“Cosette,” answered the dowager in an airy voice. The two societal mavens moved together with a swish of silk and kissed the air around each other. “How are you this morning?”
“Very well, thank you, my dear. Now tell me all. Are you so very poor it has come to this?” The face of the comtesse may have appeared sympathetic, but her eyes gleamed with malevolent delight.
Penelope had thought herself accustomed to the bluntness of the comtesse, but this greeting surprised even her.
“Goodness no, my dear. Wherever do you get such notions?” said the dowager with an outward calm Penelope found admirable. Antonia motioned to the tea table and they all sat around it.
“Enlighten me s’il vous plaît. Why would you, of all people, consent to be his wife?” The comtesse passed on the cream and sugar; she preferred her tea as black as her soul. “Have you been beguiled by this Madame X for whom you have been acting as agent?”
“I think it wonderfully romantic,” said Penelope, trying a strategy to change the story from the dowager being so impoverished she had to wed to something less incriminating. “Her Grace was engaged to be married to Lord Langley many years ago, but their parents had a feud and intervened, breaking off the engagement.”
Penelope was telling a censored version of the story. Truth was Antonia, for all her stature now, had begun life as the daughter of a simple country gentleman. Langley’s parents had not thought Antonia suitable, but this particular truth was not helpful to their current situation.
The comtesse regarded Penelope as if just noticing she existed. “Romance? Bah! How much like a gothic novel. And you know, my dear, how much I despise novels.”
“No, no, nothing like that,” said the dowager, flashing her eyes at Penelope. “But Langley did make me an offer many years ago.”
“Indeed, he did,” said Penelope, changing tack. She had made a mistake by trying to appeal to the comtesse’s romantic nature. Clearly the woman had been born without such feeling. “Lord Langley entered into a binding contract. He suffered as a result of breaking it and begged Her Grace to end his misery by consenting to be his wife.”
A slow smile crept on the face of the comtesse. “Why, you are a sly one, Antonia. Even after all these years, you are holding the man accountable. Good for you!”
Penelope and the dowager exchanged a glance. They had successfully achieved the support of the comtesse.
“Now tell me.” The comtesse smiled over her teacup at the dowager. “Who is this mysterious Madame X?” The comtesse stayed only a few minutes more, trying to wheedle out as many clues to the identity of Madame X as possible, yet Antonia remained stoic. Penelope was not sure what would happen if the truth regarding Madame X were discovered, but she was certain it would not end well for her.
They both sighed in relief when the comtesse left, taking with her the biting censure that surrounded her like an aura.
“Thank you, my dear. You have been a true treasure to me.” The duchess paused and regarded her with a critical eye. “I fear I am going to have to let you go.”
Penelope’s heart dropped. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said you are fired!” The dowager rapped her cane on the floor with a loud crack for emphasis.
Penelope’s heart pounded. “Is this because I abandoned you yesterday with your visitor? I am sorry if the duke called me away. Was the conversation very dull?”
“No, this is not because you ran off with James. Yes, I know you two are working on some dark dealings, which is in part why you are officially no longer my companion.”
“I understand.” Penelope stood and brushed out her skirts, focusing on the material and keeping her head down so the dowager would not see the tears that had sprung there. The dowager was a hard woman, but Penelope had thought they had become so much more than an old duchess and her companion.
“Now sit down. Do not get yourself in a pet. I stopped thinking of you as my companion months ago. I consider you my friend.” Antonia’s severe face cracked into something of a warm smile.
Penelope’s head shot up and the tears that had threatened spilled down her cheeks. The warmth of a compliment, particularly one from a lady who rarely bestowed them, curled up happy inside her heart. “Thank you, Your Grace.” She sank back down onto the settee next to her.
The dowager reached out and handed Penelope a lace handkerchief, clasping her hand. “Antonia.”
Penelope blotted her eyes. “Antonia. After losing my family, I could not ask for more than being welcomed here.”
“Oh. Well. Yes, yes of course.” The dowager pulled another handkerchief from the mysterious place old ladies keep handkerchiefs and blotted her own eyes. “Yes, and that is why I need to speak with you. It is time for you to find your own family,” said Antonia firmly. “You have found husbands for everyone but yourself, so I have a business proposition for you.”
“You do?”
“I will contract with Madame X at her usual fee to find a marriage partner for your own self.”
Penelope didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Finding a husband for herself was the one thing she couldn’t do. “I did try once but was unsuccessful, as you see. If I had entertained any offers of marriage, I would not have ended up your companion, forgive me for saying.”
“You were so busy helping your sisters, you did not take the time to help yourself,” accused Antonia, making a valid point. “It is the beginning of a new season. Let this be a new beginning for you too.”
“I have had several seasons already,” said Penelope, trying not to be irritated at reiterating her personal failure.
“No. You never did.” Antonia was adamant. “First you were busy taking care of your elder sisters. Then when your younger sisters made their debut, you in turn took care of them. When was it ever your turn? When did you ever have the new gowns or a maid to devote to your hair?”
“There were five of us girls, all landing on my aunt’s home quite unexpectedly. She took us in and introduced us all in society.” Penelope felt the need to defend her family, but the truth was the dowager was right. No one had taken the time to ensure she wore a new gown or did her hair to its best advantage. Not even herself.
“Now is your turn, your time.” Antonia was firm. “You may stay with me until the wedding, but after that, I shall insist you find a groom of your own.”
Thirteen
The next frosty morning Marchford sat beside Penelope in the lumbering town coach. They were going to try again to get information out of the glassmaker, but this time Marchford refused to travel in anything less than the comfortable coach. Despite the importance of their task, he was considerably more interested in the lady beside him than the plan she was concocting or the dubious creature who sat across from them.
“Now are you certain you understand what you are to do?” Penelope asked their passenger with a slight quiver of anxiety.
Jemima Price, guttersnipe street rat turned upstairs maid, smiled sweetly. “Yes’m, I got it right. I is to ask about the glass bottle thing that the spy had.”
Marchford could not help a painful sigh from escaping his lips. The urchin was likely to give more information than she got.
Penelope’s lips tightened and she ignored him. “Well, yes, we are trying to get that information, but you must not say anything about spies. Wherever did you get such a notion?”
“The Duke o’ Marchford’s a spy catcher.” Jemima’s voice trembled with delicious intrigue. “I heard Mr. Grant say so.”
“Upstairs maids may overhear things they should not repeat,” said Marchford severely. “I wonder very much as to your ability to be discreet.” He looked at Pen when he said it, but she turned her head so the edge of her outmoded bonnet blocked him from view.
“Aye, I knows. I can be very lip locked I can,” assured Jem.
“Now remember you are pretending t
o be a chambermaid who broke a bottle,” coached Penelope. “You are afraid and you are wanting to find another. You need to find as much as you can about who purchased them and where they went. Is that clear?”
“Yes, yes, and then I says how I can nick the bob to pay for the loot.”
Another audible sigh escaped Marchford.
“No, no, please I implore you would not say anything like that,” begged Penelope.
“All right.” Jem’s smile never dimmed.
“The glassmaker has a son about your age. I’m not sure the name, but I think you will be most successful if you talk to him. If you need to encourage discussion, give him this crown.”
Jem’s eyes widened as Penelope produced the heavy coin. “All righty,” she said randomly, not attending to anything Penelope was saying.
“Now listen, Jem, listen!”
Jem’s eyes snapped to attention, though they kept sliding down to the coin in her hand.
“Try to get a name or an address of the man who commissioned the bottles. Anything identifying will do. Then come tell us what you learned. Doyou understand?”
“Yes’m,” said Jem, her eyes stubbornly fixed on the crown.
Marchford sighed to the point of groaning and Penelope finally threw him a severe glance. Petty though it was, he could not help but feel he had won by succeeding in drawing her attention.
“We shall have to drop you several blocks away. Do you think you can manage walking a bit on your own?” asked Penelope.
“Aw bless you, ma’am. I’ve been everywhere in this here Town on these here feet. And look, now I gots shoes!” She held up her feet to show them.
“Good gracious,” muttered Marchford, turning away from the offending little feet.
The carriage rolled to a stop and Jemima jumped down with a smile. “I’ll do right. I’m a kinchin mort!”
Penelope smiled and waved, watching her skip down the street. “Whatever did she mean by that,I wonder?”
“If my understanding of the thief cant serves, it means she was trained as a young girl for a life of pervasive criminality,” Marchford said cheerfully.
“Oh.” Penelope’s mouth formed a perfect round circle, causing Marchford to catch his breath.
“I doubt we shall see her or that crown again.” He needed to focus on something other than Penelope’s rose-colored lips.
“Now have a little faith. Besides, neither one of us could be as persuasive as she. No matter how we might pretend poverty, we cannot carry it off as convincingly as our young Jem.”
“True.” The word was an indictment.
“And we certainly could never get a young boy to talk to us,” added Penelope.
“Also correct. Of course, it may be she who does most of the talking.”
It was Penelope’s turn to sigh. “She does mean well.”
“Does she?”
“You did not have any better ideas,” accused Penelope.
“Which is the only reason I agreed to this travesty. If it all goes terribly wrong there is very little we can lose. The spy already knows I have the bottle and that I am looking for him.”
“Perhaps our young Jem will surprise you.” Penelope spoke as though she was trying to convince herself. She shivered in the cold of the coach. The weather had turned bitter and outside it was starting to sleet.
“I am rarely surprised, so it would be a novelty at least.” Marchford rapped on the ceiling to get the coachman’s attention and gave him leave to go to a nearby pub to get warm while they waited. He then reached for the blanket they kept in the carriage and spread it over Penelope.
“Thank you,” said Penelope, tucking the blanket across her lap. “You are very kind.”
Marchford attempted to guard himself against the warmth of her compliment, but it was too late. “No thanks needed,” he said gruffly. “Only sensible thing to do.”
“Then we should both share the blanket and put it over the foot warmer so we can try to not freeze.” Penelope scooted dangerously close to him and shared half the blanket.
His treacherous mind considered other ways two people could avoid freezing. They were alone in a coach with a blanket. Marchford folded his hands together before him and grasped them tight to remind himself to remain aloof. It may be his imagination, but he swore he could feel her warmth on his side even through multiple layers of cloth and coats.
“Oh!” exclaimed Pen. “With all this excitement I just realized something.”
“Which is?” He had ridiculous hopes that somehow it involved getting closer.
“It is Christmas Eve. Happy Christmas Eve to you.”
“Oh. Christmas.” What a disappointing answer.
“Have you no sense of the magic and wonder of Christmas?” Penelope’s face lit up. “Tell me about how you celebrated Christmas as a child.”
“Church,” was his monosyllabic answer.
“Yes, but beyond that,” Penelope pressed with a childlike gleam of anticipation in her eyes. “I look forward to Christmas every year. When I was a girl, we celebrated the twelve days of Christmas by giving each other little gifts every day, starting with Christmas and going till Twelfth Night. Since there were five of us girls, we would draw names out of the hat to pick who to give a gift. Some of the days we gave to each other and some of the days we gave to our neighbors, especially those less fortunate.”
Penelope paused, looking at him expectantly. If she hoped he would share happy reminiscences, she was much mistaken. Marchford had nothing to say, so she continued. “Mother would always bake plum pudding on Christmas and king’s cake on Twelfth Night. She would hide the bean and the pea inside the cake and the people who found it were the king and queen for the evening’s festivities. After dinner, father would read from the gospels of Christ’s birth and we would sing songs and play games, like the twelve days of Christmas. You know, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying.”
“No, indeed, I was not aware any family actually did such things,” Marchford said stiffly. He kept himself emotionally removed from the pain of childhood remembrances. It was best that way.
“We were only country folk after all, so our amusements must appear rather shabby to such a worldly man as yourself.” Penelope glared at him, and he guessed she interpreted his reserve as arrogance. To correct her would be to reveal himself, so he said nothing.
“What were your family traditions?” Penelope asked, unable to leave it alone.
Marchford gave her a cheerless smile. “Every year my mother would make an attempt to decorate the house for Christmastide—green bows, holly, red ribbons, and the like. And every year my grandmother would order the servants to take out the decorations and burn them. Christmas decorations were considered a hallmark of low society. Of course, anything my mother wanted my grandmother considered low society.” He spoke quickly. These were not remembrances on which he wished to dwell.
“That is dreadful.” Penelope’s expressive face turned from irritation to sympathy. “I had no idea the dowager was so displeased with your mother.”
“If I told you my grandmother loathed her, it would be an understatement.”
“But why?”
This was a topic he never discussed. Never. And yet in Penelope’s eyes, he saw compassion without pity, and without intending to, he began to talk. “Grandmother chose my father’s first wife, and my half brother Frederick was the result. It was not that my father was unhappy, but he was not in love with her, a situation he sought to remedy after his first wife died and he began looking for a second. His second wife, my mother, he loved. An inexcusable mistake for a duke.”
“What makes you say that? Your grandmother did not approve?”
Marchford shifted on the velvet seat. “My mother was not what my grandmother considered suitable.”
Penelope pressed her lips together for a mome
nt in thought. “But surely they must have put aside their differences for Christmastide, if only for the sake of the children. What did you and Frederick do for Christmas?”
“Mostly listen to Mother and Grandmother argue. Father would disappear to the club. There would be a huge row over what food would be served. Figgy pudding would be ordered and then thrown in the rubbish heap. Frederick and I often went without supper because the menu could never be decided.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.
“I am sorry,” whispered Penelope, placing her gloved hand on his. “This year we shall have to make up for what you lacked.”
Something in his frozen heart began to melt, and he clenched his teeth against an unmanly show of feeling. To remain aloof was the only safe option. “I assure you there is no need.” But he took her hand in his own and held it.
“Indeed, but there is.” Penelope’s voice was inviting, and he struggled against its seductive warmth.
Marchford rubbed his gloved thumb along her hand. She gave his hand a small squeeze and he returned it. Her rich brown eyes met his. “You are a kindhearted soul, Penelope Rose.” He spoke in a low voice, as if not wanting to admit it even to himself.
She parted her lips to say something, but no words came. He leaned forward, her full lips beckoning him. She leaned toward him and every rational thought died. The only thing that made sense now was Penelope and drawing her close to him. He moved in for the kiss.
Suddenly, the door opened and in hopped the cursedly prompt figure of Jemima Price.
“Jem!” Penelope jumped away, releasing Marchford’s hand and smoothing the blanket off her lap in a flustered manner. “Are you all right? Tell us what happened!”
“Talked to the son o’ the glassmaker. He was a peery cove, looked cutty-eyed at me.”
“Is that so?” Penelope turned a bewildered eye to Marchford.
“He was suspicious of you?” asked Marchford, serving as translator, though the only thing on his mind was how to get the urchin out of the carriage and return his attentions to Miss Rose.
A Winter Wedding Page 10