Miss Dashing, page 25
“I must ask you to hear me out,” Nunn said. “My intentions were good—I consider Ross a friend, always have. I introduced him to your mother, in fact, which Isaac lists among his many grievances with me. I have tried to act as a friend would act, but I also have an obligation to you, and Lord Phillip went very spare with me for neglecting it.”
Uncle Nunn maundered on for a good quarter hour, unburdening himself at the measured pace of a man trying to maintain his dignity in the midst of a fraught topic and mostly succeeding. Hecate listened, and by the time he finished, she was no longer crying. She was instead wondering why Phillip had gone to Bristol and whether he’d truly come back to her.
Though, really, sorting Phillip out was not the most pressing problem.
“I will understand if you cease speaking to me,” Nunn said. “You might well move to Paris and leave the lot of us to muddle on as best we can. I would request, for the sake of your young man, that you delay your departure until this house party has concluded.”
“Isaac has likely told Johnny of my patrimony.”
“And Johnny will threaten to make the matter public at the time least convenient to you,” Nunn said. “I doubt polite society will take notice. Old news regarding a woman long gone to her reward, and Isaac has doubtless cried in his brandy often enough in the clubs.”
A comforting and likely accurate perspective. “Johnny has other leverage over me, or so he claims.”
“Read these,” Nunn said, passing her the folded missives. “You have resources Johnny hasn’t accounted for, in me, in Lord Phillip, and in those letters. Mrs. Roberts is staunchly in your camp, and my guess is Edna will at least affect neutrality. I cannot speak for Charles, but Society regards him as little more than a chattering tailor’s dummy with an overdeveloped interest in opera dancers. I daresay Johnny isn’t ready for the forces you have at your disposal.”
Hecate took the letters, and Nunn rose.
“Read them here,” Nunn said. “You will not be disturbed. Take as long as you like, and then the letters are yours to do with as you wish.”
He pressed a hand to Hecate’s shoulder and departed, and that gesture—avuncular, personal, consoling—was yet another source of amazement.
Hecate moved around to the desk and settled into the more comfortable chair. She debated for another quarter hour whether to do as Nunn had bid her and read the letters. They were from her father, who might well have married and sired six other children. Who might not have recalled Mama as fondly as she had her Edward.
Hecate glanced at the dates, which started a month after Mama’s death and continued, the most recent being less than a month old. Most of them began in the same general manner:
* * *
My dear Nunn,
Your epistle of the nineteenth brought me much joy and no little worry. As proud as I am of my dear girl, I am anxious as well. How I wish I could aid her, and how appreciative I am of every word you relay that acquaints me with her circumstances…
* * *
The closings were all of a piece as well.
* * *
No daughter was ever so well loved, or so poorly served, by her father as my Hecate, and yet, I beg you for the next missive, as soon as you find it convenient to write…
* * *
There was such a thing as a good cry, such a thing as tears that acknowledged heartache and accorded it the respect it was due. Tears that admitted the truth and gave that truth dignity and meaning.
Tears that strengthened resolve and illuminated the way forward.
Hecate gathered up the letters and returned them to the safe, where neither moth nor rust nor conniving cousins could destroy them. She went to the door and found Mr. DeWitt at his ease in the footman’s chair several yards down the corridor.
“Mr. DeWitt, might you locate my uncle and tell him I’d like to speak to him?” Tears had made Hecate’s voice deeper, but she had never enjoyed such clarity of purpose. “I have a question to put to him, and I will await him in his study.”
“You’ve been crying.” This conclusion apparently displeased Mr. DeWitt. “Did Nunn give you the sharp side of his tongue?”
“He finally gave me the truth. Please fetch him, Mr. DeWitt. I will not set foot outside his study until you do, and then you and I can go for a stroll in the gardens, and you can tell me more about growing up in Crosspatch Corners.”
“More about Phillip, you mean?”
She smiled, because even the thought of Phillip gave her joy. “Of course about Phillip.”
Chapter Seventeen
“You cannot assist me to dress for the ball, Mr. DeWitt.” Hecate allowed a note of exasperation to underscore her words.
Gavin DeWitt had become her shadow in recent days, sitting through last-minute menu reviews with Cook, trundling along through the wine cellars when Hecate conferred with the butler. DeWitt had just finished patiently waiting through a discussion with the stable master regarding where coaches should park when half the shire showed up for tonight’s ball.
When DeWitt had been unable to escort her—to the parlor after supper, for example—Mrs. Roberts had taken up the duty. She’d admonished Hecate to keep her bedroom door locked at all times and not to venture down to breakfast until Mrs. Roberts or Mr. DeWitt arrived to escort her.
“As it happens,” DeWitt said, “my years with the theater mean I am an expert lady’s dresser. I am also accomplished with cosmetics, of which you have no need.”
Hecate reached the top of the staircase and turned for her room. “A man of varied accomplishments. Now I need you to turn invisible, because for the next ninety minutes, I will be in my bedroom, having a short lie-down, and then outfitting myself for the evening. If this is how royalty lives—no privacy, a retinue hovering at all times—it’s no wonder poor old George went mad.”
DeWitt strolled along beside her, damn his longer legs. “Comfort yourself with this realization, Miss Brompton: Wherever Lord Phillip is, whatever task he’s about, he is half mad worrying for you, and his anxiety is justified. Darling Johnny has been lurking behind potted lemons, loitering on balconies, and making a general attempt to keep you in his sights to an alarming degree.”
Hecate stopped outside her door. Johnny had been comporting himself like some lovelorn adolescent, or a villain intent on a kidnapping. He’d watched Hecate at meals, maintained a brooding distance from her over pall-mall, and taken a seat for piquet and whist that allowed him to stare at her over his cards.
“Phillip said he’d be back in time for tonight’s ball,” Hecate muttered, extracting the key from a pocket. “He has less than two hours before the dancing begins.” She twisted the key and pushed the door open, stepping back to allow DeWitt to inspect her room before she set foot therein.
Had she not lived her whole life among Bromptons, she would have thought the measure excessive.
“What have we here?” DeWitt posed the question to Flavia, poised before Hecate’s open jewelry box, a gold bracelet winking from her wrist.
“Nothing of any moment,” Hecate said, though Flavia had managed to get past a locked door, and then she’d had the presence of mind to relock the door before embarking on her larceny.
“I can’t undo the clasp,” she said, holding up her hand. “One puts the bracelet on one’s right hand, the better to display the pretty bauble, but then one’s left isn’t equal to the… I wasn’t stealing it. Please believe that.”
“Where is your familiar?” DeWitt asked, opening the wardrobe and moving dresses aside.
Flavia looked confused. “I am not a witch.”
“He means Portia,” Hecate said. “Did she accompany you?”
“Porry is having a lie-down. She’s on her last nerve, and Mama isn’t helping. I’m to waken Porry on the half hour so I can help her dress and do her hair. The maids always annoy her, and Mama’s lady’s maid won’t look in on us until Mama’s ensemble is complete.”
DeWitt moved aside curtains and peered under the bed, then had a look on the balcony. “No Portia. Shall I escort Miss Flavia to her room?”
Flavia fiddled with the clasp, pink staining her cheeks. Ashamed because she’d wanted to look pretty and sophisticated for a change.
“I think not,” Hecate said. “Flavia and I can chat while I get off my feet for a bit.”
“Don’t harangue me,” Flavia said, apparently giving up on the clasp. “I never steal. You know that. I only borrow, and then I put everything back.”
“Mr. DeWitt was just leaving, and I know you’re not a thief, Flavia.” A dupe, yes; a thief, no. “Mr. DeWitt, I will not go down to the buffet until you rap four times on my door. Give me at least an hour.”
He bowed and withdrew, sending Flavia the sort of look headmasters reserve for recidivist pranksters. Hecate locked the door after him, because he’d linger in the corridor until he heard the mechanism catch.
She gestured to one of the chairs by the empty hearth. “You are welcome to keep the bracelet, Flavia. You have the delicate bones for an article like that, while I do not.”
Flavia stared at her wrist. “You should be scolding me.”
“Everybody scolds you. I know how that feels.” Hecate took one of the worn chairs and waited for Flavia to do likewise. “No matter how hard you try, they criticize the results. If, by chance, you manage something perfectly, they warn you against showing off.”
Flavia looked up. “I don’t do anything perfectly.”
Hecate wanted to howl on behalf of her younger self and on Flavia’s behalf. “You keep a complicated set of signals straight at one game of whist after another.”
“That’s cheating.” Flavia resumed trying to free herself from the bracelet. “Porry says nobody misses tuppence, but we win a great more than tuppence sometimes. We never just enjoy a hand of cards anymore. I used to like whist.”
“Is that why you’ve been partnering Mr. DeGrange lately?”
Ah, a smile. A sweet, genuine, slightly bewildered smile. “Mr. DeGrange is kind and funny, and he’s only ten years older than me. He’s not silly, but he’s not serious either. Porry claims he’s merely gentry. Gentry live in the country, and I hate London’s coal smoke and bustle.”
Flavia got up to pace, which a lady did not do and which Hecate was prone to doing when vexed by an investment.
“One cannot think when the noise in Town never ceases,” Flavia went on. “Don’t tell Porry I said that. Porry claims a third Season is a disaster, but Mr. DeGrange says ladies should be allowed to thoroughly examine what’s on offer, not be rushed to the altar before they’ve had a chance to avail themselves of Town’s diversions. Porry declares that’s nonsense.”
Porry says, Porry claims, Porry declares… “Portia Brompton has never, to my knowledge, been appointed the arbiter of truth in any regard. She is often in error, frequently bullheaded, and unrelentingly selfish. Mr. DeGrange is quite well fixed. He tends his acres conscientiously, and his grandmother was a copper heiress. She left him significant means that he’s invested wisely. I would not have added him to the guest list if he were merely agreeable.”
Flavia sank back into her chair. “Portia was wrong. I knew it. Porry is often wrong, but one cannot tell her that, or she flies into the boughs, and then one must apologize for having done nothing wrong, or she pouts. Nobody can pout like Portia.”
Edna, Isaac, Eggy, Charlie… They could all give Portia a run for her pouting money. “You are not her nanny, Flavia. Tell her she’s mistaken, decline to partner her at whist, and bide here at Nunnsuch if you don’t choose to go to Town. Uncle Nunn could use the company, truth be told.”
Flavia tucked her feet up and curled her arms around her knees. “I can’t. Portia is all I have. Mama is off on her intrigues and scheming with Eggy, or doting on the little boys. If Portia turns her back on me, I’ll have nothing and nobody, or worse, Porry will decide I need to be taught a lesson. She used to do that. Hide my dolls. She tossed one of them to the rag-and-bone man once because I wouldn’t give her my pudding.”
What a horrid thing to do. “And yet, you are loyal to her.”
Flavia shrugged. “You are loyal to the Bromptons, and then Johnny struts home from Canada, and the lot of us can’t wait to see him snatch your fortune from you. I think it’s horrid myself. You aren’t doting, but you are fair and generous, and you have a head for figures. Porry says Johnny will be more generous than you are, but she’s determined to marry Lord Phillip. She won’t be the one wearing last year’s bonnets when Johnny leaves us all to starve. I’d really rather not wear your bracelet, if you don’t mind.”
She held out her wrist, and Hecate undid the clasp, though the links had snagged on the lace of Flavia’s cuff. Freeing her took some delicate maneuvering.
Hecate held the skein of gold up to the slanting beams of evening light. How many of her own figurative dolls had the Bromptons tossed to the rag-and-bone man? How many of her years, her best efforts, her good intentions?
Her fortune was the least of it.
“I like Lord Phillip,” Flavia said.
“I love him. Is Portia intent on getting compromised with him?”
Flavia tucked herself into a smaller ball. “I never said that.”
Hecate waited, mentally castigating herself for having overlooked the one family member who never gave her any trouble.
“Eggy vows I’m nearly simpleminded,” Flavia said. “Mama warns me that I’d best work on my charm and wiles, because my brains and fortune will never impress a man. Charles says he might be able to foist me off on one of his older friends. Portia has a use for me, sometimes.”
Hecate had been five years younger than Flavia was now when the Bromptons, abetted by a lot of crooked solicitors, had decided that she, too, had a use.
Damn them for that and for what they were doing to Flavia. “You are pretty, Flavia. More attractive than Portia, and that bothers her exceedingly.”
Flavia looked up, her expression suggesting the dressing bell had sounded an hour early.
“You learned the quadrille in three days flat,” Hecate went on. “Lord Phillip, an intelligent and determined man, is still struggling with it after weeks of practice. You would doubtless be a dab hand at the ledgers, and I cannot find another Brompton who will even glance at them. You have seen Mr. DeGrange’s good qualities without even knowing he possesses a fortune, and that will matter to him a great deal.”
Flavia worried her lower lip. “You are really rich, aren’t you?”
What had that to do with anything? When had that ever had a blessed thing to do with what mattered?
“Yes and no.”
Flavia stared hard at the gold winking in Hecate’s hand. “I wish I could be like you, wealthy enough that I don’t have to marry. Don’t have to be pretty. Don’t have to charm all the bachelors in hopes one of them will take me off the Brompton charity rolls. I could work at your sailors’ home—I’m good with a needle.”
This was as much enthusiasm as Flavia had ever shown about anything, and Hecate was reminded again of all the enthusiasms the Bromptons had criticized, ridiculed, and shamed her out of.
And now they wanted to take Phillip from her, too, and foist Johnny off on her?
“Flavia, if that’s what you want, then I will make the arrangements. You can have a cottage in Chelsea—Miss Blanchard adores her cottage—devote yourself to charity, and leap over the whole Mayfair madness.”
“You’d do that?”
“I wish somebody had done that for me.” Wished she had done it for herself, but like Phillip, she’d accepted a sentence passed upon her by those unqualified to render judgment.
Flavia set her feet back on the floor and smoothed her skirts. “Porry plans to compromise you with Johnny so Lord Phillip will be left for her. She might choose Mr. DeWitt instead. I saw Mr. DeWitt first, but when Portia makes up her mind…”
“She’d leave you with no one?”
“No one but her, though to be honest…”
“Right. No sister at all might be an improvement over a sister like that. How is this compromising supposed to work?”
Hecate had a general idea—DeWitt had mentioned that Portia was plotting more mischief—and Flavia supplied details consistent with prior offenses.
“Thank you for telling me,” Hecate said. “You’d best go waken Sleeping Beauty, and I will have a word with Uncle Nunn.”
“What about?”
“A topic we aired in theory several days ago that now must be dealt with in earnest.” Hecate stopped Flavia at the door, pulled her into a hug, and then slapped the bracelet into her palm. “Keep it for luck.”
Flavia hugged her back and slipped into the corridor, where Mr. DeWitt waited, already attired in his evening finery.
“Porry, hold still, or your coiffeur will be lopsided.”
“This vanity stool is an instrument of torture, and lopsided is fashionable. A curl or two cascading over my milk-white shoulder. Can you try that, Flavie?” Mama claimed Lord Phillip would be returning for tonight’s ball—where had he got off to, and how did Mama know that?—and the usual ringlets would not do.
Schoolgirls wore ringlets. The future wife of a marquess’s heir was entitled to more sophisticated styles.
“I can try.” Flavia, still attired in chemise and dressing gown, began unbraiding the plait she’d just made. “We will be late for the buffet if you don’t soon make up your mind.”
“The buffet is only for family and guests. We don’t need to be punctual. Besides, you are going to be late anyway, remember?”
“Because I’m to discover Hecate and Johnny at five minutes past the hour… Where did you decide I’m to discover them?”
“Must you pull my hair?” Portia took a fortifying sip of punch, though if Hecate had allowed any wine into this batch, Cook had used a very subtle hand. “You, accompanied by Eggy, at least, and possibly Mr. DeGrange and Mr. DeWitt, will find Hecate and Johnny in the warming pantry beside the formal dining room.”
