Viscount Vagabond (5 page)

As far as Lord Browdie knew, Catherine hadn’t any friends. He pointed this out to his hostess.

In response, and with much fussing and flustering, the lady drew out a letter from her workbasket. “It’s from Ireland,” she explained, handing it to Lord Browdie. “I did not like to leave it lying about, because the servants—” She gasped as he tore the letter open. “Oh, my—I don’t think— it is
hers,
after all.”

He ignored her twittering as he scanned the fine, precise handwriting. Then he folded the letter and stuffed it into the tail pocket of his coat. “Good enough,” he said. “Won’t be no wild goose chase after all. She’s gone to London.”

“Dear heaven!” The spinster sank back in her seat, fumbling for her smelling salts.

“Now, now, don’t fuss yourself,” Lord Browdie said irritably. “There’s only the one place she can go, so there’ll be no trouble finding her. No trouble at all.”

Miss Collingwood’s Academy had been squeezed into a tidy corner of a neighbourhood best described as shabbily genteel. Miss Collingwood catered to bourgeois families that did not yet aspire to the glory of housing governesses, but did wish to improve their daughters’ chances of upward mobility by means of a not-too-taxing course of education. While the training would not make a butcher’s daughter a lady, it might subdue the more blatant signs of her origins.

The streets the hackney coach now traversed bespoke an entirely different social level. Here were trees enclosed in tidy squares upon which the sparkling windows of elegant townhouses bent their complacent gazes. These streets were wider, cleaner, and a good deal quieter, their peace broken only by the rumble of elegant carriages and the clip-clop of high-stepping thoroughbreds. A gentleman stood at one doorway drawing on his gloves as his tiger soothed the
restless, high-strung horses impatiently waiting. On the sidewalk, a neatly dressed female servant hastened along, basket in hand.

Catherine surveyed the passing vista with confusion at first, then growing anxiety as her companion replied that, yes, they had long since left the City proper and were now in Mayfair. She shrank deeper into her corner of the coach and wished there had been room in her bandboxes for an enormous poke bonnet. This was precisely the sort of neighbourhood in which one could expect to meet Papa’s friends. Lord Pelliston never came to Town, but his cronies did. How would she explain her presence here if one of them recognised her?

The hackney finally halted before a splendid townhouse of classical design and proportions. Catherine concluded that Mr. Demowery’s sister must have married very well indeed, even if she had rejected the “rich old toad” her parents had initially selected for her.

So preoccupied was Miss Pelliston with her wonderings and worries that she scarcely attended to her companion’s conversation with the butler. Only when she was ushered into the sumptuous drawing-room and beheld her hostess did the words belatedly register.

The butler had addressed Mr. Demowery as “my lord,” and was not corrected. Now Catherine heard distinctly the sigh of exasperation her benefactor uttered when the butler announced, “Lord Rand to see you, My Lady.” Miss Pelliston’s face grew hot and her heart began pounding so hard that she believed it must burst from her bosom.

“Ah, Max,” said the lady. “Am I the first to behold the prodigal’s return?” She gave her brother a peck on the cheek before glancing enquiringly at Catherine.

“Louisa, may I present Miss Catherine Pettigrew. Miss Pettigrew, Lady Andover—m’ sister, that is.”

The ersatz Miss Pettigrew sank into a graceful curtsey, and wished she might sink through the floor. Her benefactor’s sister was the Countess of Andover! Her benefactor himself was a nobleman. Demowery, indeed—
he probably had a dozen names besides.

When Catherine rose she found Lord Rand staring at her in that puzzled way he’d done several times before. She gave him one reproachful look, then turned to his sister, who was expressing rather subdued pleasure at the acquaintance while dropping a quizzical glance at Miss Pettigrew’s frock.

In her ladyship’s place, Catherine would have been hard put to express any sort of pleasure at all. What must the countess be thinking? Catherine looked like a betweenstairs servant. She had carefully designed a wardrobe that would convey that impression. To dress as befitted her station would have aroused speculation and, probably, trouble during her travels. Her present costume, however, was bound to provoke another sort of speculation in these surroundings.

Still, for all that Lord Pelliston was an arrant scapegrace, his title went back to the eleventh century at least, and his daughter had been scrupulously trained. She returned the countess’s greeting in her politest manner, apologised for intruding, made another curtsey then turned to leave the room.

Lord Rand’s none-too-gentle grip on her elbow prevented her. “Dash it, Miss Pettigrew, don’t be such a coward. It’s only Louisa, you know. She won’t bite you.”

“Not, certainly, on such short acquaintance,” Lady Andover observed. She gestured towards a chair. “Won’t you be seated? I’ll order some refreshment.”

Miss Pettigrew murmured more gratitude and apologies along with a firm expression of her intentions to leave.

“Oh, sit down,” said her benefactor. “You haven’t anywhere to go, you know, and wouldn’t have the first idea how to get there if you did. Besides which, Louisa’s all afever to know why you’re here and who you are, only she’s too dashed well-bred to show it. Ain’t that so, Louisa?”

“I am curious why Miss Pettigrew looked so stunned when Jeffers announced you, Max. Have you been running about under false colours all these months?”

Without waiting for a reply, she bade her brother ring for a servant. That personage appeared instantly—not at all, Catherine thought, like those at home, who pretended to be deaf, and then if they did heed a summons were prodigiously offended. This one appeared, vanished, and reappeared in minutes, a scrupulously polite and efficient wraith.

In the interim Lord Rand’s sister kept up a light flow of amusing conversation, unaided by her two visitors and all about the weather. The tea arrived along with coffee for her brother, who gave one affronted look at the cup offered him and marched to a table upon which stood several decanters.

“Max,” said the countess.

He stopped in the act of lifting a decanter.

“You require coffee, My Lord.”

“Dash it, Louisa,” he muttered, putting the bottle back. “It’s well past noon.”

“So it is. Still, I suspect you have some explaining to do not only to me, but to Miss Pettigrew, and you are cryptic enough when sober.”

“Nothing to explain,” his lordship answered as he studied the sparkling crystal containers wistfully. “I found Miss Pettigrew in a spot of trouble and hadn’t time to discuss genealogy. Not that she’s been very forthcoming herself.”

The sister returned her attention to her oddly attired guest. “Sugar, Miss Pettigrew?”

Catherine, who’d been staring at the vagabond who’d so abruptly turned into a member of the nobility, dragged her gaze back to her hostess, and then wondered how one could have possibly ignored, even for an instant, this magnificent woman.

The Countess of Andover was as fair-haired as her brother and quite tall as well, but his lean, chiselled features found a softer counterpart in her lovely countenance. Clad in an aqua gown that seemed to have been poured upon her perfect form, Lady Andover was the most beautiful woman Catherine had ever seen. Though not
au courant
with the latest modes, Miss Pelliston was sure that the countess’s gown must be the first stare of fashion, the handiwork of the finest of
couturieres.

Nearly blinded by her hostess’s brilliance, Catherine grew agonizingly conscious of her own drab appearance. A guilty conscience, which in recent hours had developed all the vicious attributes of a swarm of outraged wasps, did not improve her poise. All she could manage was a nod.

“What sort of trouble?”

Though Lady Andover’s voice was kindly enough, the suspicious glance she sent in her brother’s direction brought two bright spots of color to Catherine’s cheeks. Luckily, Miss Pelliston was spared from replying when Lord Rand favoured his sister with an answering scowl.

“You needn’t look as though it were
my
doing, Louisa. Leastways, to start off with it wasn’t.” He wrenched himself away from the tempting array of decanters and took a seat by her ladyship.

He seemed, Catherine thought, suddenly very uncomfortable, though she could not be sure she wasn’t investing him with her own feelings. She, after all, was fervently wishing she might melt quietly into the Aubusson carpet and thus be relieved of having her outrageous behaviour and its gruesome consequences called to this lady’s attention.

“Then what have you done, Max?”

“Oh, please,” Catherine interrupted. “Mr.—his lordship has been everything that is kind, and it is all my fault, really.”

“It
ain’t
your fault, and I can’t think what bloody idiot’s filled your head with that sort of nonsense that you’ve got to be beggin’ everyone’s pardon for doing what any woman in her right mind would do. Dash it, Louisa, you’d think it was the Dark Ages still in this curst country.”

“I must admit that at present your subject is rather dark to me,” his sister replied. “Perhaps Miss Pettigrew can be more enlightening.”

Miss Pettigrew had thus far managed to endure any number of indignities without weeping. Now, at being accused of nonsensicality, she gave way. Her chest heaved, and the tears she struggled in vain to keep back made it rather difficult to understand the shameful words she blurted out.

“Ran away?” Lady Andover repeated, after her brother had translated. “I don’t understand. Surely Miss Pettigrew is not an apprentice.”

“Of course not. What are you thinking, Louisa?”

“If she is not a runaway apprentice, why does she weep? I shall have to consult Edgar, of course, but as I understand, it is runaway apprentices who are subject to legal action. It may be a fine or imprisonment—”

“She ran away from home because her father’s making her marry some old dotard.” Lord Rand went on to explain about the stolen reticule and the elopement of Miss Fletcher. Catherine was relieved to note (between sobs) that he tactfully left out certain other adventures and described the events as having occurred but a few hours ago.

When he’d finished his summary and answered one or two of his sister’s questions, that lady directed her gaze to her guest, who had regained a semblance of composure.

“I see,” said the countess. “Max has brought you here in order that I may enact the role of Cousin Agatha.”

“Oh, no! I told him I meant to go home. That is—” Catherine’s colour deepened, but she swallowed her pride and went on. “I’m afraid I will need the loan of a few shillings for coach fare.”

“Now if that ain’t the most cowardly thing—”

“Max,” Lady Andover said quietly.

“But she can’t—”

“If Miss Pettigrew wishes to return, I can hardly keep her prisoner, can I?”

“Dash it all, Louisa—”

The countess turned her back upon her brother. “All the same, Miss Pettigrew,” she said, “you are too overset at present for travel. You will pardon my saying so, but your colour is not good. If I were to allow you to depart now, my conscience would plague me so,
I
would become ill.”

“Really, I’m quite well,” Catherine protested. “I’ve never had good colour.”

“My conscience refuses to believe you. I do apologise, my dear, but mine is a very fierce conscience. Molly will convey you to a guest chamber and bring you a fresh cup of tea—you’ve scarcely touched yours and it is grown cold, I’m afraid.” Lady Andover’s tones became commanding. “Tonight you will remain here. We will reserve further discussion until tomorrow when you are rested.”

“Might as well do as she says,” Lord Rand suggested, taking his cue. “My sister’s got a stubborn conscience. No use arguing.”

In other circumstances, no amount of cajolery or command would have kept Catherine in Andover House. She was still in London, and every step she’d taken since coming here had hurled her into disaster. She wanted only to flee.

She knew she should press harder for the small loan that would allow her to go home immediately without having to answer embarrassing questions. By the time she’d met Lady Andover, however, Catherine was on the brink of hysteria. Miss Fletcher’s elopement had been the
coup de grace
of a series of stunning calamities. A clean, comfortable bed, a maid to look after her, and a hot cup of tea to consume in private was more temptation than Catherine could withstand.

She made the feeblest of protests, to which Lady Andover proved quite deaf. Moments later, Molly was leading the unexpected guest upstairs.

Now that his charge was in capable hands, Max was eager to get away. He was not permitted to do so. Fortunately, Lady Andover not only ordered him to remain where he was, but invited him to sample the contents of the alluring decanters. After filling a glass and taking a long swallow, Max ambled over to the fireplace and commenced a rapt contemplation of the marble.

His sister studied him for a few moments before she spoke. “Well, dear,” she said, “this is a very interesting homecoming present you’ve brought me. Only
I’d
thought it would be you welcomed back with fatted calves and such—though she isn’t very fatted, is she?”