“Indeed, you do.”
When she unwrapped the parcel, he set down both his legs and spread his wings. She whisked the twine into the embroidered reticule hanging from her wrist, out of sight.
“Oh, no. You stay over there.”
He froze with his wings half-spread and strained his neck, as if to see where she’d put the string. “What’s over there?”
“You are,” she told him with a smirk.
The witticism was lost on him.
The paper crinkled as she opened it, speaking to her pet at the same time. “You can’t have the twine, my dear. You might swallow it and choke. Even if you don’t, it will feel exceedingly odd coming out your other end.”
Pickle squawked, indignant. “How do you know?”
“I’m extrapolating, based on the assumption that you won’t be able to digest it properly.” She shook her head. Sometimes, he sounded as intelligent as a human.
“Meg ate the cackling cheat!”
Other times, he said things like that. Though Phil would be interested to know which of Meg’s brothers had taught Pickle that particular phrase.
A huff sounded at the doorway. When Phil turned her head, her hands still on the parcel, she found Meg glaring at the parrot. Meagan O’Neill, one of the many O’Neills employed by the St. Gobain family, had been with the family ever since they had arrived in London. Granted, then she had been far too young to work and had been Jared’s playmate instead, as they were closer in age. The moment she’d grown old enough to do steady work, she’d latched onto Phil. When Phil had made her bows as a marriageable young woman, she had begged Meg to take up the position of her lady’s maid despite the fact that she was four years older than Meg. She’d never regretted the decision. Whether she needed a hairdresser or a confidante, Meg was always close at hand.
After brushing her pale brown hair away from her heavily-freckled cheek, Meg jabbed her finger at the bird. The other hand scrunched around a pair of silk, white gloves. “If I cared to eat you, I’d take you down to mam first and have her roast you. Then you wouldn’t be singing no song, I’d say.”
Pickle whistled, innocent-looking. When he unfolded his wings, looking like he might take flight, Meg flinched and shuffled from the doorway into the corner, beside the work table. Pickle cackled.
“You did no one any favors when you brought that blighted bird home with you.” Meg’s voice was weak, her freckles stark against her milk-pale skin.
Phil shrugged. Meg constantly lobbied for her to get rid of the parrot, but Pickle amused her. And despite his occasional threats, he never bit or landed on Meg. Though the latter might be due to the fact that whenever he took to the air, Meg hid beneath the nearest table. She was only brave from across the room.
As Phil lifted the goggles from the paper, she didn’t find a prism beneath. She set the one in her hand down on the rough wooden work table. “Have you seen another bit of glass like this? I’m sure I put it in my jacket when I left the Society meeting the other night.”
Sidling closer, Meg didn’t take her eyes off the parrot. Even her irises were pale, to match the rest of her. A light, icy blue, much darker than Phil’s storm-cloud-blue eyes. Meg licked her lips before she answered the inquiry.
“You only had the one in there. I set it on your writing desk when I cleaned the tailcoat.”
Phil sighed. “That’s where I found this one. Maybe I took it out and put it on the work table for some reason?”
Muttering under her breath, she systematically searched the table from end to end. Meg ventured out of the corner, hovering at Phil’s elbow as she alternately tried to convince Phil to give up the venture and argued with the parrot. Phil tuned the pair of them out. When she reached the end of the table only to come up empty handed, she started along the shelves.
Beside her, Meg wrung the gloves in her hands. “I do not smell like pickles, you overgrown canary!”
Phil fought the urge to grin. She pressed her lips together until she had herself under control. Pickle loosed a rude whistle.
“You know pickle is his favorite word.”
Meg made a face. It scrunched her freckles together until they looked twice as big. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have named him that.”
Absently, Phil answered, “It’s a bit too late to undo it, now.”
She cut a beeline across the room, heading for another shelving unit. Meg skirted the edge, giving the perch and parrot a wide berth.
As her friend rejoined her, Phil added, “Besides, he was in a pickle when I met him, thanks to that horrid old hag. The word seemed to amuse him.”
“It still does,” Meg grumbled.
No prisms caught Phil’s eye. She sighed. Where had she put it? She had one, so the other had to be around here somewhere.
Meg caught her arm as she turned away. “Maybe now isn’t the best time to search. In fact, you should put on some gloves, I think.” She held up the pair in her hand. “And I’ll fix your hair.”
“My hair is fine.”
Meg raised her pale eyebrows. “It’s falling free of your pins again.”
“So? Let it fall. In fact, let’s take it out.”
The young woman rolled her eyes. “I doubt your guests would appreciate your unkempt appearance.”
Phil frowned. “What guests?”
“You forgot that it’s Monday, didn’t you?”
Phil pressed her lips together.
Meg sighed. “The ball?”
“Hell and damnation!” Phil snatched the gloves from her hand and tugged them on.
Pickle reacted to her vehemence, flapping his wings with a vigorous thwap-thwap-thwap as he clutched his perch and repeated the expletive.
Phil prayed for patience. “You shouldn’t say that, my dear. It’s rude.”
“Hell and damnation!”
Wonderful. Now he would be repeating it all the night through and her guests would think her savage.
With a sigh, she turned her back to Meg, who was an inch or two taller than her. With a brisk, businesslike touch, Meg coiled the tendrils of Phil’s auburn hair escaping the coif and pinned them in place. The moment she finished, Phil turned toward the door.
“Have the guests started to arrive?”
“About half an hour ago.” Meg gave Phil a pointed look. “I’ve been searching for you ever since. I should have known to look in the invention room.”
Phil patted her shoulder, the signal for Pickle to fly over. The moment he launched from his perch, Meg squeaked and ducked into the corridor.
“Don’t let him—”
Pickle’s wing buffeted Phil’s coif as he landed on her left shoulder. His claws dug into the thin silk and her flesh beneath. Stifling a wince, she tapped his foot to tell him to ease up. As he settled his wings into a half-folded position for balance, he loosened his clutch on her.
Meg sighed. “That dress cost a fortune. If he soils it…”
Phil shut the door to the invention room. Pickle ran his beak lightly over the shell of her ear, tasting the curve with his tongue. When he reached where the top fused with her skull, he relinquished the exploration and butted her cheek with his beak instead.
“Kiss, kiss.”
As requested, she gave him a peck on the beak.
Meg scowled. “You two deserve each other.”
Phil tickled the parrot’s chest as she grinned. “I certainly think so.”
The maid rolled her eyes. “If you need my help after he ruins your hair or your dress, I’ll be in the kitchen playing loo.”
Phil shrugged with the shoulder not currently weighed down by her pet. “You know I don’t much care about my appearance.”
“You might decide otherwise after you meet the guests. You have a duke in attendance tonight.”
Phil’s stomach lurched. She stopped walking as her knees turned weak. Surely Meg didn’t mean…
No. The Duke of Tenwick had never attended one of her balls before. He couldn’t have connected her to the m
an he’d met at the club, either. She hadn’t given him her name. No, it had to be someone else.
“Are you all right?”
Phil didn’t like the worried look on Meg’s face. She could be worse than a mother bear, given the smallest semblance of cause. Phil feigned a smile.
“I’m fine. Have fun playing loo. Don’t let your brothers cheat you out of your wages this time. If you do, I might as well start paying them instead of you.”
Shaking her head, Meg turned on her heel and strode in the opposite direction. She muttered something under her breath that sounded uncomfortably close to, “Why couldn’t I have chosen a normal mistress who cared more for ribbons and embroidery than beastly birds and machines?”
I inherited you. So there.
The spiteful words didn’t come close to the truth. The O’Neill family was as loyal to Phil as she was to them. She would never turn them out. In fact, she loved them as though they were her own family, even though it wasn’t quite true.
The only family she had was Jared.
Pickle squawked in her ear as he dove to nibble on her earring.
And Pickle, too, of course.
She batted him away with her fingers. “Don’t chew on that. I have to look presentable tonight, and I won’t if you pop the gem out of the setting.”
The parrot stopped his chewing. Leaning very close to her ear, he bumped her with his beak and whispered, “Pickle.”
Chuckling, Phil strolled down the corridor. The scattered candelabra lit this portion of the townhouse, which was destined to remain unoccupied for the duration of the evening. Save, of course, for those she accompanied up to her invention room. As she passed by the window, she saw that the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon. The sky was a grayish purple, deepening to inky black overhead as the stars began to wink into being.
As she reached the bannister on the staircase, the babble from below rose upward with a swell and burst like the bubbles in a champagne glass. She descended into the corridor. Although the scattered guests moved to and from the sitting room, where card tables had been set up, the bulk of them were contained behind the open double doors leading to the ballroom. Unlike many in London, Phil’s townhouse was nearly as big as some ancestral mansions. Four years past when the house had fallen to her as Jared’s regent, she had expanded from the original structure, sacrificing the garden out back in order to make room for the ballroom.
The ballroom was a vast rectangular room with wide, costly windows and a vaulting ceiling. Several chandeliers twinkled from the heights, ringing a larger one in the center. The floor was a marble mosaic, bewitching to the eye. Porcelain pots from China decorated the area between neoclassical pillars on the far end of the room. On one side was a line of chairs, for wallflowers, chaperones, and the infirm; on the other, the orchestra sat on a raised dais as they prepared to play.
This early in the evening, the dance floor was vacant, the dozen or two guests who had arrived early chattering around the edges of the floor in little knots. As Phil paused in the doorway, her appearance caused a stir. Two women in their sixties, one tall and thin with a chemisette filling in her neckline to the chin and the other short and plump with a daring cut to her dress and narrowed eyes, twittered to one another. The first, who Phil recognized as Mrs. Biddleford, a notorious gabble-grinder, had to bend nearly double to press her head near her companion, Miss Maize. They squawked nearly as adamantly as Pickle, who reared his head to transfix them with a pugnacious look in his eye.
“Pudding house.”
This, to him, was a grievous insult.
Raising her chin, Phil ignored the busybodies. Let them say what they would. She had only invited them because of Mrs. Biddleford’s connection to the esteemed Lord Strickland, the son of Biddleford’s older sister.
Several others on the guest list tonight had been invited simply because not to do so would be a grievous insult. Phil didn’t care to embroil herself in ton politics; she only cared for the revenue opened by the deep pockets of her patrons. Although she craned her neck, she didn’t spot anyone she had invited with an aim of showing one of her inventions. In fact, this early she didn’t spot any of the richer peers. Those who typically showed up at this early hour were those with the most to gain from rubbing shoulders with the titled peers, along with desperate matchmaking mamas. In fact, Jared was ensconced right now with a woman in a golden dress, and he didn’t look happy about it. The back of her brunette head was to Phil.
Pickle whistled provocatively, gaining the attention of several nearby guests. Phil smiled at them, offering a word of greeting to counteract Pickle’s name-calling as she strolled around the perimeter of the ballroom. Where was this duke Meg had announced? Phil made it a point to familiarize herself with the physical appearance of all the highest peers in the country, especially the ones called eccentrics. As she toured the room, her rapid pulse slowed. He wasn’t here—not the Duke of Tenwick or any other duke. Meg must have been mistaken.
“What a charming bird.”
Phil turned with a smile at the young woman’s voice. She was about seventeen, taller than Phil and not as round in the hip and breast. Her inky black hair was coiled atop her head and threaded with pearls that looked real to Phil’s inexpert gaze. A double string of pearls lined the young woman’s throat, following the lace-edged bodice of an embroidered muslin dress over a creamy underdress—an appropriately pale color for a debutante. Phil, who had no designs on marrying, didn’t give a fig’s end whether or not she conformed to the fashion standards of the ton. Let the gabble-grinders call her long in the tooth if they wanted.
Without a care for her pristine, white silk gloves, the young woman lifted her hand to stroke Pickle’s feathers. She giggled when he gently took her index finger between his beak and ran his tongue along the length.
“It tickles.” Her cheeks turned rosy. Her deep brown eyes twinkled.
Phil couldn’t help but smile. Anyone charmed by her bird was a good person, in her books. “He’s very gentle, though he likes to pretend to be a bully sometimes.”
As if to prove her point, Pickle released the young woman’s hand and said, “Meg ate the pickle!”
The girl laughed, clapping her hand over her mouth. “Who’s Meg?”
“My maid. She’s a bit afraid of him.”
“Who could be?” The young woman stroked Pickle’s chest. “Does he help you with your inventions?” Several expressions crossed her face, shock and chagrin among them, before she gushed, “Forgive me, that was terribly forward of me. It’s just that I’ve heard you are an inventor. I find it fascinating. I’m Lucy, by the way.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Lucy. Call me Phil.” Normally, Phil wouldn’t be so intimate with a woman she’d just met, but it would feel odd being called ‘Miss St. Gobain’ by a woman whose surname she didn’t know.
Despite Lucy's obvious innocence, a flush of caution swept through Phil. How had Lucy known she was an inventor? Phil liked to keep knowledge of her hobby restricted to certain clientele that could afford to purchase what she created, but the excited gleam in Lucy’s eye made it difficult not to feel at ease around her. Not to mention that if the pearls she was practically enshrouded in were, indeed, real, then the girl had money. Maybe she would be interested in purchasing something.
Beaming, Lucy asked, “Do you find it difficult, being a woman inventor?”
“It can be challenging at times. Men like to think they are the masters at everything, including the ability to generate ideas.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “I have four older brothers. I know exactly what you mean. I’m a writer and they don’t understand my desire to research.”
Phil smiled. “Yes. Well. I’m sure they mean well.” Not that she knew any such thing, but it seemed like the proper thing to say.
Lucy shrugged. “Yes, I suppose they do. Actually, it’s wonderful that we’ve met.” Lucy reached out, almost as if she meant to take Phil’s arm, but Pickle’s presence on Phil’
s shoulder barred her from doing so. After a moment’s hesitation, she let her hand fall and leaned closer instead. “I have so many questions I’d like to ask you. Would you mind if I called on you some time?”
“Not at all.” In that, at least, Phil could be genuine. “If you come sometime in the morning or afternoon, I’ll show you a few of my inventions.”
“Smashing!” Lucy’s wide smile dazzled. “The heroine of my latest book was going to be a swashbuckling princess, but now I’m thinking it might be best for her to do some inventing. Perhaps she creates her own guns.”
Phil blinked twice before she found the words to answer. “She sounds like…a very capable woman.” An eccentric woman, to be sure. Being an eccentric herself, Phil could appreciate that.
Smugly, Lucy answered, “All the best women are.”
I agree. Phil pressed her lips together, though a smile teased at the corners of her mouth.
With unbridled enthusiasm, Lucy asked, “Have you ever created a gun, Phil?”
“I have not.”
“A pity. Perhaps you ought to try.”
If you have the money to invest, I’d be willing to design anything you like. Phil didn’t dare venture the phrase aloud, not with an acquaintance she’d met five minutes ago. Although her penchant for inventing was well known, the fact that she sold her creations was a well-kept secret. If widely known, she—and her brother’s social statuses would be reduced, much the way the rich men of industry were treated. The indolent ton preferred to embrace those who appeared, on the surface at least, to be every bit as unambitious.
“Have you met my brothers?”
Phil’s head spun at the abrupt change in topic. “No, I have not. I hope you don’t mean to ask me to shoot one of them.”
Lucy laughed, a loud, unrestrained sound. “No, of course not.” She half-turned away. “Come with me, and I’ll introduce you. I left them with Mother.”
The young woman left Phil with no choice as she turned her back and sashayed across the room. Phil quickened her step to follow. They approached a group in the corner, consisting of a woman near the age of fifty with chestnut hair threaded through with gray, wearing a ravishing violet dress, and two impossibly tall, broad-shouldered men with black hair who had their backs turned. Lifting her skirt above her ankles with one hand and waving her other through the air, Lucy called, “Giddy!”
Deceiving The Duke (Scandals and Spies Book 2) Page 3