A Suspicious Affair (16 page)

Hold his head up? The last time someone said something like that they were talking about an artillery cannon. “’Old ’er ’ead up, boys,” some old, grizzled sergeant used to yell, warning the cannon was loaded. Lower the barrel and a live ball was liable to drop out among the troops. My God, he thought, holding the infant farther away from his body, what did the duchess have in mind?

Embarrassed servants be damned, Carlinn started to follow Marisol out the door. Sal had other ideas. Her orders were to stay. Stay she would. The big dog got between Kimbrough and the door. The fur on the back of her neck rose; the lips over the long white fangs lifted.

“Friend,” Carlinn called in his cavalry-command voice.

“Grr.” Sal marched to a different drummer.

The earl slowly backed up until he felt the sofa behind him. He sat, gingerly cradling the baby. The dog sat, tongue lolling, tail wagging. “Good dog. Good baby.”

But the baby wasn’t being good. He was starting to screw up his face and turn red. Oh God. Carlinn jumped to his feet and started pacing, three-legged Sal following with her eyes. The movement calmed the baby some, but his arms and legs were thrashing in the blankets. “Want the coverings off, do you, old chap? Can’t blame you. She’s got you done up like a straitjacket.”

But when he started to place the baby down, Nolly started to cry and Sal started to whimper. Carlinn snatched him up again. Like trying to juggle eggs, the earl tried to unwind the constricting blankets. And keep Nolly’s head up. And keep walking, but not toward the door. “And don’t drop it, whatever you do,” his lordship muttered to himself, wishing he had another hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead. Why did they have to wrap the creature in so many layers? It was deuced warm in here.

Finally the baby was more or less free, except for the death-grip Kimbrough had on him. Nolly turned his face into Carlinn’s chest, got a mouthful of blue superfine, and started sucking. “Dear Lord, not that!” He shifted the light weight around, so Nolly was more or less upright, and close enough to get a fold of the earl’s neckcloth in his mouth. “No!” Carlinn almost shouted, but caught himself in time when he saw furrows appear on the little brow, making Nolly look like a thoughtful old man. He stuck his thumb in the baby’s mouth. “It’s the best I can do, old chap. Don’t blame me; blame her for leaving you.”

Nolly wrapped his hand around the earl’s thumb and looked up at him. The gray-blue eyes stared into Lord Kimbrough’s brown ones almost assessingly, as if wondering just what kind of guardian he was going to be if he couldn’t provide a snack. The earl was mesmerized by that clear stare, the tiny fingers, the downy hair, and petal-smooth skin. The infant smelled of talcum and weighed next to nothing, and frowned his disapproval like the most superior of aristocrats. Like his mother. And he was so soft, like his mother. Then Nolly spit out the earl’s thumb, with a quantity of drool, and smiled up at him.

“As changeable as your mother, too, Your Grace,” Carlinn said, grinning back and thinking that he was right to get to Bath. The sooner he offered for Miss Sherville, the sooner he could have one of these all his own. One without that Laughton Nose. And hopefully one that didn’t leave a damp streak down his fawn breeches.

Chapter Sixteen

Bath was as awful as he recalled, only worse. This time Kimbrough wasn’t recuperating, so he didn’t spend his time bathing or resting. Without those activities, there was hardly anything to do, as the clerk at the White Hart informed him. The Pump Room, the Tea Room, the Upper Rooms, the Lower Rooms, the Gardens: That was Bath. Slow walks and promenades, twice-weekly assemblies, once-weekly musicales, card parties. If the pools weren’t so crowded with gout-ridden oldsters, he’d go swimming anyway. And Bath was everything he hated about London, only smaller and not so smelly, except at low tide. Here was all that constant bowing and hat-tipping, changing one’s clothes by the hour, being surveyed and audited, all without the escape of the gentlemen’s clubs.

There were coffee houses, to be sure, but some doddery old windbag was liable to interrupt Kimbrough’s newspaper reading to ask his opinion on the latest war news. He didn’t know the latest war news; London papers took longer to get here than they did to Berkshire.

On a walk through Sydney Gardens, he was just as likely to be accosted by retired officers as retiring spinsters, women of a certain age, women of uncertain incomes. Were there no youngish gentlemen in the town?

Carlinn’s original plan was to happen upon Miss Sherville by luck—and a bribe to the hotel clerk to find which giddy entertainment she’d be enjoying—but he changed his mind. Another day dawdling around would have him complaining of his rheumatics. Besides, who could make tittle-tattle out of a duty call to his cousin’s goddaughter?

The six simpering matrons in the Sherville drawing room, that was who. Six pairs of eyes watched him cross the room to the Sherville ladies, to express his cousin Winifred’s greetings and regard for Lady Sherville’s health.

“Why, ’tis as tiresome as ever, as I’m sure Winifred must know. I just wrote her last week. But I do find the Bath climate salubrious.”

Salubrious? Carlinn found the climate about as healthful as the air around that bog he was draining. Right now, in the overheated drawing room, he was finding the atmosphere positively oppressive. Or was that because of the six pairs of watchful eyes? Lud, how he wished he could loosen that blasted neckcloth!

“So what brings you to Bath, Kimbrough? Can’t be your health; you’re looking disgustingly robust.”

He wasn’t sure whether to apologize to Lady Sherville or say thank you, so he just explained the mission he’d created.

“Oh no,” Miss Sherville exclaimed, “you mustn’t bring Miss Kimberly to Bath now. It is the summer which is positively gay for the younger set. The Regent’s crowd flocks to Brighton, but families and such come to Bath. Sydney Gardens are at their finest then.”

So were his mother’s perennial borders. What, should he give up the fishing and riding and the most productive time on the agricultural estates? And why did Edelia’s words make him feel old? From what he’d seen, though, Edelia was correct. Tina would be miserable in Bath, where a horseback ride required a day’s outing.

From what he’d seen of Miss Sherville, however, he was correct in making Bath his destination. She was lovely in her morning gown of oyster-shell luster, fashionable without being flashy. Every auburn hair was in place on top of her head; there wasn’t a single curl to tempt a man to tuck it back. She had a small, slightly rounded nose, thank goodness, and pleasant hazel eyes. Those wide-set eyes bespoke neither a dewy-eyed virgin nor a fiery temptress, but a chaste, clear-gazed maiden who wouldn’t play her husband false. She even modestly lowered her eyes under his scrutiny.

His own gaze dropped, then rose. Better not dwell on that distressingly untempting neckline.

The proper twenty minutes for a social call passed quickly, with no interruptions for babies or dogs or importunate relations. His seat was immediately taken by a clerical gentleman who posed a question about last week’s sermon, and an ex-India colonel took Miss Sherville’s other side with a mention of the war news. Politics and religion; now those were fitting topics for the drawing room, not all that twaddle about fashions and balls his sister was always prattling on about, nor the latest crim. con. stories that surrounded Denning Castle.

Before leaving, he asked if Miss Sherville would walk out with him to give advice on renting a property, in case he decided to take a place for the summer. Which he would do if Berkshire or Hell froze in July, whichever came first. But the six pairs of eyes were nodding and passing their scrutiny over to the two newcomers, so his request must seem plausible.

Miss Sherville highly recommended those residences in the Royal Crescent as the most fashionable. They were also the most closely connected, cheek-by-jowl dwellings he’d seen outside a London slum. They were elegant, of course, and pleasing to the eye, but there was no land! Just the cursed endless hills they were climbing up and down at a snail’s pace, to suit the speed of the female in black who trailed behind. Carlinn didn’t know if she was a maid or a paid companion, for he’d never been introduced, but Sal could have taken lessons in watchdogging from the old crow.

That night he had a dance with Miss Sherville at the Assembly Rooms. Just one, for she was promised for the rest to a clutch of middle-aged Romeos with pomaded locks, creaking corsets, and snuff-stained fingers. Two were even in wheeled Bath chairs. Kimbrough assessed the competition while doing the pretty by every wallflower and widow in the room; he wasn’t worried. He also wasn’t tired when the Assembly ended at the stroke of eleven. So he was happy to walk back to his hotel rather than take one of those dratted sedan chairs where the polemen grunted at his weight with every step, hoping for a bigger tip.

The following morning he made one loop of the Pump Room with Miss Sherville on his arm to fetch her mother a glass of the foul waters, before his arm and company were politely but carefully dismissed. In the afternoon, he took one cup of tea before his allotted time was expired. He played one hand of cards with her that night before partners were switched. No, there would not be idle gossip about Edelia Sherville. There would also be no getting closer to the female without a formal declaration.

Damn and blast, he couldn’t just propose. He wasn’t ready. Besides, a woman expected to be courted. Circumspection was all well and good, but the devil take it if he was going to act the mooncalf under the eyes of every Bath tabby.

But how could he get to know her, to see if they would suit, if they were never alone? And how many days was the deuced thing going to take before he could go home?

He suggested a ride out of the city. She thought her mother would be delighted for the drive. A shopping expedition? The lending library? Miss Sherville organized a party of her friends, with luncheon at one of the coffee houses. Such conduct would have been considered fast in a girl his sister’s age, Edelia confessed, straight-faced, but she considered herself above the most confining social strictures.

Then why the hell wouldn’t she step an inch off the path at Sydney Gardens? For heaven’s sake, Duchess Denning was willing to sleep with a rifle at her side and thumbed her nose at society by not wearing full mourning. And the duchess drove out with him with no chaperone and entertained him in her nightrail without blushing. Granted, Lady Marisol was a married woman, a mother, a widow, but she couldn’t be much older than Edelia Sherville. In fact, she seemed much younger, except in experience. Kimbrough reminded himself that he didn’t want an experienced bride, a woman of the world. He wanted just what Miss Edelia Sherville offered: a dignified gentlewoman who understood the proprieties.

Then he reminded himself again. And again the next day.

*

Never before had Lord Kimbrough appreciated the mayhem that entered his life with the introduction to Duchess Denning. Never before had he received one of her urgent summonses with such delight. Actually the duchess hadn’t requested his presence back in Berkshire at all, nor had she suggested the groom ride neck or nothing to deliver the message. She’d just written to inform him of the occurrence, but no one in Bath had to know that.

“I am saddened to have to shorten my visit with nothing settled,” he hinted to Miss Sherville, her mother, the six members of the Greek chorus, and the ever-present black-clad dragon. “The rental property, of course. But there is an emergency in Berkshire; a neighbor needs my help. The messenger almost rode his horse into the ground to get to me, so I must leave at once. Thank you for making my stay in Bath so pleasant. Farewell.” Miss Sherville permitted him to take her hand and kiss the fingers, which was the closest he’d come to intimacy with the woman in a sennight.

Carlinn left Bath faster than Marisol’s messenger had entered it. And happier.

The emergency in Berkshire was that Foster Laughton was home, and a hero. He was wounded, Marisol wrote, but the doctors were optimistic. She hadn’t wanted Lord Kimbrough to hear the news elsewhere and be concerned. So he wasn’t, and took his time on the return, not pushing his horses, not taking chances with bad weather or muddy roads. Freedom was a heady brew and Carlinn was going to enjoy every last drop.

He supposed the duchess expected him to entertain the lad, or speak to the War Office about a promotion now that Foster had distinguished himself. Perhaps he would.

Or perhaps he’d have the young marquis drawn and quartered.

“Bloody hell,” Kimbrough shouted when he saw how matters stood. “Why didn’t you tell me to hurry back?”

The duchess slammed the door in his face and went back to the room where Foster lay on a sofa. The baby gurgled over some toys on a blanket on the floor, and Aunt Tess knitted in the corner. Sal kept watch from the hearth, and Max chased a ball of yarn. And there, leaning over the sofa, hanging on the invalid’s every word, bringing him lemonade or a cool cloth for his head or a book to be read aloud or a guessing game, was not the nursemaid, not milady’s abigail, but Kimbrough’s own little sister! Entertain young Laughton be damned! Carlinn would see him entertained in the afterlife, if he didn’t stop ogling Bettina’s chest when she leaned over that way. And where the deuce was Cousin Winifred? Was ever a man so besieged by rattle-pated females?

Foster, it seemed—and Kimbrough read the newspapers to verify the details—was indeed a hero. His troop ship, in convoy, had caught fire just two days before landing in Lisbon. The fire was not due to any enemy cannonade, but to a carelessly smoking seaman in the munitions cargo hold. Suddenly there was pandemonium aboard the ship, with explosions and burning sails, flying sparks, falling masts.

The captain’s dying words were “Abandon ship” so the first mate and half the navy crew did, leaving the army recruits and their few inexperienced officers to fend for themselves. Men were trampled in the stampede for the longboats; others just jumped overboard. Then Foster proved his mettle. He ordered his batman Joshua and the highwayman Jack Windham to stand by the lifeboat lifts, pistols in hand, to make sure the men made an orderly retreat.

Foster, meanwhile, went below, dragging injured naval officers and enlisted men up on deck to be carried to the boats and safety. When everyone he could find in the smoke and flames was away, he had Joshua and Windham launch the remaining boats, manned or not, so the men in the water could be rescued. The three of them rowed and rowed, for hours, it seemed, prying panicked soldiers away from burning debris. Over Joshua’s protests, Foster even dove into the water to haul out exhausted swimmers until another of the convoy ships got close enough to send out boats.

All the survivors were taken aboard the second ship, which proceeded on to Lisbon and the army surgeons. The uninjured and those whose wounds were minor were sent to join their units; the more seriously hurt were left on-board and returned straightaway to England. Jack Windham would get his preferment in Portugal; Foster Laughton was a war hero, without his feet ever touching foreign soil.

Now he was home being feted by the neighborhood, as helpless as Nolly, his burned arms and chest swathed in gauze and ointments. Joshua Dimm had been promoted, but sent home to care for his officer, who needed to be fed, dressed, and diverted from his pain and discomfort. Foster’s favorite diversion, it seemed, was Bettina Kimberly.

“Damn and blast!” her brother cursed again. “You should have seen the look on the little snirp’s face,” he told his cousin, who was home with a head cold. That was why she wasn’t chaperoning Bettina, although Winifred had thought the duchess, her aunt, and the dowager ample protection from one bedridden soldier. She guessed not, with Cousin Carlinn wearing a hole in the Aubusson carpet with his angry pacing.

“She looked like one of those martyrs in the stained glass windows who’s just been told he’s going to heaven. Why, I couldn’t loosen her from the boy’s side with a pry bar. I was right. She needs a firmer hand at the reins.” He kept pacing. Cousin Winifred blew her nose, hoping she’d be well enough on the morrow to go visit dear Foster and precious Noel. Carlinn’s next words intruded on her thoughts of calves’ foot jelly and mustard plasters.

“Your goddaughter Edelia was so helpful to me in Bath, showing me around, introducing me to her friends, that I thought I should repay the favor.”

“I’m sure a note would not come amiss. Edelia would never expect anything more. She is a very polite sort of girl.”

“Yes, and that’s even more reason I thought you might want to invite her for a visit. She’d be a good influence on Bettina. Show her how to go on, that kind of thing.”

Somehow he’d gone from a thank-you note to an invitation while Winifred sneezed. She blinked. “You want me to invite her here?”

“Of course. Nothing out of the ordinary in that; you’re her godmama. If I were to extend the invite, naturally tongues would wag, perhaps expectations might even be raised in certain quarters. But it cannot be pleasant for her in that musty old town with those octogenarians for company. And her mother is amply cared for, so Miss Sherville can enjoy a vacation away from the dismal place. Lud knows she deserves one.”

“Here? You expect me to invite Edelia Sherville here? In the middle of winter?”