by Jo Goodman
Sheridan’s manner of collecting himself until he could make a considered reply was to lift a single dark eyebrow in a pronounced arch. In that fashion he could communicate reproach, caution, or even carefully measured astonishment. If the dark glance that accompanied it was equally persuasive, the recipient of this look simply ceased to speak. There were times, though, when Sherry’s deeply brown eyes were only amused, and the effect of the raised brow was to lend his expression a touch of the ironic.
“I did not realize you were acquainted with Miss Dumont,” he said mildly.
“Acquainted? With your mistress? Hardly, Sherry, and you well know it.” To give her hands something to occupy them, Lady Rivendale picked up her teacup and sipped. “But aware? Yes, indeed, how could I not be? She has been your consort these last three months. I believe I learned you intended to set her up in that house in Jericho Mews before she knew the same.”
“You have never said anything.”
“It is not at all flattering that you can scarcely credit it. I have always maintained that you should have some secrets from me.”
“Or at least the illusion that I have them,” Sherry said dryly.
Lady Rivendale had the grace to blush. Suffused with pink color, her remarkably smooth countenance hinted at the complete beauty she had been in her youth. In her fifty-second year, she was still a handsome woman by any of society’s standards, though proportionately rounder. The visible markers of her advanced age were the graying threads of hair at her temples and the faint but permanent creases at the corner of her eyes. Because she had earned the latter by laughing at the vagaries of life, and the former by surviving them, she accepted both without regrets or any thought of concealment. A military man did not conceal his ribbons, and it was no different for her. Life was a campaign.
“You are put out with me, Sheridan,” she said. “Do not deny it; I can see that you are. Although I abhor defending myself, I cannot abide that you might think I spy on you. What particulars reach my ears concerning you are never sought by me.” Over the rim of the delicate bone china teacup, Lady Rivendale saw her godson’s brow rise a fraction higher. “Almost never,” she amended. “Certainly that is true in the case of Miss Dumont. I might have happily lived the rest of my life without knowing you had an arrangement with this woman, but no less a personage than Lady Calumet repeated the on dit within my hearing. Deliberately done, make no mistake, but entirely for my benefit. She knows I dote on you.”
“Then perhaps I should extend my thanks. Will a note be enough, or should I call on her?”
Her ladyship went on as if Sherry had not interrupted. He meant not a word of what he said, and they both shared that understanding. “I doubt that Miss Dumont is even French, so if she has tales of escaping the Terror or of connections to the Bourbons to retain your sympathies and lighten your pockets, it is all lies and nonsense. Miss Duplicitous is what the baggage should call herself.”
Sherry was glad he was holding his tumbler of whisky and not drinking from it. By only the narrowest bit of luck did he manage to swallow his laughter rather than choke on it. “Pray, do not mince words. If you have an opinion, I should like to hear it.”
Unlike her beloved godson, Georgia Pendelton had never held back laughter in her life, and she was not inclined to begin now. It was no polite, trilling titter that escaped her. When she laughed it was an abandonment of genteel sensibilities in favor of a full-throated, husky shout of her delight. Her shoulders and bosom were engaged in the activity, heaving once, then merely shuddering until the first wave of amusement passed. There was little delicacy in the movements, though in the end, when she dashed away the tears that had collected at the corner of her eyes, it was accomplished with a certain gravitas.
“You are an evil boy,” she said without rancor. “I am certain I knew it from the first. Look, you have made me spill my tea.” Since every drop had been neatly caught by the saucer, her accusation did not have the weight of a rebuke.
At once solicitous, though with an exaggerated formality that made his gesture a parody of concern, Sheridan leaned forward and took the cup and saucer from her hand. He tipped the saucer so the droplets of tea slid onto the serving tray, replaced it under the cup, then added a generous pour of whisky from his own tumbler to her tea.
“For your nerves,” he said. “Drink deeply.”
Lady Rivendale was immediately alert. “What is it? Never say you mean to marry the girl.”
“No,” he said firmly. “I confess, the idea has never occurred to me. It is not a done thing.”
This time when her ladyship’s plump bosom heaved, it was with relief. She could point out to him that it was indeed a done thing, though perhaps not very well done. As annoying as Sherry’s perfect sense of propriety could be on occasion, there were times, such as now, that it was a most comforting aspect of his character. He actually looked a bit affronted that she had even briefly entertained the notion.
“I am heartily glad to hear it,” she said. She raised her cup and took a deep swallow. The whisky blended nicely with the tea’s piquant flavor and admirably warmed her. She regarded him expectantly. “Well?”
“Last evening’s incident at the garden was not without bloodshed.”
The whisky kept Lady Rivendale’s complexion in the pink. He was right to suspect she would need it. “But not yours,” she said, eyes narrowing again.
“No. Not mine.” Before she could interrupt, he hastened to add, “And I did not do murder, though that thought did occur to me. It was the fellow who bowled me over who was stabbed.”
“Hoist with his own petard, I’d say. He meant to rob you.”
Sherry nodded thoughtfully. “It appears that way.”
“You are entertaining some doubts?”
“No, not really. It all happened very fast. Most of the crowd scattered. Perfectly understandable. You can imagine there was a great deal of screaming.”
“A fair amount of it from Miss Dumont’s substantial lungs.”
He confirmed his godmother’s observation with a faint grimace. The memory of Francine’s shrill vocalizations following the attack still echoed in his ears unpleasantly. “It was generally agreed by those witnesses who were in the least reliable that the fellow tripped in his approach and was caught by his own blade.”
“A grievous wound?” she asked. “Or will he hang for surviving it?”
“I’m afraid I can answer neither of your questions. While I was being attended to, and Miss Dumont was being quieted, he was carried off.”
“Carried off? Whatever do you mean?”
“Just that. Taken away.”
“By the parish watchmen?”
“No, not the Charlies. By his accomplices, I should think. Except to remove his person from mine, no one evinced concern for him. That he was wounded was apparent. There was the knife hilt under his ribs and blood seeping on the stones. Hoist with his own petard, as you said. Onlookers moved in closer, and when the area was cleared again, he was gone.”
“Then mayhap he was not hurt at all.”
“I cannot conceive of a reason for such an elaborate ruse, but it doesn’t matter. His wound was real enough. The blood on my waistcoat and shirt was quite real.”
“You did not mention blood before.”
“We were speaking of my injuries then,” he said with perfect calm. “And I will remind you that there were none. In any event, the waistcoat and shirt went the way of my trousers. Kearns insisted.”
“As well he should have.” She gave him a considering look. “I did wonder why you so easily accepted a whisky this morning. It is not generally your way to drink this early.”
Sherry had only accepted the tumbler because he knew most of it would be used to lace his godmother’s tea, but if she thought he required Dutch courage or the hair of the dog to set last night’s adventure before her and behind him, he would not correct the assumption.
“It was good of you to come and tell me the whole of it, Sh
erry,” she said. “I shudder to think how the story will be perverted by the time I hear it again from Lady Calumet.”
“Yes, there is that.”
“Hmmm.” Georgia’s gaze became a little unfocused as she regarded a point in the distance beyond her godson’s shoulder and set herself to the task of perverting the facts to fit her own sense of how the tale should be told. “I shall have to put it about that you gamely acquitted yourself. One does not like to think that you simply lay there under that unfortunate person. Do you ever carry a blade, Sherry?”
“I do not.”
She sighed, expecting just that answer. “No matter. It is perhaps better that you had no weapon. Placing yourself between the cutpurse and your lady friend is romantic nonsense, of course, but just the sort of thing a doting mama with a daughter on the marriage mart will want to hear. Are you certain you were with Miss Dumont, dear? Mighten it have been Miss Harriet Franklin who accompanied you? I think you will agree she is likely to inspire more gallantry than Miss Dumont.”
“What she inspires is indigestion.”
Lady Rivendale frowned. “Truly? That is too bad. I admit to having some hopes in that direction.”
Sherry merely shook his head and set himself comfortably back in the wing chair, though if she had offered him another pour of whisky he would have seized it with the alacrity of a man going under for the third time.
Mrs. Nicholas Caldwell, née Cybelline Louisa Grantham, brushed past the butler in the foyer of her brother’s townhouse and summarily announced herself in Sheridan’s library. He was caught between pleasure and dismay in the same manner he was caught between standing and sitting behind his polished cherry wood desk.
Cybelline did not expect ceremony from her brother, though she knew he was hard pressed not to offer it. “Oh, do sit, Sherry, if that is what you intended. I am quite content to come to you.” She briskly unwrapped the paisley shawl from around her shoulders and unfastened the ribbons of her straw bonnet, then tossed bonnet and shawl in the direction of the damask chaise, all the while advancing on the desk as if she were a regimental standard bearer. She stopped only when she was inches from the chair into which he had slowly lowered himself. “Perhaps you’d better stand,” she said. “I will have to see for myself that you are unhurt.”
“Would you be offended,” he asked mildly, “if I snapped to attention?”
“Beast.”
Sherry pushed back his chair and stood, allowing himself once again to be the object of a loved one’s careful scrutiny. Cybelline’s study was only different from his godmother’s in that her eyes were a steelier shade of gray. “You are looking well, Cyb,” he said. “You are glowing, you know.”
“Glowering.”
“That also, but I choose to comment on what is lovely about you.”
The glower went completely out of her. She rested her hand lightly on the gentle swell of her belly. She was only three months into her pregnancy and would have welcomed more proof of it. “How is it that you know precisely the right thing to say?”
“The same instinct that sends a fox running to his earth: self-preservation.”
She tapped him lightly on his arm with her fist. “You really are a beast, Sherry.” Assured now that he was in every way unharmed, Cybelline backed away and bade him sit once more. She chose the damask-covered chair for a resting place, fitting a small pillow in the curve of her back and placing her feet on an upholstered stool. When she looked up she saw his expression had arrested on her. She laughed. “Yes, Sherry, I am going to have a child. Truly. Did you have doubts?”
He blinked. Raising one hand to his dark hair, he plowed through it with an apologetic, if somewhat perplexed, manner. “No doubts,” he assured her. “But I think it is only now penetrating the gray matter.”
She nodded wisely. She knew the look and the feeling. It was akin to her own experience but even more closely mirrored her husband’s. “It was the same for Nicholas. He accepted the news easily enough, but I know the exact moment he actually understood it. Astonishing, really, when you think about it, since it is the natural course of things. You do realize you’ll be an uncle?”
“I knew that at the outset, but you will understand that until a moment ago it was an abstract concept.” He regarded his sister’s lovely, familiar features. They were set more softly now than they had been when she entered the room. Then they could only have been described as militant. At this moment a slight smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and the color in her cheeks was as pink as a perfect English rose. Curling tendrils of hair the color of honey framed her serene countenance like a golden nimbus. She did indeed glow.
“Uncle Sherry,” he mused aloud. “It suits me, I think.”
Cybelline let her hand flutter over her belly again. “Certainly it does. You will be a wonderful uncle.” The timbre of her voice dropped slightly as it took on a husky, hopeful quality. “Marriage . . . babies . . . your turn as uncle might yet inspire you.”
He grunted softly. “You have surely been talking to Aunt Georgia.”
“She is entirely sensible on the subject, though that is not why I came here today.”
Sheridan was certain that was so, but wondered now if he should be glad of it. Sighing, he forged ahead. There was no point in avoiding the subject any longer. “What have you heard, and more significantly, from whom did you hear it?”
“I should have liked to have heard it from you,” she said reprovingly. “Since you failed to deliver the details yourself, I had the tale from Miss Arbuthnot and Mrs. Dorsey.”
“Then it was your ladies’ literary circle that was titillated by the story. I suppose I may take some solace in that. If my poor adventure is going to be embellished, the best minds should have a crack at it. Come now, out with it.”
“The particulars are these,” she said, raising one slim hand to tick them off on her fingers. “You were set upon by footpads in Covent Garden.” Tick. “You dispatched one by planting him a solid facer that broke his nose and the other by using his own knife to gut him.” Tick. Tick. “Miss Dumont made a cake of herself screaming like a banshee while you were attacked.” Tick. “And when it was over you gave the Charlies enough coin to see that your erstwhile victims were properly cared for.” Tick.
Sherry regarded his sister’s open hand for a long moment before he spoke. “My. The wags have had a good run with it. Aunt Georgia weaves a story with considerably more warp than weft. I suspect by the time I arrive at the club this evening, modesty will prevent me from admitting that I dealt soundly with a half dozen of London’s worst sort.”
“None of it’s true?” Cybelline asked.
“You are crestfallen,” he said, observing the way her mouth pulled at the corners. “And I am sorry for that. You must feel free to make more of the tale if the fancy strikes you.”
“I am not disappointed,” she said stoutly, “and I will have nothing to do with perpetuating the lie. What is the truth?”
He told her. When he finished he could see clearly that she could no longer deny her regret. “It is singularly unheroic, is it not?”
“You were simply knocked down?” she asked.
“Flattened.”
“You did not try to move Miss Dumont out of the way?”
“She stepped aside easily enough. The fact that she was screaming like a banshee did not dispose me to save her.”
“Then that part is true.”
He tapped one of his ears lightly with the flat of his hand. “Sadly, yes.”
“You did not gut your assailant?”
“I do not clean my own fish.”
“I wondered about that.”
He watched her carefully. “Should you have liked it better if the tale were true?”
“No!” The response was forceful and surrendered a shade too quickly. “No,” she said more convincingly a moment later. “You had no opportunity to defend yourself.”
“Perhaps I would not have.”
“I don�
�t believe that.”
He shrugged. “When the choice is put to you that it must be your money or your life, there is only one sensible answer. I do not like it that the question was not even posed. It seemed rather ill mannered that he would simply run at me.”
“Ill mannered?” Cybelline said weakly. “That is your characterization of the footpad’s methods? You do admire good form.”
“I do not deny it. Why should I? Every profession must have standards, else how to judge one’s success?”
“Why, Sherry, you are disappointed that he was not better at it!”
While it was clear his sister was astounded by this notion, Sherry did not understand the why of it. “Certainly. How else was I to properly acquit myself? I might have wrestled him on the path and taken the upper hand. Not dignified, mayhap, but preferable to lying under his dead weight with my lungs absent of breath. We might have grappled for the knife if it hadn’t been buried to the hilt in his side. He was so inept that he tripped while advancing and plunged the thing in himself.”
Cybelline frowned. “You’re certain you had nothing to do with that? It seems deuced odd that he would have been able to manage the thing.” Standing, she crossed the short distance to his desk and picked up the silver letter opener that was lying squarely at the center. She held it by the embossed hilt as if to make a stab at him, then puzzled over how she would do herself in with the same blade. She reversed the opener in her hand so that she gripped it by its sharper end and tried again.
“Bloody hell,” he said.
She looked up, startled, and realized he had been watching her closely. “Why, Sherry, you never swear.”
He did not apologize for it. “Do give it over before you do real damage to yourself and my niece or nephew.”
Glancing down, she saw she still held the pointed tip of the opener mere inches from her right side. “This is what you were doing before I came in here,” she said. Certain that she was in the right of it, she did not wait for his confirmation. “You were wondering yourself how it was accomplished.”