by Joan Smith
“Of what?”
“Of there being no point in her leaving tonight.”
“Tonight, but tomorrow I shall have the pleasure of a sleepless night?”
“One day at a time. That’s the way to proceed in these perilous ventures. Tomorrow night, Maggie will take your place.” He extended a hand and patted her arm in an avuncular manner. It was a mere nothing, but Clara felt his touch clear up to her head and down to her toes.
“You busy servants need your rest. You’ll be placing Max the pincher between two appetizing morsels of femininity if you don’t have your wits about you.” Glancing around, he added, “That’d be between yourself and Nel. The party is noticeably lacking in pulchritude.”
A compliment placing her in tandem with Nel Muldoon found little favor. Clara said, “Does Maggie—your sister—know of this arrangement?”
“We call her Maggie, en famille. I am happy she has asked you to do the same. I know the cautious Miss Christopher would not have advanced so fast without a hint. I haven’t told her yet, but she always does what I ask, and sometimes what I want even without being asked. A darling sister, don’t you think?” he asked with a lazy smile that set Clara to wondering what had passed between brother and sister.
She also noticed that he used that “darling” in a careless way. Perhaps it did not signify, his calling Nel a darling. Clara cleared her throat and expressed some mild approbation of Maggie.
Allingcote shook his head. “I used to think calmness was your outstanding characteristic, Miss Christopher, but I begin to see caution runs it a close second.”
“Hardly an attribute you will regret in the present circumstances, when your friend requires such a deal of it,” she replied blandly.
“Not an attribute to be despised at any time. Or almost any time,” he added deliberately. His dark eyes, studying her, seemed to suggest some particular significance in the present moment. “But I think I prefer your calmness.”
It was not easy to remain calm under his penetrating gaze, while a little smile hovered on his lips. “Ah, the tea tray,” Clara said, happy for a diversion.
“Saved by the pot,” he laughed. “Shall I get you a cup? A little milk and no sugar, right?”
Clara looked at him in fascination. “Are you a mind reader, Lord Allingcote?”
“No, ma’am. I wish I were, but I have often gotten tea for you in the past, and I am blessed, you recall, with an excellent memory.”
“But so long ago!”
“It has seemed ages to me,” he said softly, leaning his head closer to hers and looking at her with such a meaningful expression that her poor mind went reeling.
She thought if this intimate behavior was kept up, her calmness would vanish, but it did not continue. When Allingcote returned with her tea, actually with more milk than she liked, he settled down to some amusing but innocuous discussion of the wedding, the family—his own and Prissie’s—and after a quarter of an hour he rose and excused himself to converse with others, just as he should. A little later he was required to rescue Nel from the advances of an elderly roué at whom she had been rolling her eyes.
Clara had been watching Nel’s new flirtation with some interest, wondering how long it would take Allingcote to become incensed with it. He seemed more amused than angry at first. Clara did not find him a fiend of jealousy, but eventually he did make his way toward Nel. As the hour was a little more than up by this time, he brought Nel toward Clara. “Ready?” was all he said. She nodded, and the three of them left the room together.
Chapter Seven
There was no hope of congenial conversation in the carriage with Miss Muldoon on the way to the inn. She had only one interest: herself. She complained at having to leave the house, complained of the cold, of the dullness of the party just left, and prophesied unaired beds and lumpy mattresses at the inn.
“You’re overly tired,” Allingcote said forgivingly.
“I am not tired,” she declared, and in a final fit of pique added, “at least I trust you will not register me as Nellie Muldoon.”
They were just descending from the carriage, and Clara frowned at her charge, wondering what she meant.
“Who are you tonight, Nel?” Ben asked. “Mrs. Siddons, perhaps. Or is it a princess in disguise?”
“Don’t be silly. I’m much too young and pretty to be Sarah Siddons. I shall be Lady Arabella de Coverley, and Miss Christopher will be my abigail.”
“I expect Miss Christopher will have something to say about that,” he said, and strode to the desk. “Miss Nel Muldoon,” he said in a loud voice.
Nel regarded him with loathing and said, “Come along, Miss Christopher.”
The interaction between Allingcote and Nel seemed less lover-like at every moment, and Clara’s curiosity mounted higher. “Why do you call yourself Lady Arabella?” she asked.
“Nellie doesn’t suit me. It is a name for a dairymaid, or a servant girl. My name is actually Helena, but people call me Nel in spite, for they know I hate it. Arabella suits me better.”
Clara mentioned that she doubted there was any spite in it. Nel was a common nickname for Helen, but the common quality of it was exactly what irked the beauty. Nel flounced her shoulders and went on to mention a few other names she considered worthy of herself and occasionally used: Cecilia, Aurora, Naomi. Clara concluded this was a childish game invented to give herself airs and added a few likely ones that Nel had omitted. Thus occupied, she did not observe that Lord Allingcote was for some few minutes in conversation with the proprietor. She had no way of hearing the questions he was putting to the man, or what answers he received.
“Has a young dark-haired gentleman been asking for Miss Muldoon?”
“No, sir. No one has inquired for her at all.”
“If he shows up I would like to be notified at once,” Allingcote said. “No matter what hour, wake me any hour of the night. And—ah—no need to let the gentleman know I have been inquiring.” He slipped a golden boy into the innkeeper’s hand and received a hearty, “Right you are, milord,” in reply, before returning to the ladies.
They were no sooner shown into their rooms—fine, spacious, clean rooms—than Nel began finding fault. The bed was too hard. She couldn’t sleep on a hard bed. Clara offered to change, but hers was too soft. The rooms were cold and drafty with a dozen wrong things, but when all her complaints were uttered, Ben said flatly, “They’re the last empty rooms in the place. It’s here or the stable, Nel.”
“Let me have your room, and you can have mine. I wager your bed has a good mattress.”
“A charming idea, but it has slipped your notice that your room adjoins Miss Christopher’s, without benefit of door. Just the curtained archway, you see.”
“Oh poo!” She tossed her curls, flung her bonnet on the dresser, and said. “You shan’t care about that.”
“Miss Christopher shall, however. Unlike yourself, she has some sense of propriety. Go to bed now,” he said, and turned toward the door.
“I’m hungry,” she called after him.
“It is not two hours since dinner.”
“Dinner was horrid. I didn’t eat a bite. I’m starved. I can never sleep when I’m hungry.”
“Try, Nel.”
“A bowl of gruel would not take long,” Clara suggested, to have done with it. “We could have it sent up.”
Miss Muldoon stared at her as if she were insane. “Gruel!”
“An excellent notion,” Allingcote grinned. “I shall ask to have a bowl of gruel sent up.”
“I don’t want gruel. I hate gruel.”
“You are not getting belowstairs tonight, Nel,” he said firmly. “I’ll order gruel if you think you’ll expire before morning, but it comes up. You don’t go down.”
Nel threw off her pelisse and assumed a Stoic attitude. “In that case, I’ll go hungry.” She walked to the door and held it wide for Allingcote to leave.
“That’ll teach me,” he said, chucking her chin, and
with an apologetic shrug back at Clara, he left. Nel tried a little more wheedling on Clara, whom she judged to be made of softer stuff. Taking her cue from Allingcote, Clara was adamant and the subject was finally dropped.
Nel next tried her hand at turning Clara into an abigail, and again she was thwarted. Clara limited her services to unfastening the back of the girl’s gown. Even when Nel kicked her good blue silk into a heap on the floor and left it there, Clara quelled the urge to pick it up. She suggested Nel do it, but did not insist.
“If you wish to look as though you had slept in it, there was no point in taking it off” is all she said.
“I am not accustomed to doing servants’ work” was the lofty rejoinder.
“No more am I,” Clara retorted, and went through the curtain before she gave in to the impulse to pick the beautiful gown up. She had noticed that Nel’s lingerie was of the finest, too, all embroidered in silk. It seemed woefully unfair that one lady should have so much, especially when she was so unappreciative.
She peeked once through the curtain at the gown on the floor. Such a beautiful gown! But she would not knuckle under to Nel Muldoon.
Clara was soon in bed with her candle extinguished. Her own gold taffeta hung carefully on a hanger. She was tired, but in a strange room, sleep did not come easily. She had ample time to wonder why Miss Muldoon, a troublesome heiress, traveled without an abigail, and why she was so determined to get downstairs. Escape could not have been her aim. She did not mind if Allingcote went with her. Nor was hunger the reason. She refused food in her room. Was it only one last chance to find someone to flirt with, to make Ben jealous? But he hadn’t seemed so very jealous.
She listened for sounds of escape in the adjoining room, but heard only silence. A little later, she heard the long breaths of sleep. Doubting that Nel was clever enough to simulate sleep so well, she relaxed. Before she slept herself, she indulged in a long recall of that interesting day. Allingcote’s coming and seeming so happy to see her again. His sharp recollection of their former meeting in all its details, his renewed attentions, and Maggie’s strange expression when she asked if it had been at Bellingham’s that she met Ben. Obviously Ben had spoken of that party at home. Finally she thought how remarkably strange it was that she should be sleeping in the same inn as he, with only Nel Muldoon between them. On this symbolic thought, she slept.
Chapter Eight
When Clara opened her eyes to an unfamiliar set of walls and draperies in the morning, she was momentarily confused. No sense of panic accompanied her confusion. She merely had to lie still a moment and think: where am I staying this week? This was not her room at Branelea—ah yes, the wedding, Allingcote, the inn—Miss Muldoon!
Clara leapt from bed and ducked through the curtained arch to ascertain that Miss Muldoon still slept, as indeed she did.
If only the chit could remain a Sleeping Beauty! In repose, she looked young and vulnerable, with her tousled curls spread over the pillow, and her rosebud lips partly open. She slept deeply, and as a glance at her watch told Clara it was only seven o’clock, she decided she, too, would return to bed for an hour. She didn’t expect to sleep, but to lie and anticipate that in an hour or so, she would be having breakfast with Allingcote.
Before she had mentally had more than a bite of toast, for food figured very sparingly in this imaginary breakfast, she was back to sleep. And before much longer, Miss Muldoon’s blue eyes fluttered open. She lay still a moment listening. When she heard only silence beyond the curtain, she sat up, swung her legs out of bed, snatched her crumpled gown from the floor, and scrambled into it. Unable to fasten the back buttons, she threw a shawl over her shoulders and went tiptoeing down the stairs, peering about to left and right like a spy.
“Good morning, Lady Arabella,” a cheerful voice called from an open doorway, and Lord Allingcote stood quizzing her. “I trust you slept well? Forgot to bring your hairbrush, did you? Never mind, Miss Christopher will be kind enough to lend you hers.”
Nel assumed a dramatic pose and declaimed, “I hate you with all my heart, Benjamin Davenport!”
A passing servant girl stopped to goggle at such interesting goings-on at an inn whose liveliest customer was usually a drunken traveler. “Breakfast for two, miss, if you please,” Allingcote told the servant, and ushered Nel into a private parlor.
“At least let us hide your shameful dishevelment in here if you don’t mean to tidy up,” he said.
When they were alone, her melodramatic manner vanished, and she took a chair, accepted coffee that he poured from the pot on the table, and sipped it calmly.
“He hasn’t arrived yet,” Allingcote said. “You missed your beauty sleep to no avail. Did you sleep in that gown, by the by? He won’t like to see you looking so slovenly.”
“He will be aux anges to see me looking any way at all,” she replied smugly.
In a short while food was brought by the highly interested serving girl. Hard at her heels came Miss Christopher, in the wildest disarray that she had ever appeared in in public. Her usually neat coil of hair had slipped from its hastily arranged roll, and a curl fell over her ear. Like Nel, her gown’s undone buttons were covered by her shawl. She came pelting into the parlor, and upon seeing Allingcote, she cried, “She’s gone, Ben! I have let her escape. Whatever are we to do?” In her state of agitation, she didn’t notice she had called Allingcote, Ben.
The servant dropped a plate of hot buns on to the table in excitement. One fell unobserved into Allingcote’s cup. As the words left Clara’s mouth, she spotted Nel sitting at the other end of the table, beyond her view from the doorway. Clara stopped dead.
“Good morning, Miss Christopher,” Allingcote said, rising and bowing. “Make that breakfast for three, miss,” he added aside to the servant. “And a fresh cup of coffee for me, if you will be so kind. My bread seems to have drunk mine,” he said, peering into his cup. The servant just stood, her curious gaze running from one of the group to the other.
“You must not fear that your kitten has run off, Miss Christopher,” he said to Clara. “You really should have closed the lid of its basket, but no matter. We shall have a look about the roads as soon as we’ve eaten.” He walked toward Clara and held her chair for her, just sliding his eyes in an admonishing way toward the staring servant, to explain this seemingly irrelevant talk of kittens.
“Ye didn’t bring no kitten with yez,” the servant said.
Nel was charmed with this chance for a little play-acting, and joined in, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. “Hush!” she said, looking over her shoulder with awful caution. “It is a very special kitten. It was necessary to conceal it. The French are after it, you see.”
“What would they Frenchies be wanting a cat for?”
“It’s Queen Charlotte’s cat, and they want to hold it for ransom,” the inventive Nel explained.
From her smiles, Allingcote knew she was about to begin a long story. “But not a word of it belowstairs, mind!” he said to the servant who continued regarding them all with the deepest mistrust. “May we have our coffee now, please?” he said, to be rid of her.
She poured the coffee and left, looking over her shoulder as if she expected to receive a knife in the back.
“What fun!” Nel chirped when they were alone. “When she comes back, I shall tell her there is a hundred-guineas reward for the recovery of the kitten. She will have every soul in the place out scouring the roads.”
“What a pleasant idea, with the balmy December breezes blowing,” Clara said, lifting an eyebrow at Miss Muldoon. Noticing Nel’s state of undress, for her gown was beginning to slip from her shoulder, she added, “You look a fright, Miss Muldoon. You should have tidied up before coming downstairs.”
“So should you,” Nel replied triumphantly.
Clara’s hand flew to her hair. She brushed back the loose curl with one hand, clutching her shawl with the other, while her eyes flew to Allingcote. He was regarding her with amusement.
&nbs
p; “Now you have placed me in an untenable position, Nel,” he said. “I can hardly praise Miss Christopher’s charming dishabille when I have just been giving you the devil for yours. Might I suggest you both take a moment to tidy up? There is a mirror and a washbasin behind that curtain. You go first, Nel. Do you have a comb?”
“No.”
“I have one in my reticule,” Clara offered, but she had some difficulty extracting it while still trying to hold herself together, so she handed Nel the bag.
Nel, less bashful, pulled off her shawl and demanded Miss Christopher do up her back buttons before she leave. Such a hand-demanding chore as this was beyond Clara, however, and it was Allingcote who struggled with a dozen pea-sized buttons much too small for his fingers.
“My reputation wouldn’t be worth a Birmingham farthing if anyone were to see me at this moment,” he declared ruefully. “Two half-dressed ladies in a private parlor with me at eight o’clock in the morning. I shall think twice before jumping to conclusions another time.”
“I daresay you’d be happy enough to be considered so dashing,” Nel said pertly, and ducked behind the curtain.
“You neglect to mention the ladies’ reputations would suffer even more,” Clara pointed out. She attempted an air of dignity, but her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment.
“There is a tried-and-true way to redeem a lady’s reputation, Miss Christopher,” he said, laughter lurking in his eyes, and a smile that he tried to conceal hovering about his lips.
“I know of no simple way for one gentleman to redeem two ladies’ reputations simultaneously.”
“We could always adopt her,” he said, leaning closer and speaking in a low voice. He made no effort now to conceal his smile.
“I would as lief adopt a panther! And that servant knows perfectly well there is something amiss here, too. Did you see the way she stared?”