Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip

by Maggie Fenton

  She sighed and followed at what she hoped was a much more dignified gait, wondering just how much of a disaster this was going to be.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IN WHICH THE VISCOUNT REVEALS HIS POETIC PROWESS . . . SORT OF

  JUST WHEN MARLOWE thought he’d arrived back in London unscathed, he discovered Dr. Lucas lurking about the townhouse, no doubt waiting to scold him. This was not the happy homecoming he’d imagined. One moment, his housekeeper, Mrs. Chips, was giving Marlowe her usual taciturn greeting, and the next, the vision of salt-and-pepper whiskers and a judgmental frown was assaulting his eyeballs from the doorway to his library. He ducked behind a corner, out of the doctor’s view, and glared down at Mrs. Chips.

  She was, as usual, totally unruffled by his pique, from the top of her graying head to the tip of a nose that was as sharp edged and perpetually unimpressed with the world as the rest of her.

  “He’s been here since dawn, Your Lordship,” she said in the same tone of voice she’d used when mold had once had the effrontery to invade her pantry. “It seems the duke told him of your trip.”

  “That traitor,” he muttered. Montford, the meddler, had never been able to keep his gob shut when Marlowe needed him to.

  And for some misplaced reason, Montford had a great deal of faith in the medical profession. But then again, Monty had not had the dubious honor of witnessing the British Army’s Medical Services at work during wartime. Even men with flesh wounds had rarely survived their stay in the medical tents on the Peninsula.

  Marlowe had to grudgingly admit that Dr. Lucas was a cut above the rest in his profession, though. He’d yet to bring out the leeches.

  Nothing would ever convince Marlowe that leeches had any place in a sickroom.

  The sound of the twins clattering in the front door, followed by a suspicious crash and Miss Jones’s shriek, rose up behind him. Mrs. Chips’s left eye twitched, as it always did when the twins broke something, and Marlowe tried to hide his amusement, lest the woman finally decide she’d had enough and retire to Cornwall, as she’d often threatened.

  He had to give old Chippers credit for holding on as long as she had. Marlowe had always had trouble retaining servants, and indeed, most of the current staff had fled en masse during his illness and the twins’ reign of terror. Yet Mrs. Chips had soldiered on as she always had. He suspected she had a soft spot for the twins underneath that India rubber exterior—deep, deep underneath. For as much as the twins made Mrs. Chips’s left eye twitch, they also tended on occasion to elicit a brief twinge of the lips that was a very close approximation to what someone might call a smile. Maybe. In the right light.

  It was the same twinge Marlowe remembered from his own childhood, when Mrs. Chips had been employed in the earl’s household. He and Elaine had often been the recipients of that same look. Mrs. Chips had always been too smart, though, to have been taken in by Evander’s false charms or the earl’s haughty posturing, which was the reason Marlowe had poached her for his own household after the twins were born.

  Well, not the only reason. He’d enjoyed the look on his father’s face when he’d learned of his best servant’s defection. He suspected Mrs. Chips had enjoyed it too. Her contempt for the earl nearly matched Marlowe’s own.

  Mrs. Chips had been with him ever since, and the only explanation for that had to be a reluctant sentiment on her part. He didn’t dare accuse her of such a thing to her face, however, since she’d have the kitchens serve him nothing but pea soup and mutton for a week, or claim the laundresses had “misplaced” all of his favorite banyans. She tended to take out her grievances on the household, and in that she was rather like the twins. Sometimes he wondered if Mrs. Chips had taught his daughters everything they knew about sabotage. Which was a great deal.

  Something else shattered in the hallway behind him. Mrs. Chips’s eyebrow twitched again.

  “I hope that was nothing important,” he murmured.

  “It was a copy. They broke the original last year.”

  Ouch. “Well, don’t despair, Chippers, I’ve brought a governess with me.”

  “It sounds like she has everything well in hand,” Mrs. Chips said, deadpan, after another shriek from Miss Jones rent the air. Then with a heavy sigh and a final twitch, she whisked her way down the hall to defend the household honor, leaving Marlowe to face the firing squad alone.

  Dr. Lucas was one of those rare people who could make Marlowe, a man with very little shame left, feel like a naughty infant with a single look. Marlowe blamed it on the doctor’s lethal combination of lightning-blue eyes and facial hair: one mesmerized his patients, while the other made him seem like he knew what he was doing. In Lucas’s case, that was more or less true (e.g. the lack of leeches in his medical bag, healing more patients than he killed, etcetera, etcetera). Though Dr. Lucas looked as if he wanted to stick Marlowe with a hundred leeches at the present moment.

  Marlowe pretended not to notice the doctor’s disapproving gaze as he strode briskly into the library, trying to project an aura of good health. It failed spectacularly.

  “A week ago, you were on your deathbed, Lord Marlowe,” Lucas chided. “Where you’ll be again if you continue such foolhardy behavior. Your definition of convalescence leaves much to be desired.” Then the wily bugger managed to maneuver himself close enough to feel Marlowe’s brow and take his pulse before he could even attempt to evade his clutches.

  Marlowe glared him off and retreated to the sideboard. He poured the doctor a dram of the Scotch whisky but stayed his hand before he poured himself the same. Excessive drinking had led him into his present fix, and he’d be damned if he let his daughters down again. Tea sounded like a much better idea, and he’d have Chippers fetch some for him just as soon as she rescued the household from the twins’ incursion.

  Tea. His illness had transformed him into his Great-Aunt Agnes.

  The doctor didn’t turn away the whisky, however, as the man was clearly not a fool. He threw it back in one go with barely a grimace, which was rather impressive for stodgy old Whiskers (though Marlowe suspected that underneath all of that facial hair the man was not nearly as old as he seemed).

  “You’ve a fever yet. I’d order you back to your chambers if I thought you’d actually go,” the doctor said in a much more agreeable tone now that he’d had a fortifying dram.

  Marlowe waved a hand in surrender. “I’ll go. I’m pigheaded, not an idiot. But my errand couldn’t wait. You’ll just have to patch up what’s left of me.”

  Lucas looked as suspicious of his easy acquiescence as he was surprised. Marlowe hadn’t been this agreeable since he’d been unconscious, which was doubtless a shock to the doctor’s system. Now that his daughters were safe, however, Marlowe was feeling magnanimous.

  And feverish. Lucas was right about that, unfortunately.

  A rap sounded on the door, and Miss Jones poked her head around the edge. She looked even worse than she had in the ditch—unsurprising, since they’d driven straight through to London without stopping for anything other than the twins’ distressingly small bladders. Her sable hair was almost entirely fallen from its moorings, and her gray redingote—hideous to begin with—was brown now. It creaked when she moved, little flecks of dried mud marking her progress across the parquet. She looked half-vexed and half-dazed, as she had for most of the journey, as if she still couldn’t believe she’d agreed to their arrangement.

  He couldn’t either, for he’d not made things easy for the woman, but he wasn’t vexed about the outcome at all. There was something about Miss Jones that was absolutely riveting underneath the mud and frump and righteous indignation, and he planned on figuring out what it was.

  He must have been staring at her too long, for she was beginning to look impatient. “My lord? Your housekeeper has disappeared with the twins, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed . . .”

  “Minerva?” Dr. Lucas interjected, sounding shocked.

  Miss Jones’s eyes widened almost comically at t
he doctor. “Inigo?” she breathed as the doctor came forward and kissed her knuckles. Her cheeks flushed in a much too charming manner at Lucas’s gallantry.

  Well, this was an unexpected development.

  Marlowe cleared his throat, but they ignored him completely.

  “What are you doing here?” Miss Jones demanded of the doctor, who was now smiling in delight. Marlowe hadn’t seen Lucas look so pleased with himself since the doctor’s short-lived courtship of the Marchioness of Manwaring a few years back.

  “I’m here for my patient,” the doctor said, indicating Marlowe with a rather dismissive gesture, all of his attention now focused on the muddy schoolmarm. “What are you doing here?”

  Miss Jones’s blushes faded quickly, and she grimaced, obviously not relishing having to recount the events of the past few days.

  Marlowe cleared his throat again, louder this time. The pair jumped apart as if they just remembered there was a real, sentient being in the room with them. “You know each other?”

  “Miss Jones is a close family friend,” Lucas said, giving Miss Jones another indulgent grin.

  “A friend?” Marlowe said. Did he sound disgruntled? Judgmental? He must have, for Miss Jones’s eyebrows slanted at him warningly.

  “I was to marry Dr. Lucas’s brother, but he died in the war,” she said in a manner that dared him to put one foot out of line about that.

  That took all of the wind out of his sails, though he was still not quite sure where all the wind had come from in the first place.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he grumbled.

  “Thank you, but it was long ago,” she grumbled back, turning her glare to the parquet at her feet as if embarrassed by his sympathy.

  “But I don’t understand why you’re here, Minerva,” the doctor pressed, apparently uninterested in enlightening Marlowe any further on the subject of their acquaintance. “The last time I heard from you, you said you were quite content in your new position.”

  “I was,” Miss Jones began, too carefully, and Marlowe had to cough at this glaring bouncer, for there was no way on earth anyone with a soul could have been content at West Barming School for Recalcitrant Young Ladies.

  Miss Jones flashed him a warning look, as if she could read his mind. “But the viscount has offered me a position as governess to his daughters, and I have accepted it.”

  That recounting rather left out all of the interesting bits, but Miss Jones seemed determined to give the doctor as close to a Banbury tale as she could.

  Lucas, who, as the family sawbones, had both met the twins and become quite familiar with the long laundry list of their misdeeds over the years, valiantly managed to keep his expression mostly blank. He was too much a gentleman to express his true opinion of the twins in front of their own father, but the judgment was nevertheless apparent in the pursed lips and slightly alarmed widening of his eyes. The doctor clearly thought Miss Jones had lost her mind.

  “Governess? Are you sure . . .” he began.

  “Absolutely,” Miss Jones lied once more with a grin that was too wide to be at all believable. “I shall enjoy being back in London, and the twins are . . .” She faltered a little, God bless her, and Marlowe supposed he should be indignant that Miss Jones couldn’t manage at least one halfway positive adjective to describe his girls. She was a grammar teacher and a Misstopher, for heaven’s sake. She couldn’t be lacking in vocabulary or imagination.

  “Well, anything’s better than West Barming, honestly,” Miss Jones finished briskly. And she wasn’t wrong about that.

  Lucas wilted. “You should have told me if you were unhappy, my dear Minerva. You know my offer still stands. I wish you would consider it instead of . . .” He gave Marlowe a sidelong look that was anything but subtle.

  Marlowe gave the doctor his most shameless grin. He was beginning to regret offering the doctor that whisky.

  Miss Jones’s cheeks went crimson at the doctor’s cryptic words, which was interesting. He wondered what the doctor’s offer could possibly have been to warrant such a reaction. “Thank you for your concern, Inigo. But you had my answer years ago, and it hasn’t changed.”

  “Arthur would have wanted . . .”

  “I doubt that very much, and as I’ve said, it only matters what you and I want,” Miss Jones cut in, sounding a bit weary, as if the two of them had had this conversation many times before.

  “Of course,” the doctor said, though he sounded like he was merely humoring her.

  Miss Jones obviously thought the same, for her jaw clenched and a vein pulsed in her temple. Marlowe braced himself for the explosion, for he already knew Miss Jones’s tells when her temper was stretched to the breaking point. That poor frock of hers had met as violent an end as any he’d ever seen.

  But the fight just drained straight out of her, and she gave the doctor an affectionate smile.

  Soon after, the doctor took his leave, and Marlowe found himself alone in the library with Miss Jones. He decided to poke at her to see what happened.

  “The two of you seem quite close,” he observed. “Inigo, was it?”

  She scowled at him. “If you must know,” she said in a tone that made it clear he mustn’t, “Inigo asked me to marry him.”

  Well, that was unexpectedly blunt. And all of a sudden, his stomach felt very sour. Something else clenched tight in his chest—something that couldn’t possibly be jealousy.

  Ha! That would be ridiculous, since he’d known Miss Jones for barely a day.

  “But of course I couldn’t accept,” she continued.

  “Of course,” he murmured. “Though it seems he is very agreeable with the idea.”

  Her look made it clear how very little business it was of his. “He is a dear friend,” she said insistently. “Though how my matrimonial prospects are of your concern at all is unclear to me.”

  “My concern is that my children’s governess will abscond for greener pastures at the first opportunity. And after all the trouble I’ve gone through to hire you.”

  Her brow rose in disbelief. “Trouble you’ve gone through?”

  “You are very difficult to reason with, Miss Jones.”

  The disbelief transformed into angry incredulity, her pale cheeks flushing, her whole small body vibrating with barely contained rage, as if she were one step away from attacking him.

  He wasn’t sure whether to feel worried or flattered, since he seemed the only one so far capable of inciting Miss Jones to fisticuffs. But he was certainly entertained.

  “And you . . . you . . .” she began, but then broke off, her attention caught by something beyond him. Her brow furrowed at first, then her whole face seemed to go slack with astonishment. She turned in a circle, gazing around the room, looking astounded.

  “What is it?” he demanded, alarmed by her sudden shift in behavior.

  “Your . . . this . . . I had not noticed until now,” she murmured, walking toward one of the nearest shelves with a covetous look.

  “Noticed what?”

  “Your library,” she said. “I’ve never seen one quite so large.”

  He manfully restrained himself from pointing out the double meaning in her words. It was just too easy. And inappropriate, of course.

  Instead, he followed her lead and surveyed his library. It was rather splendid. He’d bought the townhouse because of the massive room. The last owner had used it to display his taxidermy collection (Marlowe still shuddered every time he remembered walking into that), but with a little work, Marlowe had turned it into a repository for his books. It was nothing compared to the size of many country house libraries, but it was big enough, especially for London living.

  He followed her stunned gaze to the second level, reached by a winding, wrought iron staircase, and heard her gasp, “It’s two levels!”

  It was indeed, and her enthusiasm for his library was doing funny things to his heart. Either that, or his fever was worsening.

  “I’ve got poetry—Essex and the li
ke—somewhere around here,” he said, gesturing vaguely across the room, though he knew very well his very extensive poetry section was to Miss Jones’s immediate right.

  Her brow furrowed with disbelief. “You don’t even . . . ?” she spluttered. “Do you even read any of these books?”

  How to reply to that. “Er . . .”

  His hesitation seemed to confirm her worst suspicion. “How could you have all of these books and not . . .?” It appeared from the horrified look she was giving him that he might have broken her brain box just a little bit.

  He attempted a reassuring grin while simultaneously fighting down what Monty would doubtless have called an inappropriate amount of glee over his governess’s discomfiture. From the way her eyebrows rose nearly clear off her face, his attempt was less than successful. It was probably all the teeth. Even his last mistress had asked that he refrain from smiling while in her company, citing his resemblance to a murderous hyena—and he’d paid her to be nice to him.

  He scaled it back, though her eyebrows remained aloft. “Oh, no, Miss Jones, I like words well enough.”

  “Words?” Oh, the scorn she managed to breathe into that single word was inspiring.

  “A bit of verse. Poetry and the like.”

  “Poetry?”

  She was very good at repetition, which he supposed was a good quality for a teacher to have. Lord knew the legion of tutors and professors who’d plagued his formative years had been very good at putting him through his paces when they weren’t rapping his knuckles . . . or caning his posterior.

  “Poetry,” he repeated. “You know, limericks and a bit of bawdy verse here and there.”

  “Limericks.”

  He cocked his own eyebrows to match her own. “Limericks, as in ‘There was a young fellow from Kent / Whose anatomy was very bent . . .’”

  “Yes, yes, I know what a limerick is. Thank you,” she interjected primly, her eyebrows finally dropping into a fearsome scowl.