Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand (10 page)

The hall was dark. Mrs. Howell had long ago gone to bed below stairs. He raised the candle to look around the hall. "A bit shabby, my lord," he told himself. "Could use some refurbishing, rather like you."

He mounted the stairs slowly and walked down the upper hall to his room. "Good night all," he called to the empty rooms. "Sleep well, everyone."

Mrs. Howell woke him in the morning with a can of hot water, coal for the grate, and a reminder that breakfast was ready, and wasn't he leaving? He dragged himself onto his elbow, uncomfortable in his clothes, and wishing he had possessed enough dexterity last night to have at least unbuttoned his pants. Mrs. Howell folded her arms and regarded him with the proprietary disfavor that was the particular gift of female servants old enough to be his mother.

"I know. I know. I am disgusting," he growled. "I'll be down in a minute, Mrs. Howell."

"Take your time, my lord," she muttered as she left the room. "You can only get better."

He took his time, shaving carefully, dressing with more care than usual, and wishing he had time for a haircut. That could wait for Winnfield, he thought, where his valet languished. He combed his hair, glad at least that while it was graying, it was not thinning. Chickering could scold him for being such a shaggy beast, and probably would. Then Amabel would descend again, full of plans for Christmas and her palm up for money. He winced at the thought and put his hands to his head, pressing hard against his temples.

He pulled on his boots, packed his saddlebags, and took a last look around the room. Mrs. Howell could put the books back in the library, he thought, then he looked at the one on top. He pulled out the handkerchief he had been using for a bookmark and sniffed it. Mrs. Drew had wrapped his spectacles in the handkerchief, and he had been meaning to return it. The lavender was gone now, but he tucked the dainty square out of sight in his pocket.

Mrs. Howell waited for him outside the breakfast room. "You have a visitor, my lord," she whispered.

He hauled out his watch. "At seven o'clock in the morning someone has come calling?" He groaned, pocketed his watch, and went into the room after squaring his shoulders.

He looked around and could not see anyone. "Hello?" he called. "Anyone here?"

Felicity peered out from one of the wing chairs. She grinned at him, and he smiled back, unable to resist her any more than he could resist her mother.

“I thought you would never come down," she scolded, and took a napkin from the table. "I am starving."

He laughed out loud and looked down on her over the back of the chair. She tipped her head up to return his stare. He rested his arms along the back of the chair and admired her red cap, noting that she had removed her mittens at least. Red was definitely Felicity's color. Probably her mother's color, too. He took her plate.

"What will you have, my dear?" he asked, peering at the sideboard. "I don't see any porridge."

"That's all right," she said generously. "I can have that at home. I would like some bacon and a cinnamon bun most especially."

"Very well," he said as he grinned and selected her choices, adding a baked egg. "You'll eat an egg, too."

He set the plate before her and filled his own, marveling how rapidly his headache had disappeared. When he sat down, she took his hand for the blessing, and his cup nearly ran over.

They ate in silence. When Felicity finished her bacon and bun, she wiped her hands carefully on her napkin and looked at him with those eyes that made his heart crack a little. "Aren't you going to wager?" she asked.

He let out another shout of laughter and she grinned at him. "Do you know that you are a certified rascal?" he asked.

"Mama says I am a scamp."

"She's right," he agreed. "No, I am not going to wager. If I do, and lose, your mama will ring such a peal over my head."

"She would never!" Felicity said, shocked, her eyes wide.

"Trust me on this one, Lissy," he said. "She would." He leaned back in his chair and looked at his breakfast guest, who tackled the egg last. "You know, if you had eaten the egg first, then it would be out of the way, and you could have saved the best for last."

She nodded. "Mama puts things off, too."

"Oh?" he asked, hoping for
more
information about Roxie Drew from such an unimpeachable source.

"She says bad news always waits. So do eggs." She finished the egg and looked at him expectantly. "And I am depending on you to give me another cinnamon bun!"

He laughed again, then heard rapid footsteps coming down the hall. "Lissy, I think your tenure in my breakfast room is about to end."

"I had hoped she would wait until I had another cinnamon bun," Felicity commented, her disappointment evident.

He leaped up and put another one on her plate and then opened the door as Mrs. Drew had raised her hand to knock on it. "Mrs. Drew, what a delightful surprise, and so early!" he commented as she just stood there, looking at her daughter.

She was dressed, but her hair was still down around her shoulders, wavy and brown. Although his brush with marriage had been brief, he knew better than to make any remarks upon her appearance. She would smite me if I told her how beautiful she looked with her hair that way, he thought as he ushered her in and pulled back a chair for her to sit in. Or at least, Cynthia would have. Of course, Cynthia never got up before eleven o'clock, so what do I know?

"Lord Winn, I hope you have not been making any bets," she said as she glared at her daughter. "Felicity, you are enough to try a saint!"

"Have a cinnamon bun, Mrs. Drew," he said, and brought the whole dish over to the table. "I told Lissy that her credit wasn't that good at present, so we had better not wager on your approximate arrival."

"Thank heavens for that!" she declared, and to his delight, sat down in the chair he pulled out. "I would love a cinnamon bun. Lissy tells me they are wonderful." She took a bite and rolled her eyes, to his infinite enjoyment. When she finished it, she turned to regard her daughter. "I thought I sent you upstairs to get Helen out of bed, and what do I find but that you have escaped!"

"I wanted to say good-bye to Lord Winn," Felicity said, then grinned. "And eat his cinnamon buns."

Mrs. Drew laughed. She ruffled her daughter's curly hair, then looked sideways at him. "Only think how much more peaceful your life will be soon with no little scamp to plague you!"

Dead dull is more like it, he thought, but returned her smile. "The funny thing is, I haven't minded it," he said, then put his napkin on the table and pushed back his chair. "But I do have to leave."

Mrs. Drew rose, too, and held out her hand for Felicity. "Then we will see you off from the front steps, sir. By all means, my dear, put on your mittens!"

"Then to earn your breakfast, you can carry my saddlebags out to the front," he told Felicity and pointed to them by the door.

He chuckled as she tugged the saddlebags down the hall, intent on her duty, then strolled along more slowly with Mrs. Drew, savoring every moment of her presence. "Mrs. Drew, I have instructed Tibbie to spend more of each day here at Moreland. I think Retling Beck will be sold within the month, and I prefer that he spend more time here."

"Why, sir?" she asked. "Are you worried about my brother-in-law?"

He took her by the arm, holding his breath that she would not bolt from such familiarity. To his relief, she did not. "Let us say, I am cautious, Mrs. Drew. If he tries anything, Tibbie can get me word."

She nodded and moved along slowly at his side. "Very well, my lord. I will be finishing the sitting room at the dower house now, and if there is anything you wish done here, I am at your disposal."

How I wish you were, he thought. I would take you upstairs and we wouldn't come down until spring. "Do remind Tibbie when the coal gets low," he said instead. "That clause in Latin covers coal until the warm weather returns."

She stopped and looked up at him. "Don't try me, Lord Winn!" she began. "Yes, I will let him know. And thank you."

Felicity had tugged the saddlebags out the front door, where his horse waited, saddled and bridled. He took them from her and fastened them onto Ney, who whinnied and stepped about at the prospect of removal from Moreland. "Slow down, lad," he cautioned. "We haven't left yet."

There was nothing to remain for. He had finished his business at Moreland. He could return to Winnfield and suffer any variety of plaguey attention from his relatives, now that he had visited this estate. Mrs. Drew stepped back inside and came out with his riding coat and hat. He shrugged into the coat and rescued his hat from Felicity, who was trying to put it on. "Fits me better than you, Lissy," he said as he clapped the low-crowned beaver hat on his head and moved toward his horse again.

"Wait one minute, Lord Winn!"

He turned around, his heart pounding, as Mrs. Drew came toward him.

MRS. DREW PLA YS HER HAND g,
"You can't leave here without buttoning your coat!" she scolded as she stood on tiptoe and started at the top. "Don't you have a muffler? Suppose you get a cold?"

Felicity looked up at him. "She does that to me, too," she commiserated.

His eyes lively, he allowed Mrs. Drew to button him into his coat. "There!" she said and stepped back. "Now you can leave." She held out her hand. "Thank you again for all you have done."

He took her hand, wanting to sweep her into his arms and kiss her until she begged for breath. "It's been a pleasure, Mrs. Drew."

Felicity leaned against his leg, so he knelt down and kissed her cheek. "Take care of your mother," he said. "And don't make any bets with strangers. Give Helen a kiss for me." And your mama, he told himself, as he swung into the saddle. I feel as though I am leaving my wife and child, he realized with surprise. We have discussed mundane affairs, she has made her last adjustments to my person. We will say good-bye, except that I am not a husband or a father, and there will be no return anytime soon. I am imagining what isn't there.

"Can I finish the cinnamon buns?" Felicity called to him.

He laughed and waved his hand, then put spurs into Ney's ribs.

Don't look back, you idiot, he told himself as he set his face south down the lane of bare-boned elm trees, ragged now with descending winter. He would write Clarice and tell her he was coming for Christmas, the Etheringhams be damned. He could stop back here in the spring on his way to Northumberland to straighten out that pernicious deed on High Point. By then, Mrs. Drew should be out of mourning, and probably the center of attention of several of the North Riding's gentlemen. If not, at least he should be sufficiently recovered from his brush with love to risk a brief stop here on his journey to nowhere.

He reached the end of the lane and stopped. It was safe to turn around, he thought. They would be inside by now, and he could savor one last look at an estate that was infinitely more dear to him than any other he owned. He turned around for a last look, and they stood there yet, mother and daughter, far away now, but watching him still. He could make out the red dashes that were Felicity's mittens.

As he looked, Mrs. Drew raised her hand again.

"That does it," he said. "Ney, I hate to disappoint you, but we're not going anywhere today."

He wheeled his horse about and started back up the lane. He wanted to gallop, but he forced Ney into a sedate walk, trying to give himself more time to think of a plausible reason that he would be returning. Mercifully it came to him as he traveled the lane again. He reined in his horse in front of Mrs. Drew and Felicity, who could hardly contain her excitement.

"Mrs. Drew, I am the veriest coward," he said as he dismounted. "I find that I cannot face my relatives for Christmas. I have a proposition for you. And don't look wary! How would you like to direct the refurbishing of Moreland? It's a lovely old home with much promise." Like me, he thought. Please, Mrs. Drew.

Mama, I think Lord Winn is not easy to argue with." Roxanna looked up from the baseboard where she was peeling away the last of the sitting room wallpaper, tattered from years of neglect. She laughed in Helen's dirty face and touched another smudge from the end of her finger to her daughter's nose. "My dear, he is impossible!" She leaned closer, her eyes twinkling. "Perhaps he is deranged. Let us do what he says before someone hauls him away to an asylum and we do not have a sitting room."

"Who is deranged, madam?" asked Lord Winn from the entrance, where he was scraping his muddy boots. He draped his coat over the newel post and came into the room dressed in a faded shirt and patched breeches.

"You are, my lord," she replied as the wallpaper came away with an enormous rip and a showering of plaster that left Helen gasping. "Oh, dear, Helen, come out of there! Lord Winn, you do not need to do this before we start on Moreland. And surely you don't have to help with this work."

"Of course I do," he replied as he dusted the plaster off Helen's head and pointed her in the direction of the kitchen and Meggie's attention. "I think it's in that old Latin contract," he said and grinned at her.

"You will remind me," she murmured.

"Of course! Besides all that, Mrs. Drew, I hate to leave things unfinished, and I enjoy this kind of work. We'll have this room plastered and repapered by the end of the week, and then you can turn your attention to Moreland, where I will use you unmercifully until that grand old place is up to snuff." He grinned and ripped off the piece above her head that she could not reach. "At least now you'll have a sitting room to collapse in every night after I've wrung you out!"

"I suppose that is fair warning," she said, ducking from under his arm and turning her attention to another section of the wall. "I recommend that we tackle the sitting room and library at Moreland first. That way, should you choose to entertain during the holidays, at least they will be done."

"Oh, I won't be entertaining, Mrs. Drew," he said as he pried off the rest of the baseboard under the window and the glass shivered. "Don't you know I am not received anymore?"

"I had heard," she replied cautiously.

"Hasn't everyone?" he replied, his voice affable. "I am a beast and an ogre for creating a scandal where there did not need to be one." He stood the baseboard in the corner. "I should have been a gentleman about my former wife's numerous indiscretions, and I was not."

This is not a conversation for my ears, Roxanna thought as she pulled off the layers of wallpaper. Why is he telling me this? she thought, knowing that her face was rosy with embarrassment.

"And now I have embarrassed you," he said quietly, looking at her. "Perhaps I am still not a gentleman." He turned back to the wall to pry up another section of baseboard.

She watched him in silence for a moment, admiring how easy the work was for him, and remembering how hard it was for Anthony to even hold a spoon in his hand toward the end. I wonder. Lord Winn, do you work hard all day so you can fall asleep without dreaming at night? I know I do. But he was speaking to her, and she forced her mind back to the present.

"Your silence tells me that you agree," he said, putting his back into the pry bar.

"Oh, no! I wasn't thinking of that," she apologized, speaking louder to be heard over the creak of the wood.

He stopped and leaned against the wall, shaking his head at her. "Mrs. Drew, here I give you the perfect opportunity to learn all the unsavory details, and you are not interested! You are a disappointment to your sex!"

"Really, Lord Winn!" she protested.

"Yes, really! Or is it that you have already formed your opinion of my character?" he asked, his voice subdued now.

She looked at him then, considering his question seriously.

"Why, yes, I suppose I have." She paused, watching him, and the way his eyes never seemed to leave her face. "I think you are very kind, sir," she concluded, wondering what it was about her that always seemed to take his whole attention. I must have plaster in my hair, she thought. Is my bodice too low? Surely not.

"You should have seen me in the House of Lords, passing that legion of lovers in review by some very startled peers," he said. "No one thought me kind then."

"You were hurt, weren't you?" she asked. She looked into his green eyes, calmly observed the pain there, and plunged ahead. "I personally think infidelity is a dreadful circumstance. Perhaps that makes me old-fashioned, but—"

"That's two of us then, Mrs. Drew," he interrupted. "I took my marriage vows seriously. Too bad Lady Winn did not."

"You must be a rare member of the peerage, indeed," she said before she thought.

He laughed. "You have definitely formed an opinion of my class! And you would be right, in the main, Mrs. Drew." He ripped up the rest of the baseboard, then sat back on his heels. "But, no, I am not kind."

She smiled then, thinking of red and blue mittens, and a pony, and coal, and a leg of mutton. "Well, as to that, I suppose you are entitled to your opinion and I to mine."

They worked in silence then. In a few moments. Lord Winn was whistling under his breath, absorbed in his efforts. When she finished stripping the wallpaper, she paused to watch him a moment, admiring the play of muscles under his shirt as he strained at the baseboards, and remembering when Anthony would have thought nothing of such a task. She remembered their first year in the vicarage, and the times he carried her upstairs for an afternoon romp in their bedroom that would have scandalized his parishioners. She sighed, and then looked guiltily at the marquess, hoping he had not heard.

To her chagrin, he turned around with that searching regard that further discomfited her. "Mrs. Drew, if you have time to sigh like a schoolgirl and be so idle, give me a hand here."

She hurried forward and grasped the board he indicated. "You pull while I pry, and if the whole wall doesn't come down, I'll be through with this."

Roxanna did as she was told, gritting her teeth against the shriek of the wood. One more deft nudge of the pry bar and the whole baseboard came off in her hands. She sat down with a thump as the dust and plaster swirled around them.

"Are you all right?" he asked, kneeling beside her. "Nothing injured?"

"Just my dignity," she said and remained where she was on the floor. She gazed around the room in dismay. "Oh, my. You really think it will be done by Friday?"

He wiped his hands on his breeches. "I am certain of it. Which reminds me"—tie looked toward the entrance to the front door— "do my eyes deceive me, or is that a clean child in the doorway?"

Felicity giggled. "Meggie says I am not to enter this room," she reported to her mother.

"Sound advice," Roxanna said.

"Lissy, let me engage your services," Lord Winn said as he settled on the floor, his long legs crossed. "Hand me that scroll of wallpaper by my coat."

"Just toss it in, love," Roxanna said.

He caught the roll of paper and spread it out between them. "What do you think?"

Roxanna leaned forward, careful not to touch the paper. It was a floral pattern, delicate and springlike, the lightest shade of blue, and obviously expensive. "It's beautiful, my lord," she breathed.

"Good! I thought so, too."

"Is it for your sitting room?" she asked. "What an excellent choice."

"It is for yours, madam," he said. “I was in Darlington earlier this morning, and this caught my eye in the warehouse."

"Oh, dear, Tibbie didn't tell you?" she asked, dismay and regret mingled with equal parts in her voice.

"Tell me what?"

"We've been doing the rooms here with leftover paper from earlier renovations at Moreland. This is much too expensive, my lord."

"But I like it," he said. "I bought it for this room because it reminded me of you and your girls. And I don't like to be argued with."

"He doesn't, Mama," Helen agreed from the other doorway into the dining room and kitchen.

"My lord!"

"There you go again," he said as he rolled up the paper and tossed it back to Felicity. "You really have to let me use it on the walls here, because it matches the carpet I purchased at the same time."

Impulsively she touched his sleeve. "And yet you will tell me that you are not kind?" she asked, her voice low.

He got to his feet and held out his hand for her. "Kindness has nothing to do with it, Mrs. Drew," he assured her as he lifted her up. "It is mere expediency. How would it appear if the carpet did not quite fit with the sofa and chairs I ordered?"

Roxanna glanced at Felicity. "Lissy, hand me back that roll of paper. I intend to beat Lord Winn over the head with it!"

Felicity laughed and clapped her hands. "Can we watch, Mama?" she asked, while Helen opened her eyes wider. "Mama, he is a marquess!" she reminded her mother.

"He is a scoundrel," Roxanna said. "And now you will say it is in the Latin charter."

To her further embarrassment, Lord Winn ruffled her hair. As she coughed from the plaster dust, he went to the entrance and pulled on his coat. "I wouldn't dare, Mrs. Roxie Drew," he declared. "If you and the girls will wipe down those walls, I'll send the plasterer
over
here this afternoon. Good day, Mrs. Drew. Don't get in a snit over small things."

And he was gone, shouldering his roll of wallpaper like a musket, and leaping lightly over the muddy spots in the front yard. Helen watched him go, then closed the front door. "He likes you, Mama," she said quietly. "Do you like him?"

Roxanna sat down on the stairs and held out her arms for her daughters. "Of course I like him," she said, hugging her girls, even as they sneezed from the plaster on her dress. "You'd have to be made of stone not to like Lord Winn."

Felicity nodded, and rested her head on Roxanna's lap. "Mama, do you think Papa would have liked him?"

Why that should bring tears to her eyes, she did not understand. "I am sure he would have, my dear," she said, and kissed Felicity, and then Helen. She hugged her girls close, comparing and contrasting. Physically, they were two completely different men, she thought, Anthony tall and slender, Lord Winn shorter by a little, and built sturdy like a Yorkshire barn. She rested her cheek against Helen's hair, reminded of Anthony's blondness and his graceful ways as she looked at her elder daughter. He had been everything she wanted in a husband. Too bad he was gone before they had time to do more living together.

But both men were kind. She considered her dead husband a moment, aware for the first time that his kindness everyone took for granted, because he was a vicar. With Lord Winn, such kindness was unexpected. Roxanna ran her hand through Helen's silky hair. Why is it that I suspect he is selective in his kindness? she thought. And why on earth has he singled us out?

She closed her eyes a moment. When she opened them, Felicity was watching her. "Mama, are you sad?" she asked, her voice anxious.

Roxanna hugged Felicity. "I don't know what I am, Lissy, but I don't think I am sad."

The plasterers descended on the dower house after a hasty rub-down of the walls that left Meggie retreating upstairs to nod over a book, and Roxanna and the girls sneezing even as they withdrew to the kitchen. "Why does every home improvement seem to fill a whole house?" she asked Tibbie as he got the workers started.

"That's what my wife always wonders." He pulled a folded note from his pocket. "It's from Lord Winn. He said he won't take no for an answer."

Roxanna glanced at Helen's expectant face as she opened the note. "My dears, it seems we are to dine at Moreland tonight." She sighed and looked at Tibbie as her daughters clapped their hands. "We are such an imposition on that man!" She pointed to the note and read out loud. " 'I do not think you would care for stewed plaster, or fricasseed plaster, or plaster hollandaise, which, I believe, is on the menu in the dower house tonight. I will request cinnamon buns for Lissy.' "

"Mama, he will spoil us," Helen declared solemnly as she read the note in her mother's hand, then ruined the effect by grinning at her sister. “I like it!"

Roxanna shook her head at Tibbie, who shrugged his shoulders. "Think of it as getting a wonderful return on your ten pounds, Mrs. Drew!"

Lord Winn dressed more carefully for dinner than usual, changing waistcoats several times, thinking that he ought to write to Chickering for more clothes. He combed his hair and wondered if the village had a barber. Not that it would help much. Cynthia used to complain that no matter how elegantly he dressed, he always looked as though he belonged on a farm. "Happen I do," he murmured to the mirror. There was no question that he was seriously wanting in high looks. "But I am rich," he told himself. "I can have anything in the world I want—except Mrs. Drew." He raised his chin and tied his neckcloth. "And that, Fletcher, is the ' cruelest kind of poverty."

He considered Mrs. Drew as dispassionately as he could, comparing her to Cynthia, who was without question the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He was only one of many suitors that season who'd dangled after Cynthia Darnley, second daughter of Sir Edwin Darnley, enraptured by her ash-blond beauty and eyes the color of cornflowers. She was tall and elegant of form, with an aristocratic curl to her lips that he'd thought enchanting at first. Her nose was chiseled from the palest marble, and Brummel himself had rhapsodized over Cynthia's profile until little portraits of her appeared, white against a blue background, all over London. "Chiseled" was certainly the operative word, he thought. Cynthia, you were chiseled from an entire block of marble. Lucky me. Thank God there was a war on and I had to leave you. I can only wish Lord Masterson good luck.