The colonel poured her more wine. “I am not a hero, Miss Pearson. I was simply one of many soldiers and luckier than most. The incident earned me a promotion I have never felt I deserved and might have also figured in the knighthood that even my commanding officer begrudges me.”
The second glass of champagne was as good as the first and held up easily to the food it accompanied. Some champagnes were like afternoon dresses—pretty enough, but not adequate for evening occasions. The colonel’s vintage was equal to any hour, a light midday repast or full banquet honors.
Like the man himself.
“You begrudge yourself that knighthood,” Ann said.
The colonel sat back and crossed an ankle over the opposite knee, a relaxed, informal pose that showed off his physique to excellent advantage. He would age well and soundly, for all his early years had been spent in battle.
“I don’t understand why my name was included on the honors list at all,” he said. “I am in disgrace with my regiment, though I have never been able to ascertain exactly why. The trouble started before the Hundred Days, when we all thought the last shot had been fired, and Bonaparte was buttoned up on Elba.”
Bonaparte had become unbuttoned, as it were, escaping from his island after less than a year of exile, mustering the French army to his cause, and re-entering Paris in a matter of weeks. That entire unexpected coda to years of war had lasted little more than three months and culminated in the great slaughter at Waterloo.
The great victory, rather. “Did you serve during the Hundred Days?”
“I was considered unfit for duty, and as depleted as Wellington’s forces were after nearly a year of peace, I took that to mean I was undesirable rather than unfit. Just when I think the rumors about me are beginning to subside, they start up again.”
Ann took the butter biscuit from his plate and held it out to him. “Gunter’s butter biscuits are not to be missed. I would give much for the recipe. I can come close, but I cannot re-create them exactly.”
He broke the biscuit in half and took a bite. “I generally avoid sweets.”
“Why?”
“I am less apt to miss them, and if I expect my boys to learn some self-restraint, then I must practice limiting my pleasures, too, mustn’t I?”
He passed Ann half of his biscuit, and she was not about to refuse such a treat. “Tell me of the rumors, Colonel. We hear everything at the Coventry, sooner or later. The military contingent doesn’t frequent our tables in great numbers, but we get enough retired officers among our customers to hear what’s making the rounds at Horse Guards.”
He put the uneaten portion of his biscuit back on his plate. “The telling makes for poor conversation, Miss Pearson, and I have taken up enough of your time. My thanks again for being willing to oversee Benny’s apprenticeship.” He rose, the chair scraping discordantly against the flagstones.
Ann rose as well, though she didn’t want him to leave. She liked him, liked his honesty, liked his concern for Benny, liked that he’d share his past with her.
Liked that he’d ask her opinion of his champagne and liked—very much—that he would kiss her.
“I’ll send one of the boys around to take the basket back to Gunter’s,” the colonel said, gathering up his hat and walking stick. “My regards to Miss Julia and Miss Diana.”
He hesitated before descending the garden steps, and Ann spoke rather than hear him apologize for kissing her.
“You should not tie it so tightly,” she said, moving to his side and reaching behind his head to undo the string holding his eye patch in place. “We wear caps and aprons in the kitchen all day, and you would be surprised what a difference a loose bow can make.”
Before he could protest, she had the tie undone and his eye patch off. A pink crease crossed his forehead where the leather had bitten into his flesh. Ann rubbed her thumb along that small discomfort, knowing that she was presuming terribly, but also knowing she was right.
A small, relentless hurt could eventually cause considerable pain.
“The scars hardly show,” she said, winnowing her fingers through his hair. “Do you truly need the eye patch, Colonel?”
He was regarding her out of two clear blue eyes, and he was not smiling. “On bright days, I need the patch to avoid headaches, but I must tell you, Miss Pearson, the sight of you on this pretty autumn afternoon is enough to make me rejoice that I have any ability to see at all. Before I make a complete fool of myself with further excesses of sentiment, I will take my leave of you.”
He didn’t bother to retie his eye patch, but instead stuffed it into his pocket, bowed without taking Ann’s hand, and marched down the steps onto the brick walkway.
“You’ll call again?” Ann asked, wishing she could command him to pay her another visit. “I enjoyed your visit very much, Colonel.”
He paused halfway to the gate. “I ought not.”
He was trying to be polite, drat him. “Limiting your sweets again, Colonel Goddard?”
His smile was subtle, mostly in his eyes, only a touch of humor about that tender, wry mouth. “Exactly so, Miss Pearson. Removing myself from some of the most alluring temptation I can recall in ages.” He saluted with his walking stick and let himself out the back gate.
Ann watched him carefully close the gate behind himself, while she refused to entertain the notion that perhaps Melisande had a point. Perhaps the company of a good man, a family household, and the prospect of friendships outside the kitchen might have something to recommend it.
Ann resumed her place at the table and took up the colonel’s uneaten half biscuit.
Whatever rumors plagued him, they must be very bad. Eventually, they would find their way to the Coventry, and when they did, Ann would be listening for them.
* * *
“I found a place for the girl. She’ll be apprenticed to a cook.” Rye made this announcement while settling between his friends in the Aurora Club’s reading room. The fire was throwing out good heat, Rye’s belly was full, and Benny was soon to be settled in a new post.
All was right with the entire dratted, bedamned world.
“Cooking is a respectable profession,” Dylan Powell said, slouching low in his chair. “I’m fond of good victuals myself.”
“You’re worse than a biblical plague,” Alasdhair MacKay muttered, propping his foot on a hassock. “Seven years is a long time to be apprenticed. Is the girl in London, or did you send her off to the provinces?”
“I sent her to the Coventry, as it happens. A few streets away from home.” And yet, Alasdhair was right. Seven years, the length of most enlistments, could be an eternity. Benny hadn’t gone off to war, exactly, but she’d be going off alone.
Worse, when she left on Monday morning, she’d be leaving for good. Going out into the world, never to return if matters went well. And Rye had ingratiated himself with no less person than Sycamore Dorning to bring about Benny’s departure.
What the hell was I thinking? “She’ll learn more at the Coventry than she would in just any old household kitchen. She’ll get to use her French.”
“The Coventry has a fancy chef.” Dylan’s observation was ever so casual. “A Frenchman.”
Jules Delacourt. Rye had made inquiries among his émigré connections and heard nothing untoward so far. A bit of a temper, a tendency to drink, the usual shortcomings for a talented chef.
“Benny will be apprenticed to the undercook,” Rye said, “an Englishwoman of irreproachable antecedents.” Though, in point of fact, Rye knew little of Ann Pearson’s family. She dwelled in a respectable boardinghouse, had ambitions worthy of her talent, and had been educated beyond her trade. She’d learned French, for example—and how to kiss.
Rye mentally slapped himself for that observation, but when Ann Pearson had kissed him back, he’d become like a glass of good champagne, imbued with effervescence of the animal spirits and of the heart. Fortified and—had he run mad?—sparkling.
Something about the way
Alasdhair crossed his feet on the hassock struck Rye as restless. Then too, his cousins weren’t bickering.
“How’s business?” Dylan asked.
Jeanette had forbidden Rye to bequeath the vineyards to her, claiming no interest in the vintner’s trade. Alasdhair and Dylan were thus Rye’s heirs, and their interest in the business was thus justified.
“Managing,” Rye said. “I’ve agreed to supply the Coventry over the winter, and as it happens, I have the product on hand to manage that easily.” In a fit of optimism, he’d sent off instructions to have yet more inventory brought into the country. His entire market-ready stores were never kept at one location, because warehouses could burn, and a merchant’s life savings would perish with them.
“You have the inventory because the English aren’t buying your champagne,” Alasdhair said. “When was the last time you found a new customer, Goddard?”
“The Coventry is a new customer.”
“Dorning is family now,” Alasdhair rejoined, taking a sip of his brandy. “The Coventry relied on Fournier for their champagne until you came along.”
And why the hell would Alasdhair have bothered to learn that? “Fournier raised his prices, and on a customer who bought increasingly large quantities. Because the Coventry relies on champagne as part of its métier, diversifying the supply is only prudent. Besides, our champagne is better than Fournier’s.”
“Your champagne is cheaper than Fournier’s, lately,” Alasdhair retorted. “Did Lady Meecham renew her order?”
“No.” And she had made it plain that Rye had only received her custom because a hostess who risked running out of champagne punch at her annual ball would never live down the disgrace.
“What about the cloth merchants’ guild?” Dylan asked. “Did they ask you to save them enough crates for next year’s banquet?”
“No.” Rye had snabbled that order because the ship ferrying Fournier’s bottles across the Channel had been blown back to Calais by foul weather and then had to wait nine days for favorable winds. “I’m starting on my rounds for the spring orders. Everything slows down as winter sets in.”
“Try the brothels,” Dylan muttered, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. “A damned lot of libation is consumed in those establishments, and they have the money to pay for it.”
“I am not selling my grandmother’s champagne in furtherance of lechery.”
“Now you take up against lechery,” Dylan said. “I despair of you.”
That wasn’t quite right. Rye’s friends were worried for him. Nothing less than genuine concern would have them posing such pointed questions about the business.
“What aren’t you two saying?” he asked, feeling as if he were prying a confession from Otter or Louis. “Out with it. Is there some bill floating through Parliament to raise the excise taxes again?” Taxes were a fact of life, unless a man chose to do business with the gangs running the coastal trade, in which case extortionate schemes took the place of the crown’s levies.
Alasdhair rose to refresh his drink. “We’re hearing rumors.”
“London is perennially full of rumors.”
“Worse than usual,” Dylan said, eyes still closed. “About you. Mutterings that you were promoted because your incompetence in the field was getting good men killed.”
“I went out of my way to keep my men as safe as they could be under the circumstances. I followed orders, and you two know it.” Rye had always followed orders.
Alasdhair resumed his seat. “The gossip also bends in that direction—you dodged orders to avoid engaging the enemy.”
“Who didn’t? Every commanding officer was criticized for every order he gave, failed to give, followed, failed to follow, failed to follow quickly enough, or didn’t follow carefully enough. The men talked more than they marched.” Though these rumors were doubtless circulating in the officers’ ranks, if Dylan and Alasdhair had heard them. “Where are you coming across this gossip?”
Dylan yawned. “Here and there.”
“Over cards,” Alasdhair added. “Over a pint, along a bridle path, while indulging in my usual penchant for lechery.”
Since mustering out, Alasdhair had been a veritable monk. “If you are hearing the talk in all those places, and it’s reaching both of you, then somebody wants me to know I’m being slandered.”
And that, apparently, was the warning Rye’s friends were trying to convey. Fournier might resent Rye’s contract with the Coventry, but Fournier would also respect that Rye had a family connection to the Dornings. Fournier had gambled with the Coventry and lost—this round.
“I haven’t stepped on any particular toes lately,” Rye murmured, “so I am left to wonder why the rumors are gathering force again now, as well as who is behind them. What has changed?” If anything, banishing Jeanette’s in-laws from London in spring should have quieted the talk, not given it fresh life.
The silence that spread was broken by a burst of laughter from the dining room down the corridor. Elsewhere, life was rollicking along, nary a care in the world beyond whether to keep tomorrow’s appointment with the tailor or nip down to Brighton before winter descended in earnest.
“Might be time for you to check on your vineyards,” Dylan said quietly.
“I already checked on my vineyards.” Had escorted a pair of Jeanette’s younger family connections to France to learn the art of making champagne. Lord Tavistock and his cousin reported to Rye regularly by letter.
“Then check on your farms in Provence,” Alasdhair said. “The talk circulating now is the kind that can provoke a man to call out the fools spreading the gossip.”
“Move to France for a while.” Dylan opened his eyes and sat up. “Leave your horses and your pickpockets with us, and let the talk die down.”
Rye had tried letting the talk die down. Years after the cannon had ceased their volleys on the battlefields, he was still skirmishing with an unseen enemy. One who apparently wanted him either dead on the dueling green or permanently disgraced.
“I am done with killing,” he said. “If I know nothing else about myself, I know that.” Rye also knew he would not willingly abandon his boys, not as they were embarking upon the difficult years of adolescence.
They each needed to find a place in the world, and that journey was much easier when a lad had a home to navigate from. Then too, Benny might need a place to come back to, and a half-dozen émigré households relied on Rye’s support.
“Killing might not be done with you,” Alasdhair said, downing his drink and getting to his feet. “Powell and I will walk you home.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“They are children,” Dylan spat, rising. “Those little thieves and rogues you employ as your eyes and ears. They could summon the watch or land a few blows, but against a pair of toughs with knives, those boys would be powerless or, worse, distract you in a fight. We’ll walk you home, and we will take the streets, not the alleys you favor.”
Alasdhair rose as well, and while Rye could have held his own against either man in a fair fight, he could not best them both at the same time.
“I accept your friendly offer of an escort,” Rye said, standing. “This once.” They couldn’t nanny him at every hour, but that was not the point. The point was that a pair of generally sensible men who well knew Rye’s abilities with his fists and firearms were worried for him.
He ambled along through London’s noisome darkness, ignoring the invitations of numerous prostitutes, half of whom knew Alasdhair by name. While Alasdhair stopped to exchange a few words with one of them—quiet words Rye and Dylan weren’t meant to overhear—Dylan pretended to study the sulfurous illumination of the nearest streetlight.
“You really ought to spend some time in France, Rye.”
“That won’t solve anything.”
“It will keep you alive, which solves rather a large problem for those you’d leave behind. There’s something else you should know.”
In Rye’s late-ni
ght imaginings, where he relived old battles and prognosticated about new ones, he speculated that Dylan and Alasdhair were planning to leave England. The New World held vast opportunities for men who could work hard and plan carefully. He’d hate to see them go.
Hate it, but wish them well. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
“Deschamps is back in London.”
Philippe Deschamps, former officer in the French army, charmer at large, and opportunist without limit.
“We are no longer at war with France, Dylan, and I, for one, am pleased to keep it so.”
“He’s a dead shot, Rye.”
“So am I. Shall we be going? It appears our dear Alasdhair has been taken captive.”
“Dare!” Dylan called. “Leave the lady in peace, or pay her for her time.”
Alasdhair glowered at him. “A moment.” He passed something to the woman—a flash of metal gleamed in the lamplight—and jogged to Rye’s side. “What is the bloody hurry?”
Dylan resumed walking. “We’re out after dark on London’s streets. It’s cold, dark, and miserable, not to mention dangerous.”
“She’s out in the same weather,” Alasdhair said. “Hasn’t eaten for two days.”
She’d eat well within the next hour, would be Rye’s guess, which turned his thoughts in the direction of Miss Ann Pearson, who could rhapsodize about anise hiding beneath other spices, or butter biscuits she could not exactly replicate.
Would Ann Pearson miss him if he moved to France? The question was academic—he was not about to scurry away merely because gossip was once again turning against him—but if he should find himself dwelling in France, he would certainly miss her.
Miss her a lot.
And her kisses.
* * *
“By the end of the first day of my apprenticeship,” Ann said, “I thought my arms would fall off.”
Henry had taken Benny to the staff hall, where she would choose a hook for her cloak, find clean aprons and caps, and sample the lemonade, ale, and bread and butter that were available to the staff at all hours.
Miss Delectable: Mischief in Mayfair Book One Page 9