Miss Treadwell's Talent

by Barbara Metzger

  She stared straight ahead at the driver’s back, wondering if he could hear their conversation and what he thought of it. “Please do not go on, Lord Hyatt,” she said, before their words were bandied about the Running Footman or some other pub frequented by the serving class. “You do not need to explain.”

  Socrates did not need to explain; he wanted to. “Florrie was, ah, keeping company with a close acquaintance of mine. We became friends, that’s all.”

  “I’m sure it is none of my business, my lord.” The news was certainly giving her pleasure, nevertheless, for some reason.

  “And that’s another thing, all the ‘my lord this’ and ‘Lord Hyatt that.’ Blast, I cannot keep calling you Miss Treadwell if I am going to keep kissing you, Maylene.”

  Devil take the driver. “Are you, my lord?”

  “Socrates. Or Soc.”

  “Are you, Soc?”

  He was staring at her mouth, savoring the sound of his name on her lips. “Am I what?”

  “Going to keep kissing me?”

  “Heaven help me, it seems I have no choice.” He leaned across the carriage toward her. Maylene closed her eyes and licked her lips.

  “Curzon Street, m’lord,” the driver called out. Then he muttered, “And not a minute too soon, neither.”

  As soon as the earl handed Maylene down from the carriage, an urchin ran up and handed them a printed page. Repent, it read. Sin lives in Curzon Street. Raising the dead is the Devil’s work. Cast out the witches among you! Other pedestrians, whether out for a stroll or delivering their goods, had similar pages.

  “I see Reverend Fingerhut has not given up his efforts to have us burned at the stake,” Maylene said, trying to call forth a smile.

  “I should have throttled the vermin while I had the chance.”

  “And I should have asked Miss Lafontaine for the name of his church.”

  “Do not worry, no one in this day and age is going to heed a word of his bilious babbling.”

  Except for the butcher who would not let his son deliver meat, the coal hauler who would not bring another load, and the two neighbors who crossed the street when they saw Maylene coming.

  At least the weather was warm and, serendipitously, the ladies were promised to dine at Crowley House that evening. Socrates promised to look for the chawbacon churchman.

  *

  He was not attracted to the mop-top blond, Socrates told himself. Well, perhaps he was slightly drawn to her elfin looks and bright smile. But he was not growing fond of her, despite her plucky courage and determination. The chit had bottom. And a nice, rounded one at that. Very well, he was attracted and admiring. He was not interested in Miss Maylene Treadwell. Not at all. She was neither mistress material nor spousal stuff. The Earl of Hyatt’s wife had to be rational, reasonable, respectable. His wife had to be the Duke of Mondale’s daughter, wherever the hell she was. Socrates decided he would simply escort Miss Treadwell to the coming ball, see if she unearthed any clues to Lady Belinda’s disappearance, and then avoid the troublesome Miss Treadwell for the rest of his barren, boring life.

  *

  Socrates was trifling with her, Maylene knew. That was all. He had so little respect for her that he could make improper advances, knowing she had no father or brother to defend her reputation, if she had a reputation worth defending. Being an original, an eccentric, a oner, was not the same as being untouchable—not to men of his wide experience and worldly tastes. My, how wonderful his lips tasted!

  No, Maylene would not think about his kiss. The bounder’s intentions could not be honorable, not while he was promised to Lady Belinda. Therefore, the Earl of Hyatt was making a May game of Maylene’s emotions—if she let him.

  She vowed to avoid him after Lady Belvedere’s ball. That was only a few days away. It might be bruised, but her heart would survive.

  *

  Mr. Collins was going to survive, too. The highwayman’s bullet had not managed to kill him, nor had the fever that ensued. Unfortunately, Joshua was too weak to walk, much less work. It would be months before he’d be able to play his violin, and the quartet he was to join in Brighton would long since have hired another musician. His young wife had traded the last of the few belongings the highwaymen had left them in exchange for this shabby room. But they were alive, and she refused to leave him. Furthermore, his darling bride had a plan. Whoever said you couldn’t live on love alone had never met Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Collins.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A pearl might not do much for the oyster’s chances, but the duke’s necklace surely enhanced Maylene’s odds of becoming a success at her first grand ball. The necklace was beautiful, of course, and valuable, but it also lent her a confidence, a radiance that others would recognize and admire. If part of the pearls’ reflected glow was due to the duke’s disclosure that Lord Hyatt had selected the necklace with its coral beads, no one but Maylene had to know it.

  She wore those pearls at her throat, Fleur’s pearls woven into a crown atop her short hair, and Lord Shimpton’s flowers at the high waist of her pale pink crepe gown, with its pearl-studded lace overskirt. The flowers, white rosebuds, had also been the earl’s idea, Shimpton admitted. He would not have remembered to bathe for the ball, much less the obligation to his dancing instructor, without Hyatt’s hints. It was the Treadwell butler, Campbell, who hastily brushed cat hairs off the viscount’s claret-colored superfine, his eyes avoiding the saffron-waistcoat underneath.

  The earl’s nacre-decorated fan dangled off Maylene’s wrist, when she was not admiring it. This gift was his, without roundaboutation, and she liked it best. She swore to put all of her misgivings aside and enjoy herself this evening, whatever it brought, especially if it brought news of Lady Belinda. The approval she read in Hyatt’s hazel eyes when he called to escort them to the ball convinced her that a one-night lapse of good sense was forgivable, especially when he was looking so devilishly handsome in his elegantly subdued dark evening clothes. He wore a single pearl in his neckcloth.

  The duke had also presented Lady Tremont with a pearl brooch, on his own, without Hyatt’s prompting. The gift was a thank-you for all her assistance, he said, no matter the outcome of their investigation. And Mondale also gave a set of pearl-tipped hatpins to Aunt Regina, who wore them in her turban, after biting them to make sure they weren’t paste like the strands she wore at her bony neck. All the ladies had new gowns, slippers, gloves, silk stockings, and high expectations for the evening. Aunt Regina even had new eyelashes.

  A single grain of sand could irritate an oyster into making a thing of beauty. The way every man at the ball was ogling the beautiful Miss Treadwell’s pearls—and her small but shapely bosom—was irritating the hell out of the earl. He took himself off to the card room after escorting the ladies through the receiving line.

  The duke stayed by the grouping of chairs Lady Tremont selected, waiting for the opportunity to introduce Maylene to his daughter’s friends. Soon Lady Crowley joined them with her niece, Miss Tolliver-Jones, who had been permitted to attend even though her own presentation was yet a fortnight away. The girl could get her feet wet in the social waters, Lady Crowley declared, but she would not dance.

  Unfortunately, Maylene had to. The minuet with Lord Shimpton went better than she’d expected; she could still walk at the end of it. Her steps might have included some hops and skips that the dance obviously didn’t require, but she was not permanently lamed. Afterward, when she’d limped to her mother’s side, she suggested Lord Shimpton sit by Miss Tolliver-Jones to keep the younger girl company. Lady Crowley’s niece might be the perfect match for Shimpton, if she stopped giggling at him.

  Shimpton sucked on his high shirt collar. “Got nothing to say to a chit. Not in the petticoat line, don’t you know.”

  Maylene had an inkling. Then he asked, “Does she like cats?”

  Mentally adding a new requirement in a bride for the viscount, Maylene had to confess that she had no idea. “Why don’t you ask her?
That will give you something to speak about.”

  Cats, it seemed, gave Miss Tolliver-Jones spots. That was the end of the conversation. Shimpton chewed on his collar; the girl giggled. Perhaps the two were not so well suited, Maylene conceded.

  She reluctantly took her cousin’s arm for the country dance now forming. Maylene could not refuse Grover, but she could manage to step on his foot when he held her hand too hard and long whenever the figures of the dance brought them together. She’d learned something from Shimpton, after all. At the conclusion of the set, Glover invited her to the refreshments room, the picture gallery, the balcony.

  The day Maylene went off alone with the sniffling squeeze-stealer was the day pigeons took up roosts in her cockloft. Disgruntled, Grover took up a position on the other side of Miss Tolliver-Jones, who might have an annoying twitter, but she also had two thousand pounds a year.

  Maylene danced the quadrille with the duke next. They had agreed that His Grace should act as normally as possible, to protect what they could of Belinda’s reputation. People were beginning to ask for her, but gossip would dwindle if her own father seemed unconcerned. The duke turned out to be an elegant dancer with courtly manners, despite his obvious lack of concentration, as his eyes kept returning to Maylene’s mother at the sidelines. Lady Tremont had put off her usual lavender gauze in favor of a new deep plum satin gown with a lowered neckline, with the duke’s pearl brooch affixed at the vee of the décolletage. She looked beautiful, Maylene thought proudly, quite the handsomest dowager in the room, and the duke, it appeared, thought so, too. If those pearls were eggs, they would have hatched under the heat of his stare.

  “Isn’t it a shame that my mother considers herself a mere chaperone tonight, Your Grace? Why, she is a better dancer than many of the young girls. Of course, she might consider taking the floor if you were to ask her,” she hinted none too subtly.

  “Do you think so?” His Grace almost left Maylene on the dance floor in his eagerness to reach Lady Tremont’s side for the next set, a waltz.

  The baroness hesitated. “Oh, no, I’m much too old for cutting a caper. And the waltz, oh, dear. Chaperones mustn’t, of course. People will talk.” Then Aunt Regina removed one of her new pearl hatpins and jabbed it into her niece’s backside. Lady Tremont was on her feet instantly, the duke bowing over her fingers. “I’d be honored.”

  Maylene looked around. She would dearly love to waltz, but Shimpton hadn’t been taught—a donkey could learn sooner—and she’d never chance letting Grover hold her so closely. Lady Belvedere was too busy finding partners for the younger girls, and gentlemen who might have offered now had to wait for her mother’s return for an introduction. Maylene was just deciding this might be a good time to go to the ladies’ withdrawing room to see if any of Belinda’s friends might be there, now that the duke had identified some of them. Lady Crowley was nodding off while Shimpton enumerated his kitten’s fine points, so Maylene thought she’d better pry Miss Tolliver-Jones out of Grover’s grasp to accompany her, rather than leave the silly chit in his wandering hands.

  Then Hyatt was bowing in front of her. “My dance, I believe.”

  Her fondest dream, she believed.

  Maylene went into the earl’s arms, telling herself what a dunce cap she was, how she greatly feared part of her would stay there forever, never to be reclaimed. Their steps matched perfectly, but they did not speak. Socrates was likely as afraid as she, Maylene thought, that they might argue and ruin the moment. They both knew the moment would have to last a lifetime.

  When the dance ended, Maylene would have gone home to cry a hundred tears for every pearl of her necklace, for finding what she’d always wanted and not being able to have it. But Maylene would not drag her mother away, not when she was gaily strolling about the room on the duke’s arm. Cousin Grover and Miss Tolliver-Jones were gone.

  Maylene bit her lip. “Oh, dear, I’d better go after them.”

  “I’ll go with you. We’ll try the refreshments room first, shall we? Perhaps your cousin merely took the chit for a lemonade.”

  More likely he took her for a lesson the girl’s innocence would not survive. Maylene nodded and followed Lord Hyatt through the crowded room. Before they reached the area set aside for punch and cakes, however, he was accosted by Aurora, Lady Ashford, whom Aunt Regina had helpfully pointed out to Maylene as Hyatt’s current mistress. She was dressed in scarlet-trimmed black satin, with a heavy diamond bracelet on her silk-gloved wrist. The widow instantly draped herself over the earl’s arm.

  “Soc, darling, you haven’t forgotten our dance, have you?” she purred, fingering the bracelet. “I wanted to thank you for the gift. I’m sure your little friend will excuse you.”

  Maylene couldn’t help herself. She touched the pearls at her neck, staring at the matching pearl at Hyatt’s throat. “Yes, of course, Lady Ashford. The earl is quite generous, isn’t he? Thank you for the dance, my lord. I’ll go find our missing friends, shall I? All our missing friends.” She left no doubt she meant to remind him of Lady Belinda.

  How was it, she asked herself as she made her way down the hall, that the sight of Hyatt not only stole her breath, but her wits, also? He needed but to look at her, and she forgot that he was arrogant, beneath contempt, and bespoken.

  “Miss Treadwell? It is Miss Treadwell, isn’t it?” The voice that finally penetrated Maylene’s musings belonged to Lady Belvedere herself, an attractive young woman with an older husband and ambitions of becoming a Society hostess of note. Judging from the crowded rooms and corridors, she was well on her way to becoming a success. She was also on her way to the supper area to check on the provisions, she said, drawing Maylene along with her. Grover and the Tolliver-Jones girl were not there, Maylene could see, and she would have gone on to look in the card rooms except that Lady Belvedere had her arm.

  “I hope you do not mind my asking, Miss Treadwell,” the woman was saying as she led Maylene away from the public rooms and down a long corridor, “but is it true that you can find things?”

  Maylene couldn’t find her cousin standing here, but neither could she offend her hostess. Besides, Lady Belvedere might turn out to be another client. Heaven knew they could use another wealthy patron at Treadwell House. “I have been lucky at locating things in the past,” she admitted, not mentioning the hours of hard work and research, the squads of young boys she employed, nor her mother’s spectral suggestions. “Have you lost something, then?”

  Indeed she had. Lady Belvedere had mislaid a locket, it seemed, a small gold piece of no particular value, except sentimentality.

  “I am sure it will turn up tomorrow, when the servants make a thorough cleaning. It must have gone missing while you were preparing for the ball,” Maylene suggested, thinking that an entertainment of this magnitude would take days of effort. It did, but not on Lady Belvedere’s part. She’d merely directed her housekeeper and butler to hire more staff. No, the locket, it turned out, was not so much misplaced as misfound. Lord Belvedere had come upon the necklace that afternoon and had locked it in his study, down the hall from where they now were.

  Maylene was confused. “But if you know where your jewelry is, ma’am, it is not lost.”

  “It’s as good as lost, and so is my marriage if my husband thinks to look inside the locket. There was no time for him to do so, earlier.”

  “Inside…?” Maylene prompted.

  “Do not be dense, Miss Treadwell. You are reputed to have a wise head on your shoulders. There is a lock of hair inside the locket, a lovely brown curl.”

  Lord Belvedere’s hair was gray. “I don’t suppose your husband’s hair used to be that shade?”

  “Black,” the young matron said with regret “He already suspects something. That’s why he stuck it away somewhere, and he’s been watching me all night. I dare not go after the thing.”

  “But you think I should, is that it? Break into his locked study and steal the necklace? Good grief, ma’am, that is not finding a los
t item, it is robbery!”

  “Not if the locket is mine is the first place! And you would not have to break in because I have the spare key. You are my only hope, Miss Treadwell. Please do not let me down, or he’ll banish me to the country or some dreadful place.” She pressed the key into Maylene’s gloved hand and turned. “La, Belvedere, there you are, just in time to escort me back to the ballroom. I was just showing Miss Treadwell the way to the library. She is a great admirer of books, aren’t you, miss?”

  Maylene hoped there’d be some law books.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Socrates managed to disentangle himself from the limpetlike arms of Aurora Ashford before the supper dance, thank goodness, else he’d be forced to partner her through the meal, too. Obviously the lavish bracelet had sent the wrong message. Instead of ending their liaison, it had whetted her appetite for more: more gifts, more time with him, more chance of becoming the next Lady Hyatt. Attila the Hun had a better chance of getting into heaven. Devil take all ambitious women, he thought.

  And devil take Miss Treadwell for disappearing again. The duke and Lady Tremont were so absorbed in their conversation that they barely noticed that half their party was missing. The old auntie had found someone fool enough to play cards with her, and Lady Crowley was snoring slightly, her head half resting on Shimpton’s padded shoulder. The viscount had taken to playing cat’s cradle with some yarn he’d found, unless the nod-cock usually carried a ball of string in his evening clothes. Dash it, did no one care that Miss Treadwell was wandering about by herself, looking for the debutante and the dirty dish? Hyatt cared. He knew Maylene had as much consideration for her reputation as a rabbit, and as much social experience, despite her age and intelligence, as a lamppost. She’d never think that tongues would wag if she was seen poking into empty rooms and dark corners; she wouldn’t realize that some of the young bucks had overimbibed on champagne to the point where a delicious morsel like Miss Treadwell might prove too tempting to resist. Socrates started down the hallway, glancing into the card rooms, the supper room, the billiards room, and the drawing room, where a string quartet played softly so some of the older guests could carry on their conversations, most likely about the lax morals of the younger generation, the earl supposed.