by Fox, Georgia
Evernight Publishing
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2012 Georgia Fox
ISBN: 978-1-77130-189-3
Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor: JS Cook
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To TF
PRINCES OF CHARMING
Naughty Fairy Tales
Georgia Fox
Copyright © 2012
One in the Afternoon
London, November 16th, 1899
"I don't know what to say, Madam. How to broach the subject."
Although it was a grim, bone-cold day with rain rattling persistently at the window and occasionally spitting down the chimney into the coals in the grate, Captain Wilder, seated in her small, tidy parlor, apparently suffered the effects of tropical heat. The wretched man was flushed scarlet, a brilliant contrast to the snowy white of his handlebar moustache. Shining beads of perspiration clung to the creases of his forehead, occasionally shaken loose by the vibrations of an uneasy laugh. It would take a blind woman not to guess his discomfort by now, and Drusilla had always been told her eyes were bright, curious, far too intense to fool anyone into thinking she might miss a single trick. But he seemed to think it necessary to explain his awkward fidgeting in her parlor, as if she hadn't seen it all before.
"Really, Captain Wilder, rest assured, there is nothing that will shock me." Drusilla managed a politely restrained smile above her sherry glass. "Tell me what you require." Probably nothing too strenuous, she thought, taking a quick, sly assessment of his portly figure and the plump, trembling fingers clasped around his hat brim. A few quick taps with the paddle perhaps. A tickle with the strap. Sometimes all they wanted was to be tugged about on their hands and knees while they suffered the indignity of a bridle for a few hours.
"Oh, your services are not for me, Madam. Good gracious no."
"Not for you, Captain?"
"For my grandson. Nicholas. Everyone calls him Nicky."
Grandson? Drusilla's clients were generally established gentleman of wealth and standing— men who held certain places of circumstance in society. Her youngest customer, in fact, was a decade older than she, not that anyone would know that. Her dress was librarianesque, hair pulled tightly back in a chignon at the nape—nothing youthful or frivolous about her person.
"Nicky is the child of my scapegrace son," Captain Wilder added, drooping further in the chair.
Drusilla set her sherry glass on the butler's table between them. "Ah, yes. I believe I heard something of it. Years ago."
She was being delicate, pretending the scandalous details were not known to every soul who lived in London twenty one years ago, when Captain Wilder's son Brandon, then only eighteen, sired a child with someone else's wife. It was quite the scandal in its day. The woman in the case was estranged from her baronet husband when she became pregnant. Brandon Wilder confessed to being the father and was subsequently named as a correspondent in divorce papers. It was expected that he would marry the child's mother after the divorce from her husband, but only shortly before the wedding, Brandon fled the country.
The Captain continued, "Since my son left, his child has been my responsibility. Nicky has been in my care since he was two months old. His mother wanted no part in it. Now, I understand, she's in the south of France with her latest paramour." He shook his head. "The selfishness and immorality of the younger generation never fails to shock me, Madam."
Drusilla was puzzled. What on earth was this prim fellow doing at Madame Pantoufle's House of Correction? "What is it you would like me to do for your grandson?" She hesitated. "He is agreeable?" The discipline had to be desired by the subject, otherwise she would have no part in it.
"Oh yes, he knows it must be done. We've had a long talk, he and I."
"It must be done?"
"He's twenty one and just returned from a European Tour. I'd like to see him married and safely settled with some girl of good background, before he faces the same wicked temptations here in Town that ruined my son. I'm told you're the best in the business, madam, at setting a young man on the correct path."
As this conversation advanced she'd begun to suspect their purposes crossed. The feeling was confirmed with his next sentence.
"I put my trust in you to bring him up to scratch with his manners and etiquette—things I fear he avoids, as young men will—and, most importantly, find him a suitable bride. I understand you coordinate perfect matches. I hope I may count on your discretion."
She thought for a moment, listening to the steady thud of the mantle clock, which was timed accidentally, but almost perfectly, with the smacks of a leather strap against the naked posterior of Arthur Henry Mortmain Beauchamp, the fifth Duke of Wynthorne, currently being tended to in the chamber above. Occasionally one thwack fell out of rhythm with the mantle clock's pulse, but only she was conscious of it. Fortunately the Duke favored a gag, so there would be no screams or groans, even when her assistant, Martha, tickled his scrotum with the studs of her whip.
Drusilla listened to every tiny creak from the room above, picturing the scene being played out as it was every other Thursday, when "Dear Artie" as the Duke liked to be called, would be on his knees, bent over, forehead pressed to the floorboards, naked from the waist down. With him it was all about spanking the buttocks and tickling the balls, while he was whispered to as if he was a naughty little boy.
The Captain dabbed his forehead with a wrinkled handkerchief. "You will not turn my grandson away, I hope, because of his illegitimacy?"
Someone, she realized, had sent this blundering gentleman to her out of mischief, letting him believe she was an etiquette tutor and society matchmaker. "I have never yet turned anyone away, Captain, when they truly need my assistance."
"Splendid!" Relief cracked his ruddy face apart in a broad smile, just as Martha's whip above stairs surely cracked hard across Dear Artie's undoubtedly crimson buttocks . "I was afraid you might look down upon the boy. I've done my best to shield him, sent him to the finest schools, you know. But he scarce listens to a thing I say. I fear perhaps that while making up for his father's absence I may have over-indulged the boy."
"You mean he's spoiled."
He skimmed over that with another laugh that consisted mostly of hot air and no mirth. "My mother-in-law feels he lacks the refinement she expects from a Charming and there are still some in society who cannot overlook the fact that his mother was an adulteress, his birth out of wedlock. That stigma seems likely to remain with him. As for the legacy of his father's antics... " He lifted his shoulders in a weary shrug.
"What exactly did become of Mr. Brandon Wilder?" She was curious; how could it be helped? Once upon a time, Brandon Wilder was the most eligible bachelor in London, until the scandal that led to his sudden departure from England.
"My son went off to America. He flits about, here and there. Sends letters to the boy once in a while. I daresay he's found life considerably harder now he has to work for a living, with no inheritance to fall back on."
"I thought he was heir to the Charmings Chocolate fortune?" When Drusilla was a dreamy-eyed kitchen maid she'd often imagined what it would be like to dance in the arms of the Prince
of Charmings —as they'd called him.
"He was, madam. Brandon's mama, my dear first wife, was a Charming. Tragically she died when Brandon was born. She was an only child herself, so the family wealth would have come to our son, had he not made such a pig's ear of his life." He sighed heftily, his moustache heaving with the effort. "When Brandon left England, my mother-in-law, Elinor Charming, wrote him out of the will and everything now goes to Nicky. But only as long as he behaves himself and settles down."
She stood and walked around the couch. "And what does Mr. Brandon Wilder think of getting his son married with the services of a matchmaker?"
He snorted. "Brandon never knew his own mind, let alone what was best for his son. He gave up guardianship when he left the country. He gave up everything."
Smiling grimly at the lace curtains covering her parlor window, she ran her fingers slowly across the pleats. It must be easy to give things up, she thought, when one was born into privilege and had not been forced to work hard for everything one possessed.
She'd met him once, in the flesh—Brandon Wilder, Prince of Charmings—when he attended a ball at the house where she worked. She'd helped him out of the rhododendron bushes after he fell into them while tossing up his guts. He must have been eighteen, for it was around the time of the scandal. Drusilla had lent him her apron to wipe his face and taken him into the scullery to sponge down his evening clothes. Despite his disheveled state and the fact that she was only a fourteen year-old kitchen maid, he'd still played the roguish charmer, as if he thought it necessary to entertain and enchant every female who crossed his path.
Drusilla raised a hand to her throat and swallowed. A little palpitation had jerked to life in her heart, startling her after so many years. Good gracious, she'd had the most terrible crush on that young man, as did every other hapless young kitchen maid and flower seller he ever favored with a smile. Drusilla had improved her reading and vocabulary by following his adventures in the more gossipy segments of the newspaper.
Her back to the Captain, she reached into a hidden pocket in her skirt and withdrew a gold pocket watch on a chain. She flipped it open, but not to study the time. The mechanism kept breaking down, sticking with both hands on the twelve. Drusilla ran a thumb over the glass face and sighed.
"Hopefully, Madam, the fortune my grandson Nicky will inherit from the Charmings can make up for his less auspicious beginnings."
Snapping the watch case shut, she slipped it back into her pocket. She should tell the Captain he'd been sent to her by mistake—that the services she preformed in her house, although discreet, were nothing whatsoever to do with matchmaking or etiquette. That what she provided within those walls was some of the very same temptation he sought to avoid for his grandson. Glancing back over her shoulder, she caught his anxious expression, saw his hands shake as he raised his sherry glass. While fumbling to put his handkerchief back in his pocket, he'd dislodged a few loose coins that fell to her carpet. He didn't notice. Drusilla did, of course, being a woman accustomed to emptying pockets on the sly and taking every opportunity to relieve the wealthy of their burdens—redistributing the wealth, as she liked to think of it.
She suspected that if she picked the Captain up, turned him upside down and shook him, there would not be much more to fall out. After his son's expensive lawsuit the Wilders had fallen on hard times. Evidently the Captain needed the Charming's Chocolate fortune for his grandson and now he came to Drusilla for help, to ensure the boy didn't lose his chance to inherit too.
Poor man. He would be mortified if he knew he'd been made a fool by some malicious person who'd sent him deliberately to the wrong place. The Captain might be a pontificating ass, but he clearly cared about his grandson and took on the responsibility of raising the boy when no one else wanted the task.
Really, why should she not help him? After catering to the disciplinary needs of London's wealthy elite for six years, she had some intimate connections. She could make inquiries, find a suitable young woman of good family for Master Nicholas Wilder, new prince of the Charming Chocolate empire. The lucky woman would certainly become a very rich wife and if Drusilla arranged the match it might be a feather in her own cap. It was always useful to have friends in high places. Friends who owed favors.
Perhaps she'd open a side business.
"Madam? You will take on the job?"
"I will, Captain Wilder."
His cheeks swelled, lifting the great, thick branches of his ivory moustache. "Excellent! Jolly good!" He lurched to his feet. "You will want to meet my grandson Nicky, of course."
"I should like that very much." If he was anything like his notorious father she'd taken on quite a challenge.
"I'll arrange a meeting when he comes to London soon, if that is agreeable to you."
She nodded. "I look forward to it."
"The young lady will be thoroughly vetted? We don't want any common flotsam."
Her smile in danger of becoming strained, she steered him toward the door. "Certainly, Captain. Leave it to me." Drusilla was very good at being polite when every inch of her longed to scream at the hypocrisy. She'd had a great deal of practice.
Behind the front door of this house she was Madame Pantoufle, purveyor of punishment to upper class toffs, who paid well for half an hour under her heel. In the outside world she was Mrs. Kent, respectable widow, left a comfortable income by a deceased, country parson husband.
Who, incidentally, had never existed.
No one would ever guess she was once a guttersnipe pickpocket, taken in by a kindly cook who, finding her out in the rain one day, gave her a post as scullery maid. No one would ever know how she dragged herself up by the boot laces after that, surviving almost as many lives as a cat—first rising to kitchen maid, then to cook, then mistress and finally Madame.
Now she was about to add another life—matchmaker.
She held the door for her guest and ushered him out with a gentle assurance, "Captain, you may consider me your grandson's Fairy God-mother."
Two in the Afternoon
November 17th
Moving along the street with a quick march, Drusilla paid little attention to her fellow pedestrians or the rush of horses and carriages. It looked like imminent rain and she was anxious to get back home before all her packages received a thorough dousing.
Suddenly, there was a carriage in her path. It turned a corner sharply, just as she prepared to dash across the street behind the passing omnibus. A second later and she would have been trampled under the horses. Stepping back with a shout, she dropped her packages and looked up, ready to berate the coachman. The door swung open, a face appeared.
"Mrs. Kent!"
His face was instantly familiar, but it took her a moment to place it. He had very warm, clever eyes the color of treacle and a smile equally sweet, but just as dangerous to a lady's figure.
Cocky brat may as well be written all over his— oh dear—now she remembered. A few weeks ago he came to her front door, having followed her all the way from the park. She didn't know his identity then and he never told her. Now here he was again and this time he introduced himself properly.
"Nicky Wilder." He reached out one hand. "At your service, madam. As you, I understand, are now at mine."
Ah. As she watched his wicked grin widen, the penny fully dropped.
Poor Captain Wilder—that bumbling, mustachioed fool—had been sent to her by this young man, his grandson, quite deliberately. The boy must have found out who she was and planned out his little scheme to get what he wanted.
"Before you shut your door on my face that evening, I told you I don't give up, didn't I?"
"Since you were in drink and had trailed after me on a whim, I certainly didn't think you'd go to these lengths—"
"Oh, I go to any length, Mrs. Kent, for a woman I fancy."
Ignoring the outstretched hand, she stooped to rescue her packages from the pavement. He leapt out, apparently eager to help. He was tall, lean, dressed
in a tweed jacket, riding breeches with muddied knees and filth-encrusted boots.
"I hope I didn't startle you too badly just now, madam."
"Not at all. I was just..." He'd taken all the packages from her and tossed them up into his carriage. Eyes narrowed, she took another, slower assessment of the grinning young man who apparently made bold presumptions. He wore no hat and his hair —light brown with touches of tarnished gold—was a rumpled mess, with a few small leaves tangled in it. There was a mark on the side of his brow. "Your grandfather told me not to expect you in Town for another week, Mr. Wilder."
"I know. But I couldn't wait once I knew he'd hired you for me." How could he speak and maintain that wide, artless smile at the same time? Clearly he had practice at being effortlessly charming. Or it was in the genes. If the latter was the case, his grandfather had missed out somehow for there was nothing effortless about the Captain's smile. It was as primped and trained as the curled tips of his waxed moustache. This boy, however, had a relaxed manner and an easy smile that could fell a lesser woman. "I think you and I can use my grandfather's error to our advantage, Mrs. Kent."
She did not return his smile. "Oh?"
He held out his hand again, this time to help her into his carriage. "Grandfather is quite naive and often gets the wrong end of the proverbial stick." He shrugged. "With a little encouragement from me, of course. Don't worry. I'm not going to tell him. Your secret is safe."
"Mr. Wilder—"
"Nicky. Everyone calls me Nicky."
"Mr. Wilder—"
"I see. Going to be like that is it?"
"There is no other way for it to be."
"Even after you spanked me behind the bandstand in the park?"