. “There aren’t many men who will dare come around here as it is, for fear Lucy will darken their daylights as she did Monday Moggs.”

As laughter filled the little parlor, Clifton realized the only person who didn’t find that notion amusing was the lady herself. Lucy wasn’t laughing.

And in that unguarded moment, he saw the same wary light he had beheld just before he’d been about to kiss her.

Cutting off the others, Clifton raised his glass to her. “Madame, my brother and I have forgotten our manners. I must thank you for this generous and delicious meal. You have been too kind to us.”

“Hear, hear,” Malcolm added. “My brother is right. We should not be amusing ourselves at your expense when you have given us such a good supper—this stew is most excellent, and I am thankful for your kindness.”

Mariana raised her glass as well for another, different sort of tribute. “What you should be thankful for is that it isn’t at all like the stew Lucy made for Lord Roche.”

“Sister!” Lucy protested. “Be still.”

A bit of the conversation from earlier trickled back through the earl’s memory.

…
and no dosing his stew … He is no Lord Roche …

Clifton took another glance at the pot on the table, and down at the half-eaten bowl before him.

“Whatever did your sister do to Roche?” Malcolm asked.

Mariana laughed. “He was ever so haughty and full of himself—”

“Rather like my brother?” Malcolm suggested.

Mariana shook her head. “Oh, your brother is far higher in the instep than Lord Roche, but he isn’t as much of an …”

“An ass?” Malcolm supplied.

“Oh, yes, that’s it exactly. Thank you, sir,” she said, as if he’d supplied her a cup of tea rather than an obscenity. “Well, Roche was such a, well, as you said, an ass, so Lucy dosed his stew and he spent the next day and a half in the necessary.”

Mariana bit her lips together for a moment, her eyes sparkling. “He left soon after and returned to London a much more humble fellow. He never did join the rest of Mr. Pymm’s associates in Portugal.”

“Nor should he have,” Lucy pointed out. “He would have been a terrible disgrace. A risk to all.”

Now it was Clifton’s turn to gape, first at Lucy and then at the stew set before them. Even Malcolm had edged back from the table a bit, his enthusiasm for this unexpected supper having cooled.

“Oh, good heavens,” Lucy declared, tearing off a piece of bread from the loaf and dunking it deeply into the pot. Then, as they watched, she ate it. “Will that do?” she asked before using one of the napkins to wipe her lips.

Then she refilled their bowls, setting them down on the table with an impatient
thump
. Catching up her glass of claret, she retreated to the card table in the corner.

Mariana had already settled into her chair. She leaned over to ask, “Whose card was it?”

“Mine,” Lucy declared, nodding to the discarded ones in between them. The two girls reconvened their game, and the two men were all but forgotten as the play began anew.

Clifton sat there, a bit in shock over Roche’s fate. That Lucy Ellyson had weeded him out, sent him packing because he’d been … well, an ass.

And so are you if you fail at this …

A rare sense of disquiet ran down his spine, followed by the hint of a suggestion, whispered in his ear.
So leave
.

It was a voice not unlike hers.

Startled, he glanced over to find her watching him. With those sharp, intelligent eyes of hers. With an air of superiority that would make a duke weep with envy.

The same look that had challenged him to kiss her this afternoon.

In that moment, in the blink of an eye, Clifton’s heart constricted. Not out of some waffling emotion, but a stab of determination to show this meddlesome bit of muslin that he was no Roche.

Clifton tipped his head toward her with all the noble grace of his ancestors, if only to get on her nerves. But what he really wanted to do was discover more about her.

Then he glanced over at her sister and asked, “So, aside from Mr. Moggs, have you any other admirers, Lucy?” Just as he suspected, Mariana— already on her second glass of wine—filled in nicely, all too eager to spill the family secrets.

“Naught but Archie, the clerk at Mr. Strout’s office,” she jumped in to say.

“Mariana!”

“Archie at Mr. Strout’s office?” Clifton asked as innocently as the worst sort of gossip.

Mariana followed his lead quite happily. “Mr. Strout is Papa’s solicitor in London. When he has business matters for Papa, Mr. Strout sends it over with Archie. He’s taken a fancy to Lucy.”

“He has not!”

Mariana ignored her sister’s protest. “Then why did he bring you flowers Sunday before last when he had no business being here?”

“Yes, and I sneezed for three days straight.” Lucy shifted in her chair. “And what Archie fancies is a position with the Foreign Office and thinks if he charms me, Papa will help him.”

“Hasn’t he the connections to gain his own place?” Malcolm asked. “Or is he another Mr. Moggs?”

Mariana shook her head. “Oh, heavens no. Archie is very well connected, but his grandfather thinks him a great fool.”

“His grandfather thinks everyone is a great fool,” Lucy amended.

“True enough,” Mariana sighed. “But you should be thankful he is foolish enough to fall in love with you.”

“Harrumph!
Do you want to play cards or gossip?”

“Well, both.” Mariana laughed.

Malcolm chuckled. “Are you two planning on attending the assembly Wednesday night? The innkeeper’s wife, Mrs. Turkel—”

“Turnpenny,” Mariana corrected.

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Turnpenny told us that all the ladies and gentlemen from around the Heath would be there.”

Clifton glanced up and saw Lucy stiffen, her cards trembling in her hand for just a moment. “I prefer not to dance, Mr. Grey.”

“My sister is being too polite, sir,” Mariana said, her gaze fixed attentively on her cards. “We cannot attend because we are not received.”

This fell like a cannonball onto the carpet.

“Not received?” his brother said. “Why ever not? Is it because of that Moggs business, because that hardly seems—”

“Malcolm!” Clifton chastened. “Perhaps it is none of our business.”

“Oh, in Hampstead it is everyone’s business, so it is of no matter,” Mariana said. “We are not received because our mother is the Contessa di Marzo.” She paused for a moment. “Yes, I can see from your expression you know who she is. And since Father never married her, not that he could—” There was a pause, and the girl let out a loud “ouch.” She reached down to rub her shin. “There is no reason to kick me, Goosie. They will discover the truth soon enough. I’m surprised Mrs. Turnpenny hasn’t warned them off yet.”

“She has not,” Clifton supplied.

Mariana shrugged. “Oh, she usually takes great delight in scandalizing all with our presence.” She paused again and made a mulish face not unlike their landlady’s, then spoke in perfect imitation of her country tones, “The daughters of that woman! In our neighborhood! Be warned, my good gentlemen. Be warned!”

“You are in excellent company, then,” Malcolm told them. “For my mother was not married to my father either.” He paused and winked at Clifton. “Which makes my noble brother the oddball of our lot, eh, Gilby?” He grinned at Mariana. “We must stick together, our sort. And never fear, Miss Ellyson, I would dance with you at any assembly and be the envy of all.”

“You wouldn’t like to go to an assembly?” Clifton asked Lucy.

“It doesn’t matter what I would like to do, my lord. We are not received, so I give the idea little thought. Rather like wishing to fly to the moon.” She glanced up at him. “I try to concentrate my efforts on what is before me.” Then she turned her attention back to her sister. “How do you ever expect to win if you do not pay attention?”

At this, Mariana smiled triumphantly at her sister, then laid her cards down. “Ha! I’ve beat you, Goosie. I have to wonder where your attention is this night.”

“Distracted by your nattering, I imagine. Besides, this is only a temporary setback,” Lucy told her as she gathered the discarded cards together and began to shuffle with the skill of a sharpster.

“Where did you learn to deal like that?” Malcolm asked, as mesmerized by her deft handling of the cards as Clifton was.

“Thomas-William,” she said, referring to her father’s servant. “When he and father traveled together on the Continent, Thomas-William would play cards with the other servants—”

“—because servants usually know more of their master’s business than he knows himself,” Clifton and Malcolm said together, quoting another of Ellyson’s maxims.

The ladies laughed.

“Don’t be so dazzled by my sister’s dealing,” Mariana offered. Then she winked at Malcolm and Clifton. “For it is how she cheats.”

Does she now?
Clifton glanced up at Lucy, who had her gaze fixed on her cards, but that telltale pink hue had returned to her cheeks.

“What a terrible thing to say, Mariana,” she said. “What need have I of cheating, when you are such a poor player?”

“I just beat you,” her sister shot back.

“Mere luck,” Lucy replied with that smug sort of arrogance Clifton liked about her.

“Do you truly believe in luck?” he asked Lucy. She shook her head almost immediately. Too quickly, actually. “No. I think we make, or take, our own luck.”

He paused, for he knew that statement was naught but another of Ellyson’s proverbs. Everything about Lucy Ellyson—the way she ran the house, held her secrets, even disavowed love— rang with that same practicality that was her father’s hallmark, but Clifton suspected that they were all parts of the same carefully constructed façade, just like her faded fashions and ugly bonnets.

Parts of a great conspiracy to hide her true feelings, her heart.

He glanced down at the tray before him, the supper offered with a nonchalant air on the sole purpose that “they were most likely hungry,” but he knew what it truly was.

An apology and a peace offering.

And for just those reasons alone, Lucy fascinated him.

He reached for the bottle of claret and was about to pour himself another glass, when out of the corner of his eye he watched her finishing the deal. And spied something he doubted he would have noticed a week ago, before he’d come to this madhouse and listened to Ellyson’s lessons on being observant.

While her fingers moved skillfully as she dealt, making the cards fly across the green baize of the table, he realized that their whirling flight distracted nearly everyone from discerning that she could pluck a card from anywhere in the deck.