Kasey Michaels (26 page)

“Bobbit, my good man! Where is she?” Sir Wallace Merritt boomed, stepping into the foyer, tossing his hat, cane, and gloves at the butler, who expertly snagged them out of the air and placed them on the table. “Where is the little darling? I’m here to worship at her feet.”

“Wonderful news, sir! I’ll straightaway tell Miss Winstead that you’re here,” Bobbit said, and Bramwell watched as the butler stood his ground, smiled, and held out his hand, palm up.

“What?” Sir Wallace asked, then grinned sheepishly. “Oh, of course. Put it on my tab, would you, old man? I’ll get you before I leave. Probably owe you another small fortune by then anyway, eh? There’s a good fellow. Now, take me to her, if you please.”

Bramwell stepped out of the shadows. “Wally, what are you doing here?” he asked, clapping an arm around his friend’s shoulders and guiding him back down the hallway. “Surely you don’t want to beg a free dinner, as I’ve already told you Sad Samuel is going to be in attendance.”

“Sad Samuel? Here? Gad, I’d forgotten.” Sir Wallace shivered in either real or very well feigned horror and all but broke into a run, heading for the relative safety of Bramwell’s study. “Been good all the day long, Bram. But, damn, that calls for a drink!”

Bramwell watched him go, then turned to Bobbit. “I do supply two suits of clothes a year for you, don’t I?” he asked. “And yet—” he broke off, motioning to the butter’s attire, which mimicked the Selbourne livery, but was definitely not cut from the usual cloth.

Bobbit flushed an embarrassed pink all the way to his eyebrows. “What you provide is fine, Your Grace, if a bit lacking in its cut and fabric. I’ve found a tailor more to my liking in Threadneedle Street, Your Grace,” he said, bowing. Then he straightened, beaming, a hand to his coat. “Would you like to see the lining, Your Grace? It’s satin. Red satin. All the crack this Season, I understand.”

“Never mind, Bobbit,” Bramwell said with a wave of his hands. “But if you’d apprise Miss Winstead of Sir Wallace’s arrival, as I believe it is she whom he wishes to see? If, that is, your heavy pockets don’t inhibit your ability to climb stairs?”

“At once, Your Grace,” Bobbit said, bowing again and again, even as he backed toward the stairs.

Bramwell turned away, unable to keep a smile from his face, a smile he definitely didn’t want his butler to see, and returned to the study. Sir Wallace was sitting at his ease, a glass of wine dangling from his fingertips.

“You’re looking chipper, Wally, much like a very contented cat,” Bramwell said, taking up the facing chair. “Actually, I think I even see a few canary feathers sticking out of the corner of your mouth. What’s happened?”

Sir Wallace sat forward and grinned at his friend. “They’re tossing me out!” he exclaimed, then sat back again, wriggling against the soft burgundy leather as if too excited to remain still. “Called me in, sat me down, and told me that I’m more than thirty now, and it’s past time I got my sponging, ungrateful self out from under my long-suffering mama’s roof. Can you believe it, Bram? I’m
free
!”

Bramwell propped his elbows on the arms of the chair and pressed two fingers of each hand against his lips, tapping them, tapping them, as he looked at the grinning Sir Wallace. The man’s wineglass was still half-full. Ordinarily, the glass would be emptied by now, at least twice, and his friend would be heading for the decanter on the drinks table to refill it. “Throwing you out, you say,” he ventured carefully. “And you think you owe this new freedom of yours to Miss Winstead?”

“Hell’s bells, yes, Bram!” Sir Wallace returned cheerfully. “Don’t you?”

“And you’re happy about this? Happy that your mother, your aunt, have most probably entered into intimate, clandestine relationships with servants you’ve handpicked for them? That, with you out of the house, these two good women will doubtless spend their nights cavorting with these same servants, doing heaven only knows what and which I, for one, refuse to imagine?”

“Well, hell, yes, I’m proud. Tickled straight down to my toes.” Sir Wallace frowned. “You think I’m an unnatural son?”

Bramwell rubbed a palm across his mouth, wondering if he was the only one in the room with a strangely perverted sense of the ridiculous, the only one who could even
see
the humor in the thing. Now, if Sophie were here? She’d see the deliciousness, the laughable absurdity of it all. Ah, but he shouldn’t think that way, should he? “I don’t know, Wally,” he said at last. “To tell you the truth, I’m caught between being shocked, and wanting to toast your new freedom with you. Where will you go?”

Now Sir Wallace did down the remainder of his wine. “I asked Lorrie if I could move in with him for a few weeks, but he turned me down. Bram, do you think you could see your way free to—”

“No!” Bramwell stated firmly, quickly cutting off his friend in mid-appeal. “I don’t think so, Wally. But perhaps you can look to Miss Winstead for assistance? I’m sure she’d enjoy helping you find suitable lodgings. As she says, she’s never happier than when helping to make someone else—happy.”

Sir Wallace hopped to his feet “Sterling idea, Bram. Sterling! I’ll do just that. God’s teeth, how I adore that girl!”

Bobbit had entered the room and was smiling broadly at Sir Wallace, so that Bramwell could tell that the man was already contemplating an increase in this evening’s profits. “Miss Winstead is indisposed at the moment, Sir Wallace, dressing for dinner, and sends her regrets. She did, however, ask that you call for her tomorrow at one, at which time she will accompany you as you both inspect the list of properties she has already deemed worthy of your habitation,” he said, his hands cupped into loose fists as he scratched at his itchy palms.

“How—how did she
know
—” Sir Wallace stuttered, then shook his head. “How about that, Bram? She already knew the plan would work. Sharp as a tack, that one, sharp as a tack. Gad, but I adore her.”

Bobbit smiled, a bit too avariciously Bramwell thought. The butler then cleared his throat, turned to his employer, and continued importantly: “However, Mr. Samuel Seaton has arrived, Your Grace, and I’ve put him in the drawing room. And Miss Waverley’s carriage is just drawing up outside. I’ve instructed one of the footmen to immediately bring her here to your study. Unless you’re ready to join Mr. Seaton? But I fear that before you decide, Your Grace, I must first inform you that Mr. Seaton has already broken your late mother’s prized Dresden shepherdess, and is even now dropped down on all fours, attempting to pick up the sharp pieces. Remembering your cousin from previous encounters, I’ve taken it upon myself to send a footman for salve and bandages. And your cousin smells mightily of camphor, if I might be so bold as to say so, Your Grace. I believe he has come to dine with a restorative plaster stuck to his chest.”

“Well, I’m gone!” Sir Wallace exclaimed, jumping to his feet almost before Bobbit was finished speaking. “I’ve never been here. Probably sailed for France early this morning, as a matter of fact. Why, I’ll wager I’m already halfway to Calais. Don’t know when I’ll be back. You’ll tell him that, Bram, won’t you? There’s a good fellow. Miss Waverley, your servant and all that. Got to go, got to go.”

“Coward,” Bramwell called after him teasingly as his friend barreled toward the doorway to the foyer, Bobbit in hot pursuit, his hand still out, his palm still empty. “I’ll be sending round a white feather in the morning, damme if I won’t.”

“Selbourne?
Profanity
?” Isadora Waverley asked questioningly as she drew back against the doorjamb to allow the fleeing Sir Wallace and the butler to scurry past her. “Lud, such a sad lack of manners! Whatever is going on?”

“Sir Wallace just remembered an important appointment, my dear,” Bramwell said, bending over Isadora’s hand, then drawing her into the room, careful to leave the door open, as his fiancée was a stickler for propriety. Lord only knew what she thought he’d do to her if the door was closed. Ravish her? He bit his bottom lip for a moment, realizing that Isadora had nothing to fear on that head. As a matter of fact, other than their betrothal kiss, which landed somewhere on her left cheek, as she’d turned her head at the last moment, he couldn’t remember a single. romantic interlude with the woman who was soon to be his wife. It was a sobering thought, even for a sober man.

“Well, this worked out well, Selbourne,” Isadora said, settling herself into the chair Sir Wallace had so recently and abruptly vacated. “Lud, how could you have known that I’d want a private audience with you?”

“Private audience? I’m not the Archbishop of Canterbury, Isadora,” Bramwell said, heading for the drinks table and pouring a little unsobering wine for himself and a glass of ratafia for his fiancée. “I’m your affianced, remember?”

Isadora shrugged her modestly draped shoulders, the movement bringing attention to the fact that she had fine, fine, aristocratic bones—and very little flesh. “Lud, Selbourne, you’re prickly tonight, aren’t you? It’s Miss Winstead, isn’t it? Her presence is dredging up old memories, old hurts. Lud, I imagine the gossip is simply shredding you into pieces.”

“The gossip, Isadora?” he repeated, handing her the glass of ratafia. Ratafia. Horrid drink. Sophie, he knew, had a much more sophisticated palate, a greater appreciation for fine wines. Which had nothing to do with the point at hand, he reminded himself. “I’ve heard no gossip, Isadora. But perhaps your ear is closer to the ground, and more finely attuned to such things?”

She looked shocked, as if he had just slapped her—or, worse, told her that her grandmother had been conceived on the wrong side of the blanket. He immediately apologized, knowing his nerves were overstretched, and had been for several days. “I don’t know why I said that, my dear. Forgive me.”

“Lud, Selbourne, think nothing of it,” Isadora said, looking up at him with pity in her eyes. “Of course your nerves are overstretched. I vow I don’t know how you go on, truly I don’t. If my father had behaved as yours did? That business about the balcony? Yes, I knew that. But the
other
stories? The very public nature of their liaison?” She spread her hands in an expression of hopelessness. “Lud, I think I should have died. Simply died, Selbourne,”

He scratched at the side of his neck, thinking over what Isadora had said. “The
ton
is dredging it all up again, I imagine? And you’re hearing it all, aren’t you, Isadora? Did anyone tell you about the time Lord Byron all but tripped over them in the back aisles of Hatchard’s? Scribbled a few rather incisive lines of poetry about that episode that were never meant for general publication, I can tell you. Or the story, never proved, that the Widow Winstead and my late father had traveled with Gypsies for a few weeks one summer, telling fortunes and stealing chickens as they wended their way through the countryside, living life in the raw? That one seemed to titillate more than a few people, especially when my father took to wearing a red kerchief in public for a while.”

Isadora clapped her hands to her ears. “Oh, stop, Selbourne, stop! I can’t bear it! I thought I could, but I can’t, I can’t!” She took her hands down from her ears and wove her fingers together in her lap, taking a deep breath to steady herself. “Forgive me, Selbourne. I was overcome for a moment. But, if there were just a way,
some
way we could...”

“Get rid of Sophie?” he prompted when her voice trailed off.

“Oh, lud, Selbourne,
yes
! I hate myself, truly
loathe
myself for saying such a thing—for thinking such a thing. She’s a dear, truly. So sweet, so biddable, so entirely conscious that she has not the slightest notion of how to go on in Society. I could weep for her, Selbourne, truly I could.”

She sighed. “But I don’t know how long I can continue to ignore the whispers, the hands raised to smiling mouths, the remarks, the innuendo. We are not yet married, and already I’ve been cast into comparison with your poor betrayed mother. I have not, you see, any familiarity with being—well, with being ridiculed.”

She looked at him searchingly. “Did I do anything, Selbourne, to become the butt of so many tawdry jokes? I didn’t, did I?”

“I’m so sorry, Isadora,” Bramwell said, meaning every word. He should have realized that Isadora would be drawn into whatever gossip might be winging its way through the
ton
. “But it’s all a nine days wonder, I’m sure. Once Society comes to know Miss Winstead as you do, as my aunt does, the gossip will die a natural death.”

She gave a dismissing wave of one hand as she dabbed at the corners of her eyes with the small lace handkerchief held in the other. “Yes, yes, I know. Lud, there’s already talk about Lord Stanley and his mother’s lady’s maid eloping to Gretna. Scandals are thick on the ground every moment during the Season. But... but... lud! How do I say this, Selbourne? I—I’m worried. Concerned. Oh, you were only funning me, I know, but the other night? When you said something about the father and the son resembling each other?”

“Like father, like son?” Bramwell said helpfully, beginning to believe he could sense where this conversation was heading.

“Yes! That was it, like father, like son. Well, lud, Selbourne—are you? I mean, you’ve shown no tendency toward reckless behavior. Impulsive action and the like. But what if it’s in the blood? What if it’s a family trait that doesn’t appear until the later years? I worry, Selbourne. I can’t help it.”

Bramwell drained his glass and set it on the table. “Yes, I can see where that might be a worry to you,” he said reasonably, even as a tic began to work in his left cheek. “One never knows, does one, when someone else, someone who had heretofore looked so ordinary, so unexceptional, might take a notion to strip to his unmentionables at Almack’s and swing upside down from a chandelier.”

Isadora smiled weakly, looking very beautiful, very aristocratic, and as close to human as Bramwell believed he’d ever seen her. “Oh, poor Selbourne. I’ve hurt you, haven’t I? I never meant—never intended...” She sighed once more, a deep, heartfelt sigh. “I think we should postpone the wedding, Selbourne. My papa wrote again, saying his gout precludes any visit to London before the Season ends, which is the same as to say the wedding must be delayed in any case. We’ll use that as our excuse, not that anyone will believe us. I do want to marry you, Selbourne. I would make you a fine duchess. But, lud, first we must settle Miss Winstead and get her packed off somewhere. She cannot be in attendance at our wedding. I won’t have our nuptials become nothing more than another reason for Society to giggle and make suppositions. You can see that, can’t you?”