Miss Treadwell's Talent

by Barbara Metzger

  “There better be some wits in the marriage, Frederick,” came the deceased dowager’s advice, “else you’ll lose your way on the honeymoon and never get home.”

  “You better put him on a leash, else he’ll never find his way to the church!”

  Furious that the insufferable Ideal was determined to think the worst of her, Maylene snapped back, “I’ll make sure his driver knows the direction.”

  Chapter Six

  So they were out to snabble the vacant-headed viscount. The jade had as much as admitted it. Good, Hyatt thought, she’d be bored within a month of the wedding. Nay, a week, then an adventuress like Miss Treadwell would be ready for a real adventure, and a real man. Hyatt thought he might like to be that man. At least the chit had spirit and sense, two things that would be wasted on Shimpton. Socrates took out his quizzing glass to see what else would be wasted on the paper-skulled peer.

  Why, of all the rude, revolting affectations, Maylene decided, pulling the shawl closer around her shoulders so no bare skin showed above her gown’s low neckline, this had to be the worst! Of course she never realized that, by pulling the woolen wrap closer, she outlined her figure more revealingly. Lord Hyatt noticed, then nodded a connoisseur’s approval of her small but shapely bosom. Lady Tremont and Max noticed, and finished their communication with the viscount with: “And don’t be getting any notions to play fast and loose with some innocent gel, sonny. It’s marriage or nothing.”

  Hyatt slipped the looking glass back into his pocket. Lud, the baroness couldn’t read minds, could she?

  Hoping that Lord Hyatt could not see her red cheeks in the dimly lighted room, Maylene prayed that her mother would move on to the next petitioner, Lord Patterson. At least Mama was not trying to marry her off to the myopic, three-score peer, nor needing to warn him off. Patterson had eyes for nothing but the portrait of his little Toby that lay on his lap, if he could see it at that distance.

  Lady Tremont took a sip of water from the glass in front of her while Lady Crowley patted Shimpton’s trembling hand and loudly whispered, “I like your neckcloth, Frederick, no matter what the old witch—That is, no matter which style your dear mother might have preferred.”

  Campbell cleared his throat to gain everyone’s attention. Then he stamped his foot. “Leg cramp, don’t you know.”

  Maylene knew that was the signal for his nephews in the next room to get ready. Lady Tremont nodded and asked if Max was not too tired for a few more questions. “For Lord Patterson has come back three times, dear, hoping for word of his precious Toby. Have you seen Toby, Max?”

  A scrabbling sound came from the next room, and Lady Tremont’s voice grew stronger, to cover the noise. “You have? Not, not in the beyond, I pray, Max, for poor Lord Patterson would be quite bereft without his little Toby.”

  “What’s he saying, ma’am?” Patterson cried. “Never tell me Toby is gone aloft.”

  “You’ve found him for us?” Lady Tremont said in a higher pitch, giving an excited squeal. “What’s that, Max? You are speaking so fast, and there is so much yip-yap that I cannot make out… Oh, there was an accident, you say? A runaway carriage? Oh, dear!”

  “That’s what I was afraid of!” Patterson wailed. Sir Cedric’s wife was weeping, and even Aunt Regina was squeezing out a few fake tears.

  “But he didn’t die? He lay at death’s door until we started calling him back, you say? Lord Patterson’s love and devotion brought him right back from the gates of the Happy Hunting Ground? Oh, Max, that is good news indeed.”

  “But where is he?” Patterson shouted. “Where’s my laddie? How can I find him?”

  In her own voice, Lady Tremont told him, “Max says that dear Toby might be a little different than you remember him, but that’s because he has been so close to the Light.”

  “Yes, yes, but where?”

  “He will find you. Call him, my lord. Let us all call him. Toby! Toby!”

  Maylene called him, as did Lady Crowley, Aunt Regina, and Campbell. Shimpton asked if they were going to call his mother back next, and should he take his neckcloth off first.

  “Just call, you twit,” Patterson screamed. Sir Cedric and Lady Bannister joined in, and the Duke of Mondale shrugged his shoulders and called, too. Soon “Toby” filled the room, with one “Mumsy.” In all the noise, no one heard the connecting door open, nor saw the little fox terrier shoved into the parlor. He was the spit and image of the dog in the portrait, which happened to have been painted some six years earlier. Toby hadn’t looked so chipper in years, not before and definitely not after the runaway carriage. In all of London and the outlying areas there had not been a single aged fox terrier with the appropriate markings for sale.

  The pup hesitated in the doorway, likely terrified to hear his new name being shouted by so many strangers. Then he unerringly bounded for Lord Patterson’s chair—which had been introduced to a lamb chop before the guests’ arrivals.

  “Toby? Toby, my boy, is that you? Why, look at you, my fine lad! By George, you are a handsome fellow. Ah, how I have missed you.” Patterson was on his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks, as he hugged the curly-haired little dog he could barely see.

  The only dry eye in the room, in fact, belonged to Lord Hyatt. His hazel ones saw very well indeed. He saw a confused young dog, a delighted old fool, and a satisfied smile on Miss Treadwell’s misty-eyed face as she surveyed her handiwork. Gammon, that’s what it was, but how could he denounce the minx and her mother in front of Patterson’s so-evident joy? At least his friend Mondale wasn’t taken in, for the older man was smiling despite his own woes, and even winked at their underhanded hostess.

  Lady Tremont suggested that Lord Patterson and Toby take their leave, as Max’s voice was growing weaker in her head, and they still had some queries to put to him. One of the footmen came when Campbell pulled the bell cord, ready to assist with a new braided leather leash. The other footman was sent to fetch his lordship’s carriage. From the parlor Maylene could hear Campbell’s discreet cough as they passed the Chinese urn, and Patterson’s, “Of course. Dash it, Toby, stop wriggling whilst I make a donation. Down, sir, I say, so I can open my purse. Devil take it, Campbell, keep the whole thing. I’d have paid anything to get my laddie back.”

  Campbell’s nephews and the other lads would get a bonus, Maylene decided. And perhaps Treadwell House could afford to keep a carriage again. Her fingers itched to make lists of the current account balances, but that would have to wait till the large suspicious gentleman next to her had gone. For all she knew, he was merely waiting for morning to set the magistrates on them. For now, her mother was chanting again.

  “Let us focus our mental energies once more.” Lady Tremont addressed the air above her as soon as the room was restored to silence, murmuring to the somewhat smaller circle. Lady Cedric was wrinkling her nose, but Maylene could not tell if she was getting a sniff of the lamb chop or of the viscount. “Max, dear, I can feel your fatigue, but do try to borrow strength from our collective thoughts for a few moments more. We have two small questions, if you would be so kind.”

  Mondale sat forward in anticipation. He was going to be disappointed, Maylene knew, because her mother never changed the order of her proceedings. New requests were made in the order they were received. Maylene had passed on news of Mr. Ryan’s search that afternoon, so her mother would direct her thoughts, and Max’s, there first.

  “Max, dear, we are searching for a young gentleman named Joshua Collins. All we know is that he is sandy-haired, slightly built, and musical. There might be an element of danger involved. I do hope he has not gone aloft, but you could save us a lot of effort by telling us if he has. Oh, and Max, dear, Maylene wanted me to tell you that there is a most generous reward for locating him. As if you care about such things now. What would you do with money, anyway?”

  A reward? Were these ninnyhammers hunting wanted men now? Lord Hyatt frowned. He had never heard of a Joshua Collins, and did not care to wonder why there
should be a bounty on his head, musical or otherwise. Was there no end to these females’ foolishness? Prying among the criminal elements was far more dangerous than dabbling with the dead. Then he relaxed. From what he’d seen, any supernatural search was liable to produce nothing more than a few memories and a new mutt. Besides, why should he worry over the connivers? The Treadwell women were as deceitful as any cardsharps preying on the ignorant and unwary. Lud, he despised dishonesty.

  A small part of his mind, the part connected to his lower organs, likely, was meanwhile mulling over the chit’s name. Maylene, was it? Volstead had said some such, but Socrates hadn’t been paying attention, too busy trying to dissuade Mondale from calling on Volstead’s sorceresses. Hyatt could understand the man’s desperation, and damn the selfish chit Belinda for causing her father so much grief, but to call on the thaumaturgists at Treadwell House? They’d have done better to consult a Gypsy fortune-teller, for the Gypsies might even have an idea to Belinda’s whereabouts. Miss Maylene Treadwell did not.

  May. The first violets and the unfurling ferns, pushing through a cover of last year’s leaves. Yes, it suited her, bursting with life, exuberantly awakening from a winter’s rest. Shimpton would only put her back to sleep. That, too, was none of his concern. Aurora Ashford was. He consulted his pocket watch. “Damn, there’ll be the devil to pay,” he muttered.

  “No, only the Fund for Psychical Research,” Maylene told him, fully aware of what kind of appointment his lordship must be anticipating. “And you’ve already made your contribution.”

  Socrates had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. He would not find this farouche female amusing. There was nothing amusing about Lady Tremont’s asking Mondale to describe his daughter, either.

  “She…she is about shoulder height, with soft brown braids that she keeps in a knot. And her eyes are the blue of…of an autumn sky, a bit grayish, wouldn’t you say, Hyatt?”

  Socrates shrugged. The lady had blue eyes. Two of them. They were not the startlingly clear mountain lake color of Miss Treadwell’s. He would have remembered that

  “Can you think of anything else that might help, my lord?” the shrew asked him now. “As a man about to become engaged, surely you can give a better description than brown hair and bluish eyes.”

  In the face of her disapproval, Hyatt was tempted to say that Lady Belinda’s bosom was more rounded than her own, or that Belinda never had a hair out of place, and she would not be caught dead in a threadbare, faded shawl. He held his tongue. “You should have brought the miniature, Duke.”

  “Next time.”

  Next time? Over his dead body, Hyatt swore. He’d give the fakers this one night, at considerable cost to himself, incidentally, but no more. He was not going to see Mondale sucked into a whirlpool of greed and guile, not by this group of gull-catchers.

  Lady Tremont was asking Max to look around. “Not that Lady Belinda has departed the mortal plane, dear, but perhaps someone knows where she has gone. You can see so much more from your vantage point. And His Grace is so unhappy at her disappearance, Max, that surely you and your friends will take pity on him, won’t you? We all know what it is to lose someone so beloved, don’t we, dearest? Even a short while is too long. And the dear earl is sorely missing his promised bride.”

  Whose eyes he cannot describe, Maylene added to herself. And who was certainly not the reason he kept checking his watch. The Ideal might be a magnificent representative of manhood, but he’d make some poor girl a wretched husband. Perhaps Belinda had concluded that herself.

  “So, Max, dear, you will let us know if you discover anything? Perhaps in a few days? I know that is soon, but thank you, dear, for trying. Good night.” Lady Tremont sank back in her seat and reached for the glass of water.

  “Two days?” His Grace cried. “That’s much too long! Belinda is in trouble, I know she is, else she would have come home or written me. I cannot wait two more days!” With shaking hands, he accepted the glass of wine Campbell poured out for him as Lady Tremont tried to soothe his impatience.

  “I can try tomorrow if you wish.”

  Hyatt was growling next to Maylene. “Never. You will not get your claws into him. Surely the man is suffering enough without your machinations. Instruct your mother to tell him what he wants to hear, for heaven’s sake, and let him be on his way. You’ve had your payment, now give him his money’s worth.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Maylene insisted. “Mama knows nothing about Lady Belinda”—how could she when they had done no research?—“and won’t know anything until Max tells her. As she tried to explain, the beyond is a large place, with millions of souls. One cannot simply throw a name into the ether and have answers returned.”

  “You don’t believe that humbug any more than I do.”

  “I believe in my mother.”

  “Bah! You believe you can feather your nest on Mondale’s grief.”

  Maylene had been thinking of a new bonnet, with an ostrich feather.

  “Very well, if I cannot appeal to your nonexistent sensibilities to another’s sorrow, I’ll appeal to your avarice. I’ll toss another hundred pounds into that monstrosity in the hall if you get your mother to say that Belinda is alive and waiting for Mondale to find her. That’s all she has to say, and it’s most likely true.”

  “I pray it is so. But I cannot put words in Mama’s mouth, not for any amount of money. Only Max can do that. And even if I could get her to try to reach him again, she is much too drained.” Maylene gestured to where her mother was slumped in her seat, trying to hold her head up until Campbell brought the tea cart. “Anyone can see that she is exhausted from her labors.”

  “Anyone can see that Lady Tremont is a consummate actress. She could have made her fortune on the boards.”

  Maylene had had enough. She stood, forcing Hyatt to his feet also, in a belated effort at civility. Her eyes were like sapphires, spitting icy bolts of blue lightning his way. Her hands were on her hips, allowing the dowdy shawl to fall open to reveal a stirring view of heaving bosom. With the mop of pale curls around her head transformed into a halo by the fire behind her, Miss Maylene Treadwell looked like an avenging angel. The only thing missing, Socrates thought, was the flaming sword. Her tongue, however, could flay a man alive.

  “You have come into our home and insulted us at every turn. In your narrow-mindedness, you refuse to consider other views, other possibilities. We might not have helped find Belinda anyway, for any girl forced into marrying an ogre such as you deserves not to be found. Why, I’d help her stay missing rather than bring her back to such a fate. So leave, Lord High-and-Mighty Hyatt, and take your friend with you. Take your filthy money, too, for you cannot buy truth any more than you can buy love. Go, my lord, and do not come back.”

  Mondale was bending over Lady Tremont’s limp hand, thanking her for her efforts, swearing to return the next evening in case she was up to another effort, or to inquire as to her health if she was not. Socrates would have dragged the man away by force, but he could see his efforts would be wasted.

  “I’ll be back, Miss Treadwell,” he said through gritted teeth. “Count on it.”

  Chapter Seven

  What did you think of him, dear?” Lady Tremont drifted into the book room the following morning, where her daughter was busy with lists and logic, trying to deduce where Mrs. Ingraham could have mislaid her husband’s journals. Maylene was also trying to imagine what the shriveled old prune thought was written in those ledgers to make finding them worth the king’s ransom the barrister’s widow was offering. Maylene was getting nowhere with either problem, so she did not mind her mother’s interruption.

  “Think of whom? Oh, him. I thought he was ruthless and rude and arrogant beyond measure.” And as handsome as the Devil, which he was. But handsome is as handsome does, Maylene told herself. In that case Lord Hyatt was as ugly as sin, which he also personified.

  Lady Tremont took a seat across from Maylene’s desk, gathering togeth
er papers that Maylene had carefully laid out in piles. “Rude, dear? I thought His Grace everything refined and dignified. And not a bit high in the instep. No, not condescending at all.”

  “His Grace?”

  “And such concern for his missing daughter. Why, the dear man is even willing to forgo a lifetime of beliefs to get his only chick back. I find that touching, May, do not you?” Lady Tremont reached across and tried to push some of her daughter’s unruly curls back under the hair ribbon Maylene wore. “Why, I know how I would feel if you were missing, dearest.”

  His Grace? Maylene hadn’t thought of the duke at all, not once in the hours she’d spent awake after last evening’s encounter, not once in her restless, dream-filled sleep. The man who was still strolling through the corridors of her mind, to her dismay, had long dark hair, a shadowed jaw, and a knowing look.

  “And his friend,” her mother was going on. “So elegant, so well turned out.”

  Well, she’d tried to turn the dastard out. “I’m afraid he’ll be back, Mama.”

  “Of course he will, May. He wants to find the poor missing girl as badly as his friend.”

  No, he wanted to prevent them from helping the duke—or from earning a living. She did not want to upset her mother with the notion that Lord Hyatt was just as likely to have the lord high sheriff with him when he returned. Instead, she said, “I found Lord Hyatt to be an insufferable boor, Mama.”

  “Truly, dearest? I suppose a gentleman such as Lord Hyatt cannot help being a bit full of himself. When a young man comes into such an elevated title and such a handsome fortune at so early an age, people quite dote on him. And to be given the sobriquet the Ideal, why, it would be amazing if his lordship was not a tad puffed up.”

  “A tad? The man is so full of his own conceit it is astonishing that his hat still fits on his head.”