The beleaguered Lord Bourne Page 6

  It was ridiculous. Why should she feel this almost overpowering urge to dash across the street and plummet the two slyly simpering creatures about the head and shoulders with her reticule? And when she had done with them she would deliver a bash or five on the noggin of the stupidly grinning ignoramus who was acting less like a married man than Prinny himself!

  She stood stock-still on the flagway, rooted to the spot by her anger and her inability to do more than mentally mangle the cause of her upset.

  “O-oo-o, lookee, miss,” Goldie piped up loudly at exactly the wrong moment. “There’s his lordship himself, out for a breath of air. Yoo-hoo! Your lordship!” she trilled in a high, carrying soprano, her voice succeeding in reaching the earl above the noisy street sounds and the animated chattering of his companions.

  “Oh, my God!” Kit breathed in exasperation as he spied Goldie and his wife—his oddly erect wife—on the opposite side of the street. What a coil! He couldn’t abandon the two females on the crowded flagway, and he wasn’t such a gapeseed as to drag them with him and introduce them to his wife of seven days. Yet to ignore his wife entirely was courting disaster. Besides, that dratted maid would probably keep bellowing like a sick calf until he acknowledged their presence. He was damned no matter what he did!

  And the Lady Luck, in the form of one Oswald Norwood, came sauntering toward him, and Kit began to believe in good fairies. “Ozzy, my dearest friend,” he intoned bravely, “would you be so kind as to escort these ladies to a hackney? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten an urgent appointment.”

  Ozzy was delighted, a fact Kit did not linger to learn, hurrying instead across the street, neatly dodging horses and vehicles that dared to get in his path, to stand smartly, and just a bit breathlessly, in a direct line between his wife and his too recent companions. “I did not know you had planned to visit the shops, my dear,” he said with studied nonchalance.

  Jennie leaned a bit to the left and peered over his shoulder at the females, who still stood where Kit had left them. “Obviously,” she drawled sweetly, “else you would have asked me to join your party. Wouldn’t you?”

  Wretched chit! he swore silently, acting just as if we had vowed fidelity or some such rot. Which they had! he remembered with a jolt. “Party?” he improvised rapidly. “Oh, pet, you mistake the facts entirely. Those young ladies are—er—cousins of my friend Ozzy, the man with them now. I was just lending them my company while he dashed off a moment to speak with an acquaintance he hadn’t seen for some time. Merely holding the fort, as it were,” he ended with a limp laugh.

  “Really?” Jennie’s voice conveyed her disbelief. “It’s a shame they had to rush off without so much as an introduction. But perhaps we can have them to dinner one evening. We know so few people in London, you know.” It was amazing how calm her voice sounded, considering she was still seriously contemplating homicide.

  “Yes, well, er, you shouldn’t let the horses stand too much longer, Jennie,” Kit said in a sudden inspiration. “Allow me to escort you home, and, er, we can take luncheon together. I’ve been so busy establishing my bona fides at the banks and seeking out friends from my army days that I’m guilty of neglecting you, aren’t I, puss? I confess to feeling ashamed.”

  You could charm the pennies off a dead man’s eyes, Jennie decided nastily, hating herself for feeling her outrage slowly melting under Kit’s engagingly open grin. Now her anger was somehow redirecting itself, turning away from her husband and centering on her own overreaction to seeing him in the company of two, she reluctantly acknowledged, beautiful females, when she herself didn’t care two sticks for the man personally. In fact, had Kit only promptly shepherded his wife into the coach he might have come out of the whole episode with nary a scratch, so angry was Jennie with herself. But Lady Luck had deserted him too soon this sunny spring day and the storm clouds were gathering, soon to rain all over his victory.

  “Kit,” came the voice of Ozzy Norwood as he joined his friend after sending two very disgruntled ladies on their way back to Drury Lane. “I demand you return my favor and introduce me to your beautiful companion. Two for one may not be a fair exchange, but then a simple mister cannot command the same privileges as an earl, what? By the by,” he added, securing his friend’s coffin with a few finishing nails, “this one makes those two warblers look like yesterday’s kippers, stap me if they don’t. Can’t blame you for dumping them in my lap and loping off like that.”

  A large rock—possibly Gibraltar itself—was lodged in Lord Bourne’s throat, making coherent speech impossible, although he did try a time or two, gasping and choking badly before subsiding into silence and glaring at his grinning friend.

  Just as Ozzy’s eyes were belatedly taking in Jennie’s simple but well-cut gown and the presence of a female much resembling a lady’s maid standing in front of what looked suspiciously like Bourne’s town carriage—a small glimmer of light beginning to grow in his pleasantly vacant face—Jennie stepped into the breach and took charge.

  Extending a small gloved hand in his direction, she said brightly, “You must be one of my husband’s good friends—one of those selfish creatures who so monopolize his time in lengthy sessions reminiscing about your shared youths. But I’ll forgive your interruption of our honeymoon, as I know how greatly Kit enjoys reliving his childish exploits. He must, mustn’t he, as I have not seen him above a moment or two since we arrived in town.”

  “It’s all my fault!” Ozzy sacrificed bravely. “He didn’t want to be with us, you know. We fairly begged for his company. Don’t blame him, my lady, I implore you—”

  Jennie pretended to pout, throwing out her full bottom lip, thereby nearly inciting her husband to violence, then brightened visibly as she said, “I have it! You must come to dine. Just as soon as our French chef is in residence—say, a week from today? And bring your two cousins, as I do so pine for some female companionship. After all, sir, any friend of Kit’s cannot help but find welcome in Berkeley Square. Isn’t that so, dear?” she asked the mute earl. Was that smoke she saw coming out of her husband’s ears? she thought, feeling rather full of herself.

  “You’re kind, ma’am,” Ozzy blustered, his overtaxed intellect reeling under the barrage his faux pas had unleashed and powerless to maneuver out of range of attack. “Too—too—kind. Indeed,” he said, attempting an air of worldliness, “Kit is undeserving of such a fine lady as yourself.”

  “Why thank you, sir,” Jennie responded. “I quite agree. But then we so seldom get what we deserve, don’t we?”

  At last Kit found his tongue. “Oh, I don’t know about that, my love,” he put in, leading her toward the open door of the coach. “Some of us get exactly what we deserve. In fact, one of us might just get it this very night if she continues asking for it so blatantly.”

  “Really?” Jennie exclaimed, bravado masking the fact that her knees were beginning to experience a decided tendency to quiver. In a much lower voice heard only by her husband she added, “My papa always warned me that people who choose to live in glass houses should beware of tossing rocks. Look to yourself, my love, before casting any stones at my behavior. Retribution can be demanded on both sides.”

  After delivering this stunning coup de grace, Jennie turned, inclined her head to her husband’s friend and incidental tattletale, and allowed herself to be assisted into the carriage. Blond head held high, she concentrated on her second verbal victory over her husband and determinedly resisted any thoughts concerning her ridiculous overreaction upon seeing Kit enjoying the company of any female besides his wife—who wouldn’t cross the street with him if he asked her to, which, she owned sourly, he hadn’t.

  As the carriage drove away Kit turned to his lifelong friend, ready to do murder in broad daylight while standing in the middle of crowded Bond Street. “Now, now, Kit, old chum, it was an honest mistake,” Ozzy began, hastily backing up a step. “You never told me your wife was such a looker. Anyway, wives ain’t supposed to be pretty. They’re supposed to ha
ve big dowries and buck teeth. And hatchet noses. And…and…and scrawny chests—”

  “Keep your filthy mouth off my wife’s chest!” Kit was so overcome as to bluster before realizing exactly what he was saying. “Never mind that! What in thunder did you think you were about, prancing over here like some hound in heat and cadging in a tryst with my wife as if she were some trollop we’d share between us? Are your brains entirely to let that you’d mistake a lady for one of your loose women? I ought to call you out for this, Ozzy, I swear it!”

  Ozzy cast his eyes about furtively and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Attracting a crowd, sport. What say we toddle down to White’s and settle this quietly over a bottle? My treat, o’ course. Call me out, you say. You wouldn’t really do that, Kit, would you? Deuced unsporting of you, knowing what a fine shot you are, don’t you think?”

  Looking around, Kit reluctantly realized the wisdom of Ozzy’s warning—while hating to credit his friend with even a small portion of brainpower at that moment—and roughly grabbing the fellow by the elbow, he surreptitiously pushed him along the flagway as if unsure Ozzy wouldn’t bolt if he relaxed his hold.

  It took more than one bottle before Kit could find any small bit of humor in the scene lately enacted in Bond Street, but no amount of wine or conciliating chatter on the part of Ozzy would make Kit believe Jennie could be induced to speak to him again much before the first snow of winter.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FOR A MAN who had so distinguished himself in battle as to have been mentioned in dispatches more than a half-dozen times, Kit showed a remarkable lack of courage when it came to confronting his wife. Perhaps this reluctance to face her stemmed from the fact that he knew himself to be totally in the wrong—as even the slapdash marital habits of the ton included at least a show of fidelity, certainly during the first flush of the union.

  So Jennie was left to wade her way through the long list of applicants who replied to her advertisement—their numbers making a long, snaking line that stretched from the servants’ entrance into Berkeley Square itself—while the earl continued making himself scarce.

  Five days after their meeting on Bond Street, Kit at last ran out of diversions and found himself, at only three in the afternoon, at loose ends. Lacking any other alternative, he directed his mount to the rear of Berkeley Square, dismounted in front of the stable doors, turned, and walked headfirst into a mountain.

  “What the devil?” Bourne exploded once he had regained his breath. Looking up, quite a good way up, actually, his startled eyes took in the sight of an enormous, hairless, black head fitted with glittering black-bean eyes; a gargantuan head that sat atop the largest man Kit had even seen.

  Two hands as large as hams reached out to steady him, nearly crushing his shoulders in the process, as Kit rocked slightly on his heels. The man must be all of seven feet tall, the gaping earl told himself in amazement. I can only hope he’s a friendly beast.

  Recovering his dignity and firmly stamping down any impulse to turn tail and make a run for it, Kit inquired softly: “What—er, I mean, who are you?”

  “I be called Tiny,” the giant rumbled from somewhere deep in his massive chest.

  “Naturally,” the earl quipped ruefully, his quick sense of the ridiculous coming to the rescue.

  “I be the earl’s new groom. Who be you, sir?”

  “I be—er—I’m the earl, actually,” Kit informed him, stepping out of Tiny’s large shadow and back into the sunlight. “So, you’re my new groom, eh, Tiny? Tell me—who hired you?” Kit held out a hand before Tiny could answer. “No, don’t tell me, let me guess. Lady Bourne, right?”

  “Lady Bourne, she be a queen. I be ready to die for her,” Tiny growled passionately. “I be ready to kill for her. With these hands,” he swore, holding out his large fists and then clenching them tight.

  Kit swallowed hard and stretched his neck. “Good, Tiny. I like—um—loyalty in a servant. But I asked her ladyship to secure two grooms.” He looked the giant up and down, still amazed by the man’s size. “Or did she think she had?”

  “’ullo, guv’nor,” came a thin, high voice as Tiny stepped sideways to reveal the person standing behind him. “Goliath’s m’name and groomin’ nags m’game. Me an’ Tiny ’ere ’re a team, ye ken. Worked the travelin’ circus till it went flat, an’ yer missus took us up. Right pretty piece too,” Goliath added with a wink, earning himself a menacing growl from Tiny.

  “A dwarf,” Kit breathed in amazement, looking down on the tiny man. “A bloody dwarf.” And then, remarkably, he grinned. “Why not? Why the bloody hell not?”

  “You be wantin’ Tiny ta take yer horse?” the large man asked almost timidly, belatedly remembering his mistress’s hint that the earl was best humored at first, until he felt more at ease with his new staff.

  “That’s very kind of you, Tiny,” Kit thanked the man as he turned and headed toward the rear of the mansion. “Just toss him over your shoulder, why not, and carry him into his stall. I’m sure he’ll give you no trouble.”

  Goliath let out a giggle and executed a perfect, if compact, backflip. “’e likes us, Tiny,” the delighted dwarf crowed, jumping up and down on his sturdy, stubby legs. “’ome at last we is, boyo, ’ome at last!”

  JENNIE PACED the drawing room in mounting apprehension. Kit’s behavior had been courtesy itself since their unfortunate meeting in Bond Street, not only refraining from taking out his threatened revenge on her person, but allowing time and distance to separate them from the nastier memories of that meeting.

  Since she had spent a very busy week interviewing possible servants for the mansion, Jennie’s memories of that fateful meeting had been given a chance to mellow, so that now she could recall little of her former anger, concentrating instead on the ludicrous image of her infuriating urbane husband at a total loss for words. Of her other, more unsettling feelings at having spied two obvious ladies of the evening dangling from her husband’s sleeves, she refused to think at all. It only confused the issue, whatever it was.

  She’d been granted time, and time was what she had needed. Time to complete her new wardrobe, and time for some of her new things to be delivered, so that she could, when the time came, face him in her new finery. That was important. She needed the outward trappings of her new title about her when her husband confronted her demanding she explain about the servants she had hired.

  Oh, yes, she mused knowingly, there would be quite a grand to-do then. She was not a complete fool. But she must make him understand her reasons for hiring Tizzie and Lizzie, Tiny and Goliath, Charity—the poor, dear thing—Bob, Ben, and Del, and Irvette and Blessing. Even Montague, the French chef Kit had particularly requested, would require a good deal of explaining on her part, she knew.

  Now the time and space Kit had granted her began to wear on her nerves. She yearned to have him summon her, ring a peal over her head, and have done with it.

  Bundy had told her he would. Even Goldie had clucked her tongue at the sight of Charity—the poor, dear thing. Renfrew, Jennie silently blessed the man, had said nothing, possibly because Del’s happy “Mornin’, guv’nor” as he took up his proper footman position in the foyer had robbed the majordomo of coherent speech.

  Deep in her heart of hearts, Jennie knew she had grossly overstepped herself. She had been commissioned to hire the servants, of course she had been, but she had not been given carte blanche to employ the odd assortment of humanity she had chosen. But they had needed jobs so desperately, she consoled herself. All those other, qualified applicants, who had presented themselves, references in hand, would have no difficulty in finding positions.

  But Tizzie and Lizzie, for instance, had little hope if she turned them down. Where could two overage, out-of-work Shakespearean actresses find work if even the lowest traveling troupe would not hire them? And as for Charity—the poor, dear thing—she might well expire in a filthy gutter if Jennie hadn’t taken her on as tweeny. Not that Charity could climb the stairs v
ery much in her present condition.

  Surely Kit would understand. Jennie picked up a Dresden statuette of a young maiden and scowled into its placid, peaceful face. And a herd of elephants might dance on the head of a pin. Of course Kit wouldn’t understand! Why should he? Hadn’t the man already proved himself to be a heartless beast capable of compromising an innocent maiden, marrying her, and then deserting her in the midst of a strange city?

  Jennie rapidly worked up a full head of steam, all her heart directed at her cruel husband, the heartless monster from whom she must protect her latest batch of ugly ducklings and pitiful misfits. How dare he question her judgment! Who was he to set himself up as arbiter of all that was required to make a good and loyal servant? Well, she thought, now in a high state of temper, just let him say one word against her choices. Just let him dare!

  Kit’s entrance into the drawing room at that precise moment was not exactly a triumph of superb timing. “Good day, m’love,” he began cheerily enough. “And what are you about today?”

  Jennie whirled on him in some heat. “And just what is that snide remark supposed to mean?” she sneered, her green eyes narrowed into wary slits. “How unhandsome of you, Kit, how very unhandsome of you!”

  “I make you my compliments, ma’am,” Kit drawled, executing an elegant leg in her direction. “That is quite a novel greeting. Am I, I sincerely trust, going to be given an explanation for it, or am I to be summarily executed for my sins without even so much as a hearing?”