Sheri Cobb South (15 page)

Still, her brother’s countenance brightened. “There you are! If Brundy will cough up the ready, what’s the problem? I vow, you’re not yourself at all today.” His eyes opened wide as one possible explanation for his sister’s queer start occurred to him. “I say, Nell, you aren’t in the family way, are you?”

“No,” she said miserably.

“Then what’s the matter?”

Lady Helen swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Mr. Brundy would think I only want him for his money.”

Tisdale felt positively giddy with relief. “Is that all? You need have no fears upon that head, Nell. Mr. Brundy cut his wisdom teeth years ago. It’s not like he thought he was making a love match.”

Lady Helen’s face flamed, and the viscount, observing his sister’s heightened color, was moved to exclaim, “Oh, I say! Sits the wind in that quarter, does it?”

She made no reply, but nodded her head in the affirmative.

“Are you sure? I mean, he hardly seems your type, Nell. I always thought your tastes ran more to Lord Waverly and his ilk.”

“He—does not show to advantage in London,” admitted Lady Helen, feeling shamefully disloyal for doing so. “It was not until I saw him at his mill, among his own people, that I—that I came to—to care for him.”

The viscount nodded in understanding. “Well, I must say, after the initial shock wore off, I thought he was a regular right ‘un—for a Cit, that is.”

“Teddy,” replied his sister with great deliberation, “I will get your money for you, but only on two conditions: one, that you never go anywhere with Lord Waverly, and two, that you never,
ever,
refer to my husband in those terms again!”

Lord Tisdale accepted his sister’s terms eagerly and, after professing (several times) his undying gratitude, took himself home to face his father with a much lighter heart. Lady Helen walked with him as far as the front door, then lingered alone in the hall long after he had gone, staring with unseeing eyes at the study door.

“And we were going to Brighton,” she whispered sadly.

* * * *

Dinner was not the pleasant occasion to which Lady Helen had looked forward with such eagerness. To be sure, her husband had smiled approvingly at her when he discovered that the dining room table had mysteriously shrunk, allowing them to dine in something approaching the intimacy they had enjoyed at Mr. Brundy’s Lancashire residence. But Lady Helen could think only of the task which lay before her, and made only monosyllabic replies to his attempts at conversation, all the while plotting how best to wheedle him out of five hundred pounds.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Mr. Brundy said at last, after yet another failed attempt to engage his wife in conversation.

Make it five hundred pounds, and I shall accept,
thought Lady Helen. She shook her head. “You would find them overpriced, I fear. Since I am such poor company, I shall leave you to enjoy your port.”

She would have suited the word to the deed, but Mr. Brundy rose with her. “I would prefer your company, ‘elen, poor or no. Would you care to play piquet?”

To Lady Helen, who would ever after equate the card game with kisses, the invitation was almost too much to bear. “If you have no objection, Mr. Brundy, I think I should prefer to seek my bed.”

“It’s been a long day,” he agreed, walking with her as far as the stairs. “I may be up very shortly meself. Good night, me dear.”

“Good night, Mr. Brundy,” she said, and made her solitary way up the stairs.

* * * *

Barefooted and clad only in her nightrail, she followed a dark, cavelike tunnel, the candle in her hand providing the only light. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dimly lit cavern, she could make out nail-studded doors set at intervals along the tunnel walls, each one inlaid with a small barred window. As she passed one such door, a claw-like hand shot through the window and snatched at her hair. Suppressing the scream that rose in her throat, she hurried down the passage, unmindful of the wails and moans of the unfortunate souls imprisoned in the darkness. At last she reached her destination, where a cell door swung open before her as if by magic. Inside, Viscount Tisdale lay in chains, his hair and clothing filthy and his coltish frame gaunt and emaciated.

“Teddy!” she cried. “Teddy, what have they done to you?”

“Debt of honor,” rasped the viscount, too weak to stand. “Couldn’t pay. Waverly—”

“Lord Waverly did this to you?”

Her brother’s answer was drowned out by the clang of metal on metal, and she whirled around to find that the cell door had slammed shut, imprisoning her with the viscount. As she gathered her breath to cry for help, a familiar, mocking face appeared in the tiny barred window.

“Welcome, Mrs. Brundy,” drawled Lord Waverly.

Lady Helen screamed.

* * * *

His wife’s scream awakened Mr. Brundy from a sound sleep. Without lingering to don his dressing gown, he was out of bed like a shot, calling her name and pounding ineffectually at the connecting door. Receiving no response, he put his shoulder to the door and threw his weight against it. The door separated from its hinges with a creak of splintering wood. Mr. Brundy stepped over the debris littering the floor, flung back Lady Helen’s bed curtains, and pulled her into his arms. Sitting on the edge of her bed, he rocked her gently, murmuring all the endearments he could not voice by day.

“ ‘ush, love, it’s all right,” he crooned. “ ‘Tis your own Ethan ‘oo’s got you now.”

Still trembling, Lady Helen burrowed deeper into his embrace, and Mr. Brundy tried valiantly not to notice the lavender scent of her hair teasing his nostrils or the soft curves of her body pressed against his. Alas, he was but human, and not only did he notice all these things, he was compelled to act upon his knowledge. His lips brushed her hair in a light kiss, which led not unnaturally to another, and then another, and when Lady Helen raised her face to his, he was a lost man. His mouth claimed hers and she wrapped her arms around him and buried her fingers in his hair. With a groan, he pressed her back against the pillows and continued his gentle exploration of her mouth, her eyes, her throat....

“Please, Mr. Brundy, st—”

At the sound of his wife’s voice, Mr. Brundy’s sanity reasserted itself. He released her on the instant, and sat bolt upright on the edge of the bed. “I—I beg your pardon,” he stammered, his breath coming in labored gasps. “I ‘ope you’ll ‘ave a peaceful night’s rest from ‘ere on out.”
One of us might as well, for I won’t shut me eyes again until morning,
he added mentally.

“Yes, I’m sure I shall,” Lady Helen answered breathlessly. “Good night, Mr. Brundy.”

Mr. Brundy would have returned to his own room, but as he reached the gaping hole left by his forced entry, his bare foot landed on a jagged sliver of wood. His curiosity piqued, he groped for the candle on Lady Helen’s bedside table and fumbled with the flint. A moment later the candle flared to life, revealing the connecting door hanging drunkenly from its lower hinge. Scattered on the floor beneath it were the splintered remains of a delicate Sheraton chair. Mr. Brundy stooped to pick up a broken chair leg, then turned to address his wife.

“I may not be a gentleman, ‘elen, but I’m a man of me word. I promised you six months, and six months you shall ‘ave.”

Without waiting for a reply, he blew out the candle and returned to his own room.

Alone in the darkness, Lady Helen lay flat on her back, staring up at the canopy overhead and thinking about what had just transpired.
Please, Mr. Brundy, stay with me.
The words had almost slipped out in spite of her best efforts to hold them back. What would he have thought if she had begged him to stay, only to demand a large sum of money the very next day? Why, that she had sold herself to him, of course, and not seen fit to inform him of the terms of the sale until after the transaction was complete! Sunk in despair, she rolled over and plumped up the pillows, then pulled the counterpane up over her ears. But when she closed her eyes, it was her husband’s shoulder upon which her head rested, her husband’s arms enfolding her as she slept.

* * * *

Mr. Brundy, having reached the privacy of his own room, made his way to the washstand on wobbly legs. The urge to claim his conjugal rights was a physical ache, but only a blackguard would take advantage of a lady’s distress in order to have his way with her—even if the lady in question were his wife. Not for the first time, he mentally calculated the time remaining. It was, he reflected, going to be a long four months, three weeks, and six days.

He had thought that sharing a platonic bed with his bride in a Warwickshire posting house was the worst torment he could endure. He had been wrong. Holding his wife, kissing her and feeling her slender body beneath him, had been a torture infinitely worse—and he wanted nothing more than to march back into her bedchamber and be tortured anew.

He picked up the pitcher from the washstand and filled the bowl with water. It had been steaming hot when it was first brought up, but that had been before dinner, and the water had long since cooled. Bracing himself against the cold, he plunged his head in.

Chapter 11

If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you’ll forget ‘em all. ALEXANDER POPE,
The Rape of the Lock

As dawn broke over Grosvenor Square, Sukey tiptoed into her mistress’s bedchamber to clean the grate and light the fire. Upon seeing the condition of that usually immaculate salon, however, she almost dropped the ash can. The door which connected the mistress’s bedchamber with that of the master had been broken down by force, and now hung crookedly from one hinge. The Sheraton chair, the placement of which had so shocked the little maid on the morning after the wedding, had been reduced to splinters, and the ruffled bed curtain had been partially ripped from its casing.

“Gor!” breathed Sukey and hastily retraced her steps back down to the kitchen, her task forgotten. “Mrs. Givens! Mrs. Givens! You’ll never credit it, ma’am!”

Having assured herself of the housekeeper’s undivided attention, Sukey proceeded to describe the scene upstairs in lurid detail, and was pleased to discover that, this time, her observations were not so easily dismissed.

“No!” cried Mrs. Givens, enthralled. “I’ll not believe poor Mr. Brundy used his wife so shamefully, not for love nor money, I won’t! And even if he did,” she added in fine contradiction of her earlier protestations, “you may depend upon it that That Woman drove him to it! But of course he didn’t, for he hasn’t an unkind bone in his body, I’ll be bound, and if you ask me, he’s treated her far better than she deserves, be she the daughter of a duke or no! A full month married, and that chair still beneath the doorknob. It’s not decent, I tell you!”

* * * *

Mr. Brundy did not see his wife at breakfast, having an appointment with Messrs. Schweitzer and Davidson which took him to Cork Street before Lady Helen had yet arisen. In fact, most of the
ton
was still abed, and consequently he enjoyed (or rather, endured) the undivided attention of both the royal tailors. Having fended for himself for most of his life, Mr. Brundy found it difficult to submit passively as the two
artistes
dressed him in the new evening clothes which he would wear to Lady Randall’s ball the following night. His patience, however, was at last rewarded when, after making the most minuscule of adjustments to his cravat, the two men stepped back and allowed him to view his reflection in the glass.

“Blimey!” uttered Mr. Brundy upon beholding the fashionably dressed stranger staring back at him. The black cutaway coat and pantaloons differed little in fabric or style from those he had worn on that fateful night at Covent Garden when he had first beheld Lady Helen Radney, but in the hands of the Regent’s own tailors, the garments had been so cleverly cut as to appear molded to his form. While aesthetically pleasing, this was a cause of concern to the pragmatic Mr. Brundy.

“Will I be able to sit down?” he asked.

“Of course, of course!” Mr. Schweitzer assured him. “Jennings, a chair!”

Mr. Davidson surveyed his handiwork with a critical eye as his underling disappeared in search of a chair. “I do wish we might nip in the waist a bit,” he said with a sigh of regret for what might have been. “Mr. Brundy, would you not consider a corset, lightly laced—”

“
No!
” said Mr. Brundy in that tone which wrought fear in the hearts of his workers, the more so because it was so rarely heard.

“There is nothing wrong with Mr. Brundy’s waist,” asserted Mr. Schweitzer, “although if I may say so, sir, a haircut would not be amiss.”

“I daresay you’re right,” conceded Mr. Brundy. “I’ve not ‘ad me ‘air cut since I first left Lancashire.”

“You will want a London barber, of course. Perhaps your valet might suggest a man.”

“I ‘aven’t a valet, either.”

“No valet?” echoed the tailor in shocked accents. “How, sir, do you propose to get that coat on unassisted?”

“I’ve dressed meself for twenty-eight years,” Mr. Brundy pointed out reasonably. “ ‘Tis unlikely I’ll forget ‘ow at this late date.”

“But up to now, your coats have been of a decidedly inferior cut,” objected Mr. Schweitzer. “Depend upon it, sir, you must have a valet.”

Jennings, returning at that moment with a chair, froze momentarily as a thought struck him.  In his line of work, he had seen many fashionable gentlemen come and go, and of one thing he was certain. The valet who could turn Mr. Brundy out as a beau of the first stare would be more than a success in his field; he would be a legend in his own time. As Mr. Brundy eased himself onto the chair, relieved to detect no signs of straining seams, the hireling picked up his discarded coat and, under the pretense of hanging and brushing it, appropriated the watch contained in the inside breast pocket.

Satisfied with his purchases, Mr. Brundy changed back into his morning coat and breeches, not noticing that his coat was somewhat the lighter. He inquired of Messrs. Schweitzer and Davidson when the remainder of his order might be completed, and upon being informed that it would be ready within the week, he took himself off. He had hardly reached the street, however, when he heard himself hailed in urgent accents.