Lady with a Black Umbrella

by Mary Balogh

  “My feet are cold,” Daisy announced, looking down at them and appearing surprised to notice that they were unshod. “Oh, dear, I did not stop to put shoes on. How careless of me, Rose. And I am very thankful for the cloak. It is a decidedly chilly morning. Now, my man”—she turned back to the innkeeper, her manner brisk—“we will go inside immediately, and I will pay both my reckoning and that of the gentleman who has just left.”

  “Daisy!” Rose admonished at her side. And then in a low voice, “Don’t get involved in other people’s problems. Oh, please do not. Not here. And not in London. You know that you always get into so much trouble when you do.”

  “Nonsense, Rose,” her sister said, leading the way indoors and leaving the innkeeper and the indoor servants to trail in behind her. “I think that poor gentleman has been sadly maligned. I would not give these very unmannerly and inhospitable people the satisfaction of being able to complain that his bill has gone unpaid. As for me, I believe that he will return or at least send a servant back with the money.”

  “Sh,” Rose hissed.

  “I really do not care if I am heard,” Daisy said. “I am not pleased with the service here.”

  When they all arrived in the taproom, the cook having been shed somewhere along the way, it was noticeable that the innkeeper’s manner had become considerably more obsequious.

  The lady might be peculiar to the point of eccentricity, but if she was willing and able to pay both her own reckoning and that of the gentleman who had just left, then she clearly was not a nobody, as he had assumed since her arrival the previous afternoon with only the one servant.

  “Now,” Daisy said, “the two bills, my man, if you please. And you will kindly send to wake up my coachman to prepare my carriage and horses for an immediate departure. No, we will not stay for breakfast. I cannot think what Gerry is about to sleep until this hour anyway.”

  The innkeeper bowed and retreated behind the bar to fetch the bills.

  Daisy turned her attention to the barmaid. “The gentleman said that he owed you money too?” she said.

  Bessie smirked and curtsied. “That he does, ma’am,” she said. “A hard night's labor I put in for that gent. He would hardly let a body get a wink of sleep. And now a full day’s work ahead of me and the dear knows what to expect tonight again.”

  Daisy fixed her with a severe eye. “You will tell me how much you earned with your hard labors,” she said. “I will pay you. And if I were you, my girl, I would not boast so loudly about your exploits. You are part of a gentleman’s bill just like the emptying of his shaving water and the blacking of his boots. Not very flattering when you look at it that way, is it?”

  Bessie tossed her head and glared defiantly back. But she did not turn and flounce out of the room, though she looked as if she wished to do. If this lady was fool enough to pay her for what she had done between the sheets with a gentleman who was a stranger to the lady, then far be it from Bessie to stand on her dignity. She even wiped the smirk from her face, though it was hard enough to do. The lady must have fallen hard for the gentleman even though she had seen him only after his good looks had been spoiled. Poor lady. With her looks—Bessie allowed her eyes to rest on the shiny face and the rather untidy braids that were now inside the cloak—she was probably desperate for any man, gent or otherwise.

  Rose appeared to have given up on her sister. She blushed scarlet at Bessie’s words and sat down at one of the tables. From the quiet air of resignation with which she sat there, it appeared that perhaps she was accustomed to such scenes.

  “Now,” Daisy said, having taken the two bills firmly in her hand and acknowledged with a nod the inflated sum Bessie had named, “I shall go to my room and be down in half an hour’s time both ready to leave and to pay the two of you. But before I do leave, I will wish to see the gentleman whose gaming debts have gone unpaid. Kindly ask him to wait upon me here, my good man.”

  “Daisy!” her sister moaned halfheartedly from behind her.

  But Daisy, once she was launched on a course of action, was not to be deterred, as Rose knew well from long experience. Why she should have expected her sister to change merely because they were on their way to London, she did not know. They both spent the following half-hour washing and dressing, doing their hair, packing away the belongings that had been taken out the night before.

  Daisy glanced through the window when they were almost ready, and nodded with satisfaction. “The coach is ready,” she said, “and Gerry is down there waiting to go. I am surprised he slept through all the commotion. I will be very glad to see the back of this place, will not you, Rose? How you could have slept on that mattress, I do not know.”

  “It was remarkably brave of you to go to that gentleman’s rescue,” Rose said. “I would not have had the courage to go anywhere near the yard. I could have fainted with fright when your leaving the room woke me up and I glanced out to see what was going on. You might have been killed, Daisy.”

  “Nonsense,” her sister said, putting in the last hairpin to hold the heavily coiled braids to the back of her head. “Bullies are always cowards, Rose. If there had been only one man attacking the gentleman, I would not have been near as safe. But then, if there had been only one, I daresay the gentleman would not have needed my assistance.”

  “Do you not think it was unwise to rush downstairs at an inn without any thought at all?” Rose suggested tentatively. “You were wearing only your nightgown, dear. It was very fortunate that so few people saw you. There might have been any number of guests wandering around.”

  “No,” Daisy said with all the logic of hindsight. “If there had been lots of other people around, those bullies would not have made their attack, you may depend upon it. Are you ready? Let us go, then. I hope you do not mind waiting for your breakfast, Rose, but I really think I would choke if I had to eat any of that man’s food after the very discourteous treatment he has given both us and the gentleman. We should be on our way soon. It will not take long to talk to the other gentleman and settle that debt.”

  “Daisy!” Rose sat down on the lumpy bed and gazed imploringly at her sister with large blue eyes. “A strange gentleman’s gaming debts are really none of your concern. You must leave well alone, you know. You do not know what the sum is, and though I know we are very wealthy and can afford even a large sum, it is not the thing at all, dear. We do not even know if the gentleman is worth your care. He is a gambler, and worse. That barmaid, Daisy!” She blushed and looked away from her sister’s eyes.

  “It is not for us to judge,” Daisy said, stooping to pick up their large valise. “But it is certainly not the thing for that other gentleman’s servants to spread unsavory stories in the servants’ quarters, Rose. The innkeeper would have dealt with such gossip with the proper severity if he were any kind of man. No, I intend to pay those gaming debts, and then let them all say what they will.”

  She marched from the room and down the stairs without looking back to see if her sister followed. Rose sighed and got to her feet. Dear Daisy! She was always on some crusade in support of strangers, human and animal alike, and half the time the recipient was either unworthy or ungrateful or both. Daisy and her lame ducks! Rose had been sorry to see the gentleman the victim of such an unequal fight, and she had been horrified to see his face. But really, his problems were none of their concern. Certainly his unpaid debts were not their business. Rose even had a feeling that if he were a proper gentleman, he would not be grateful to Daisy for her intervention.

  But how could one explain any of that to Daisy? After nineteen years of living with her, Rose still tried quite frequently. But she might as well talk to a brick wall. At least the wall would stay quiet while she talked and still until she had finished.

  Rose followed her sister downstairs and stood a few paces from the table where Daisy sat with a smiling plump gentleman who gave Rose the shudders. She could not explain why. He probably could not help having soft fat fingers with dark hairs on the back
s of each. And if he chose to wear a ring on each of those fingers, well, that was entirely his business. And one could not quarrel with a smile and a quiet, polite manner. But Rose found her lips curling in distaste and had to deliberately school her expression to blandness.

  She was very relieved that the meeting was brief and to the point. She wished as fervently as Daisy that she need never set foot inside the Golden Eagle ever again. She had never been so glad to see the old carriage waiting in the stableyard and Gerry striding across the cobbles to take the valise from Daisy’s hands and scold her for not sending him up for it.

  Gerry, it seemed, had been sent clear to the other end of the village on an errand to the blacksmith’s as a favor to the head groom of the inn, and so had missed the fight. But he grumbled his scoldings to Daisy for her foolish and dangerous intervention in the scuffle just as if he were her fond papa. He coughed and wheezed as he climbed into his high seat and took the ribbons in his hand. He would probably be dead by now, he thought as he thumped his chest, if it were not for Miss Morrison. Men who spent their lives down the mines from childhood on usually died young of coal on the chest. He must not complain of some congestion, frequent as it was. At least he was still alive and over forty years old. And he had the fresh air to breathe. He drew in a deep breath of it now, coughed again, and guided the carriage out onto the street.

  ***

  Inside the taproom of the Golden Eagle Inn, the gentleman who had just recovered his gambling debts far sooner than he had expected, was smiling in a very self-satisfied way at the redheaded female who had just joined him at the table where Daisy had left him.

  “This is far better than I hoped in my wildest dreams,” he said with a soft laugh. “A little embarrassment and a little pain to keep him from Bath is what I had planned. And that would have been bad enough for the likes of Kincade. But this! He will never recover from the humiliation. I could kiss the lady, Kit, if I did not have a far more desirable armful right here with me. This triumph needs to be celebrated, my dear. And it is still very early. Come back upstairs with me for a while.” He shook with quiet laughter again as he got to his feet and held out a hand for the redheaded female’s.

  She shrugged and put her hand in his. “It is as good a way as any of working up an appetite for breakfast, I suppose,” she said.

  ***

  Viscount Kincade was having breakfast in his London town house the following morning, talking with his brother, when the butler asked if he might admit his lordship’s head groom to deliver a message.

  “I am relieved to know he has returned so promptly and the whole sordid episode is at an end,” Lord Kincade confided before the man came into the breakfast room. “You cannot imagine the embarrassment, Arthur.”

  The Reverend Arthur Fairhaven smiled his sweet smile. “There would be plenty to say that the treatment you were given at that particular inn absolved you from all obligation to pay your reckoning, Giles,” he said. “It pleases me to know that you have done what is right rather than seek revenge.”

  “Don’t try to make an angel out of me,” his brother said before turning his head and raising his eyebrows inquiringly to the groom, who had entered the room and stood at the foot of the table. “If I could find those three louts, I would take them on one at a time and not let them go until they were mincemeat.”

  “And you would do it in a fair fight, I note, ” Fairhaven said.

  “Yes, Chandler?” The viscount turned his attention to his groom. “The bills have been paid, the accounts settled?”

  “Yes, my lord.” The groom shifted his feet uncomfortably.

  “Good,” his lordship said briskly. “Now I will have to find out Mr. Martin today, and then all that will remain to be done is for the bruises to heal.”

  His morning face indicated that that would be no swift business. He sported a swollen upper lip, a shiny sore-looking cheek, and an eye as black as bootblacking might make it for a masquerade. The raw purple-and-yellow decorations around its outer edges, and the bloodshot appearance of the eye that peeped from swollen lids proved that this was no masquerade, though.

  “Ah, my lord,” the groom said, instead of turning and taking his leave as his master expected, “the reckonings had already been paid when I got there.”

  The viscount frowned. “My purse was found?” he asked.

  The groom coughed. “A lady paid, it seems,” he said. “A Miss Daisy Morrison.”

  Lord Kincade closed both good and bad eye briefly. “Miss Daisy Morrison,” he said. “My savior, the glistening apparition. And did you get her direction, Chandler?”

  “No, my lord,” the groom replied. “The innkeeper did not know it, and she had not deemed it necessary to leave it. But she was traveling in the direction of London, he said.”

  “Oh, famous!” the viscount said. “It should be easy enough to find her, then, if we have narrowed the search to London. ” He eyed his brother briefly and turned back to the servant. “You settled that other matter, Chandler?”

  The groom’s cough was more pained than the last. “The lady had paid that too,” he said.

  “What!” Lord Kincade half-rose from his chair before sinking back and closing his eyes very tightly again. “The interfering baggage! My instincts told me from the start that she was no lady.” He opened his eyes again. “Next, you will be telling me, Chandler, that she paid my gaming debts as well. ’’

  “Yes, my lord,” the groom said crisply, not even taking the time to cough first.

  Lord Kincade was lost for words. He clamped his mouth shut after staring at his head groom for an appalled moment. “Thank you, Chandler. That will be all,” he said, and watched his servant scurry thankfully from the room, “The baggage! The effrontery! The sheer nerve of the woman! Arthur, what kind of female would rush to the rescue of a stranger being worked over by three thugs, armed with nothing but an umbrella and clad in nothing but a nightgown, pay that man’s inn bill, settle his gaming debts, and pay off his wh—”

  “His whore?” the Reverend Arthur completed. He smiled gently. “A courageous and a very generous lady, by my guess, Giles. A one-of-a-kind lady.”

  His brother glared at him from his one and a half eyes. “A madwoman,” he said. “A one-of-a-kind lunatic, Arthur.”

  Chapter 3

  Daisy and Rose Morrison found their reception at the Pulteney Hotel in London scarcely any warmer than that at the Golden Eagle, though the proprietors of the hotel were a great deal more well-bred in their coldness. It seemed that anyone who wished to be treated with the proper respect must travel with a veritable army of retainers, Daisy said with a sigh as the door of their suite finally closed behind them.

  Rose had not wanted to stay at the hotel. They really had no choice but to return home immediately, she had pointed out to Rose. They could be well on the road before nightfall, though they must be sure that dusk and the Golden Eagle Inn did not meet with them simultaneously.

  But as usual, she thought, looking about the palatial dimensions of the parlor that adjoined their bedchamber at the hotel, she might as well have saved her breath. Their uncle and aunt Pickering were not at home. They were in Paris, their butler had explained when they had arrived in the middle of the afternoon. They were presumably taking advantage of the opportunity to travel beyond England’s shores again for the first time in many years, now that the political situation made it safe to do so.

  Rose had felt panic grip her for a moment. But she was not Daisy’s sister for nothing. Daisy would surely ask if they might stay at the house for one night before beginning their return to the country the next morning. No real harm had been done beyond the fact that they had wasted several tiring and frequently embarrassing days on the road.

  But Daisy had turned from their uncle’s door, climbed back into the carriage, and appeared nonplussed for only a moment or two. She had then given Gerry the order to proceed to the Pulteney, the only hotel in London whose name she knew.

  “We will
stay there tonight?” Rose had asked. “Indeed, it will be pleasant to be able to relax for a few hours, Daisy. But would it not be wiser to start back immediately so that we might have some miles behind us before tomorrow morning?”

  Daisy had given her an uncomprehending look. “We are not going back,” she had said when she had caught the drift of Rose’s meaning. “Gracious, Rose, we have traveled all these days and made all our preparations for London, and we have come here so that you might meet some eligible gentlemen and make a brilliant match. I will admit that the absence of our Aunt Pickering from town is a setback, but only a minor one. We have plenty of money, after all, and you are adequately chaperoned. We will stay.”

  “At the Pulteney?” Rose had asked, aghast. “For the whole Season, Daisy?”

  Daisy had frowned. “1 hope not,” she had said. “We have one small problem, as I see it, Rose. We need an entrée into society. It is true that Papa was a baron and that as his daughters we should have no difficulty being received by even the highest society, for all that Papa was frowned upon because he enhanced his fortune in coal. But Papa never came near London and never deemed it necessary to cultivate the friendship of his peers. So we do face a little difficulty. But no matter. We will manage.”

  “Manage!” Rose had cried, appalled. “We do not know a soul in London, Daisy. There is no one to give us an introduction or an invitation to even the lowliest drawing room. The situation is impossible. We will have to go home and wait until Aunt Pickering comes back. Perhaps next year.”

  “Next year you will be twenty years old,” Daisy had pointed out as the carriage drew to a halt before the hotel. “No, it has to be this year, Rose. You have waited long enough for a husband. We will contrive a way, never fear.”