Chapter Ten
“You are quite sure I can’t escort you somewhere?” Bernard McGowan asked Amelie again, appearing in the doorway to the bank as she hurried past on her sixth circuit of Little Firkin’s main thoroughfare. He’d also peeked out on her third.
“Yes, quite sure,” Amelie answered brightly, wishing the banker would just go back inside. “I’m just enjoying a stroll.”
Bernard looked at her quizzically but was too much a gentleman to point out to her what everyone had noticed: that she had spent more time on the streets of Little Firkin in the last two days than she had in the last six months. She’d begun to feel a little silly window-shopping, particularly as there were only twelve windows to shop in. But if she wasn’t on the streets of Little Firkin, how else was she to “run into” Lord Hayden?
“Well,” Bernard said reluctantly, “if you are certain I can do no service for you . . . ?” He brightened. “Perhaps you’d join me in a cool beverage at MacKee’s?”
Amelie caught back her start of surprise. Bernard had never asked her to accompany him anywhere without Fanny. Last week she would have been delighted. Today she had in mind another companion.
“Oh, no. No. But thank you for asking.”
“Then may I escort you back to Quod Lamia when you’ve finished your business here?” he asked hopefully.
“That won’t be necessary. Fanny has insisted Ploddy accompany me whenever I leave the house,” she said. Ploddy was Quod Lamia’s only real servant, an elderly gent who’d once served as her father’s batman. “I’m to fetch him from Mr. Davies’s establishment when I’m ready to go back.” She only hoped he wasn’t too inebriated at that time. Ploddy had something of a problem.
“I see,” Bernard said.
“Yes,” Amelie said. “I think it’s all a bit silly. But Fanny will not be gainsaid.”
“She is taking this letter seriously then?”
“She says not, but that we might as well not take unnecessary chances.”
“And you, Miss Chase?” Bernard gazed earnestly into her eyes. He was not so tall as Lord Hayden. “Are you worried?”
She shook her head, trying to sort out her feelings. “Not really. I suppose I ought to be, but it is hard to imagine someone would want to harm me, not when I am so valuable to everyone here, and all that value rests on my being, well, alive. I am most unhappy this has caused so much consternation for Fanny.”
His smile was tender. “You are precious to some for more than the reasons you outline.”
Oh, dear. Oh, no.
She should have felt flattered, or at least a tiny bit pleased by his words. Instead, she only felt uncomfortable.
“Too kind,” she chirped, as if people told her she was precious on a daily basis. “Well, I’d best be on my way. Good day to you, Mr. McGowan.”
He looked disappointed but smiled. “And to you, Miss Chase. I look forward to dining with you tomorrow.”
“And Fanny. And Lord Sheffield. And Lord Hayden,” she said.
“Of course.”
She sailed on, knowing full well that her walk was causing Bernard much speculation. She refused to feel ridiculous.
Besides Bernard, who was there to care? The locals were concerned only that she didn’t get herself killed before they collected their money. And that she didn’t conjure up something she couldn’t unconjure. She supposed in an odd way it was a testimony to their tolerance that soon after she’d moved here, a delegation of Little Firkians had arrived on their doorstep, pushing forward their ambassador, Donnie MacKee.
Her father had already been too ill to attend the little meeting on the porch, but Fanny had stood in for him. Hands clasped primly at her waist, she’d blocked the doorway as Amelie watched from behind her. Fanny had eyed the townspeople with clinical detachment, as though they were Gypsies pedaling suspect tin.
She greeted them in her most quelling tone. “Yes?”
Donnie cleared his throat. “I come to say what needs to be said.”
“Yes?”
“Aye.”
“And that is?” Her politeness was as formidable a weapon as any Donnie would have ever encountered.
“Now, then, missus, we don’t think as yer lass here be a bad lass. But a witch she be, and bad or good, a witch is trouble.”
“Really?”
Donnie nodded. “Aye. There’s a witch lives up Beadletown and she’s come over a right pest.”
“Amelie will not be a pest.”
“That’s good ’n’ all fer ye to say.” He hesitated. “But when ye come right down to the matter—”
“Please do.”
“When ye come down to the matter, we ain’t sure how bright a lass she be, and what with magik bein’ dangerous ’n’ all, well, we’re thinking it be best if she give up conjuring altogether.” He paused. “Leastways long as she’s here.”
Amelie could still see the twinkle flashing into Fanny’s eyes and the irrepressible twitch at the corner of her mouth. Fanny had had to look away a moment, but when she turned back, she had regained her composure.
“Fear not. She’s a bright girl.”
“That may be, but still . . .” Donnie waggled his red brows suggestively.
Fanny capitulated. “I promise you, you have nothing to worry about.”
It seemed to have appeased them, for no one bothered them after that. No one really bothered
with
them, either. Except to make deliveries and the usual daily sorts of business exchanges. If her father had chosen a place for its population’s placidity, he couldn’t have chosen better than Little Firkin.
The townspeople were by nature sedentary, by temperament lazy. Which was why to a man (and woman) they were content to sit around and wait for her to grow up and move away, rather than endeavor to make something of Little Firkin, with industry and businesses and a future that did not depend on a girl reaching her twenty-first year.
Lord, she would be happy when she was finally free to leave here. If she’d voiced that desire once, she’d voiced it a hundred times. Unfortunately, as Fanny pointed out just as often, no good came of complaining. Certainly nothing but polite refusals and inquiries as to her health had come of the letters she’d written the senior Lord Collier. No. There was nothing for it. Her father had determined that until she reached the age of twenty-one, one way or another, she would be attended twenty-four hours a day, be it by Lord Collier (who had already made clear his unwillingness to assume the task), Little Firkin, or a husband. A husband . . . She smiled, her good mood restored.
“Miss Chase!”
At the sound of Lord Hayden’s voice, Amelie twirled around.
Finally
she’d managed to orchestrate a chance encounter with the elusive young gentleman.
“Miss Chase!”
He trotted out of the post office, hat in hand. As soon as he made her side, he swept a hand though his golden locks and donned his hat. “How are you?”
“Very well, Lord Hayden. Thank you. And yourself?”
“Very well,” he said, beaming down at her. He glanced around. “Very well, indeed. Is Mrs. Walcott with you?”
“Oh, no,” Amelie said. “She is more likely fishing or bicycle riding or lofting golf balls into the loch. She’s a rather solitary lady.”
“But don’t say you are unattended!”
“Why, yes. Well, not completely. Ploddy walked with me here and shall walk me back. But until then I am completely on my own,” she said. Too late, Amelie recalled that unmarried ladies in society did not leave their homes without a chaperone. What rubbish. For the first time it dawned on Amelie that the society she longed to know might not be everything she liked. “Do you disapprove?”
He looked taken aback by her question. Had she made another faux pas?
“You oughtn’t,” she said, a little stung by his continued silence. “Who is supposed to attend me when Fanny is unavailable, and what purpose would they provide? I do not require a keeper, Lord Hayden. I am not a toddler.”
He continued to regard her with slack-mouthed wonder. Was she so very odd then?
“Please say something, Lord Hayden.”
He blinked, coming out of whatever trance held him. “Excuse me. You’re just so . . .”
She braced herself to hear the word
unpolished
or worse.
“. . . refreshing!”
She relaxed, her face blooming in a wide smile. “Refreshing?”
“Yes.” He nodded vigorously. “I am sorry you could think I was such an old fogey. I could never disapprove of a young lady I only wish to impress favorably.”
He wished to impress her favorably? How utterly lovely! “Really?”
His boyish smile took on a more debonair cast as he looked deeply into her eyes. “Really.”
She blushed.
He offered her his arm. “May I accompany you to wherever it is you are going?”
Oh, blast.
What to say now? They could go to Donnie’s tavern, but she doubted even the most relaxed gentleman would like to think a young lady passed her free time in a pub. Then she recalled that Johnston had recently installed a liquid carbonic tank in his inn. Surely an inn wasn’t the same as a tavern, even an inn that was in actuality a tavern (seeing how no one but the very incidental traveler ever stayed there).
“I was shopping but I find I am quite thirsty. I don’t dare go into a tavern by myself.” She glanced sideways to see if he was impressed by this show of maidenly modesty. “But the inn has recently had a soda fountain installed.” She let the implication dangle.
“You’ve never had a soda drink?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, we shall have to rectify that straight off. Which way is this inn?”
She nodded down the street and tucked her hand in the crook of his arm as he led her forth.
“If you weren’t thinking you disapproved of me,” she said, “what were you thinking?”
“How intrepid you are,” he answered.
“Intrepid?” Now she was surprised.
“Why, yes. Here you endure under an unknown threat and yet there is nothing about you to suggest an ounce of anxiety. I call that intrepid.” He leaned a little closer. “That isn’t to say I approve. I don’t know that I like the thought of you all alone in this town, without anyone to watch over you.”
She felt a thrill run through her, but her innate honesty forced her to reply, “Really, Lord Hayden, I am sure there is no need for alarm. I may not be the most popular person in town, but I am the most important, and there is no one in Little Firkin who isn’t well aware of it.”
“What remarkable clearheadedness,” he said admiringly. “So few of the young ladies I meet would be capable of such reasoned thought. Or even want to attempt it. You almost convince me.”
She blushed again. He was too wonderful! “Please do be convinced. I should hate to have a pall cast over your visit here.”
“Then there won’t be,” he avowed. “I hereby declare our visit here a holiday.”
“And what are we celebrating?” Amelie asked, charmed.
“Why, my meeting you, of course,” he said.
And the day only got better from there.