Maggie MacKeever (4 page)

Of course he would not, Tabby realized. Why should so very fine a gentleman cherish ambitions upon her own small and plump and insignificant person, when the large majority of high-flyers in the kingdom must be fighting tooth and nail to cast themselves at his feet? “How very foolish you must think me,” she said, shyly. “I owe you an apology, I think. It must be deuced inconvenient—I mean, it must not be wholly pleasant to be in possession of a reputation such as yours, sir! You are making a dreadful muddle of those shirt buttons. Let me help you, pray.”

Vivien was not averse to some assistance. Tabby crossed the room and applied herself to the task of buttoning the rakehell’s shirt and thus sparing herself further sight of his bronzed bare chest. Her fingers were not quite steady. No one had ever kissed her before. Or wandered about in her presence in a state of undress.

Tabby was feeling very somber. On the morrow she was off to Brighton to a life of hired servitude, after all. She glanced up with innocent longing into Vivien’s wicked face. Vivien was oddly moved by that glance. He gripped her shoulders.

At that most inopportune of moments, the door flew open. The divine Sara stood on the threshold, in a state of quite fetching
déshabillé.
“Well!” she cried in heartfelt tones, as one glance at the guilty-looking couple fulfilled her direst fantasies. Clutching dramatically at her breast, she staggered forward. “Wretch! Heartless beast! Seducer!” And then she gracefully swooned, trusting that Vivian would catch her before she hit to the floor.

Chapter Five

Miss Ermyntrude Elphinstone stood gazing out the window of her papa’s rather charming house on Brighton’s Marine Parade, which stretched for a considerable extent along the sea. The view was quite delightful, of blue skies and windswept trees and waves pounding on the soft white cliffs. The view also afforded a clear view of anyone approaching Sir Geoffrey’s house, and it was this latter circumstance that accounted for the gloomy expression on Ermy’s pretty face.

She glimpsed a shabby coach. It did not interest her especially; only the carriage of a certain viscount could do that. Idly, Ermyntrude decided the shabby vehicle must have lost its way, and was surprised to see it stop in front of the house. Perhaps St. Erth had suffered an accident to his own carriage? Perhaps it suited him to travel about in this queer vehicle, incognito, so to speak? Ermyntrude didn’t care if the viscount came calling in a dogcart, just so long as he appeared.

She leaned forward in the window, the better to see. No elegant golden-haired lordling descended from the coach, however, merely one drab-looking female carrying a very shabby portmanteau. The female turned toward the house.

“Drusilla!” Ermyntrude called over her shoulder to her sister, who was putting together a map of Europe with the assistance of her inseparable companion, a large, multicolored, and very shaggy hound of indeterminate ancestry known as Lambchop. “That female that Pa hired—I think she’s here.”

“Oh, fudge!” muttered Drusilla. “I was hoping she’d had a better offer. Or been kidnapped, or worse!”

Ermyntrude couldn’t argue with this sentiment. It was one thing to hire a tutor for Drusilla, who was still in the schoolroom; but at seventeen, Ermyntrude already knew more than she wished about geography and history and other matters of a similarly dull nature. Why her father had hired this female, Ermyntrude wasn’t certain. She suspected, from his evasiveness when she’d broached the subject, that Sir Geoffrey was none too certain himself. “Where
is
Pa?” she asked.

“Don’t know.” Drusilla was preoccupied with trying to decide where Asia Minor fit into her map. “I think he went out.’’

“I suppose we’d better let her in.” Ermyntrude sighed and wandered out into the hall.

It was an elegantly furnished hallway—as was, indeed, the rest of Sir Geoffrey’s house. The walls of the drawing room, for example, were japanned in soft shades of slate and green, with gilt decoration; the sides of the ceiling were coved; and Brussels carpeting in a trailing floral pattern on a cream ground covered the floor. Ermyntrude paused by a circular convex mirror hung in the hallway. Her features, she decided, were perfect enough to grace a cameo, her hair was a lovely shade of red-gold, and her eyes as blue as the sky outside the window through which she had recently stared.

How flattering this new gown was, fashioned of clinging white muslin, with a plain, brief bodice and a narrow skirt that fell straight and close to the figure from its high waistline. A pity St. Erth was not about to see her looking so fine. What accounted for this omission? Why could not the viscount appreciate just how very near perfection Ermyntrude was? How could such a paragon be so deficient in good taste? Ermyntrude twisted a curl thoughtfully around her finger. Perhaps he would prove more attentive if she tried a new hairstyle.

Consequently, it was Drusilla who opened the door, the problem of Asia Minor having been solved by Lambchop, who had decided that the puzzle piece upon which his mistress lavished such attention could only be a tasty morsel for him to eat. “You’d better come in,” Drusilla said ungraciously to their visitor. “You might have come in sooner, but Ermy fell to studying her postures before the looking glass.”

“I did no such thing!” protested Ermyntrude, as she hastily stepped away from the mirror and joined her sister at the door. Frankly, she inspected their visitor. Crushed bonnet, battered portmanteau—her gaze moved to Tabby’s face. “Good gracious!” said Ermyntrude. “We thought you’d be quite old.”

Drusilla, too, inspected the newcomer. “Yes,” she said frankly. “As well as prune faced. You ain’t either and for my part, I’m just as glad. If I must be told how to be a lady, at least it won’t be by someone with an ugly phiz.”

Teach this hoyden to be a lady? Tabby wondered if she was equal to the task. For her part, she had expected her charges to be considerably younger. She had also not expected to be met by them at the doorway. “This
is
the household of Sir Geoffrey Elphinstone?” she asked.

“She’s as surprised as we are,” observed Drusilla to her sister. Ermyntrude’s attention had again wandered—she was craning her neck for a glimpse of a more elegant carriage—but Lambchop waved his great plumed tail.

Drusilla pushed the dog out of the way. “Come in,” she said again. “We don’t know where he’s got to, but Pa’s around somewhere. He had the notion you was supposed to be here yesterday, but I suppose it was a mistake.”

Tabby suspected that there had indeed been some mistake made, on her part. She was forming a very unusual picture of life in the Elphinstone household. Indeed, she was suffering an attack of craven-heartedness so severe that, had not Drusilla taken away her portmanteau, she might have turned tail and fled.

She had nowhere to go, Tabby reminded herself. Perhaps she was merely shaken from the carriage ride—the job-coachman had attempted to make up for the delay by driving the remainder of the journey as if the hounds of hell were in hot pursuit—and matters in this household were not in so bad a case as they seemed. And perhaps Tabby was whistling in the dark, as she followed Drusilla and Lambchop and her portmanteau down the hallway and into the drawing room.

Ermyntrude trailed after them. “I’m hungry,” she said plaintively. “We should have some tea. I’ll just go and fetch it, shall I?”

“No!” Drusilla set down the portmanteau. “If you go fetch it, we’ll see neither you nor the tea for upward of an hour. I’ll go. You stay here and keep Miss Whatever-Her-Name-Is company.”

The younger of Tabby’s charges, at least, possessed a lively intelligence, Tabby decided, even if her manners were appalling. “Why not have one of the servants fetch the tea?” she asked, not unreasonably.

“The servants?” scoffed Drusilla. “If we left the servants to do it, we’d wait longer than an hour. I’ll be right back! Ermy will entertain you, miss!” She left the room with Lambchop at her heels.

Tabby gazed around the drawing room. Tables, couches, and sofas were studiously disarranged around the classical marble fireplace as if the family had just left them—or as if the room had not had attention from the servants for some time. But the furnishings were of good quality, of mahogany and rosewood inlaid with brass.

Ermyntrude sank down on the circular ottoman and gazed out the window. Tabby perched on a parlor chair of boldly striped brown-and-white zebrawood.

The silence threatened to become oppressive. “Pardon me,” said Tabby. “I
have
come to the right house?”

Ermyntrude turned reluctantly from the window. “And Pa calls me skitter-witted!” She laughed. “You were wishful of a place, and Pa heard about it and took it into his head that you’d do fine for us, though heaven knows why! No offense, miss. But I think if I was you, I’d rather be a poor relation than hire myself out to someone else’s family.”

So would Tabby, had she a choice; but she had lost her mama early—the lady had grown exasperated by a spouse who was neither comfortably endowed nor of particularly ambitious temperament, and had left him to pursue his humdrum existence while she set out to explore the larger world. Tabby’s papa had fallen victim shortly thereafter to a riding accident. Now, with the death of her only remaining relative, Tabby had nowhere else to turn. As a result of innate curiosity and an indulgent uncle, she had received an education far beyond that usually allowed her sex; but most prospective employers would have taken a dim view of her youth and her total lack of practical experience. “I am fortunate to have found this position,” Tabby murmured.

“I suppose,” Ermyntrude said doubtfully. Gratitude was not an emotion with which she had much experience. “For myself, I’d rather marry. Indeed, I shall marry! Probably before I am eighteen.”

Tabby, too, had once assumed she’d marry, perhaps some student of her uncle’s who shared her ability to laugh at the world. Now that seemed unlikely. As an employee in Sir Geoffrey’s household Tabby would be neither fish nor fowl.

A curious sense of anticlimax gripped her. It was one thing to be offered a position by a stranger and quite another to face the reality of the thing. Tabby had no clear notion even of what Sir Geoffrey wished her duties to be. His man of business had been very vague. Tabby had assumed that the daughters of the house would benefit from English and French grammar, writing, arithmetic and music, geography and the globes. She had prepared for her new situation in life as best she could, with Miss Mangall’s
Historical and Miscellaneous Questions For the Use of Young People
tucked away in her shabby portmanteau. Now, even with this excellent volume at her disposal, Tabby was feeling very inadequate. Would she be given her own room? Or housed with the other servants in some stifling nook beneath the eaves?

Drusilla walked into the room then, balancing a tea tray. Tabby accepted a teacup and tried to take encouragement from the map of Europe laid out on the floor. The fact that Asia Minor was missing altogether seemed ominous, alas. Tabby told herself that she was merely tired and therefore seeing only the gloomy side of things. She’d feel better after a good night’s sleep uninterrupted by rake-hells and their
petite amies,
and roosters crowing outside her window—perhaps in hope of another buttered muffin— at the crack of dawn.

She returned to the present and found Drusilla watching her. How odd that it should be left to a child to do the honors of the house. “Is your mama also not at home?” Tabby inquired. It was a somewhat presumptuous question for a hireling, but Tabby was feeling a trifle desperate.

“Ma?” Drusilla echoed indistinctly, her mouth of tea biscuit. So shocked did she appear that Tabby wondered briefly if the girl’s mother had also run off. This notion that a bond might exist between them was shattered by Ermyntrude’s laughter. “We don’t have a ma!” she said. “We did, of course—and that we do no longer is entirely Dru’s fault!”

Drusilla’s fault? The child shot a venomous glance at her sister, inspiring Tabby with a grisly vision of violent deeds enacted in Elphinstone House. “Ma died in childbed,” Drusilla said to Tabby. “After giving birth to me. Ermy likes to make out I killed her, which I didn’t, and it’s hardly fair of her to take on so about it since I’d as soon have a ma as not!”

“You will!” Ermyntrude said spitefully. “Lady Grey!”

This comment for some reason plunged both the girls into gloom. Tabby almost sighed aloud, so relieved was she to discover that she was not expected to impart the niceties of polite behavior to a youthful murderess.

But just what
was
she to impart? Ermyntrude’s last remark had suggested that Sir Geoffrey planned to rewed soon. Surely his new wife would wish to oversee the education of his daughters? They were hardly of an age to require either a companion or a governess. Ermyntrude must surely soon make her come-out, and Drusilla was not so many years younger.

These confusing speculations were giving Tabby a headache. She reached for another tea biscuit, only to discover that Lambchop had taken advantage of his mistress’s inattention to make a clean sweep with his large tongue of all the tea biscuits on the plate; though the dog was named after its favorite food, any adequate substitute would do.

Drusilla became belatedly aware of her pet’s depredations. “Lambchop! Look what you’ve done! Now there’ll be nothing more to eat till dinner, and heaven knows when
that’ll
be!”

The hound withdrew to the ottoman, flopped down despondently. Tabby was rendered equally unhappy by Drusilla’s ominous remark about dinner; she had not eaten since some time the day before.

Drusilla’s next comment was even more ominous. “You’ll know what to do about that, miss,” she said. “Pa hired you in the very nick of time! Cook has a fondness for the cooking sherry, you see, and the butler for the maids, and the housekeeper gave notice a month ago saying such conditions wasn’t what she was used to or could like!”

Tabby’s heart sank. She knew that some employers expected a governess not only to take complete charge of her pupils but also to undertake the housekeeping and perhaps even some sewing, until all her waking hours were filled. At least Tabby might be grateful that sewing had thus far not been mentioned; she was not very good at needlework. She must be grateful also for the handsome wage that was being paid her, a full twenty-five guineas a year, which she had vowed to save until she might open her own school. It was not the future that she had envisioned for herself, perhaps, but still a prospect far rosier than any she’d imagined before Sir Geoffrey’s man of business had contacted her in response to her somewhat daring newspaper advertisement.