Simone almost choked on her meal. Men do that? They want a woman to do…what? Surely an older chap like Major Harrison would not expect…?
Gracious. All her mother had told her was that she’d enjoy it with the right man. Simone remember asking what would happen if the man in question—her young curate—knew as little as she did. Her mother, half French and half Gypsy, had laughed and said men were born knowing how to do it. If he did not, he was not the right man. Simone tried to put thoughts of her mother out of her mind. And thoughts of Major Harrison, naked.
Lydia gave her a brief lesson on protecting herself against pregnancy, and a little pouch with a sponge. Simone doubted Major Harrison could father a child, if he did not suffer palpitations trying, but she accepted the gift and the advice. Then she let her curiosity overcome her reticence by asking, AIf you are so well versed in…in pleasure, why did the major not invite you? That would have been less costly, less time-consuming, less chancy for him, since he knows me not at all.”
Lydia laughed. “What, sleep with old Harry? Why, we’re like sister and brother, nearly raised together.”
Simone stared hard at the madam. No cosmetics in the world could disguise the decades between her age and that of the old officer.
Lydia must have caught her look, for she amended, “We’ve known each other forever, it seems. Asides, he needed a new face.” She laughed again, and again Simone did not get the joke. “Everyone in town knows my phiz and my reputation, and knows Harry and I aren’t lovers. So that wouldn’t fadge.” She patted Simone’s knee. “He wants a younger filly, to make a real splash. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, if you play your cards right. Now listen…”
And here Simone thought all she had to do was lie quietly while a man took his pleasure. She’d heard that some women recited hymns, meanwhile, or composed shopping lists. The act never took too long, Simone gathered, having chanced upon gropings at various houses where she’d been employed. The novels she’d read spoke of fervid kisses and fevered brows, not much more. Fool, she called herself. Of course there was more to sex than that. People would not fornicate like rabbits if they did not enjoy it. So many sermons would not be preached against it.
Simone tried to ignore the reminder of church teachings, too. In fact, she wished she could ignore the whole uncomfortable subject. “Um, how many gowns do you think I’ll need for the trip?”
*
The coachman finally came for Simone at Mrs. Burton’s, but he did not apologize for the delay. He did not get down to help her into the carriage, doff his cap, or introduce himself. The boy on the driver’s box beside him jumped down, grinned, and tipped his hat while he opened the door for her, which was reassuring. She was anxious enough over facing the major without facing his servants’ disrespect.
Lydia had given Simone a coal-scuttle style bonnet, so she had no fears of being recognized by Mrs. Olmstead, if the fat old gossip-monger were at her window seat as usual. She must look like just another fast woman with a knot of fake cherries on the brim of her bonnet, going to meet her latest lover. Only Simone wasn’t, not yet.
Oh, Lord, what was she doing? Maybe she should jump out of the coach now, before it was too late.
No. With her luck she’d be run over by the wheels, or get so scraped and battered no man would want her, not even a half-blind relic like the major. Her last coins would go to apothecaries. For now she was well fed, feeling almost pretty, and the coach bespoke comfort if not luxury. That was a good sign, she told herself. And her trunk rested on the opposite seat, so she could not return to Mrs. Olmstead’s, not without a better story than any novelist every conceived, and the next month’s rent.
The boy handed over her carpet bag, which held Auguste’s letters. So Major Harrison had not forgotten. She wanted to ask the lad about their destination, about his employer, even about the unfriendly driver, but he merely grinned, shut the door, and climbed up beside the coachman. The man knew his way, and knew his horses, for he drove quickly and competently. Simone stopped reaching for the hanging strap to balance herself as the coach feathered corners, or passed wagons on the narrow roads. The major did not hire incompetents, it seemed, which gave her another scrap of confidence. He must think she had potential.
When they reached a neat town house on Morningside Drive, the boy—Judd, he told her, Jeremy Judd—opened the door and put down the steps, then took the satchel from her. “Harold,” Jeremy grinned and jerked his head toward the driver, who hadn’t turned, “will bring your trunk in later. I’ll introduce you to my mum. She’s the cook and housekeeper. Mr. Harris, he’s out and about on the governor’s business right now.”
Mrs. Judd was almost as close-mouthed as Harold. Simone wondered if they were related, but ceased speculating as she admired her surroundings. The house was a perfect gem, small but furnished with comfortable-looking furniture that was gleaming with care. The colors were bright and inviting, and warm fires burned in every room Mrs. Judd showed her. Other doors remained as tightly closed as Mrs. Judd’s lips.
Simone’s own bedroom was done in soft shades of blue, with flowers embroidered on the bedstead and painted on the walls.
“The major must have had other women staying,” Simone guessed out loud, from the sweet femininity of the furnishings.
Mrs. Judd sniffed. “The master’s business is the master’s business, I am sure, miss.” She left, making Simone feel like a poor student who forgot his lesson. Privacy, she told herself. She had to remember to tell the truth and respect his privacy. And avoid the disapproving housekeeper whenever possible.
Unpacking her cloth bag took Simone no time at all, placing Auguste’s letters on the dressing table and stuffing the pouch with the sponge under her stockings in the drawer. She did not know if she was expected to return below stairs or stay here until the secretary sent for her, or the major did. She stared out the window that overlooked a narrow walled garden to the back of the house. With its shade tree and bench, the garden looked to be a lovely place to read a book, if the house had a library. She had not seen one on her abbreviated tour, nor the master’s rooms, nor the kitchens or servants’ quarters. She was tempted to go exploring, but her trunk arrived before she could decide.
The heavy-set coachman carried it on his shoulder like a sack of grain, and he was not even out of breath from carrying it up the steep stairs. He still wore his hat, still pulled low over his forehead, and he still did not speak. He grunted. Simone thanked him anyway, as prettily as she could since she had too few coins to give him one. He grunted again and left. So someone else disapproved of her presence in the house and thought she was a soiled dove. Now she had someone else to avoid.
Then a young maidservant flew into the room and took Simone’s few gowns out of her hands to hang in the wardrobe. Her name was Sally, Sally Judd, and she was here to wait on Miss Ryland, if it pleased. Mr. Harris said miss would need someone to look after her fancy clothes and help her dress, and Sally had ambitions of being a lady’s maid, and wasn’t miss the prettiest female ever with all that red hair, and what a cunning bonnet. Cherries were all the thing this season, according to Ackerman’s Repository, but feathers were more suitable for night, didn’t miss agree?
Simone had never conversed with a whirlwind before, and never had a lady’s maid of her own in her entire life. She would have dismissed the girl on both counts, but Sally was the only one in the house to smile at her. Worse, the new gown fastened down Simone’s back. She could never get out of it on her own, and asking Mrs. Judd to help would have been beyond her. More importantly, Sally said she already had kettles of water on to heat for miss’s bath, and did she prefer rose scent or lilac for her soap?
A bath, in a full tub young Jeremy Judd was already carrying into the room? That sounded like heaven. She smiled back at the grinning pair and decided to enjoy the wages of sin.
Sally helped wash Simone’s long hair, bringing her mum’s own recipe shampoo, hot towels, and chatter about her beau, a footm
an at the next household, but Mum thought Sally was too young to be courted at sixteen, and what did Miss Ryland think?
Simone thought she just might enjoy being treated like a lady, especially now, when she was becoming anything but.
Sally was humming, which was a good sign, Simone thought. No one ever sang at the baron’s house, not even the children. Sally was obviously happy in her work, and Simone vowed to be happy in hers. She’d try, anyway.
Sally clucked her tongue over the shabby, dreary gowns that comprised Simone’s wardrobe, as if trying to decide which to burn first instead of which to lay out for dinner.
“Oh, I shan’t need to dress,” Simone told her. “I ate such a large tea I’d be content with a slice of toast here in my room later.”
“Mum says you are to sup in the dining room like a proper guest, with Mr. Harris. She’s fixing a special meal, she is, everything he likes. Do you fancy syllabub? Mum’s is the best.”
Simone did not care for the sweet dessert, but her tastes did not matter, not to the chatelaine of the house. “Your mother does not approve of me, does she? Or my reason for being here.”
“Oh, it ain’t you, miss. Mum was an actress herself, and she ain’t one for looking down on any female what wants to better herself. You’re a guest, plain and simple. It’s himself she’s worried about.”
“Major Harrison? Then he really is in danger?” That was not gossip, Simone told herself. She needed to be prepared for protecting her protector.
“The master always finds trouble, but Mum is worried you’ll bring him worse.”
“Me? That is, I?” She’d gone at the baron with a fireplace poker, true, but she did not usually accost gentlemen. She looked around the lovely room. “Why would I hurt him when he has been so kind?”
“Without meaning to, I am sure, miss. It’s that we were all hoping the master’d be done with his havey-cavey doings now that the war is over.”
“Havey-cavey?”
“Dark, you know. Secret. For the good of the country, but that’s all I can say about the master’s work. He’s not much out in public, which is why Mum worries about strangers. Mr. Harris’ll tell you more, if he thinks you ought to know.”
The secretary would tell her, if she had to threaten him with her bread knife. Simone had to know what she was getting herself into. “Then I better wear my new gown, don’t you think?”
*
Mr. Harris was going to be late for dinner. It was taking longer than he expected to find Baron Seldon at one of the lesser gambling clubs the man was known to frequent. Once he found Miss Ryland’s former employee, he quickly defeated the man at cards, soundly. He seldom played with fools like Seldon, for there was no challenge in it. Now he hurried the baron into debt without listening to the puffgut’s boasting and blathering so he could savor his glass of brandy without having a sour taste in his mouth. Then he offered Seldon double or nothing, which the gudgeon accepted, and lost.
“I cannot pay right now, but you’ll let me have the usual month, won’t you, my good man?”
Harris was not good, not when he was on a mission. He shook his head, with its silvered hair at the temples, and pushed his tinted spectacles back up on his nose. “I have need of the brass myself.”
“But I’ll have the blunt as soon as I return from Gorham’s house party. That affair is bound to be expensive, tricking out my doxy to compete with Gorham’s hoity-toity mistress.”
“You are not going to Gorham’s.”
“Of course I am. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The wagering will be high. I’ll win back your brass, and more.”
Harris laid a stack of gambling vouchers on the table, all with Seldon’s initials. That was another reason he was so long about this distasteful task. “I say you are not going.”
The other man’s hand started shaking as he reached for his glass, tipping it over. Harris quickly moved the IOU’s out of danger. “I say you are returning to your country estate with your wife and children. And staying there.”
“But, why?”
“Because I bought these from your debtors, and because I do not like your face.”
The baron instantly reached to the scar across his cheek.
“Exactly.” Harris leaned closer, so only Seldon could hear his whispered threat. “If you stay in the country and act like a gentleman, I shall not call in your markers. If I ever hear—and I have ways of hearing, believe me—that you have accosted another female in your household, another unwilling woman anywhere, I shall claim everything you have that is not entailed. Everything.”
Seldon rubbed at the ugly scar, which stood out twice as livid now that his cheeks had gone ghost white. “But how did you know? That is, I never touched the jade. Nervous female, don’t you know, one of those starched up spinsters always seeing monsters under the bed.”
Now Mr. Harris was almost choking on the bitter taste on his tongue. “You better not be under anyone’s bed, or in it—except your wife’s, if she wants you. Is it a bargain?”
Seldon knew he had no choice. No one would let him into any gaming hells or gentleman’s clubs, not if he couldn’t pay his debts of honor. He’d have to leave Town anyway. “You say you won’t call in the markers?”
“Not unless you return to London. Or if you ever mention that particular lady’s name.”
The baron stared at the vouchers, then at his opponent, wondering how the deuce the two were connected. “She’s no lady, only some half-breed educated beyond her station, putting on airs to impress my wife. As if her prunish attitude could cover all that red hair and fire.” He rubbed at the scar again. “I should have had the wench arrested instead of letting her think she was better than me.”
Harris tucked the chits back in his pocket and stood. “She was, and is. Her father’s father holds a title; her mother’s family was French aristocracy. Even if she were a goat herder living in a shanty, an orange seller at the opera, or a whore’s daughter, you have no right to take what is not offered. Do you understand?” Since he towered over the baron, and since Harris’s shoulders were broader and his hands were clenched into fists, Seldon understood. The baron could not see Harris’s eyes through the dark lenses of his spectacles, but he knew in his heart, in his gut, in his shriveling manhood, that his life was in peril if he did not agree to the other’s terms. “I understand. My estates have been needing better supervision anyway. My wife has been complaining I do not spend enough time with her.”
The poor woman, Harris muttered on his way out of the club.
*
“That poor girl,” his housekeeper started her lecture the minute he came into the Morningside Drive house by the back entrance and sat at the kitchen table. “She’s been sitting in the parlor waiting her supper this age. And what you are doing with an educated, polite female, I’ll never know. And that’s not to say you should be bringing strange women home, neither, not that it’s any of my affair.”
It wasn’t, but that never stopped Mrs. Judd. She’d been a friend of his mother’s and he’d taken her in when her husband deserted her and the children. Now he told her not to worry. “Miss Ryland will not know anything until I am ready to tell her.”
“The lass is downier than you think. Else why did she ask Sally if Major Harrison kept cats?”
“That’s nothing. A lot of people keep cats. Maybe she likes them.”
“And maybe she noticed the hairs on Harold’s coat when he brought in her trunk? White ones, what matched what she’d seen on the major’s sleeve?”
Harry stood up so fast the feline on his lap hissed at him.
Chapter Six
Major Harrison’s secretary was a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman of middle years with silver in his long sideburns and well-trimmed moustache. His upright, military bearing was far unlike his employer’s hunched posture, but, like the major, Mr. Harris wore tinted glasses. When he bowed stiffly over Simone’s hand, not bringing it anywhere near his lips, she again pictured the image of
a handsome, dark-haired young man, the way both Major Harrison and his secretary might have looked in their youth. Perhaps they were related, she thought, although Mr. Harris was too young to be the major’s brother and too old to be his son. He was too rigid to be as congenial as the man of her dreams, the Harry she wished to meet. Why, he almost marched her into the brightly lit dining parlor and then sat as far from her as he could and began filling his plate from the platters laid out. Obviously they were meant to serve themselves, and just as obviously, she was merely another duty he had to perform, as hurriedly as possible.
“Should I have Mrs. Judd remove some of the candles?” she asked, trying to be friendly. She looked toward the tinted spectacles. “Major Harrison also seemed to be affected by the bright light.” She did not mention that coincidence or the similarity of their names, or the white hairs on his midnight blue Bath superfine coat.
“We served together,” was his terse answer, leading Simone to believe that either there had been an explosion, too much exposure to the Spanish sun, or none of her business. He spoke in the clipped tones of English public schools when he politely offered to pass this plate or pour from that bottle, but he did not say much else. He was more interested in his own meal than in Major Harrison’s chérie amour.
Simone acknowledged his circumspection, but still took offense. Mrs. Olmstead had more conversation in one of her plump fingers than this gentleman had in his whole body. She ate more than she thought she might, partly because the meal was excellent, partly because she was afraid of offending Mrs. Judd, and partly to fill up the silence. She did refuse the syllabub, with no doubt that Mr. Harris would do justice to the bowl. He smiled at young Jeremy, who brought in the sweet, in a way he had not smiled at Simone.
The Scandalous Life of a True Lady Page 5