Aunt Clara arranged her black skirts and shawls onto the nearby sofa. “Were you speaking with Nigel, dear?” she wanted to know.
“No, it seems there is only one apparition allowed per customer. Have you ever actually seen Uncle Nigel, Aunt Clara?”
“Why, no, dear, I only hear his voice. Does your, ah, friend appear, in person, as it were?”
“Stop it, both of you!” The dowager shrieked, stamping her feet. “Clara might be the village eccentric, and my cross to bear, but I shall not have my son making such a cake of himself, do you hear me?”
“I am surprised Miss Westcott cannot hear you, Mother,” Kerry said, getting up to close the door.
“Be sure she’ll hear about this aberration of yours soon enough. Then you’ll lose the gel for sure.”
“Lose her? I hardly know her, Mother.”
“What’s that to the purpose? I never met your father until we joined hands at the altar.”
No one commented on the success of that union. Aunt Clara leaned forward and asked, “But you do like Miss Westcott, don’t you, dear?”
“She’s a nice enough female, as far as debutantes go. I suppose I shan’t mind dancing with her at that assembly tomorrow.”
“You’d better do a dashed sight more than dance with her, my boy,” the dowager cautioned. “You’d better fix her interests all right and tight.”
“Your mother is correct, dear. For once. Faint heart ne’er won fair lady, and all that.”
“What, you, too, Aunt Clara? I said I’d dance with her. I cannot see rushing into anything more permanent for at least another meeting or two,” he tried to joke. No one laughed.
Aunt Clara twisted a handkerchief in her hands. “I’m afraid there isn’t time, dear. Rumor has it that Lord Westcott refuses to take Felicia back to London. Doesn’t want to miss any more hunting, they say. Westcott’s butler told Lady Prudlow’s head groom that the marquis thinks another season would be a waste, since she turned down all the eligible partis, and that duke did not come up to scratch.”
Lady Stanford took up the story: “So that twiddlepoop Westcott will be looking to get the gal fired off right here. If you don’t snatch up the chit, he’s liable to hitch Felicia to the first respectable beau, someone like Johnny Norris or something.”
“So what? There will be other pretty girls, other heiresses.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t want to lose Miss Westcott, dear. So suitable. So dignified and polite. The way a countess should be.”
Lady Stanford ignored the jibe. “You skip-brain, you don’t have time to find another dowry. Bride, I mean. This is November. Have you forgotten that the next round of mortgage payments is due in January?”
Kerry had. He’d been thinking of what he could accomplish in the next week or so, for Lucy’s sake, and in the long range, for income’s sake. There was no way he could meet the payment due.
He almost missed his mother’s next words: “My annuity is paid out in January, thank goodness, but you cannot expect help from me. I’ll have to use my income to redeem my jewels, since you haven’t seen fit to show your mother the respect due. So if you don’t manage to snabble an heiress this month or next, we’ll be living in your confounded pigpens, eating scraps.”
“No, I am giving the table scraps to the poor.” Kerry got up and started pacing.
“You gossoon, we are the poor!”
“I am impoverished, Mother; you do not need to be. You could be living in comfort in the Dower House if you hadn’t squandered your annuity.”
“You dare criticize me for a few paltry gambling debts? What happened to your income all these years?”
“Touché. Very well, I shall try to get to know your Miss Westcott at the assembly, to see if we suit. I am not making any promises, mind.”
Aunt Clara came over to pat his hand before ringing for tea. “I’m sure you’ll do everything proper, dear.”
After Cobb wheeled in the tea cart and Lady Stanford poured, Kerry asked, “Will there be cards at this gathering, Mother?”
Lady Stanford looked as if she’d swallowed a lemon. “Why, do you hope to win a fortune instead of marrying one? That hasn’t worked for you yet, Kieren.”
“No, Mother, I shall be too busy doing my duty by the young ladies, inspecting their pedigrees, their bank balances, their teeth. Perhaps their hips for breeding.”
Aunt Clara giggled into her cup. Lady Stanford returned hers to its saucer with a clatter.
“No,” Kerry went on, “I was wondering about the cards for your sake, Mother, since the Stanford flaw seems to be transmitted through the marriage vows as well as through the blood.” He swallowed the last of a cherry tart, his favorite, and carefully wiped his fingers on a serviette. “I shouldn’t wish to see you sending us deeper into the River Tick while I am struggling to keep us afloat. If I so much as see you with a pasteboard in your hand, I’ll tell Lady Westcott that your diamonds are fake.”
Aunt Clara chimed in: “And I’ll tell your beau Goldy that your bosoms are fake.”
“Why, you jealous cat! Just because you never had a real man show any interest in you—”
“Real man, that shady character in corsets? How dare you compare that thatch-gallows to my sainted Nigel?”
“More tea, ladies?” Kerry asked before aspersions flew along with the Spode china. Aunt Clara held out her cup, but the dowager excused herself on account of the late hour.
“Some of us need our beauty sleep if we are to look our best for the assembly. Others wouldn’t be helped by a week’s rest.”
After the door slammed shut, the earl turned to his aunt. “Aunt Clara, what if, hypothetically of course, Uncle Nigel turned out to be not such a paragon? If your hero had feet of clay? Would you still love him?”
“Oh, you are worried that you might discover later that Miss Westcott is pettish in the mornings or that she snores. Of course you would still love her, dear. I didn’t know everything about dear Nigel before we were wed. It wouldn’t have been at all the thing. But that’s what love is, taking the bad with the good.” Just when Kerry was about to breathe a sigh of relief, she added, “Naturally, however, I would never love a black-hearted rogue in the first place.”
Naturally. “And, ah, you are certain it is Uncle Nigel chatting with you?”
“Quite certain, dear. Who else knows so much about the Abbey? I’m sure if it was your father, he’d be haunting her. Then again, he hardly spoke to her when he was alive, so why would he bother now?”
Chapter Nineteen
If anyone had suggested that Kieren Somerfield might someday stand ankle-deep in hog dung, directing inexperienced and incompetent footmen in corraling squealing porkers, Kerry would have laughed and said “When pigs fly.”
He wasn’t laughing, and they weren’t flying. They’d come by slow, smelly, loud wagons, which he and Hellraker had to accompany, for Johnny Norris couldn’t grab a piglet or hog-tie a sow.
Getting the stock distributed and settled took most of the morning. Catching escapees and repairing fences took most of the afternoon. Washing off the stench and the muck took two tubfuls of hot water.
At last Kerry felt clean enough to don the outfit Derek had selected from Demby’s offerings for formal affairs. As opulent as possible without being ostentatious, the ensemble was more suited to a court presentation. The only thing missing was the ermine cape. Lord Stanford was complete to a shade in a velvet coat of charcoal gray, dove-gray satin knee breeches, sparkling white lace at the collar and cuffs of his shirt, with a waistcoat of burgundy brocade embroidered in silver thread. With his diamond stickpin in the cravat, he’d be bang up to the mark—if he could just tie the blasted neckcloth.
Fingers suddenly more used to handling shovels and saws instead of snuffboxes fumbled with yard after yard of discarded linen, to Derek’s growing dismay. It was as if the earl’s hands couldn’t perform the functions logic demanded but emotion declined. He simply did not want to go to this ball. He did not want to pay court to the
local toast.
Miss Westcott would be everything charming, he was sure, dressed to the nines, looking every inch the well-bred daughter of a well-breeched marquis. She would curtsy gracefully and smile demurely, expressing polite interest in whatever topic he chose to pursue. At least she did not chatter or giggle. If one could judge the daughter from the mother, the diamond would be content to stay in the shadows lording it over a small society but deferring in all things to her husband. Like Lady Westcott, Felicia was trained to be an accepting, complacent wife. Give her a full stable and a full closet, a few cicisbei to pay her flowery compliments, and Miss Westcott would be content to stay in Wiltshire while he pursued his own interests in London. Kerry could not begin to imagine Lucy tolerating such an arrangement.
He wondered how she danced. Lucy, not Miss Westcott. The heiress indubitably waltzed well, but not divinely. That would be Lucy’s province. He recalled Lucy saying that she’d never been to a ball, but no matter. The way she glided around had to bespeak a grace unmatched by any London deb, no matter how practiced. Oh, how he wished he could be the one to lead her out for her first waltz.
Gads, he amended to himself, finally getting a perfect knot, how he’d like to hold her in his arms, period! “And that’s not all I’d like to do,” he said aloud, “so if you are reading my mind again, you may as well blush for something worthwhile.” “Oh, la,” said Derek, fluttering his eyelashes.
* * *
The grandeur of the assembly rooms did not surprise Kerry, not with a pirate paying the shot. After Almack’s austerity, this place seemed a veritable Xanadu, with flowers and festoons of ribbons.
The number and caliber of the guests was not surprising either. The well-dressed crowd being assisted from the expensive carriages and waiting on the receiving line could have passed for partygoers at Marlborough House. With little in the way of tonnish society unless one traveled to London, the landed and titled could not afford to be as high-nosed as the belle monde in town. A wealthy enough cit could buy his entree here, where he never could among the upper ten thousand.
The only surprise—nay, shock—at the evening’s onset was the purple sash across Gideon Flint’s ample chest. Atop the sash, which was atop a saffron coat, atop a puce waistcoat with cabbage roses imprinted on it, glittered a markedly recognizable bauble: the Order of the Knights of the Realm. The scapegrace smuggler had bought himself a knighthood! Speak of being more accepting of the lower ranks, everyone knew Prinny even-handedly distributed titles to anyone making a big enough contribution to the royal coffers.
So there the Earl of Stanford waited to shake the dastard’s hand, his ancient title not keeping him from point-non-plus, and Gideon Flint, gold tooth flashing in his florid face, was a knight!
Things got worse. Word trickled through the receiving line that the prince had awarded Flint the knighthood for his service to the Crown, not just his pocketbook. The wine dealer’s merchant ships—tidesmen, with no bark on them—had been carrying secret documents and couriers between France and Whitehall during the war. Gideon Flint was the espionage agent, and poor befuddled Uncle Nigel wallowed in France. That was beside the point, Kerry acknowledged to himself with no small amount of chagrin; Gideon Flint had done more for the war effort than the Somerfields ever had.
Unable to meet his mother’s gloating smile, Kerry swallowed his humiliation and a mouthful of crow. He held out his hand and offered congratulations to Sir Gideon.
“Thankee, thankee, my lord. And that’s Goldy to my friends. Sir Goldy. A word with you later, my boy, what?”
* * *
Goldy correctly opened the ball with the countess, the highest-ranking lady present. Kerry had the opening cotillion with Miss Westcott and asked her for the supper dance then also, as she was the wealthiest young lady present. The earl reasoned that Felicia’s stately beauty saved him from being an arrant fortune hunter. He would have asked the prettiest girl at the assembly to dance even if she was the dustman’s daughter, and he did appreciate her serene demeanor. What might be termed hauteur or arrogance or icy aloofness in Miss Westcott, he chose to call dignity. He would not pursue the prattling Prudlow pair if their grandmother left them each as rich as Croesus.
Which didn’t mean he didn’t dance with both the Prudlow girls, or perhaps the same one twice. His mother saw to that, in her self-conceived function as hostess for the ball, chivvying the bachelors out of their corners and onto the dance floor. The countess partnered the other Prudlow girl with Sidwell, who after meticulous research was deemed well enough connected, although through a cavalier branch, and whose wardrobe had to be augmented with Kerry’s castoffs. Sidwell stammered, Priscilla—or was it Patricia? Both girls wore white—filled in the conversational gaps with double-time drivel, and they finished the contradanse well content with each other. The secretary had one of the heiresses on his arm for the supper dance. Kerry wished him well.
Johnny did his part, making sure Aunt Clara was settled amid her shawls and cronies, then staying on the sidelines to chat up the chaperones. He sent a footman for a cold glass of champagne for a flushed Miss Westcott after she returned from a particularly strenuous Scottish reel, then sat out the next dance with her while she recovered her breath. He even good-naturedly offered to try a one-handed waltz with her, which Kerry was pleased to see the beauty was not too proud to accept. That awkward set with Johnny improved Kerry’s opinion of the incomparable far more than her graceful movements during the quadrille with him before supper ever could.
The earl purposefully seated Felicia at a small table, away from his family but unavoidably under the watchful eye of hers. He wanted to get to know her better. They spoke of the hunt and horses, mutual friends in London, the last plays they’d seen, and whether country life was preferable to city life. It was the same conversation Kerry’d had with innumerable females; he knew her no better after the raspberry ices than before the lobster patties.
Or perhaps he knew all there was to know? She liked parties but she loved to ride, preferred theater to opera, and did not, naturally, associate with the older, faster crowd he called friends.
No matter. He knew all he needed to know. She was beautiful, not a total widgeon, and rich. She wouldn’t curdle his cream at the breakfast table, she wouldn’t interfere with his pleasures, and she’d relieve his mind and pocketbook of a great many pressures. He asked for the next waltz, signifying his interest by requesting a third dance together; she accepted, indicating her receptivity to his suit. That was that.
As he rose to escort Miss Westcott back to the ballroom, Kerry felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Care to step outside and blow a cloud, my lord?” Mr. Flint, Sir Goldy, asked, the countess at his side.
“No, thank you, sir. I am sorry, but I no longer smoke.”
“Don’t be a peagoose,” Kerry’s fond parent hissed in his ear. “Go on outside.”
“I am promised to Miss Westcott for this coming set.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get young Norris to sit it out with her.”
* * *
So instead of holding a warm and lovely perfumed woman in his arms, Kerry found himself out on the cold balcony, inhaling the noxious smoke from Goldy Flint’s fat cigar. “I daresay the rubies could wait for a more comfortable setting,” the earl commented, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “You must know I haven’t the blunt for them anyway.”
“Who’s talking about the rubies?” Goldy asked as he spat out the end of his cigar. “I haven’t called in the chits, have I? Mightn’t be a gentleman in your sense of the word, but I’ve never dunned a lady yet.” He took a long pull at the cigar and spat out more tobacco. “And I know you ain’t got a feather to fly with; I had you investigated while I was in London.”
“Why, of all the—”
“Wanted to know what kind of basket-scrambler you were before I took you on as stepson.”
“—Presumpt—Stepson?”
“Aye. Didn’t want any bailiffs at
my door, or any jumped-up lordling bleeding me dry with begging his mama for handouts.” Before Kerry could protest that outrageous affront, Flint was going on: “I saw as how you got yourself square with the duns, paid off your gambling debts, too, and haven’t been back at the tables or the track since. And word is you are trying to make a go of the Abbey. I admire that in a man. Way I see it, you got off to a bad start. Bad influence and all.” He held up a pudgy, be-ringed hand. “Don’t mean to speak ill of the dead or any of that. And you’re a man growed, not a boy, so it ain’t for me to say how you should live your life. But you seem on the right track now, so I am prepared to make your fine mother an offer. With your permission, of course.”
“I am, ah…” Kerry couldn’t put a description to what he was feeling. Flabbergasted? Amused? Insulted? Flint could have knocked him over with a feather, Kerry was in such a swivet. The only other question he had was whether his stiff-rumped mother would accept this diamond in the rough, and on the fingers, pinned through the neckcloth, hanging from watchfobs, at that badge of honor. The rogue was a knight now! That wasn’t quite an earl or a baron, but it was a start! And he could certainly keep the countess in the style to which she believed herself entitled.
“I wish you luck, Sir Goldy.” Kerry hoped the other man never knew how much. “But you don’t need my permission. The countess is her own woman. She will do what she wants.” She always has, he almost warned.
“Still, I want this done all shipshape and Bristol fashion. Want your blessing on the match at least.”
Kerry was able to assure Goldy of his approval. Anyone who’d take that expensive, querulous burden off his hands had the earl’s wholehearted support. “And I’ll be happy to put in a good word for you.”
“Excellent, excellent. I’m prepared to come down heavy with the settlement, too, Stanford, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
A settlement? For bringing peace and prosperity to his household? “I don’t expect any settlement, sir. Mother’s annuity stops with her remarriage”—and blessedly returns to the estate, but he didn’t say that—“nor will she have a dowry, of course.”
An Angel for the Earl Page 15