My Dear Jenny (7 page)

“He called! They called, and we weren’t here! Only look,
Jenny. He left his card! Feabers, did the man say anything? Oh, drat! What if
he never does call again? Oh, Jenny—” She turned her questioning gaze on
the older woman. “You don’t think that he’d never call back, do you?”

“I’m sure the gentleman will call again, my love,” Miss
Prydd said imperturbably. “But do you tell me exactly of whom it is I speak,”
she urged. “I am entirely at sea.”

Emily gurgled with delight. “Mr. Teverley! Mr.
Peter
Teverley,” she emphasized. Jenny nodded sagely and kept silent. At least it was
not Ratherscombe. After a moment Jenny became aware that Feabers still stood
beside them, waiting to answer Emily’s question.

“Your bonnet, Emmy,” she suggested helpfully, as that
artifact was still swinging erratically from one of Emily’s ears. “Yes,
Feabers?”

“I believe, miss,” Feabers said imperturbably, when Emily
had disengaged her bonnet and handed it to him, “that the gentleman did ask me
to tell you something.” Emily gasped theatrically, and Jenny glanced with
amusement at the butler, whom she suspected was greatly enjoying his position
as a deliverer of great news, and was feeling too important to share the joke
with a mere country miss. “Said he was desolated to find you out, miss, and
that he’d try again tomorrow.” He bowed slightly toward each of them and
stalked out.

“Only think, Jenny! Desolated to find me out! Again
tomorrow! Oh, I think I shall die!”

“Rather go upstairs and change for dinner, my love.”

Without ceremony Miss Prydd swept the young lady, still
chattering, up the stairs. By the time they descended the stairs for dinner Jenny
awaited the promised visit with as much spirit as her friend, though with far
different motive. She was convinced that nothing but his presence would silence
Emily on the subject of Peter Teverley.

By four o’clock the next afternoon Emily had changed her
dress no less than four times. When she showed signs of wishing to change
again, this time from the ivory muslin with blue sprigs, Jenny threatened
mayhem—worse, she threatened that if Emily continued in this fashion she
would very likely miss Teverley’s call. Obediently, or relatively so, Emily
settled herself to her tambour frame with an air of saintly patience, and
proceeded to ruin a good portion of the pattern by stabbing the needle
aimlessly through the paper. When Feabers finally announced the Messrs.
Teverley, it was, to Miss Prydd at least, almost an anticlimax.

“Miss Prydd. Miss Pellering.” Peter Teverley smiled his
arresting smile from the doorway, then advanced to make his bow to each lady.
Behind him his cousin, remarkably turned out in a spanking-new coat and absurd
waistcoat, bowed with cheery awkwardness to Jenny, then went to say hello to
Emily, who dismissed him airily and returned her luminous gaze to Peter
Teverley.

“I shouldn’t mind her too much, Dom.” Miss Prydd confided
when he settled himself next to her.

“Just now she’s—”

“Oh, I know, she’s got a
tendre
for Peter because he
planted that rum-gudgeon Ratherscombe a facer and kissed her hand.” At Jenny’s
raised eyebrow he merely said, “I’d have done it myself, had I been nearer. It’s
what I’d been aching to do all the time we were at the inn.”

“Yes, dear, I know.”

“I only hope she don’t make Peter too uncomfortable while
she makes a cake of herself over him. My sister Clara did the same when she met
him: ahhed and oohed and begged him to tell her all about tigers and rajahs.”

“Tigers and rajahs?” Jenny echoed weakly.

“Yes, ma’am. Peter was an India merchant. Earlier he’d spent
some time with the Army until he was discharged—a ball in his shoulder.”

And that, Jenny reflected, was where that hard-eyed look of
command came from. “How did you cure your sister of it?”

“Oh, some nodcock offered for her, and she was so busy
planning the wedding and such that she forgot all about Peter. I say, you don’t
suppose—” He turned to Jenny in time to see her smile and shake her head.
“Well, I didn’t really think so. It ain’t,” he hastened to add, “that I
begrudge him the admiration—what else has a fellow got at his age?”
Domenic gestured at his cousin, who did not look, to Jenny’s eye, very much
above five and thirty. “It just makes it so hard on the rest of us. She thinks
of me only as a boy, d’you see? And I’m
years
older than she is.”

Jenny reflected wordlessly that those years numbered two,
hardly an impressive number to a lady of romantic temperament who had so
recently attempted an elopement with a “man of the world.” “I’m afraid that all
you can do is wait for her to regain her senses, my dear. You know that she is
truly sensible of all your kindnesses at the inn.”

Domenic appeared unimpressed by this comfort, and watched
dourly as Emily chattered animatedly under Teverley’s amused eye. “She don’t
give a fig for me, ma’am. She’s like a flower: You may look all you like, but
it don’t look back. Not” —Dom shook his head vehemently— “that it
would serve, did she return my interest. Either her folks wouldn’t like it or
mine wouldn’t. Come to think of it, there’s nothing to object to in me,” Dom
said judicially. “But
my
parents! They’d be sure to ruin it. Father’s
all right enough, but Mamma is against anything I want, and Father keeps
insisting that she has the raising of us ….”

After listening to Dom’s airy assessment of his worth on the
marriage market, Jenny felt obliged to ask what objection—barring the
incidents at the inn—Dom’s mother could have to Emily.

“She wouldn’t care what she
is
, Mamma would only see
that I wanted her and
presto
, she’s against it. She’d complain about the
title, and carry on about Amaryllis Gorbuttleigh and the title to Hansom
Terrace, and if she hasn’t promised me to Lady Gorbuttleigh she’d just as soon
see me wed to my cousin Barbara, and
she’s
nothing but a toadying
rabbit-faced lummox ma’am! Honestly!” Domenic dropped disgustedly into his
chair, chin buried deep in collar points and cravat.

With some difficulty Iphegenia extracted enough intelligence
from him to make some sense of that confusing narrative. “Your mamma considers
you promised to Miss Gorbuttleigh in order to reattach Hansom Terrace to your
estate?”

“And failing that, she’d as soon marry me off to cousin
Babs. She’s not a bad sort for an ape-leader, ma’am, but when a man’s seen
Emily—”

“I suggest that, having talked yourself, I am sure, from
Miss Prydd’s graces, you go pursue your surveillance of Miss Pellering from
closer quarters.” Peter Teverley gazed blandly down at his cousin’s startled
face. “Move, gudgeon!” He added. Dom stood up, returned Teverley’s look with
one of cheeky gratitude, and disappeared.

“I hope, ma’am,” said Teverley, settling himself in the
chair Dom had vacated, “that you will gratify me with ten minutes of rational
conversation? The nursery can safely be left to itself, and even at the risk of
being scourged by another of your set-downs, I would greatly like to hear a
word of sense.”

“Why, I have never given anyone a set-down in my life!” Jenny
denied vigorously.

“On the contrary, you have delivered at least two to me
since we met.”

Her eyes flew up to meet his. “I should not have thought it
possible,” she said quickly.

“Your pardon: three set-downs,” he announced, unperturbed.
And watched a slow, deep blush rise over Jenny’s face.

“Indeed, I don’t know what makes me say such things. I never
used to—it’s as if you brought it out in me. I beg your pardon. I shall
try to keep a better guard on my tongue in your company.”

“Nonsense. I probably deserved each one.”

“Probably?” Miss Prydd asked irrepressibly.

“I cannot go back to examine the events leading to each
encounter. Suffice it to say that I am convinced you are largely blameless.”
Teverley delivered his judgment blandly, waiting for a fiery reply, which never
came.

Iphegenia stayed quiet for a minute more, then very
pointedly asked a question about his years in India. Teverley accepted the
change of subject with good grace, and spoke with ease and eloquence about his
travels.

“There were “ he was saying, “a good many splendid fellows
working in the trade, but there was this one chap—” He paused to watch
Feabers enter the room and deliver a message to Emily, who turned bright
scarlet. “Excuse me, but what has upset your charge so?”

“She is not my charge.” Jenny said tersely, but Teverley was
not listening. Across the room Emily was in consultation with Feabers. Next to
her Dom had assumed a mask of controlled fury, and was as white as she was red.
A moment’s more conversation and Feabers nodded and left the room.

“Ought we to ask, do you think?” Teverley’s eyes met Jenny’s
in shared misgiving. Amazing, she thought hurriedly. The least little thing
draws us together this way; worrying over Emily, I suppose.

“No, see, Feabers has come back,” she murmured. “Wait and
see what happens.”

Together they watched as Feabers again bent to speak to
Emily. Her reply was louder than before, colored with distress and quite
audible to the others in the room.

“You may tell Mr. Ratherscombe that I do not intend to be at
home to him at any time in the future, and that he has behaved entirely in such
a way as to make his presence unwelcome here.”

Feabers, armed with this gratifying assignment, left the
room with his face wreathed in something as close to a smile as his dignity
would allow. Domenic, after a moment digesting the declaration Emily had made,
permitted himself one deeply sighed “By Jove!” whereupon Emily burst into tears
and cast herself onto Domenic’s shoulder. He was so completely beatified by
this treatment that he took her hand, when her tears had subsided, kissed it
solemnly, and breathed, “Emmy, you were absolutely
splendid
!” Whereupon
she burst again into tears and the process was begun anew.

Across the room Peter Teverley raised his brow, astonished. “Damme,
the child’s not a child, it’s a woman. Who’d have thought that that pretty
little chit had that much to her? Is this some contagion of yours, my dear
Prydd?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, call me Jenny!” she exclaimed
inappropriately. “It’s
your
name anyway! What do you mean,
contagion
?”

“This elusive quality of not being what you seem to be. Here
I have a woman who proclaims herself to be a lady’s-companion-ish sort of
person, who continually contradicts the proposition by brangling with me each
time we meet. Next I find that the chit I’d assumed had more hair than wit and
more vanity than heart can assume the manner of Good Queen Bess talking to
Essex. What charade will come next? Dom as rakehell?”

“Perhaps” —Jenny rose from her seat— “the truth
is simply that we are exactly what we seem, and when faced with
trying
situations or
trying
people and under
extreme
provocation we must
find our way as best we can.” She picked up her workbag from the taboret and
tumbled threads and pins into it with an angry snap.

“I’m in favor of it, you know.” Teverley said lazily. “You
have a tidy turn of mind when under—uhm—provocation. I suppose that
Dom and I should take our leave.” He had come to his feet now, and followed her
to Dom and Emily.

“May I take her to the stairs?” Domenic asked gravely over
Emily’s bowed head. Jenny nodded, and Emily, supported gingerly by Domenic,
gave Teverley a watery smile, and was rewarded by his best bow over her hand.
Then Dom helped her toward the door.

“Thank you for your kindness to Dom,” Teverley murmured. “He’s
a good fellow, for a halfling.”

“He’s a very dear boy.” Jenny smiled.

“I wish you will cure yourself of this habit of phrasing
everything as if you were an aged hag, woman. My cousin is only a few years
your junior.”

“As I am only a few years
your
junior? Are you aware
of the fact that Dom sees you as his
aged
uncle? But no, you have
brought me to brangling again. I will say nothing more than good afternoon, Mr.
Teverley.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Prydd.” He looked after Emily. “Splendid
little thing. Most amazing.” His glance returned to Jenny, and he smiled
deeply. “Most amazing.”

Even after Mr. Teverley and Domenic had gone, Jenny did not
straightaway go after Emily; instead she stood for a few minutes in the drawing
room, musing (although not for the first time) on the particular charm of Peter
Teverley’s smile. At last, with a shake, she recalled herself to her duties,
characterized herself roundly as a greater fool even than Emily, and went in
search of her shawl.

The fortnight which followed Ratherscombe’s attempt upon the
peace of the Pellering household was mercifully undisturbed by any further such
incidents. Emily, and Jenny in her wake, settled into a round of parties and
visits, punctuated by the occasional calls of the Teverley men, and by what
seemed to Jenny to be interminable hours spent at Emily’s mantua-maker’s
warehouse. Finally an afternoon did come when Jenny was able to persuade her
friend that she truly did not care to come once more to New Bond Street to
inspect the stuffs for Emily’s court dress, and when Emily and her mother had
departed and Lord Graybarr had taken himself off to his club, she was able to
remove to the library with pen, ink, and paper, to write some hopelessly
overdue letters.

She had finished the first, a letter to her aunt Winchell,
and begun on a second, addressed to the nursery inhabitants of Winchell house,
when a noise in the hallway distracted her from her writing. Aside from a mild
surprise that Emily had dispatched her errands so quickly (for so she supposed
the case to be) Jenny paid no attention to the bustle until it forced itself in
upon her. The door was opened, and a frail, pretty, and very grim old lady
entered the room.