My Dear Jenny (14 page)

“Well then, little boy. Let’s see how well you fight when
you have a
man
who’s prepared for you.”

“Just a moment, then,” Domenic said, and removed his jacket,
his cravat, and handed Emily his riding crop to hold. Ratherscombe eyed him
with distaste.

The battle, when joined, did not last very long, and Adrian
Ratherscombe discovered himself again on the grass, with his eye already
blackening nicely, contrasting with the welt he carried from Emily’s slap.

“Why, I’ll kill you—” he swore furiously.

“Don’t suggest it, sir,” Domenic advised him. “I’m not in
the least winded, you see, and you appear to be. Took first prize in a couple
of the mills at school, sir, and I’m accounted rather sweet with my fives. And
my cousin Peter’s been teaching me a little as well,” he added, honesty winning
through triumph. “Are you done?” he asked politely.

Ratherscombe nodded sullenly.

“Emily, d’you think you can ride back to your house on
Hellbrand?” Domenic suggested. Emily was jolted momentarily from her hysteria
by this outrageous suggestion.

“Dom, I’m not dressed for riding!” she wailed.

“Well, I ain’t walking through London carrying you, nor yet
riding with you walking beside me. Come along, Emmy, be a good girl. It don’t
matter how you’re dressed at this hour; there’s only the tradesfolk to see, and
they all think the gentry are mad as hatters.”

Brooking no resistance, Dom led her away from Ratherscombe’s
recumbent form and toward Hellbrand, who stood neatly cropping grass. After a
moment’s awkwardness Dom took matters into his own hands. Emily was too shaken
to begin to think of how to adapt herself to riding in a walking gown, moreover
on a gentleman’s saddle. He threw her up on the horse to manage as best she
could. In the distance, as they proceeded toward the park gate, they could see
Ratherscombe rise and try to right himself.

After a few minutes, Dom said mildly, “I don’t wish to
distress you when you ain’t feeling quite the thing, Emmy. But d’you mind
telling me what you were doing sleeping in Hyde Park without even an abigail at
seven in the morning on a Sunday?”

“I meant it to be eight o’clock—” she began weakly,
and went off into a series of little sniffs and moans.

“Whatever you meant it to be, we’d best agree on what you
was there for, for we’ll be at your house very shortly, and then what we’re to
say I don’t know. You don’t look too knocked-up,” he said judiciously. “But no
one would believe that you went for a stroll alone in the morning air and
turned your ankle.”

Emily sniffed and said nothing.

“Well enough, Emmy, but I would hate to simply leave you at
your door and let you explain yourself to that starchy manservant.”

This was a necessity which had not yet borne itself upon
Miss Pellering. She whimpered.

Domenic looked at her in exasperation. “Come on Emmy, I won’t
peach. But I do have a right, don’t I? After all—”

“Yes, Dom, I k-k-k-know,” she stammered damply. “But can’t
you say that we were out walking, and a big dog came and scared me, and you
chased it with your crop, and—” She might have continued, but his look
did not encourage it.

“I’ll tell them something. I’ll think of something more believable.
But
why
? I mean, did you go there to meet Ratherscombe? It didn’t seem
it.”

“Didn’t seem it? Why, how long were you there? What do you
mean?”

“You was asleep the first time I passed you, so I thought it
best to keep an eye on you. Who’s this Reagham person? Yes, I heard about him
too. I was sitting in the tree behind you.”

Emily ignored this unromantic confession. “Mr. Reagham is a
gentleman—he came to my house the other day to say that an—ad-mir-er—”
Emily’s voice broke over the word. “An admirer wished to meet me, and didn’t
feel right about speaking to me at home, what with Feabers and all the others,
and Jenny and Mamma and Papa, and Maggie, and—” Her voice broke again. “I
thought it was romantic!”

“Damme, Emily, that’s the sort of nonsense that got you into
a scrape when we met.” Domenic shook his head. “I swear, it’s as if you
wanted
to lose your reputation. Why, I can hardly blame Ratherscombe for—”
Catching sight of Emily’s face, he amended the statement. “Almost can’t blame
him. So he sent an emissary to ask you to meet him, and you went. Didn’t think
it was Ratherscombe, so who the devil did you think? The prince? Devonshire? Or
perhaps Lord Byron’s corsair? If you ain’t the silliest chit I’ve ever met! Now
look, Emmy. When we reach your house, let me do the talking, and I shall get
you out of this scrape somehow.” Domenic stopped the horse for a moment to
stare up at her earnestly. “It’s just that I should hate it if you were hurt,
Emily.” He patted her hand.

Emily, still hiding behind his handkerchief, peered down at
him in awe. “Oh, Domenic.”

“There, there, Em. It’s all right,” he assured her
awkwardly, and reached up to touch, just once, a curl of her dark hair. “Well,
shall we go along?”

“We could go through the back, you know,” Emily added in a
more prosaic tone.

“Worse than the front,” Dom replied. “All the maidservants,
and they’ll gabble something fierce, I can tell you. Front door’s the ticket,
Emmy.”

“I shall leave it all up to you,” Emily stated as he lifted
her down from Hellbrand’s saddle.

The door was flung open almost before Dom had time to knock,
and Feabers, looking as distracted as it was possible for such a retainer to
look, ushered them into the house. Behind him, Lady Graybarr and Miss Prydd,
pale and hurriedly dressed, had stopped in the midst of talk to see who had
arrived.

“My child!” Lady Graybarr shrieked, flying past Jenny and
the butler to seize her daughter in her arms.

“Oh, Mamma!” Emily gasped, equally overcome, and the two
supported each other toward the stairway.

“Which leaves only me to thank you, it seems,” Jenny said
wryly to Dom. “And to ask where on earth you found her, Dom. Her maid came to
me an hour ago insisting that Emily had left the house—dressed herself
and left before the fires were even burning! I didn’t believe it, but when I
saw that it was so, I had to tell her mother—we were quite frantic with
worry. Not that she was gone so long, but at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning?
What else could we think but that she was in trouble of some sort. What romantic
conceit was she playing at?”

“Why,” Domenic said hurriedly, with as much authority as he
could muster, “I met her in the park for a walk, and this great cur came
dashing up to us and—”

“Tried to black your eye for you?” Jenny asked.

“Well, I promised I’d not peach on her,” Dom admitted.

“I shan’t make you. And together we shall think of something
better than a dog,” Jenny said. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Be much obliged, actually. I’m hungry as a lion.”

“Dom, there’s nothing for us to—to worry about, is
there?”

He stared at her, open—mouthed, for a moment, then
broke into a peal of laughter. “D’you know, she’s quite fierce when she need
be, Jenny? No, she’s a little shaken, but she’ll be right enough. And you’ll
have no more trouble from Rathe—that quarter again, I can tell you,” he
finished quickly.

“Excellent,” Miss Prydd said solidly. “Well then, let us see
what cook has produced for us this morning.”

After an enormous breakfast, during which he disclosed to
Miss Prydd far more than it had been his intention to, Domenic finally turned
his attention to what sort of story should be told to satisfy the curiosity of
the servants. “Although why we need tell them anything—” he began. “Yes,
Jenny, I
know
. But it does seem hard that, when someone pays a wage to
someone else—”

“That that fact in itself should not insure that the someone
else will do no talking about the someone?” Jenny supplied. “In a better world,
my dear, certainly. But, although Feabers would never talk about the family, I don’t
suppose we can rely on the housemaids to exercise such discretion. So, my dear,
we must think up some story as to what you and Emily were doing out at that
outrageous hour.”

Domenic looked up, startled. “
Me
! Why, ma’am, I only
rescued her from that—”

“Certainly,” Jenny assured him hurriedly. “But no one saw
her leave, and unless someone saw Ratherscombe with you or with her, it will
look very much as if she crept out to meet with you.”

“But that’s ridiculous, Jenny. Everyone knows that Emmy don’t
care two figs for me, leastways, not when Peter’s about. Not that I’d mind
meeting her in the park. But you know, ma’am—” He looked at her
imploringly.

“Yes, dear, I do indeed know. But you realize that you’re
something of a hero now? Perhaps the best thing is to say that she did go out
in the park to meet with you—on some silly wager, perhaps? That way, Emmy
will think that you gave
that
out to save her name, and no one will
really think the worse of either of you, for it is much better for a headstrong
girl to meet with a nice young man in the park on a Sunday morning for the
purpose of playing out a wager—Lord, what should that have been?—than
for the same girl, with a slight tint of scandal about her name, to go to meet
some entirely unknown man, only to have him turn out to be—”

“The blighter who brought her to scandal in the first place.
I say, ma’am, that’s not half bad. Just what one might read in a romance.”

“I was afraid of that.” Jenny said ruefully. “But it will
have to do, for
I
cannot think of anything else. Have you had enough to
eat?” She eyed the wreckage of two ham steaks, several eggs, a sweet bun,
kedgeree, kippers, potatoes, and jam, which littered several plates in front of
Domenic.

“Why, yes, thank you,” the boy said, unabashed.

“A growing boy.” Jenny mused, half under her breath, as they
left the room. “Now, I must tell Emily and her mother, and make clear the story
we are to tell ... or let drop for the servants. That wager—let me think.”

“I dared her to walk around the Serpentine entirely.”

“Goodness, no. Do you think Emmy would agree to such a
scheme? Even for a wager? You—you dared her to ride Hellbrand? I
certainly wouldn’t myself, but then—”

“No, ma’am, that won’t wash, for Emmy gave me the devil of a
fight over just coming back here with her on Hellbrand’s back, since she wasn’t
dressed to ride.”

“You’re right. Oh, Lord, what then? You dared her to walk
backwards to the edge of the Serpentine without falling in?” Jenny suggested,
remembering a prank of her own nursery-room days.

“That’s the ticket! And a great dog
did
come up and
frighten her, just as she was about to win the wager, and I had to chase it
off, and she—”

“Careful, Dom, don’t overly embroider this story. I will
allow you your miserable cur. Either way, you make a heroic figure.”

“If you say so, ma’am,” he said resignedly. “I suppose I had
best be off and tell Peter, then.”

“Why? The fewer people who know of this morning’s work—the
true or the false of it,
indeed!—the better.”

“Well, he said something to Ratherscombe about not troubling
Emmy again, and I should think that he’d like to know that he was not regarded.”

“Just what any gentleman must like to hear with his Sunday
morning breakfast,” Jenny agreed readily. “All right, Dom, to Mr. Teverley,
but, I beg you, to no one else.”

“What sort of gudgeon do you take me for, Jenny? And may I
call later and see how she goes on?” The young man’s voice lowered, and his
open face became, momentarily, older and more serious. “It sort of makes up for
the mill at the inn. I would have done it then, too, only Peter was there
first, and today she looked at me, Lord, ma’am, as if I had the keys to all
heaven in my pocket. She’s very pretty,” he said simply. “And if she weren’t
such a gull-wit at times she’d be very dear.” He sighed. “Making a cake of
myself, ain’t I?”

Jenny smiled at him. “Not at all. And who knows, maybe it
will all come right for you. Now, be off and tell Mr. Teverley what has
happened to you today. And we shall hope to see you later.”

Domenic bowed and took his leave, and Jenny, smiling to
herself, went upstairs to consult with Lady Graybarr and her daughter.

o0o

When Dom returned that afternoon he found all three of the
ladies in the blue salon. Lady Graybarr was paging through the
Ladies’
Companion
, Miss Prydd was engaged in making a collar from some bits of lace
and silk left from Emily’s newest gown, and Emily herself was propped up on a
chaise longue like an invalid with a Norwich shawl about her shoulders. She
looked very pale and shaken still. It was Emily who looked up first, and the smile
that lit her face and dark eyes would have warmed the heart of a far cooler and
wiser man than Domenic Teverley.

“Hullo, Emily.” He had made his bows to the older women, and
set himself gingerly next to her. “I just came to see how you were feeling.”

“Oh, Domenic,” Emily breathed, and made a quiet fuss over
him, insisting that he stay for tea, and watching him with a glowing gaze which
pleased and unnerved him exceedingly. Lady Graybarr, uninterested in talking
with a boy of nineteen (be he never so much the hero) finished with her
magazine and took her leave. Once she was gone, those remaining in the room
relaxed somewhat; Domenic even vouchsafed the information that his mother had
sent her regards to the ladies of Graybarr House.

“She did?” There was no mistaking the surprise in Miss Prydd’s
voice.

“Why, yes. Confess it surprised me a deal, seeing as how she—”
He trailed off, eying Emily. “I collect Peter had a talk with her, ma’am.”

“I wish I had seen it.” Jenny murmured wryly.

“She was quite civil, too,” Dom assured her. Emily looked
up, uninterested in this obscure conversation, and smiled at Dom’s third coat
button, rather bewildered.