The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  Chapter Eight

  Remington strode from the dining room in high dudgeon. There was only one woman in his personal acquaintance who fit old Hoskins’s irreverent description. When he emerged from the passage into the entry hall, his suspicion was confirmed. There stood a tall, willowy woman in a figured silk dress, extravagantly piled velvet hat, and prodigious feather boa. In one hand she held a folded newspaper and in the other a delicate Parisian parasol, raised as if she intended to use it on someone.

  “So there you are,” she declared, shaking the newspaper at him.

  “What in—creation—are you doing here?” he demanded, heading straight for her, his countenance dark and his voice thunderous.

  “The same might be asked of you, Remington Carr!” she said in a voice that with a little more volume might have curdled the paint on the walls.

  He glanced furiously around the entry hall and caught sight of Prudence and Pollyanna Quimby at the bottom of the stairs, staring at him and his visitor. Catching a glimpse of the open drawing-room doors, he seized the woman by the arm and, over her piercing protest, ushered her forcibly into the drawing room.

  “Sit!” he commanded, propelling her toward one of the settees, then swinging both of the drawing-room doors closed. When they were alone, he turned back to find her standing beside the settee with her mouth in a petulant line that was dramatized by the lip rouge she wore.

  “How dare you come here—barge into this house, demanding to see me!”

  “I have sent you notes and messengers for three days,” she said with a tremor of outrage in her voice, “and you have coldly and callously ignored me. Then this morning I opened the newspaper to find you have been cavorting about the city with this—this Paxton woman—wearing female unmentionables and making laughingstock of yourself. Doing a menial’s work when you won’t even—”

  “Hillary—” he said with a warning growl. “This is none of your—”

  “It’s abominable and I won’t have it, do you hear?” She stomped her foot. “I won’t allow you to wash your hands of me just so you can carry on with your hideously selfish life. You have time to cook and to scrub this wretched woman’s floors, but you cannot bother to pay me a civil quarter-of-an-hour call to see if I’m fully recovered … when you know how ill I was!” She pressed her gloved hand to her temple and sniffed artfully. “And I’ve been waiting for more than a fortnight for you to order my banker to release my quarterly funds early … when you know I need to take the waters at Brighton. You owe it to me. You’re responsible—”

  “Hell, yes, I am responsible!” he snarled, advancing on her so that she started back. “I’ve been responsible for four bloody long years and you haven’t let me forget it for a minute! But I told you after that debacle at White’s that one more such outrage and I’d wash my hands of you altogether. And so help me, you’ve done it again!” He shoved his face into hers, and she shrank to avoid him and dropped onto the settee with an unceremonious plop.

  “Charging in here like some wounded harpy, scolding and demanding. Well, by God, enough is enough!”

  She stared up at him, her kohl-enhanced eyes widening with the realization that she had pushed him too far. His fists were white at his sides, a vein in his neck bulged, and a new, implacable fire burned in the depths of his eyes. Instantly her strident persona crumbled, and with it she seemed to change physically. Her haughty form deflated over the settee cushions, her shoulders slumped, and her chin shrank as it lowered to her chest.

  Remington saw it happening and braced internally. He knew from experience what came next, and this phase infuriated him even more than her strident demands.

  “Why are you doing this to me, Remington? Abandoning me, casting me off? You know your father wouldn’t—”

  “Don’t you dare bring him up to me!” he bit out, lashing a finger at her. The fury that flared in him caused her to sink even lower into the settee cushions. Out of nowhere a lace-rimmed handkerchief appeared. No, not that, he groaned. Not now, not here!

  Her eyes crinkled at the edges, betraying the delicate web of lines that veils and cosmetics usually hid. Tears welled and she lowered her lashes, releasing the tears down powdered cheeks that were beginning to show the crepe of age, past rouged lips that had lost some of their alluring fullness. Bending her head to shield her face from him with her hat, she dabbed at her tears and sobbed enough that her shoulders trembled.

  Oh, God … the tears. How he hated this part. Her tears were real, he knew, but he couldn’t escape the knowledge that she used them against him. He could almost feel the tugs as each sob pulled the strings of duty and protectiveness that bound his male pride. He hated that most of all.

  “Enough, Hillary,” he said, the anger in his voice dampened. He paced to the door and back, then fished in his coat pocket for his unused handkerchief and thrust it into her hands. “For God’s sake, dry it up. I haven’t abandoned you … I can’t abandon you. But as God is my witness: from this day on you’ll have to find someone else to truckle after your endless needs and appetite for attention.” His voice hardened around a core of steel. “I have come to the very end of my patience.”

  Moments later he pulled open the drawing-room doors and ushered her through the entry hall at an undignified pace. Her hat wobbled and her feather boa dragged forlornly behind her. She stiffened and tried to halt, looking up at him with one last wounded-doe look. “Please, Remington, I promise—”

  “No!” he ground out, with a look that said he would not suffer another single appeal. Without waiting for Hoskins he jerked open the front doors and trundled her down the front steps and into her waiting carriage. And as she drove off, glaring through the carriage window at him like an angry child, he shuddered and stalked back up the steps and into the hall.

  Hoskins, Eleanor Booth, and the Quimby sisters were standing in the hallway, staring at him as if he had suddenly sprouted another head. But the one that concerned him most was at the far end of the hall, near the dining-room doors. Antonia stood with her arms crossed over her waist, looking at him, then turned on her heel and reentered the dining room.

  Setting his jaw, he strode back through the hall and found her gathering up the papers scattered over the table.

  “In future,” she said, without looking up, “I would prefer you receive your friends elsewhere.”

  “She is hardly a friend,” he said, and instantly wished he could take it back.

  Her head came up, with eyes shining. “I don’t really care to know what she is, your lordship. How you label your acquaintances is your affair. Just keep them out of my house.”

  It did not take a genius to discern what sort of woman his visitor was; one look at Hillary’s showy dress and artfully painted face was all that was needed to know her profession. But it would have taken a closer look to see that she had aged beyond her prime in the world of the demimondaine, and to guess that her days as a wealthy earl’s mistress were well behind her. And Antonia had not been close enough for that.

  Deep in her eyes he could see the traces of unspent passion colliding with outrage at having her home invaded by a member of the demimonde. As he watched, he could see her consigning to the moral trash heap every pleasurable sensation she had just experienced with him.

  Damn and blast his father’s old mistress for charging in and wrecking his plans!

  “Very well. Shall we continue where we left off, Antonia?” he said, stifling his anger beneath a layer of aristocratic control. Her head snapped up, and if he had been any closer, the fire in her eyes would have scorched him.

  “Continue where we left off?” She nearly choked. The colossal male conceit! One minute he was seducing her, reducing her to puddles in his arms, and the next he was closeted in her drawing room with his overdressed lightskirt, who had the gall to invade her home! And now he expected to take it up with her again?

  “Not on your life, your lordship,” she declared, snatching up the lists and charts and thrusting them into
his hands as she sailed out the door.

  She stormed through the hall toward the stairs, not knowing why she was so angry. Was it because he had plied his devious charm with such devastating effect? Or was it because he had the nerve to suggest they just go on as if nothing had happened, when a great deal had happened, at least in her?

  It had felt to her as if she were being turned inside out, body and soul, so that every nerve, every desire, every longing was utterly exposed. As humiliating as her participation in that kiss was, the feelings that erupted in her were far more shattering. Elation, hunger, pleasure, and wonder … she had all but come unstrung from that wretched kiss. And the worst part of it all was that it had been but a transitory bit of pleasure to him. Or less.

  Shall we continue where we left off? he had suggested coolly.

  A moment later her face flamed. It hadn’t occurred to her until that moment that he might have been talking about the menu planning.

  The man was a menace. And she was seven kinds of a fool to take him into her own house, knowing what a devious and carnal beast he was. Striding furiously into the upstairs parlor, she paced across the room and back, before the presence of Aunt Hermione and Prudence on the settee brought her up short.

  “Auntie … Prudence.” She glanced between the startled women. “What are you doing in here? Auntie, shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  “N-no, my dear,” Hermione answered for the pair, her cheeks suddenly Cupid-pink. “I’m feeling much better now.”

  Aunt Hermione provided Remington’s instruction for the rest of the morning. She arrived in the dining room to find him in a toweringly surly mood. She gave him an understanding smile, which became even more beatific as his glower deepened.

  “I’m afraid you’re now saddled with me, your lordship,” she said, looking over the papers littering the table. “How far did you get with Antonia?”

  Remington stilled and stared at her. The question had a number of possible interpretations, but her angelic smile made it seem obvious and innocent.

  “Not too bloody far,” he said with a growl, unsure just which question he was answering.

  “Ummm.” The white-haired cherub nodded thoughtfully. “Then it appears you still have a good bit of work to do. Where did you leave off?”

  He had the strangest feeling they were carrying on two conversations at once. But when she just smiled sweetly and focused her attention on the papers strewn about the table, he told himself he was imagining things.

  “She had just laid out the dietary demands of the members of your household when I was called away. If I remember properly: one will eat nothing uncooked, and another nothing that isn’t raw. One will eat no meat, another no vegetables. One will eat no fat and another will eat no lean.” The sense of it suddenly struck him. “Ye gods—it’s Jack Sprat and wife, twelve times over!”

  Hermione took no offense. “We are a bit like that, we finicky old cats,” she said with a laugh. “And poor Toni lets us get by with it.” She shook her head fondly and beckoned him to a seat beside her at the table. As he held the chair for her, then settled stiffly into one across the table from her, she looked up at him with a decidedly mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Ridiculously softhearted, that girl. But her head … now, that is another matter altogether.”

  Midafternoon that same day, Remington found himself burdened with a large willow basket and trailing Molly McFadden along through the vast and bustling Farmer’s Market—under Antonia’s watchful eyes. It had taken most of the morning, even with Dame Hermione’s able tutelage, for him to wade through that morass of competing nutritional demands and develop a menu plan for the Paxton household. At the end of it he learned that his work was just beginning, for he would be required to do the shopping for it, then to help with the cooking as well.

  Buying food didn’t sound like a particularly formidable task, until he learned the constraints under which it had to be accomplished: a strict budget. He had to acquire a considerable amount of food with what appeared to be a miserly amount of money.

  “It cannot be done,” he declared, standing in a busy butcher shop amid hams and hanging strings of sausages, eyeing the numbers on the price board. He turned to Antonia, who had been pressed into accompanying him and Molly McFadden. “What’s the point of taking in all these extra mouths to feed,” he demanded, “if you cannot afford to feed them?”

  “What I can and cannot afford is beside the question, your lordship,” she said curtly. She wasn’t pleased about being here with his imperial lordship. She wouldn’t have come at all if Maude Devine, who usually helped Molly with the shopping, hadn’t suddenly come down with a bout of her recurring back ailment. “It is always sound practice to keep expenses—especially food costs—as low as possible. And when it comes to getting the best price on food, our Molly has no peer.”

  He glanced doubtfully at the figure on his list and back at the price board, then scowled at Molly. “So you think it can be done.”

  “You bet yer rosy arse it can,” plainspoken Molly said with a determined tug at her bonnet strings and a rather indelicate adjustment of the corset straining at her ample waist. She looked for all the world like a bare-knuckles fighter getting ready to step into a ring, “just watch, yer lor’ship. An’ take a lesson.”

  She stepped up to the counter, peering down her nose at the cuts of meats stacked behind smudged glass cases. With regal disdain she passed over one pile of chops, loins, and cutlets after another. Then she turned that eloquently discerning gaze on the sides of meat hanging behind the counter, near the butcher’s worktables. When she was asked what she would like, she threw her first punch:

  “I want a solid piece of good English beef wot ain’t rouged up nor shot full o’ brine nor short-weighted.” Then she fixed the butcher with a narrow-eyed look. “So far, I ain’t seen a thing wot measures up.”

  What followed was the baldest and wiliest bit of bargaining Remington had ever seen in his life. Molly shamelessly berated the fellow’s meats and poultry, and he just as energetically defamed her judgment, the acuity of her senses, and her knowledge of what constituted good meats. She charged behind the counter and invaded his hanging stock to select the pieces she wanted, then proceeded to question every cut the fellow made for her. She wouldn’t pay a pound and six for that joint of ham, she declared, when it wasn’t worth more than eleven and ninepence. She finally agreed to take it off his hands for one pound even. The huge capon seemed a bit gray, would have to be cooked that night to keep it from going “off,” and she reduced the price by a third.

  In a short while she had contracted for their meats and poultry for the week ahead, all within the allotted budget. When they stepped outside into the street, Remington’s jaw was set and his nostrils flared with indignation.

  “That was the most outrageous display of pound-flogging and penny-pinching I have ever witnessed in my life,” he gritted out. The words were intended for Antonia’s ears, but they carried to Molly’s as well. The butcher’s widow lapped one hand over the other around the handle of her market basket and fixed him with a canny look.

  “Ain’t never had to watch yer pennies, eh, yer lor’ship? Many’s the woman who would envy ye. But many more would think ye a fool to pay more than goin’ rate for decent food.”

  “And you. You actually condone this sort of thing in your house?” he demanded of Antonia. Molly spoke for her.

  “Ever house must practice some economies, yer lor’ship. It ain’t no disgrace. I be Laidy Toni’s buyer, and them shopmen would think she run a slack house if I didn’t bargain proper.” Then with a devious smile she picked up his hand and deposited her bag of coins in it. “Hope ye were watchin’ close, m’lord, cause it’s yer turn next.”

  He stiffened and gave her his fiercest and most aristocratic glare. “I will not haggle over ha’pennies like some deprived fishwife.”

  “Afraid you cannot do it, your lordship?” Antonia challenged with a smile that wouldn’t have melted bu
tter.

  What she couldn’t make him do by reason or wheedling, she intended to lever him into by goading his pride, he realized. But recognizing her tactic didn’t make it any easier for him to resist, especially when she removed several coins from the household purse and genteelly bargained for a number of spices in the neighboring grocer’s shop. He was boxed neatly into a corner of his own male pride. She could do it without apparent loss of dignity, her smug little smile said, but could he?

  With a growl of protest he snatched the list from her hands, stuffed the purse into his pocket, and strode into the nearest greengrocer’s to do battle for peas, carrots, leeks, and turnips. He felt conspicuous in the extreme among the housekeepers, cooks, and matrons prowling the bins and stands. Worse yet, he had no idea what faults one could decry in a leek or a turnip that would make a shopkeeper reduce its price.

  As his frustration mounted, he retreated further and further into hard-nosed aristocratic hauteur. In desperation he inquired after the price of the turnips, declared it “too bloody high,” and demanded to know if the local constabulary knew of the shopkeeper’s thieving prices. He held his breath as the grocer quickly sized up his mien, his garments, and his superior air, and began—in long-standing English tradition—to defer to his better.

  As Remington watched the little man scrambling to refigure his prices, it occurred to him that when all else failed, a pigheaded and insufferable air of nobility had been known to carry the day. And armed with that bit of insight, he was soon bargaining for the rest of his list as well.

  Antonia and Molly watched from the front of the shop, biting their lips to keep their laughter from reaching his ears. His manner and countenance were a rather outrageous and self-conscious parody of his own upper-crust assumption and superiority. Seeing him behaving with such inflated condescension, Antonia could not help contrasting that insufferable aristocrat to the man who sat at her kitchen table in a corset, whittling potatoes into nubbins, and the tender, larcenous rogue who poured heated words into her ear and kissed her within an inch of her soul.