Minor Indiscretions

by Barbara Metzger

  “I knew you were a downy one, Pip! Of course, I’ll need you with me to explain it to them,” she mentioned casually, starting another of her campaigns. Before he could object she went on: “I don’t think I have the same grasp of finances you do. I’d only make a mull of it, you know.”

  Pip handsomely conceded that females weren’t expected to understand such weighty matters, and yes, she ought to have a man, or a boy, at her side.

  The twins, who were always filthy despite Nanny’s best efforts, were naturally put in charge of the new pigs, once the pen was built. Then delicate Meggie, wrapped like a mummy in Nanny’s knitteds, wanted a job all her own. She got the chickens and handled those eggs like fragile porcelain.

  Ducky learned to weed, more or less, under Nanny’s supervision. More weeds and less cabbage and parsley seedlings, thank goodness, Melody cheered. And Nanny, of course, kept her needles flying. With all the new wool, she declared, they wouldn’t go cold for another three years. They might even try selling mittens in the village, come next winter.

  Melody was determined that even the pup, Angie, would earn her keep. There were rabbits and partridge and pheasants in the home woods that could be better utilized on the home dinner table. Angie could scent food miles away—she was already canis non grata in the village—so all Melody had to do was convince the dog to help her locate supper in the wild. Of course, after Angie flushed the game, Melody had to shoot it, which posed a few obstacles of its own, considering Melody had never handled a gun in her life. She would learn.

  Two other obstacles were not as easily overcome: Mama and Felice.

  “My dearest daughter out there in the muck with pigs and chickens? My salts, quickly.”

  It got worse when Melody determined that the most money could be saved by combining the two households.

  “Don’t be a ninnyhammer, Melody. You cannot expect me to permit those, those children to come live at the Oaks, can you?”

  “No, Mama, I expect you to go live at the Dower House.”

  “Oh, dear Lord, my heart. I’m having spasms, you sapskull, call the physician.”

  “Mama, we cannot afford to heat this pile, much less pay enough staff to keep it clean. The idea of an army of servants waiting on three women is absurd anyway, even if we had the means.”

  Tears did not work either, nor cajolery, nor guilt. “You are an unnatural child, trying to kill your own mother. I am not a well woman, you know. Living at the Dower House with the children, all the noise and dirt…I’m afraid it will be too much for me.” Melody wasn’t budging, and she held the purse strings. She also hid that little silver bell.

  “Don’t give me that perishing cordial, you nodcock, I need the brandy.”

  *

  “I am sorry, Felice, but we cannot afford a dresser for you and Mama. In fact, the few servants we do keep will be too busy, so you’ll have to look after my mother, help with her clothes and things.”

  Felice turned another page of the fashion magazine. “You cannot make a maid out of me, Miss High-and-Mighty. I won’t do it.”

  “Then you won’t eat.”

  Felice threw the magazine down and stamped on it. “My father shall hear of this!”

  “Good, I’d like to have a few words with that gentleman myself. Perhaps he can advise me on some investments, if he ever reimburses the money spent on your behalf. Shall I show you the tally Pip made of that last stack of bills?” The beauty made no reply. “Three parasols, Felice?”

  “I wouldn’t expect a dowd like you to understand. They were for three different outfits, of course.”

  “But I do understand, Felice, and I sincerely hope you bought quality merchandise, for it will have to last you a good long time.”

  “You always were hateful, Melody Ashton, you with your so-perfect manners and your so-dignified airs. Well, you don’t fool me for a minute; you’re just jealous. You’ll never get a husband, and you want to make sure I never get one! Why, even that windbag Lord Pendleton wouldn’t have a managing female like you!”

  Melody’s innate honesty forced her to admit to the germ of truth hidden in the vitriol. Not that claptrap about husbands, of course, but the charge of jealousy hit home. All the attention Mama gave the other girl, all the stares from all the men, for all those years, hurt. Still, she could be fair. “You would be beautiful dressed in rags, Felice, and gentlemen will continue to offer for you, I am sure. Please believe me, I shall heartily wish you joy with whichever man you accept…the sooner the better.”

  *

  They planted potatoes and fenced in the chickens. The merchants were cooperating, and the two sows gave birth. Unfortunately, piglets could fit through gaps their lumbering mothers could not.

  “Pigs like to wander,” Toby informed Melody. So wires were strung.

  “Pigs can dig.” So boards were sunk.

  Pigs could chew, and pigs could jump. Pigs could fly, for all Melody knew, and likely would before she found a way to keep them penned. So there were always little pink piglets in the garden, on the lawn, or down the drive, and almost always two identically dirty little girls chasing after them. Sometimes the boys joined in, and sometimes Angie, adding her baying to the giggling, shouting, squealing melee. They seemed to save the best, noisiest, muddiest pighunts for when Lady Ashton was taking her constitutional or when the vicar came to call. No one even bothered to hand Lady Jessamyn her smelling salts anymore; they went straight for the brandy.

  *

  Melody was practicing her shooting, using her father’s old dueling pistol that Toby had taught her how to load and aim. The gun would be no good over distance, but in her careful reasoning, Melody felt she would do better to start with a stationary target at short range. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she could shoot a bunny rabbit. There was a certain amount of pleasure, meanwhile, in the skill she was gaining.

  She was concentrating on the day’s target, a playing card, and never heard the man approaching till Angie’s bark grew sharper.

  “’Ere, ’ere, call your dog off, miss.”

  “It’s Mr. Pike, the constable, isn’t it? How do you do, sir?”

  Pike removed his low-crowned hat and bowed, revealing a rat-brown wig slightly askew on his head. “Aye, miss. They said as how you were the one I had to talk to, concerning the complaints.”

  “What complaints might those be, sir?” Melody asked, reloading the pistol.

  “Well, ma’am, there’s complaints from the shopkeepers about bills, complaints from the butcher about your dog, and complaints from the villagers about the bast—brats.”

  “Oh, those complaints.” The man obviously had no sense of humor. He merely wiped at his pointed red nose, where another drip was already forming. “Yes, well, I believe I have accommodated the merchants, and Angie here has not repeated her foray to the village.”

  “And what about the youngsters? There’s some as saying they belong in the workhouse.”

  “That’s absurd.” She looked at him narrowly. “Unless ‘they’ get a portion of the county dole for each resident there. Those children are my responsibility, not to be thrown on the parish.”

  “But law-abiding citizens are saying they’re running around wild and unsupervised, and you’re keeping freaks out here.”

  Melody drew herself up and looked down on the little man—they always were small, bullies like this. “Mr. Pike, those are lovely, happy children you are speaking of. They are well fed, properly clothed, and have lessons every day. I’ll thank you not to call them names. Now if you are finished, sir, I have more practicing to do.”

  Pike rubbed his hands together. “You haven’t answered all of the charges, miss.” He edged a little closer, looking at her sideways. “Of course, I’d forget some of the complaints if you were to make it worth my while. A little snuggling might do it.”

  “Sir, you forget yourself!”

  “No, I remember Miss Felice used to cooperate.” Why, that little yellow-haired baggage! Melody turned away and poin
ted the gun. “Mr. Pike, I am going to forget this conversation.” She aimed at the card. “I suggest you do the same.” And fired. She hit the card, the knave of spades, right on the nose. “Do I make myself clear?”

  It was time to try Papa’s rifle.

  *

  They harvested the first row of beans, sold some of the farrow pigs, thankfully before the twins could count, and Melody shot her first woodcock. Of course, she had to wrestle with Angie over possession of the bird, but she was working on the problem. Felice was spending more time in the village, fixing her interest on Edwin, Melody hoped, and Mama was resting, if not resigned. They were managing. Mr. Hadley told Melody she should be proud.

  At night sometimes, though, when her body was exhausted but her mind was wide awake, and she only had Angie for company, Miss Ashton stared at the ceiling of her tiny room and despaired.

  Should a person stop dreaming because no dreams have come true? Stop wishing when no wishes are fulfilled? Then where is the place for heaven? How can life itself go on without hope? It cannot; that’s called hell. At the very least, one can hope for a sunny day or an end to rain. Small dreams, but fair odds, sooner or later.

  And a young girl, even one with freckles from working out in the sun, should never give up her dreams. Sooner or later…

  Chapter Nine

  Sooner or later, a man has to pick up the threads of his life, even if his nose is crooked. Lord Cordell Inscoe, Viscount Coe, had stayed away from London for over a month. The first few weeks, of course, were not by choice.

  “You take that deathtrap vehicle out of the carriage house, and I won’t be responsible,” the doctor announced when he came to the inn to do what he could for the viscount’s nose. “One rut, one miscue to those fractious brutes you young blades drive, and one of those cracked ribs goes right through your lung. Then where are you? Lying in a road somewhere, gasping for air like a beached perch. And what did you say happened to your nose, anyway? You fell? Addlepated young fool, I told you to keep quiet. Lucky you didn’t do yourself an injury right here, in Mrs. Barstow’s best parlor.”

  Lucky? If the cantankerous old sawbones thought a broken nose was no injury, he should just get a taste of what it felt like. Coe had a mind to—

  “Too bad I couldn’t get here yesterday when it happened. Mrs. Reilly, don’t you know. For real this time, by Jupiter, great big bruiser of a boy, it was. Already set a bit, your beak, that is. I’ll have to break it again, of course, unless you want to be sniffing at your right ear the rest of your days. This might pain you some.”

  If Corey didn’t flatten the physician right then, it was because he was too busy picturing a slim, graceful neck between his hands.

  So he stayed on in West Fenton for his ribs’ sake, not eager for anyone to see him in his present condition anyway. Hostesses would faint, the fellows at the clubs would be merciless in their ribbing, without even knowing about the little girl who’d dealt the last blow, and his town house staff would wrap him in cotton wool. Corey thought for a moment of lying low as soon as he could travel to the little house in Kensington he kept for his convenients. He was not paying his current mistress Yvette for her conversation, however, and not being up to the obvious exercise, he might as well stay put.

  Corey sent for his man Bates, his ex-batman from army days, now a dapper gentleman’s gentleman, who took his stature from serving a pink of the ton. Lord Coe also notified his secretary to refuse invitations, forward important mail, and handle everything else. The viscount’s affairs were well in hand, as they had to be, with him gone so long fighting old Boney. He trusted his bailiffs and his bankers and Mr. Tyler, who had been secretary to his father before him.

  The first week Corey took laudanum for the pain; the second, Bates was hiding his master’s boots to keep the viscount from overdoing. By the third week Coe was visiting Albert, playing cards in the taproom with the worshipful locals, and making a nuisance of himself in the stables, wanting to exercise the horses. Mostly, he went for walks and reflected on his life. Time and boredom will do that to a man.

  The war was over, his part of it anyway, and maybe he was taking too many risks with his life. Maybe he should think about leaving more to posterity than a new driving record to Brighton. The viscountcy was secure, at least, in a sober cousin and his large, hopeful brood. Coe’s personal wealth, the considerable unentailed property, would go to his beloved sister and her future children. Erica, Lady Wooster, was now a childless widow living in Bath, but she was only twenty-four, and that could change. Now that Corey had time to think about it, his heritage demanded more of him. He would just have to change his way of life—or find Erica a new husband.

  London was a little thin of company when he finally got there, the Season not formally underway. The clubs seemed to have the same gouty gents sitting under a pall of smoke, the same glitter-eyed gamblers feverishly dicing away their patrimonies, and the same hard-edged tulips shredding reputations over cognac. The parks were full of dandies on the strut and hey-go-mad bucks on bonecrushers. Erica’s first marriage was a joyless one, Corey thought regretfully, still feeling guilty for his part in arranging it. She deserved better.

  With this thought in mind, or so he told himself, Viscount Coe went to Almack’s. The beau monde’s Marriage Mart worked both ways, he reasoned, and a gentleman on the lookout to become a tenant for life would more likely be found here than at, say, the Coconut Club or the Cyprian’s Ball. If, while he reconnoitered the field of bachelors, the viscount’s eye happened to glance to the rows of debutantes decked in white lace, that was merely by accident.

  As Lord Coe temporized for a stunned Lady Jersey, he was just popping by in case an old friend was up from the country. The elusive, reckless Lord Coe at Almack’s surveying this year’s crop of fledglings? What a tale to pass around! Reading her mind, Corey tugged at his neckcloth, an elegant creation it had taken him and Bates an hour to tie. It may be de rigueur to arrive at Almack’s before eleven, and in knee smalls at that, and even to flirt with Lady Jersey, but dashed if he’d let the lady patronesses pass him off to every whey-faced chit and her eager mama. He was not about to give rise to hopeful expectations in any grasping woman’s breast.

  He had one dance with Princess Esterhazy before excusing himself. “I see that my, ah, friend is not here, so I’ll just be going on. Another engagement, don’t you know.”

  That wouldn’t stop the rumors, not when his lordship kept scanning the sidelines.

  She wasn’t there, his green-eyed sprite, not that he would admit looking for her. She said she would not have a Season, but such a beauty deserved gowns and jewels and elegant waltzes—in his arms. After he strangled her, of course. He touched the bridge of his nose where there was and might always be a new bump, and smiled, causing one dumpling of a deb to nearly swoon with joy. The viscount did not notice.

  This was absurd, he chided himself, looking for Angel amid such milk-and-water misses! Looking for her at all was foolish beyond permission. That’s why he had purposely not asked Barstow for her direction, debating with himself whether Mrs. Barstow would have given it. Why, his behavior toward an untouched maiden was already reprehensible, and he was no closer to jumping into parson’s mousetrap over a pair of green eyes and a captivating dimple than he was to…to asking that plump little chit over there for a dance. The wealthiest, most attractive, most alluring bachelor in many a year scowled and stomped out of Almack’s. Miss Weathersfield fled in tears to the retiring room, while all the young sprigs of fashion wondered how they could get such interesting deviations in their proboscises.

  At least Yvette could not be tarnished by his rake-shame reputation, Coe thought as he walked off his ill-humor on the long trek to Kensington. Hell, she’d helped him earn it, along with many of her sisters. Now it was time she earned that charming little bijou and the pony cart and the diamond necklace.

  Yvette earned the matching bracelet, leaving Corey spent. Too bad she could not satisfy his mind as well as
his body, but Yvette’s talents did not include beguiling conversation. There was no friendly banter, no natural tenderness, or warm good humor. For the first time ever, Coe was bothered by bought affection. He went home early.

  A few tedious weeks later, the best Viscount Coe had managed for entertainment was a green-eyed replacement for Yvette, some heavy wagers, and the idea of a house party at his property outside Bath, to liven up his sister’s days. The best prospect he could come up with for a new brother-in-law was Lord Pendleton, and even Corey was hesitant about foisting the prosy bore on Erica for a fortnight. Then Erica wrote him a troubled letter, asking if he could help with a delicate matter. Her words spoke of adventure, danger, and intrigue, a menace to his dear sister’s happiness, and a threat to the family name. What could be better?

  *

  It rained for four days. The viscount put up at Hazelton, a town about an hour from his goal, according to his maps. He had decided to keep this distance, not wanting his destination made public. He knew what a stir a nobleman and his retinue could make in a small village, which was precisely what he wished to avoid in such a delicate family matter. He could not simply travel by horseback, for he needed the closed carriage, which meant a coachman, footmen, and postilions. A groom was necessary to look after his stallion, Caesar, tied behind. The viscount’s man, Bates, refused to be left behind, saying; “Just look what happened last time, milord.” So Hazelton it was.

  It kept raining, however, and the only inn in town was damp. Corey’s ribs ached, damn the quack in West Fenton. His man, Bates, came down with a cold, and the groom reported one of the carriage horses was off its feed. Blast this whole mission!

  He set out finally on a high-strung gray stallion that hadn’t been exercised in too long a time, down muddy roadways and up mired country lanes. He got lost twice and almost unseated once, to the detriment of his temper. At last he spotted a gravel drive, as per his directions, flanked by two stone columns with acorns carved in them. Original, he thought sarcastically, prepared to find nothing pleasing about this place. He was not disappointed.