Nora swept out, leaving her young lady to finish dressing in the dark. Downstairs, she opened the door so suddenly that she almost received a rap on the nose from the gentleman’s umbrella. “Good evening,” he said with crushing dignity. “How awfully kind of you to let me in. I do hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
He held out his umbrella to the little hunchback, but, to his astonishment, she let out a shriek and ran away. “Sure Miss Cosy will be down in a squeeze, your honor!” she squeaked as she ran. “’Tis only after jumping into her clothes she is!”
She took the candle with her.
Presumably, “Miss Cosy” was the housekeeper, probably the woman who had shouted at him from the window. Benedict disliked her already. Needless to say, he was not accustomed to being kept waiting in a cold, dark hall while the housekeeper jumped into her clothes. And why was she a Miss Cosy, anyway? Married or not, most housekeepers assumed the honorific of “Mrs.” when they achieved the rank of an upper servant. Obviously, Miss Cosy wanted every man she met to think of her as marriageable!
After pushing his valise inside the house with his foot, the baronet closed the door against the wind and the rain and wiped his wet face with his sleeve.
Where the devil was Pickering? he thought angrily.
Since losing his right hand, he had learned to do everything with his left. Taking out his silver cheroot case, he lit a match, striking it on the underside of the hall table. After lighting the candles in a nearby sconce, he was able to see his surroundings a little better. The damask-covered walls and gilded sconces were in keeping with the elegance one expected from a Camden Place address, but the cheap tallow candles in the sconces cast a dirty, orange stain over everything. Benedict preferred the clean, white light of beeswax, a fact well-known to Pickering. Seriously displeased, he placed his umbrella in the stand just as a figure in skirts appeared at the top of the stairs. “Ah. Miss Cosy, I presume?”
Her Christian name was Cosima, but, as no one but her mother had ever called her that in her life, she saw nothing odd in this form of address. “Aye,” she answered, coming down the steps. “You said you were given the wrong key, Sir Benedict? You’re locked out?”
Miss Cosy was Irish, but, although she was obviously more genteel than the other servant, she made no attempt to speak with an English accent. “I rang the bell,” he complained.
“Ah, sure, we disconnected that jangly old bell,” she explained cheerfully.
“Indeed! Help me out of my coat,” he commanded brusquely, putting his back to her. As he turned, Cosy caught sight of his right side. His right arm ended abruptly at the elbow, and his coat sleeve had been pinned up. Poor man! He really was a ciotog. He must be a war hero, thought the colonel’s daughter, instantly claiming the stranger for the Army.
“I will, sir,” she said in a tone of great respect. Descending on him in a rush, she peeled the fine black wool from his shoulders. Wet through, the fabric stank of tobacco and perfume, which could only remind her of her own father, except that, being an incorrigible drunkard as well as a remorseless philanderer, Colonel Vaughn usually stank of whiskey, too. “I’ll hang it to dry in the kitchen, Sir Benedict,” she offered courteously.
“Certainly not,” he said harshly. “I won’t have my coat smelling of cooking.”
Cosy thought the smell of her cooking would have improved his musky coat, but she held her tongue. “I’ll hang it here so,” she said cheerfully, finding a hook for it above his umbrella.
“You will give my coat to Pickering, of course. Where in damnation is he, anyway?” Reserved with his own class, the baronet gave his irritation full reign with her. “I sent him ahead of me. I hate being looked after by strangers. This is an unforgivable lapse.”
A sheltered young lady might have been shocked and intimidated by his anger, but Cosy was used to the rough ways of fighting men. Her father and brothers all drank and smoked and swore routinely in her presence. Compared to them, Sir Benedict was the consummate gentleman. She went to the table and fumbled in the drawer for matches. “That’s the trouble with sending a man ahead of you,” she said in her creamy Irish voice. “Sure they don’t always wait for you to catch up.”
Benedict preferred to be served in silent awe by his subordinates. “I sent my valet ahead of me to Bath with my baggage,” he explained coldly and ponderously, as if addressing an idiot. “I take it he has not yet arrived in Camden Place. He must have been delayed by the weather.”
Miss Cosy’s cheekiness was not quelled in the least. “You weren’t delayed yourself,” she pointed out as she lit the three candles in a branched candlestick. “If he left before you, and he’s going at the same rate, I’d say your man is in Bristol this night.”
She held the candlestick up and, for the first time, he saw her face.
His worst fear was confirmed in spades. Miss Cosy was a stunning beauty. How men must fawn over you, he thought. In the dull, orange light he could not tell the true color of her eyes or hair, but there was no denying that satiny smooth skin, that heart-shaped face, that cupid’s bow mouth. True, her nose was a trifle short, but this only served to take the edge off a beauty that might otherwise have been intimidating.
Benedict searched in vain for some other flaw that might give him a disgust for her. Her impertinent little chin had a hint of a cleft in it, but he liked that. Her breasts were small, but, unfortunately, he had always preferred females with light, youthful figures, while at the same time deploring the light, youthful minds that usually went with such females. In desperation, he noted that her hair was a tangled mess, carroty in the candlelight, but who knew what color in the sunlight; her clothes were ugly, cheap, and wrinkled and she looked like an unmade bed.
Ah, bed…What would it be like to share the bed of a beautiful young woman? To kiss that plump, saucy, little mouth, to feel those long silken legs wrapped around one’s waist, and to hear that soft, creamy voice sighing exquisite nothings in one’s ear?
One was appalled by one’s thoughts. One savagely set them aside.
Housekeeper, my arse, he thought. She looks more like a homewrecker.
Miss Cosy, if that was her real name, would have to be dismissed, of course. His sole purpose in coming to Bath was to make a respectable marriage. There could be no convincing the rude minds of the polite world that the ravishing Miss Cosy was not warming his bed as well as ordering his coal, and the inevitable gossip could only have a dampening effect on his marital aspirations, to say the least.
She would have to go, but how the devil was he supposed to get rid of her? Technically, she was Lord Skeldings’s servant, and his lordship now lived in London.
During this prolonged scrutiny, Cosy had been staring at him with ever-widening eyes. Finally, it was too much. “I’m sorry, sir,” she cried, fighting back a disrespectful giggle. “But your hair tonic is running down your face in black bars. You look like you’re in gaol.”
Humiliated, Benedict allowed her to lead him to the cupboard under the stairs.
When he came out with a clean face and neatly combed black hair, Cosy was pleasantly surprised. He was younger and better looking than she had expected. Naturally, she would have preferred a younger man with a spectacular physique, but he was taller than herself in an age when few men were. ’Tis always easier, she thought forgivingly, to fatten a man up than it is to slim him down. She didn’t mind the scars on his right cheek at all and the cold, penetrating unfriendliness of his light gray eyes actually sent a pleasurable shiver down her spine. Of course! He was a battle-hardened officer. Her pulse quickened as she imagined him, gray-eyed and black-haired, mounted on a white steed, in the midst of an internecine battle, issuing his commands no one would dare disobey with cold, ruthless precision.
She had fetched his valise while he was in the cupboard washing up.
“Is there no manservant to take my bag?” he inquired angrily.
She looked surprised. Evidently, men were supposed to take one look at her and tur
n into spineless jellies. That most men probably did just that was completely beside the point.
“There’s Jackson,” she answered, “but I gave him leave to attend a funeral this morning, and the result is, he’s no use to anyone tonight. It’s nice and warm in the kitchen, though, if you’ll follow me.”
“No, indeed! Be good enough to light a fire in the drawing-room.” Benedict brushed past her toward the stairs. Startled, Cosy dropped his bag and caught at his arm without thinking, taking hold of his empty right sleeve. Instantly, he pulled away from her, and, instantly, she released his sleeve.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she stammered, truly horrified. “I meant no offense. There’s not enough coal for a fire in the drawing-room, I’m sorry to say.”
“Nonsense, Miss Cosy,” he said sharply. “I’m a member of Parliament. If there were a shortage of coal, I would have heard of it.”
It occurred to her that his severity might be masking a dry sense of humor. “I didn’t think to report it to the government, sir,” she said. “I didn’t think Lord Liverpool would be interested in the state of my coal scuttle,” she added, naming the prime minister.
Miss Cosy would have few options when she lost her position here, he was thinking. She belonged to the class meant to scurry about in the background, silent and invisible. She could never be invisible, not with that outlandishly lovely face. No sensible lady would hire her, and, if a gentleman lost his head and did so, the result would be only misery and disgrace, for what man could resist the constant temptation of sharing a house with such a beauty?
It would be wrong to dismiss her simply because she was young and beautiful.
And yet, she could not remain under his roof because she was young and beautiful.
Only one reasonable solution to this ethical dilemma presented itself. He could, of course, move her to a furnished apartment in London in the usual way, thereby averting any hint of scandal here in Bath. A charming mistress could only be an asset to him in his political career. In fact, if he meant to get on in politics, a charming mistress would be quite as necessary to him as a dull, respectable wife.
“You mean you failed to order enough coal,” he said aloud.
“I suppose I did bungle it,” she said. “I’m used to the turf we have at home, you see.”
“Home?” he repeated absently. “Oh, yes, of course; you’re Irish.”
“Don’t worry, sir,” she told him impishly. “I haven’t come to blow up Parliament.”
“I am glad to hear it,” he replied without a trace of humor.
Cosy gave him up as a lost cause. On the battlefield, he might well be a hero, but as a ladies’ man, he was a pure failure. “Will you come down to the kitchen, sir? It’s where the cat sleeps,” she added persuasively. “So you know it’s nice and warm.”
She started down the hall with his bag in one hand, the candlestick in the other.
As he followed her, Benedict could not help observing that her undergarments were of very fine silk, in marked contrast to the cheap baize of her skirt and jacket. He was able to make this observation because the back of her skirt had been tucked into its waistband. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, he chose to believe this had happened accidentally, no doubt while she was jumping into her clothes. Rather than call the faux pas to her attention, which would have embarrassed them both, he reached out and corrected the problem with a sharp, decisive tug.
Cosy whirled around. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
Benedict showed her only boredom and a slight, puzzled frown. “I beg your pardon?”
His unruffled calm succeeded in confusing her. “I thought—I thought I felt something brushing against me,” she said uncertainly.
“Oh? I daresay it was a draft.”
Evidently judging it best to keep an eye on him, she backed through the swinging door that led into the servants’ part of the house. After a short flight of stairs leading down, Benedict found himself, for the first time in his life, standing in a kitchen.
Chapter 2
Unlike the cold, dark hall upstairs, the kitchen was warm and inviting. Cosy dropped his bag next to the huge brick chimneypiece, placed the branch of candles on the big work table, and invited him to sit down. Though shabby and threadbare, the two chairs beside the fire were upholstered in brocade and must have graced a drawing-room at some point in their careers. As promised, a tortoiseshell cat was curled up in one of them. Benedict took the other.
Miss Cosy’s easy manners seemed better suited to the kitchen. He felt that he was now in her domain and that she, and not he, was in charge. Briskly, she stirred up the small banked fire with the poker, adding a few broken bits of wood to it. Then she stood on tiptoe to retrieve the whiskey bottle from its niche in the chimneypiece. She poured a generous measure into a glass.
“Get this in you quick as you can,” she said, holding it out to him.
He raised a brow. “You keep the brandy in the chimney, do you?”
Her eyes twinkled at him. They were green as the sea. He was less sure about the color of her hair. In this light, it looked more yellow than orange. “There’s no brandy in this chimney,” she told him. “It’s whiskey. And it’s doing you no good this side of your tonsils.”
Leaving him to it, she took the kettle into the scullery to fill it from the pump. “He’ll spoil the milk if he stays,” Nora warned her, taking the kettle from her.
Cosy was not surprised to find Nora hiding or, rather, spying, in the scullery.
“That is an ignorant superstition, Nora Murphy,” she said angrily. “Anyway, he can’t help being left-handed, poor man. He’s an amputee.”
“I had the notion he was foreign the moment I clapped eyes on him,” Nora said darkly.
“Aren’t you ashamed to be so ignorant?” Cosy scolded her. “He’s had his right arm amputated at the elbow, Nora. That means it was cut off by the surgeon. Now, go and make up the fire in my room before I lose my temper.”
Nora was shocked. “Your room, Miss Cosy!”
Cosy blushed. “I’ll be sleeping with you in the attic, of course,” she snapped.
When she returned to the kitchen with the kettle, the Englishman was sitting as straight as a ramrod in his chair, but he had finished his whiskey like a man. Encouraged by his thirst, Cosy set the kettle on the hook, swung the arm into the fire, and then refilled his glass. Not a word of thanks did he utter. She could only suppose that extreme privation had made him forget his manners. And, of course, being English, he had little manners to begin with.
She tied on her apron. “You’re hungry, of course,” she said brightly. “And if there’s anything I won’t stand for, it’s a hungry man in my kitchen.”
“No, thank you,” he replied.
“It’s no trouble,” she assured him.
Incredibly, he claimed not to be hungry.
“Are you sick?” she demanded.
“Certainly not,” he said coldly.
“Would you not have something?” she pleaded. “Even if it’s only bread and jam.”
Benedict sipped his second whiskey, accustoming himself to the smoky flavor. “You seemed to be having trouble hearing me, Miss Cosy,” he said. “I am not hungry.”
The sad fact was, she had little in the house to tempt a man’s appetite.
“You should have been here last week, sir,” she sighed. “The scallops were so nice. You wouldn’t have said no to them. God forgive me; I nearly forgot the pear! With a drop of honey, it’ll make you a nice tart.”
She looked at him hopefully, but he was unmoved. “I dined earlier in Chippenham.”
She retreated reluctantly. “If you’re sure you’re not hungry…”
“I am!” he told her curtly.
“Oh, you are hungry,” she cried, delighted. “Will it be the tart, then?”
“No, I’m not hungry,” he said, cutting short her pleasure. “I am absolutely certain of it.”
He sipped his whiskey.
“Sure that pear was bruised anyway,” she said, rallying. “Is it a pipe you smoke, Sir Benedict? I could fill it for you. My own father smokes a pipe, and, ever since I was a young girl, I’d always fill it for him, so it’s no trouble.”
“I don’t smoke,” he said.
She smiled incredulously. “You don’t smoke?”
“Not anymore,” he said with more accuracy. “The tax has become so impertinent, I have decided to give it up for a bad habit.”
“In that case, I’d say your coat’s been sneaking a few behind your back.” She laughed.
Benedict was horrified. “That is not the scent of my tobacco,” he said quickly. “I was obliged to take up some stranded people on the road. The gentleman smelled of cheap tobacco—and perfume, unfortunately. The carriage was utterly polluted. But I had no choice. In good conscience, I could not have left them out in the rain.”
“’Tis such a bother, indeed, taking in strangers on a cold, wet night,” she gravely agreed. “Sure they’re more trouble than they’re worth, them strangers, and never a word of thanks!”
“Quite,” he answered, in no way connecting her remarks to his own situation. “But one must always be charitable to those in need. I apologize if the odor offends you.”
“Ah, no. It’s myself that owes you an apology,” she said, sitting down on the brick step with her back to the fire. “Here I thought you’d been out all night, smoking and womanizing, like a proper gentleman!” Her green eyes danced.
Benedict could not believe the woman had sat down in his presence. Usually, his reserved manner was enough to curtail all such impudence. “No, indeed, Miss Cosy,” he said stiffly. “I told you I no longer smoke.”
She laughed out loud. “Just the womanizing then?”
Benedict stared at her. The women of his own class, ladies, never laughed with their mouths open. It was considered vulgar, but, perhaps more important, few women of this age had better than tolerable teeth. So, instead of laughing out loud, they smirked, they tittered, and they giggled behind their gloved fingertips or their fans.
Rules for Being a Mistress Page 2