Mischief

by Laura Parker

  She shook her head. “I cannot see that they matter against the happiness of five helpless orphans.”

  The man positively beamed. “Well said, Miss Fortnom. Well done!”

  Japonica walked the windy deck of The Griffin on unsteady legs. Three weeks out of the port of Bushire, the ship was beating up the coast of South Africa. She had learned many things in recent days. Foremost, she was not a sailor. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope a few days before, in what the captain called a “right nice blow,” sent her to her bunk with a green face and a bilious stomach. To her chagrin, she had tossed up a meal a day ever since. That was enough to convince her she would never see Bushire again if it meant an ocean voyage.

  Aggie had said it was just nerves and would pass once she got her sea legs.

  “Morning, your ladyship.”

  She glanced up with a start. As the first mate tipped his hat to her, she nodded and hurried past him. She was not yet accustomed to being addressed as a ladyship, let alone Lady Abbott or the more formal Viscountess of Shrewsbury. Perhaps she never would be. Not even with her husband’s coffin resting in the hold of the ship carrying them toward his homeland.

  Though two months old, their marriage was still the talk of Bushire when she set sail. Lord Abbott had been adamant that the ceremony be public so that he could in his words “give proper due” to his new wife. Japonica suspected that he hoped to save her the embarrassment and inevitable gossip of a hushed and hurried affair. Hurried it was. Hosted by the Resident and his reluctant wife, they married in The Company chapel with a vicar presiding and a small contingent of the “right” people invited. Despite Lord Abbott’s grave condition, the ceremony was held with all the pomp possible for a man who could not rise from his chair to make his pledge to his new bride. Afterwards, he retreated again to his sickroom while she was left to accept the best wishes of the guests at the wedding breakfast.

  Within the week she was in widow’s weeds, a show of mourning that she took very seriously. One week a bride, two months a widow. Was it odd that she genuinely grieved for a man she scarcely knew?

  The second thing she had learned about herself on this voyage was that she could no longer predict what her reactions would be to events even stranger than her sudden widowhood. That had been confirmed only this morning when Aggie insisted on examining her after noticing that Japonica’s stomach seemed distended. Expecting to find signs of a septic bowel she had instead made a very different sort of discovery.

  “Glory be! Can it be? Ye’re with child!”

  For a moment they had shared in equal parts the shock.

  Japonica reached for the older woman’s hand. “Oh, Aggie, what shall I do?”

  “You’ve done enough, I’d say.” A hard look came into Aggie’s face. “So who was the rogue?”

  Japonica had held on to her secret for nearly two months but the shock of the unexpected demanded it be spoken at last. “It was the Hind Div.”

  Aggie’s expression soured briefly. “Ah well, that I’d nae have suspected.” The older woman sat down heavily and raised the edge of her apron to wipe her face before she said, “You’d better begin at the beginning, lass, if I’m to know what to advise.”

  Japonica told her all that had occurred that night and heard for the first time in her life Aggie utter a profanity.

  “Drugged ye, the very devil he is!” she finished. “Och well, the law will know how to deal with his sort.”

  “There’s no need.” Japonica looked away. “The Hind Div is dead. I’m told he was murdered the day we left Baghdad.”

  “Not soon enough,” Aggie said grimly.

  “He—he didn’t hurt me.” When Aggie’s gaze met hers she blushed, not knowing why she chose to defend a man whose actions were indefensible. “I just meant he was not callous.”

  “The practiced sort often aren’t.” Aggie shook her head and sighed. “Wed, widowed, and with child all in the space of a fortnight. ’Tis no fit way to begin married life, I’m thinking.”

  “Aggie, I’m so ashamed! What will people think?”

  There was not a sentimental bone in her body but Aggie’s protective spirit was an awesome force. “Not a thing, to my way of thinking. ’Tis only to be expected that a healthy bride should soon be breeding.”

  “But Aggie ….” She blushed furiously. “The viscount was too ill to—to consummate the marriage.”

  Aggie bent a hard gaze on her. “You know naught of men if you think a wee thing like the shadow of death would keep all of them from a young bride’s bed.” She folded her arms across her chest her expression implacable. “You’re a married lady. What other explanation is there?” Something in her tone made it plain she did not expect an answer.

  “People will talk,” Japonica said.

  “Aye. But they cannae prove a thing.” She frowned as she gave hard thought on the matter. “ ’Twas only two weeks between the deed and marriage, so the babe’s birth date will no’ catch you out.”

  “But what of the child?”

  Aggie met her gaze with a pale blue stare. “Do you want it?”

  “I—yes.” As much as the answer surprised her, it was a completely honest one. “I never thought to marry so I never thought to be a mother. Now I am one and soon to be the other. It’s a miracle, in a way.”

  “There’s ways and there’s ways,” Aggie answered noncommittally.

  Japonica flung her arms about the older woman’s neck and pressed her cheek to her bosom as she had often done as a child. “Aggie, am I so very bad a woman?”

  “Nae, lass.” Aggie patted then stroked her hair. “You’re nae the first and nae the last to be tricked out of yer virtue by a devil of a man.”

  “But what then shall I do? I can’t have the child in England.”

  “And why not, I’d like to know?” Her expression became shrewd. “ ’Tis only right that Viscountess Shrewsbury’s child be born in the ancestral home. Rumor will quiet soon enough with the viscount’s other children there as witness.”

  “But it’s not the viscount’s child!” Japonica protested.

  “The world will care naught for the truth but to use it agin you.” She took Japonica’s face between her rough hands. “You’re a lady now. Whatever they may think, none will dare declare that this is not the viscount’s child.”

  Japonica smiled weakly. “What if the babe is foreign-looking like the Hind Div!”

  “Ah well then, you can toss the little devil in the sea.”

  “I would never!”

  Aggie smiled, a thing so rare it transformed her face. “Then we will think of something else, won’t we?”

  For the first time in days Japonica smiled. “You seem to think we shall come through this with ease.”

  Aggie’s naturally sour expression came back. “A body does what a body must. Sometimes the hardest things are the things that must be.”

  But it would not be easy.

  Japonica turned to the railing and looked out at the vast expanse of ocean rolling away from the ship and felt as bereft as if stranded on the dimes of a desert. She was a month away from England. She was far from home. She could not go back and she did not want to go forward. What, then, was she to do?

  “Astonish me.” The Hind Div’s voice seemed to come to her on the wind of the sea.

  Beneath her cloack she touched her slightly swollen belly. She had thought him dead and gone. Now she knew a part of him had taken root inside her. This then was the Hind Div’s final death-defying act of beguilement.

  A new adventure awaited her after all.

  PART TWO

  To mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

  —William Shakespeare

  Chapter Four

  England, November 1809

  A roaring fire chased the chill of an early and rare snowfall into the farthest corners of the breakfast room at Croesus Hall. The fancifully nam
ed domicile was the family seat of Viscount Shrewsbury. Situated some twenty-three miles from London, Croesus Hall was an easy distance from fashionable society. But for all the good it did the Abbott sisters, it might as well have been three hundred and twenty. Bored to bits by gentle hillocks, seasonally verdant fields, and the bucolic cares of village life, they dreamed and schemed of the day they would be presented in town. Such a thing was impossible, for they had no female sponsor to launch them on the often-perilous sea called the London Season. Nor were they likely to find such a person. Through a false sense of their own consequence and a lack of discipline that had allowed their high spirits to run wild these many years, they had managed to alienate the affections of every female relative of their acquaintance.

  Lady Wellsey, a distant relative, who had recently made the mistake of inviting them to tea, put it precisely. “The Shrewsbury Posy? Rather call them The Shrewsbury Poison!”

  The staff, run with precision by Bersham the family retainer, routinely avoided their mistresses’ attention. On this morning, however, every ear in the household was cocked toward the young ladies’ chatter. Even the Shrewsbury governess Miss Willow, who sat next to a sideboard that groaned under an enormous breakfast of which she had not been invited to partake, listened with ears pricked. For this morning, the sisters discussed the imminent arrival of their new step-mama!

  Miss Hyacinthe Abbott led the discussion. Long of limb and with a coltish awkwardness, she had a narrow, horsy face emphasized by a center part in her heavy dark hair. “I shan’t speak to her. Not a word! Why give her the consequence? I can’t think why Papa would marry his nurse.”

  “What kind of nurse was she? Papa is dead. I believe she poisoned him and I shall say so to her face,” declared Miss Laurel Abbott between generous bites of broiled kidney. An unregulated fondness for partridge, scones, and pudding had puffed her flawless complexion into full-moon roundness and her body into curves that threatened to snap her stays.

  “I cannot believe so vile a thing. Papa would never consort with a woman capable of—of …” Words failed Miss Alyssum Abbott, the middle sister and the only one possessed of true beauty.

  “What but evil influence could induce Papa to align himself in marriage to a woman so obviously beneath him in rank and breeding and… ?” Fourteen-year-old Miss Cynara, prickly at the best of times, paused to spear the plumpest kidney viciously with her fork and lift it onto her plate. “… In everyway.”

  “P-p-perhaps she is better than we dare hope.” Miss Peony, the youngest at the tender age of twelve, glanced around with the hope of finding an ally among her older siblings.

  “Oh, you would think kindly of the snake who bit Cleopatra!” Cynara pushed away her plate in disgust, the coveted kidney untouched.

  “Who is Cleop-p-patra?” Peony questioned.

  “Never mind, dear.” Laurel took a piece of toast and inspected it for weevils, which she believed the cook deliberately introduced into their wheat out of spite. Perhaps she had been a bit rash, accusing the cook of stealing, but then the bills certainly seemed to mount up to more than five young women could consume.

  “ ’Tis all very odd,” Alyssum said quietly. “Why has she waited a full year before coming to England?”

  “Perhaps she was too sad to make the journey,” Peony suggested, for only she among her sisters still mourned a father they scarcely knew.

  “It did not prevent her from promptly shipping poor Papa home like so much cured beef,” Cynara pronounced.

  “More likely she ran through whatever sum Papa gave her and hopes that by coming here she may extract more from us.” Laurel boldly voiced the concern uppermost in the four sisters’ minds. “It must be that she is after the Shrewsbury fortune!”

  “Which makes her no better than she should be.” The tip of Hyacinthe’s nose twitched. “One could expect little else from an Indian.”

  “She ain’t Indian.” Laurel looked quite smug. It was due to the woman’s letters to the family solicitor that they knew something about their new step-mama. “Her parentage is English.”

  “Yes, but who were they?” Hyacinthe, too, had read the solicitor’s replies. “Cousins of a London grocer!” She shuddered. “Mark my words. She will stink of the shop.”

  “But may, no doubt, expect that this marriage has raised her above her lowly birth,” Laurel added.

  “She may believe it raises her above us,” Alyssum exclaimed.

  “Precisely!” Laurel declared. “If we do not strike first, we shall soon find ourselves at her beck and call. That we must prevent.”

  “How can we?” Peony scratched her head vigorously, an action that caused her sisters to shy away.

  “Are you lousy again?” Alyssum asked in concern.

  “No,” Peony answered quickly though she could not honestly swear to it. Her fondness for the woods and stables made it a chronic condition with her.

  “You should not even be here,” Cynara scoffed. “Lenora Parkinson says her little sister is kept in the nursery and allowed below stairs only when expressly sent for. Go up to your room at once!”

  “I won’t and you can’t make me!” Peony shouted.

  Cynara balled up her fist and shook it. “Can’t I just!”

  “Sisters, please!” Hyacinthe rapped her fork on her plate. “Is it not enough that we must deal with this—person?”

  “I believe I have found the antidote to our new step-mama.” Laurel glanced around the table, her expression brimming with mischief as she met the looks of expectation on her sisters’ faces. “We shall appeal to the new viscount for protection.”

  “We do not know him,” Alyssum said.

  “A mere formality. He is a distant relation, after all. And unmarried!” Laurel leaned forward against the table in the way that brought prominent attention to the abundance of womanly charms exposed by her too-low-cut bodice. “And therefore open to feminine persuasion!”

  “A single gentleman possessed of title and fortune should not escape obligation to his female relations,” Hyacinthe agreed.

  “Some consideration must be made of the possibility,” Alyssum said, although, as third in line of her marriageable sisters, she would have no chance to set her cap for the new viscount. Not that she cared much. The new rector at Ufton Nervet, a Mister Charles Repington, had made an impression she could not quite forget. Unless she was mistaken, the serious-minded and quite handsome youngest son of a baronet had held her gaze a fraction longer than necessary as they were introduced after services a week ago. His “living” was said to be worth nearly one thousand a year! She hugged that tiny secret to her heart in consolation for the lost viscount.

  “For all we know the new viscount is doddering and poxed,” Cynara declared, always eager to cry “fly in the pudding.”

  Laurel’s smile remained smug. “He is not above thirty years old and a decorated officer recently discharged from the army at Calcutta!”

  “As-s-s-soldier?” Peony breathed with shining eyes. “I am partial to a gentleman in a red coat!”

  “He is expected to arrive in London no later than the end of the month,” Laurel finished triumphantly.

  “How do you know so much?” Cynara asked suspiciously.

  “I read the gazettes,” Laurel answered. But in point of fact, she had not handed over every letter she received from the solicitor. Self-promotion in a household of women, she decided early on in her young life, required a bit of subterfuge.

  “Such a gentleman,” Laurel continued, “so long away from good society, will be in need of a stylish wife who can preside over his home in a manner equal to his new consequence.”

  “What home?” Peony questioned.

  “Why, this house and all the Shrewsbury possessions.” Laurel waved her fingers about. “There is even a house in London which, I should think, he would prefer to the country. So this is what I propose: we go to London immediately so that we may be there to greet him upon his re
turn.”

  “Yes, yes!” was the rare unanimous agreement.

  “We can all buy new bonnets!”

  “And shoes!”

  “And gowns!”

  “And inquire about our yearly allowance,” Laurel said, hoping to bring renewed sense to their purpose.

  Though Hyacinthe was nominally head of the household, she spent her time looking after their father’s extensive gardens, which he had entrusted her to oversee in his absence. Laurel kept the books. There had been no direct answer from their solicitor to her request for their annual allowance, usually issued right after the fall harvest. Instead, Mr. Simmons had informed them of the dowager viscountess’s imminent arrival in England, which would, “settle all matters material to the question.” That, thought Laurel darkly, meant they were to lose control of what little they had.

  “So then, it is agreed.” Hyacinthe nodded with a rare look of satisfaction upon her face. “We shall pay a visit to London to meet the new viscount.”

  Laurel glanced suspiciously at Alyssum, thinking that she must encourage her sister’s tendency to dress in insipid colors in the hope it would obscure her natural beauty. “With very little effort I believe I shall soon convince our newly titled relation that marriage to one of his orphaned relatives is the right thing—nay, the only honorable avenue open to him.”

  “You mean to marriage to you,” Cynara taunted. “It should be Hyacinthe, the eldest, who instructs him in his duty to us.”

  “Not I.” Hyacinthe drew herself up. “I will not parade before any gentleman like a cow at market. If he has not the good sense to recognize the advantages of the alliance, I shall forbear to apprise him of it.”

  “I, on the other hand, have no such scruples.” Laurel smiled. “I shall cast my lures before the viscount, depend upon it!”

  Peony clapped her hands. “If Laurel marries the new viscount, th-th-then we need never leave Croesus Hall!”

  “As to that, I shouldn’t wish to have four sisters underfoot while I establish myself as Croesus Hall’s new mistress.” Laurel dimpled with as much pleasure as if the match were already writ in the parish book. “I would see you comfortably placed once I’m wed. Perhaps Papa’s hunting lodge in Edinburgh.”