Elisabeth Fairchild (13 page)

Nell’s hand flew to her throat. Her eyes swam in tears. "Bandit was to die in this manner?”

“I’m afraid so. He would have too, had Beau and I not happened by, in search of a friend, who, I blush to admit, quite likes to attend dog fights.”

“What happened?” Caught up in the story, Nell was inclined to regard their new coachman as something of a hero for rescuing any creature from such a fate.

“It all happened in a moment. I had no idea what Beau was about. He simply reached into the pit and caught a puppy up by the scruff of his neck, lifting him above the nose of the other dog. As I recall, the bulldog objected vociferously to the maneuver.”

“And you were allowed to leave with Bandit, without further objection?” Nell asked, amazed.

Mr. Tyrrwhit grinned. “Not exactly. We were quite fortunate in that the friend we had come looking for, arrived at the time we were to be set upon with cudgels and whips. Dog fighting crowds are not known for their tolerance, but because he is a man of some reputation and stature, our friend did manage to extricate both ourselves and Bandit, from the incident.”

Nell could not help but wonder who this mysterious unnamed friend might be. “How fortunate for Bandit that you cultivate the friends that you do, Mr. Tyrrwhit.”

Charley smiled as he looked out the window. “Indeed, Miss Quinby. I consider myself even more fortunate than the dog.”

Chapter Nine

Beau saw Nell turn away from the window. It occurred to him that perhaps Charley had the right of it. He was foolish to continue his charade. He would much rather be dancing than standing in the street. Watching Miss Quinby swing about on the arm of his best friend was small pleasure indeed. He had never been terribly fond of dancing, but to have the option of participating taken away, and as a result of his own actions, seemed oddly unjust.

Thus, the duke of Heste returned to the window in his allotted room that evening, filled with a restless energy, that was not dispelled by the effort required to put carriage and team to bed for the night. The restlessness he knew, to be rooted in his frustrated desire for Miss Quinby’s company. She was so near and yet, a great chasm of his own making yawned between them.

With the energy of a man with a mission that must not be abandoned at first sign of trouble, he took up to his room with him, a chisel and pick, both meant for the use of maintaining horses hooves, but now put to good use releasing his window from its paint prison.

His efforts were rather noisy, but when he was done, the sash went up without a squeak. Beau leaned out, proud of his accomplishment, and drank in the cool night air. He could see the lamp-lit windows of the main house clearly now. He could see that Fanella was in her room. There was movement against the light.

There came an unexpected pounding on his door. Like a schoolboy caught peeping in a keyhole, Beau reacted rather abruptly, managing to bang his head smartly on the window, as he withdrew into the room again.

It was Toby who knocked, and without waiting for permission to enter, he did so, stumbling in only half awake, to demand, “What the devil are you banging at this hour, Mr. Ferd? We’re up at four don’t you know?”ht="0pt" width="2em">Beau was not at all accustomed to anyone questioning either his actions, or the hours he kept. He rubbed the knot on the back of his head, and strove for an appearance of nonchalance.

Toby blinked at him groggily.

“Terribly sorry.” The duke apologized to the stable boy, all his mad desire to peer out the window squashed. “Terribly thoughtless o-of me to disturb your sleep. I required a-a-air.”

“Air?” Toby was mystified.

“Yes,” Beau turned to lower the window sash. As he did so, his jaw dropped open and his breath caught up in his throat. Opposite him, silhouetted against the light in her window, Miss Fanella Quinby was taking down her hair. She went at it with both hands, her long, slender arms raised to pull free the combs and pins that held the wealth of tresses in place. As a result of her arms being uplifted, the shapeliness of her upper torso and neck were admirably revealed.

It took no more than a moment for the last of the pins to be removed, and then leaning forward a little, she reached back to untwist the knot of hair at the base of her neck, and shook out the length of it, so that it swung down over her shoulders like a heavy silk veil. The shape of her silhouette, the attitude of her head, was so changed by the release of hair, that Beau stood completely mesmerized, his lips parted to facilitate easier intake of air, his hands frozen on the window frame, without any memory as to what it was he had meant to accomplish with them.

Toby crossed the room to stand at his elbow, yawning and rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Air, sir? And what was wrong with the air already stirring in your room?”

Blinking, Beau turned his back on the window, his body blocking the breath-taking view. “It was old a-a-air. Quite stifling. I required fresh. Now you shall not hear a-a-another peep out of me, I promise.”

Eyelids drooping with fatigue, Toby took himself off to bed.

When he stumbled downstairs the next morning in answer to Brampton Beauford’s cheerful whistling, Toby, had he but chanced to look up, would have been surprised to see, that the window above him, was not only open to the cool, morning air, but that it had been scrubbed so clean that it sparkled, inside and out. The window was not the only thing sparkling by the time the stable lad and his new head coachman went down to breakfast some four hours later, for the duke enthusiastically made inroads on the daily chores, whistling as he went. The curricle was polished until it shone inside and out, and the harness freshly blacked, with, of all things, the same inexpensive, liquid boot blacking that Toby used on his own footwear.

“Are you sure this will do?” Toby asked dubiously when they began the task. “Mr. Terry, our head coachman in Ipswich, cooks up his own concoction of harness blacking. It takes an hour’s worth of simmering to be done, and he is most insistent that it should be made up with mutton suet, and not beef or pork mixed in.”

“Ah!” Beau said with unruffled composure, "It must have been some of Mr. Terry ’s very own mixture that was stinking up the tack room. I’m afraid his potion had gone rancid. I tossed it out this morning.”

“But, Everett’s boot blacking, Mr. Ferd? Do you not think it too common? Surely it must be inferior to one’s own mixture.”

“Not at all Toby. Something so readily available saves us

both trouble and time, and seeing as how Everett’s is good enough for the Prince Regent, it is good enough for me.”

“Priney’s own coachman uses this? Are you certain, sir?” Toby led dubiously at the quite ordinary can of blacking.

“A-Absolutely certain! I have, myself, personally seen him with just such a can in his hand. A-And very smart the Prince’s harness always looks, if you will notice.”

Toby’s eyes went very round. “You have met him, sir?”

Beau smiled. “Yes. Bandit has, as well.” Bandit thumped his tail agreeably. “We should not both be here today were it not for the

Prince’s coachman. Whisked us out of a very touchy spot, he did.” Beau smiled to think how young Toby’s eyes would pop if he did but know that Bandit was not only on ear scratching terms with the Prince’s head groom, but that he would not be wagging his tail so happily had it not been for the intervention on his behalf of the Prince himself.

Nell jerked up out of a dream of Mr. Ferd and his rescuing of Bandit from the horrors of a dog fight. That her last thought at night, and first of the morning should concern their new coachman, disturbed her sense of propriety. Surely if she were to become infatuated, it should not be with a servant. And yet, he was like a riddle to which she would find an answer. She could not help wondering about him at all hours of the day and night, a far more pleasant pastime than pondering either her future, or the recent past.

Going to the window, she pulled back the lace curtain and flung open the window to see what kind of day she met. Her eyes were involuntarily drawn to the back hedgerow, beyond which stood the mews. With the window open, she faintly heard the gentleman who invaded her dreams laughing and calling to Toby, the groom, from the stable yard.

The shrubbery, which one must pass through in order to reach the stables, would not allow Nell to see exactly what it was that the two were doing, but as splashy sounds came from the stable yard pump, she deduced they were happily engaged in washing up for breakfast. With thoughts of her own morning toilet brought to mind, Nell was about to turn away from the window when a flash of color caught her eye. The box hedgerow was broken in the middle by an arch cut into the greenery, into which the wooden gate was set. Through this gap, she caught an occasional glimpse of what could be nothing but bared flesh.

Such glimpses, so brief and insignificant as to be unidentifiable in exact origin were yet sufficient to capture both Nell’s interest and attention to the exception of all else, including the passage of time.

It was not until their ablutions had entirely ceased, and the young man and the boy came quickly through the gate, drying their hands on a rag they wadded up and passed between them like a ball, that Nell recalled herself enough to realize that she stood, clad only in a sheer muslin chemise, with her hair still untouched by the brush and hanging down about her shoulders, exposed at the window for all who cared to look up.

Nell froze. In moving she was far more likely to be noticed than if she stood perfectly still until the two below her had passed. Hand pressed to the windowpane, she willed them not to look up.

Her will, it would seem, was not strong enough. No sooner had Mr. Ferd closed the gate and turned, to catch the rag, which Toby had let fly with an exclamation of fun, than he glanced at her window. Beau Ferd looked away again as if he had not seen her, to cast away the rag ball. Just as swiftly, he looked back again, and this time left Nell with no doubt as to his having realized she stood watching them. His jaw came unhinged, and when the flying rag was next lofted his way, he missed entirely the catching of it.

Breath and pulse racing, Nell stepped back from the window as he bent to retrieve the rag, but she could see, eve from her retreated position within the room, that Mr. Ferd ’s eyes rose hopefully once more to the window where she had been standing, before he and the boy, the rag ball on the fly again between them, passed out of her line of sight.

The fact that she had been seen, and in such a state of undress, shook her. She should never have been so careless. To breakfast she went, pulse racing, palms sweating. Safe in the still dining room, where she alone took food from the sideboard, while her aunt breakfasted from a tray taken in bed, she twitched and turned at every sound that radiated from the kitchen in the expectation of some kind of confrontation with her own foolishness. She was however, left undisturbed, and that in itself made her frown. She could not help noticing the servant’s dining area would seem to be a much jollier place than the dining room, which echoed with stillness by contrast.

Nell had never before minded this arrangement. But today, with the thought in her head that Mr. Ferd numbered among those who laughed and chatted in the kitchen, she felt very much alone as she buttered her toast and sipped lukewarm tea. It concerned her no end that a male servant in her aunt’s employ should have been privileged with a glimpse, no matter how brief, of her watching him, clad only in her nightclothes. How was she to face him again after such a mortifying embarrassment?

She need not have concerned herself. There was to be no further encounter with Mr. Ferd, over breakfast. When the kitchen no longer rang with voices and the clatter of crockery, Nell found the absence of further confrontation, strangely anticlimactic following so hard on the heels of the morning’s adventure.

She ran lightly up the stairs again, to see if she might catch a glimpse of Mr. Ferd as he made his way back to the stables. From the window nothing more was to be witnessed than the closing gate in the hedgerow, and the sound of Mr. Ferd’s very recognizable whistle, this time warbling one of the country dances that had been played the night before at the Assembly.

Nell could not stop thinking of the flashes of bare flesh she had witnessed through the hedgerow and Mr. Ferd’s slack-jawed expression in seeing her standing above him in the window. The scene played and replayed itself in her thoughts. Disturbed by her own wantonness, she went in to her aunt, who would, perversely, content herself with no other subject than the fitting of Mr. Ferd’s new livery. Nell did her best to concentrate her mind on the dressing of that young man, and not his undressing.

Beau made it a habit to remove his shirt before beginning any work in the stable yard. When one had only a single garment with which to cover one’s back, and no valet to see to the washing of it, said garment was best guarded from overexposure to the elements. It was much easier to scrub dirt from flesh than from muslin. The shirt had been removed that morning in scrubbing down the carriage, and in blacking the leather trappings. It was off again now, in the currying down of the bay horse that Ursula so longed to find a match for.