Sheri Cobb South (10 page)

While Lady Helen’s flawless complexion did not change color, a transformation no less profound was taking place within. As she listened to her husband quietly but firmly stand up to the duke, the first seeds of respect for the man she had married began to take root. What was it about a misbegotten workhouse orphan that made no less a personage than the Duke of Reddington back down before him?

“—you should still look the gentleman,” the duke was saying as Lady Helen forced her attention back to the conversation in progress. “I have an appointment with my tailor on Friday morning. You will—” he hesitated, regarding his son-in-law with a sardonic gaze. “That is, I should be pleased if you would accompany me, Mr. Brundy.”

“I should be ‘appy to, your Grace, but I’m afraid I’ll ‘ave to pass. I’ve been away from the mill too long, and must return to Lancashire for a few days.”

“You’re going away?” asked Lady Helen, taken by surprise.

“I’d be pleased to show you the mill, if you’d like to accompany me,” offered Mr. Brundy.

Lady Helen, already regretting her moment of weakness, gave a disdainful sniff. “I am already painfully aware that I owe my sustenance to Trade without being reminded of the fact, sir.”

Mr. Brundy nodded his acquiescence. “In that case, me dear, I’ll see you when I return.”

“And when might that be?”

“Just as soon as the ‘orses can get me ‘ere,” he replied, and the warmth in his brown eyes made Lady Helen’s face grow heated.

“Take all the time you need, Mr. Brundy,” she said with crushing civility.

Chapter 7

Oh, how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring!

COLLEY CIBBER,
The Double Gallant

Lady Helen remained abed until well past noon, recovering from the effects of her late night. When she at last made her appearance below, she saw no sign of her husband, either in the breakfast room or the drawing room. She dismissed his absence as a matter of little interest, supposing him to be either cloistered in his study or tending to business at his London warehouse.

When he did not appear for tea, she wondered if he might be visiting Brooks’s or White’s with his cronies—although it was a wonder to her that he should have the effrontery to show his face abroad, after the previous evening’s fiasco at Almack’s.

When she took her place at the dinner table and found it laid for one, however, Lady Helen was perplexed enough to question the butler as to her husband’s whereabouts.

“Mr. Brundy departed for Manchester early this morning,” Evers informed her. “He left this for you, my lady, to be given to you, should you inquire.”

Having delivered himself of this speech in a tone which, although scrupulously polite, clearly communicated his opinion that she should have inquired long before now, Evers presented her with a letter, folded and sealed with a wafer.

“Thank you, Evers,” said Lady Helen, dismissing the butler with a nod.

After he had quit the room, she broke the seal and spread the single sheet. Concealed within its folds were five twenty-pound notes, along with the name and direction of her husband’s banker. Should she find herself in need of additional funds, read this epistle, she had only to apply to this gentleman, as he had been instructed to advance her whatever amount she might require. Until his return he was, as ever, her most devoted Ethan B.

Lady Helen read the note a second time, then a third. He was gone. He had left that morning, without even saying goodbye.

Biting back a most unladylike whoop, Lady Helen hurried to her writing desk and dashed off a hasty missive to her father and brother, begging for the pleasure of their escort to Covent Garden later that evening. After dispatching a footman to deliver this communication, she flung herself into the task of deciding which one of her new gowns she would wear to the theater.

The duke and the viscount did not disappoint her, and soon the trio was ensconced in the duke’s box, from which location the
ton
was made privy to the information that Lady Helen had shed, at least for the nonce, her gauche bridegroom.  The discovery brought her former suitors flocking to the ducal box during the intermission, and chief among their number was the ubiquitous Earl of Waverly.

“Lady Helen,” he said, bowing over her hand. “An unexpected pleasure, seeing you alone.”

“But I am not alone, my lord,” she protested with feigned misunderstanding. “My father and brother are with me.”

“So they are,” conceded the earl, eyeing the duke and viscount in a manner that would have cheerfully consigned them to the devil. “And yet, one of your coterie is absent, is he not? Where, pray, is the fascinating Mr. Brundy?”

“He is gone to Manchester.”

“Ah, ever the conscientious tradesman, our Mr. Brundy. Or has he been exiled from Society for his sins?”

Lady Helen pinned Waverly with an unblinking gaze. “I do not discuss my husband with you, my lord.”

“As you wish,” replied the earl with an ironic lift of his eyebrow.

The signal for the beginning of the next act precluded further conversation, but Lady Helen could not in truth say she was sorry. Nor, for that matter, could she pay much attention to the scenes being enacted on the stage. While she agreed with her brother that the tragedy was indeed overlong but the farce which followed vastly diverting, she could not have stated with certainty what either of them was about.

Her gaze kept straying across the pit to the boxes on the other side, and particularly to the one nearest the proscenium arch. It was from that vantage point that Mr. Brundy had watched her so disconcertingly on the night they were first introduced. To be sure, if she had known where that first introduction was to lead, she might have been tempted to fling herself over the parapet.

It was well past midnight by the time the duke’s crested carriage deposited Lady Helen at her front door. Evers was waiting to throw open the door for her, and she passed through into the shadowy hall, where only a few candles burned. She thanked the butler and told him he might go to bed, then made her way across the hall to the stairs.

Her footsteps echoed on the marble tiles and the stairs stretched up into darkness, making the house which had been her home for the last two weeks seem eerie and unfamiliar.  She picked up a branched candelabrum from a side table at the foot of the stairs and began her ascent, making a mental note to instruct Evers to keep the house fully lit the next time she went out.

Upstairs, she passed the door of her husband’s bedchamber, where no light burned, and found herself wondering where he was at that moment, and what he was doing. Annoyed by the maudlin turn her thoughts had taken, she retired to her own chamber and, finding her abigail nodding at her post, dismissed the weary woman more sharply, perhaps, than was necessary.

* * * *

While Lady Helen lingered before the door of his vacant bedchamber, Mr. Brundy lay slumbering at a posting house in Stafford, where he had broken his journey for the night. He resumed his travels early the next morning, having never completely broken his lifelong habit of rising with the sun. He reached his destination shortly after noon, and tarried only long enough to partake of a cold collation before presenting himself at his place of business.

The sprawling brick building, situated some twelve miles north of the city, was ugly by architectural standards, but Mr. Brundy’s heart swelled with pride at the sight of it nonetheless. He dragged open the heavy door, then paused on the threshold while his eyes adjusted to the twilight world within.

“Ethan!” A familiar voice rose above the drone of the steam-powered machinery. “Ethan, me lad, where ye been? Ye’ve been away from us too long, ye have!”

Mr. Brundy followed the sound to an aging worker whose wide grin bore witness to the shortcomings of north country dentistry.

“Ben! ‘ow in the world are you?” demanded Mr. Brundy, clapping this individual heartily on the back in spite of the lint and perspiration that clung to him.

“Never mind me, lad! Stand back an’ let me have a look at ye. My, but ye look fine as fivepence!” pronounced Ben, filled with admiration for the same blue morning coat and yellow pantaloons which had so pained the duke upon their first interview. “Still, exceptin’ that yer dressed like a regular Lunnon toff, ye haven’t changed a bit.”

“Aye, that I ‘ave, Ben,” confessed Mr. Brundy with a grin. “You be’old me a married man!”

The older man’s reaction was all that Mr. Brundy might have wished. “Married?” he exclaimed. “Never say so! When?”

“These two weeks and more. I’d ‘oped to bring me wife to meet you, but—”

“Two weeks wed, an’ ye’ve left yer bride to come here? Ye’ll never get a son on her that way! Who’s the lucky girl?”

“I don’t know ‘ow lucky she considers ‘erself,” said Mr. Brundy, electing to ignore the earthier parts of this speech, “but me wife is Lady ‘elen Radney—leastways she was, until she married me.”

“
Lady
—?”

Mr. Brundy nodded.   “Daughter of ‘is Grace, the Dook of Reddington.”

A long hiss of escaping steam seemed to echo Ben’s sentiments.

“Ye hear that?” he bellowed to anyone within hearing. “Our Ethan has gone an’ married hisself a duchess!”

“Well, not a duchess, exactly,” the bridegroom offered apologetically, but no one seemed to pay him any heed.

“What’s she like, Mr. Brundy, sir?” asked one of the younger workers, a bashful lad of eighteen who had not Ben’s advantage of long acquaintance with his employer, and who consequently regarded that legendary figure with an awe which bordered on idolatry. “Is she pretty?”

“As a rose in May,” replied Mr. Brundy proudly.

“And sweeter nor any angel, I’ll be bound,” put in another.

Mr. Brundy chuckled and shook his head. “I’m afraid you’re fair and far off there, John. A regular shrew she is, me lady wife.”

“Then why’d you marry her?” retorted John, unconvinced.

“I’d no choice,” Mr. Brundy said simply. “I took one look at ‘er, and me ‘eart was no longer me own.”

“What I’d really like to know,” said John, “is why
she
married
you
!”

“For ‘is money, o’ course!” a burly redhead chimed in. The guffaws which greeted this sally were so boisterous that no one noticed Mr. Brundy’s laughter was somewhat forced. He was spared the necessity of a reply by the appearance of a lean young man with straight fair hair, who hurried up the wide aisle which separated the rows of steam-powered spinners bearing a letter in one hand. The other hand, his left, was missing; the empty sleeve was rolled up and neatly pinned below the elbow.

“Mr. Brundy, sir!” called this new arrival as he bore down upon the group.

“What’s toward, Tommy?” asked Mr. Brundy, grateful for the interruption.

“ ‘Tis from Nottingham, sir,” replied Tommy, producing the letter. “The roller printing machine you ordered won’t be here till next week.”

Since the main reason Mr. Brundy had torn himself away from his bride was to see to the installation of the aforementioned machine, he was perhaps understandably displeased with the news. Not being one to kill the messenger simply because he disliked the message, however, he resisted the urge to vent his frustration on his employee.

“Well, then, I suppose I’ll ‘ave to make other plans,” he said, suppressing a sigh of exasperation at the prospect of another trip to Manchester and yet another week away from his wife.  Resigning himself to the inevitable, he followed Tommy to the office and allowed himself to be brought up to date on the situation. No sooner had Tommy taken his leave than there was a knock on the office door, and a moment later Ben’s grizzled head appeared in the opening.

“Ethan, I’d like a word wi’ ye, if ye don’t mind.”

The younger man motioned the elder inside. “No, of course not, Ben. Come in.”

Ben did so, and shut the door firmly behind him. “Lad, I’ll not mince words. What’s the matter wi’ ye?”

The question, as well as the manner in which it was asked, caught Mr. Brundy off guard. “I beg your pardon?”

“Ye heard me, Ethan. I’ve knowed ye nigh on twenty years, an’ I’ve watched ye grow up from a sprout. Somethin’ happened when Jack started ribbin’ ye about yer money—or was it your wife?” Mr. Brundy not being inclined to respond, Ben added, “Ye should know ye can’t fool ol’ Ben.”

“Apparently not,” said Mr. Brundy with a singularly humorless laugh. “If you must know, Jack ‘it the nail on the ‘ead. She wed me for me money, Ben.”

Ben found this hard to believe. “A duke’s daughter, marrying for money? Bah!”

“ ‘appens all the time in ‘igh Society, believe me. Seems the Dook ‘as a weakness for cards. ‘e wanted funds, and I wanted ‘is daughter, so we struck a bargain. I guess you could say as ‘ow I bought ‘er for seventy-five thousand pounds.”

“Seventy-five thousand pounds?” Ben echoed incredulously. “Gawd! Wish I had a couple o’ girls I could sell ye!”

Mr. Brundy’s lips twitched, but he offered no comment.

Ben pressed on. “An’ ye love her, this duchess o’ yers?”

“More than life.”

“Well, ye married above yer station, lad, an’ I’m thinkin’ ye’ll have to take what comes with it,” replied the older man, albeit not without sympathy. “Still an’ all, I can’t say as I’m sorry you did. It’ll be one in the eye for old Wilkins. He’s been thinkin’ to foist his gal Becky on you, even though she and Tommy are mad for each other.”

This, it seemed, was news to his employer. “Tommy wants to marry Becky Wilkins?”

“Aye, has this last year an’ more, but her pa wouldn’t hear of it, not so long as there were a bigger fish to be caught.”

“If Tommy’s thinking to support a wife, ‘e’ll want a raise in wages,” observed Mr. Brundy.

“I expect he wouldn’t turn it down. Might bring Papa Wilkins around, too.”

“Send him to me on your way out,” instructed Mr. Brundy, giving Ben to understand that his private interview was at an end. The older man obeyed without protest, but paused at the door to offer one last word of advice.

“Yer a good man, Ethan, an’ I couldn’t be prouder of ye if ye were me own son. If that duchess o’ yers is half the woman ye deserve, she’ll be on her knees thankin’ her Maker for her good fortune.”