Carla Kelly (2 page)

He thought back to Fae's letter, and the one the day before, teasing him for a new wardrobe to peacock about town in. While he liked the way she looked when she strolled about town with him, her hand resting lightly—but so possessively—on his arm, he was already dreading the mornings that would be taken up with modistes and models. Fae would not buy anything he did not approve of, so he would have to accompany her to the salons. She would coo and simper over each dress trotted out on display and then look at him with her big blue eyes. “Whatever you want, my dear,” she would say.

“Whatever you want, my dear,” he mimicked. She even said that when they were in bed.
Honestly, Fae, don't you possess a single stray thought of your own? What do you like? Do you know?

He sat up then and left his bed, thoroughly disgusted with himself. He glared into the mirror and pointed a finger at his night-shirted facsimile. “Johnny Staples, you are a spoiled one,” he told himself. “You pay Fae's bills, and she must jump through your hoops. You should be ashamed.”

He regarded himself another moment and then looked about for his eye patch. No sense in disturbing the maid, who was due any moment with his shaving water. He found it and grinned to himself again, wondering how loud she would scream if she came into the room and found him leering at her with his patch over his good eye.

Too bad it was the Season now. He would have happily traded it all for a week or two on a friend's estate, if he had any friends left. He could take off that stupid patch and let the cold winds blow across his dead eye too as he rode the land. But this was London, and really, his eye didn't look too appealing, all milky white, perpetually half-open, and with that nasty scar.
I could scare myself if I were drunk enough
, he observed as he pulled his robe about his shoulders and gave the coals in the fireplace a stir.

He grunted when the maid knocked, and she entered with his hot water. When she left, he sat at his desk, staring glumly at all the correspondence before him. This was the overflow from the book room too, and he wondered again why he had fired his secretary last month. He ruffled through the letters, many of them invitations that should have been answered weeks ago. “Well, Johnny, maybe it was because your secretary was robbing you blind,” he reminded himself. “Which is true, but the man could keep up with my business and knew how to write letters that sounded just like I had written them. What a pity the wretched cove could also duplicate my signature.”

Ah, well, the little toad was cooling his heels in Newgate now, waiting transportation. Maybe if he survived the seven months in the reeking hold of a convict ship, he could find someone to bamboozle in Botany Bay. Lord Ragsdale sighed and looked at his frazzled desk.
I suppose now if I want to cancel my liaison with Fae through the penny post, I'll have to write my own letter.

Nope, no letters to Fae
, he reminded himself as he took off the patch again and lathered up.
She thinks I'm thoughtless, thankless, reckless, or feckless. And besides that, it's too much exertion. I suppose a new wardrobe won't kill me. It's a lot easier than explaining to Fae that I'm tired of her.

Lord Ragsdale was not in a pleasant frame of mind when his mother knocked on the door. He knew her knock; it was just hesitant enough to remind him that he paid her bills too. He tucked in his shirttails and buttoned up his pants, wondering at his foul mood.
Maybe I should pay Fae a quick visit
, he thought.
I’ d at least leave her house in a more relaxed frame of mind.

“Come in, Mother,” he said, trying not to sound sour. It wasn't his mother's fault that he was rich and she was bound to him by his late father's stupid will.
I really should settle a private income on her
, he thought as he reached for his waistcoat.
I wonder why Father didn't? He never did anything wrong.
Lord Ragsdale sighed.
And death came too suddenly for him to say, “Oh, wait, I am not ready.”

As his mother came into his room on light feet, he felt his mood lifting slightly. How dainty she was, and how utterly unlike him.
She doesn't look old enough to have a thirty-year-old son
, he thought as he inclined his head so she could kiss his cheek. True to form, she patted his neck cloth and tugged it to the left a little.

“Am I off center again, madam?” he inquired. “Funny how one eye gone puts me off, even after …” He paused a moment. “Let's see, is it ten years now?”

“Eleven, I think, my dear,” she replied. “Oh, well. Two eyes gone would be worse.”

He nodded, wondering at her ability to cheer him up. She was so matter-of-fact. Why couldn't he have inherited that tendency instead of his father's leaning toward melancholy?

“I suppose,” he agreed as he allowed her to help him into his coat. “Curse the Irish, anyway.”

She frowned at him, and he took her hand.

“Yes, Mama. That was rude of me,” he said before she could. “Didn't you teach me not to kick dogs? For so they are. I apologize.”

He kissed his mother, and she smiled at him. “Accepted. Now, hurry up and put on your shoes. They are belowstairs.”

He looked at her and then rummaged for his shoes. “Mama, who are you talking about?” She sighed loud enough for him to pause in his exertions.

“What did I forget this time?” he asked.

“Your American cousins, John. They have arrived.”

He paused a moment in thought, embarrassed to have forgotten something that obviously had meaning for his mother. “My cousins,” he repeated.

“John, you are the dearest blockhead,” she said, taking his arm and pulling him toward the door. “My sister's children from Virginia! Don't you remember?”

He did now. In fact, he remembered a winter's worth of bills to refurbish the ballroom and downstairs sitting rooms. And wasn't there something about Oxford? “Let's see if I remember now, Mama,” he teased. “Someone is going to Oxford, and someone else is attempting a come out under your redoubtable aegis.”

“Excellent!” she commended him. “Sometimes you are the soul of efficiency.”

“Not often, m'dear,” he murmured as they descended the stairs. “Will you begin reminding me on a regular basis that I must engage a secretary, and soon?”

“I have been,” she said patiently. “And I've been reminding you about a valet too, and while we're at it, a wife.”

He laughed out loud at the seriousness of her expression. “Which of the three do I need worse, madam?” he quizzed as she steered him toward the gold saloon, reserved for unpleasant events, formal occasions, and, apparently, little-known relatives.

“A wife,” she replied promptly as she allowed Lasker to open the door for her. “Ah, my dears! Heavens, are you drooping? Let me introduce your cousin, John Staples, Lord Ragsdale. John, here are Robert and Sally Claridge, your cousins from Richmond, Virginia. Come forward, my dears. He won't bite.”

Of course I will not bite
, he thought as he came forward to shake cousin Robert's hand. He thought he might kiss Sally's cheek, but she was staring at his eye patch as though she expected him suddenly to brandish a cutlass and edge her toward a plank. He nodded to her instead. “Delighted to meet you,” he murmured automatically, wondering how soon he could escape to White's and bury his face in a pint of the finest.

He had to admit that they were a handsome pair, as he stepped back and allowed his mother's conversation to fill in any awkward gaps before they had the chance to develop. Sally Claridge had his own mother's ash blonde good looks. If the expression in her blue eyes was a trifle vacant, perhaps a good night's rest on a pillow that did not pitch and yaw with an ocean under it would make the difference.

On the other hand, Robert's dark eyes seemed to miss nothing as he gazed about the room, looking like a solicitor totaling up the sum of each knickknack and trifle.
I certainly hope we measure up
, Lord Ragsdale thought as he cast an amused glance in Robert's direction, indicated a seat on the sofa to Sally, and then turned his attention to the fifth person in the room.

She should have taken up no more than a moment's flick of his eyes because she could only be Sally Claridge's servant, but he found himself regarding her with some thoroughness, and his own interest surprised him.

Lord Ragsdale was an admitted breast man. It was the first feature he admired in all classes of women, and this female before him was no exception to his time-honored tradition. She was still covered with a rather shabby cloak, but the slope of it told him that she was nicely, if not excessively, endowed. Ordinarily, his glance would have lingered there as he contemplated her suspected amplitude, but his attention was drawn to her regal posture. She stood straight and tall, her chin back, her head up, as poised a lady as ever favored the gold saloon. Her air fascinated him.

He knew she must be tired. Sally Claridge had sunk herself onto the sofa with the appearance of one destined never to rise again, while Robert leaned heavily on a chair back. The servant before him made no such concession to exhaustion. She bore herself like a queen, and he was intrigued in spite of himself.

“And you are …?” he began.

John threw himself into one of the dainty chairs, and he heard his mother suck in her breath as it creaked. “That's Emma, Sally's waiting woman. Emma, I wish you'd take my cloak. And see here, there's Sally's too. I don't know why we need to remind you.”

Without a word, the woman came forward and took the cloaks.

They were both much heavier than the one she still wore, but she draped them gracefully over her arm and retreated into the background again, her back as straight as a duchess.

Lord Ragsdale looked around at his butler, who stood in the doorway. “Lasker, take the cloaks. Yours too … Emma, is it?”

She nodded and showed the barest dimple in his direction.

“You are such a dunce, Emma! Can you not at least say, ‘Thank you, my lord’?” Robert burst out.

“Thank you, my lord,” the woman whispered, her cheeks aflame with color.

“That wasn't necessary,” Lord Ragsdale replied mildly to his cousin.

There was an awkward pause, which his mother filled adroitly, as he knew she would. “Robert, Sally, tell me how my sister does. I know you are both tired, but I must know.” With a shy look in Lord Ragsdale's direction, Sally murmured a response to his mother, and Robert rummaged in his waistcoat for a letter. Lord Ragsdale clasped his hands behind his back and took another look at the waiting woman, as Robert called her.

It was a quaint expression, one he had not heard before, but it fit her exactly. She stood patient and still as his mother forged ahead with conversation, looking like someone used to waiting. He thought her eyes were green, and her expression told him that her mind was miles distant. For a brief moment, he wondered what she was thinking, and then he laughed inwardly.
Really, Johnny, who cares what a servant thinks?
he told himself
. I am sure you do not.

“Well, son, is it agreed?”

Startled, he glanced at his mother, who was observing him with that combination of exasperation and fondness he was familiar with.

“I'm sorry, m'dear, but I was not attending. Say on, please. Tell me what it is I am about to agree to.”

It was the merest jest. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that fleeting dimple again. Sally registered nothing on her face, and Robert just looked bored.

“John, sometimes I think you are certifiable.”

Sally goggled at that. “Aunt Staples, he is a marquess!” she gasped.

“A title never gave anyone brains,” his mother remarked, her words crisp. “Bear that in mind, Sally, as you begin your own adventure here this Season.” She looked at her son again. “My dear, I was merely suggesting that we all drive down to Oxford to install Robert. It will give your cousins the opportunity of seeing their Grandmama Whiteacre, whom they have never met.”

“Then brace yourselves,” he murmured, wondering what the waiting woman was making of this family talk. “I think it an excellent idea. Once you have met the family Gorgon, you will only be too grateful for Charon to row you across the River Styx and into the quad of Brasenose.”

The blank stare that Robert returned made Lord Ragsdale sigh inwardly and long for the comforts of his liquor cabinet. Obviously his alma mater would be suffering one more fool gladly.

“Provided Mr. Claridge can find the coin necessary for the boat ride.”

It was said in such a low tone that he doubted Emma's words carried much beyond his own ears. He grinned appreciatively. “A hit, a palpable hit,” he whispered back and was rewarded with that fleeting dimple again.
What have we here?
he asked himself.
A servant who knows her Greek mythology and Shakespeare too?

But there was something else about her softly voiced reply that set off a bell in the back of his brain. He knew the lilt in her voice.

“Emma, where are you from?” he asked suddenly, his voice too loud in the quiet room. He knew his question was inappropriate, and a rude interruption to his mother, who was saying something to Sally about Grandmama Whiteacre. Besides that, he could not think of a time when he had ever asked a servant anything that personal. And here he was at his most strident, demanding an answer.