Lady Roma's Romance (3 page)

Bret stopped dead, lost in a tongue-tangling fit of half-begun sentences. “You . . . she . . . same circumstances . . .”

For the first time, a hint of blush appeared in her smooth cheeks. “Oh, dear,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I hope you haven’t misunderstood me, though I see how you might. You see, my father is a very forgetful man. If someone offers him a glimpse of some new find, he will erase from his mind every other obligation in order to seek it out. He left my governess and me quite alone in Tunbridge Wells for six days upon one occasion, when a friend of his unearthed half a legionnaire’s helmet in Worcester. He went hotfoot across country that very afternoon without leaving so much as a note and me with not five pounds to my name.”

“And he’d acted in the same fashion toward this incognita... Miss ... Miss ...”

“Miss Fitzgerald? Yes. He’d promised faithfully to attend upon her with the wherewithal to settle some trifling debts before departing to enjoy her companionship upon a visit to a hunting lodge owned by ... a friend. Well, the hours passed without a sign of him until she was forced to dismiss the postillions. When she’d paid them, she had nothing else. I admit, in her shoes, I might have gone to a pawnshop with several of his choicer gifts, but I can quite understand her reluctance to do so. Knowing Father, it might have been a long time before she could redeem them.”

“What did you do?” Bret asked, fascinated.

“Which time? In Tunbridge Wells, or in town?”

“Both,” he demanded with a grin.

She answered it with one of her own, as brash as any boy’s. “In Tunbridge Wells, I took some few items of clothing to a pawnbroker, as well as my governess’s grisaille snuff box. He advanced me enough for my immediate needs. I knew Father would either return to our hotel or to our home. In either case, he would soon recall my presence and rescue me from any dire consequences. Failing that, I could always have taken the recourse of writing to his solicitor. He would have advanced me enough to pay the hotel and hire a carriage to go home. In the event, however, Father did return before the hotel grew too suspicious of me.”

“And what was your governess doing all this while? It should have been her business to lay things away in lavender.”

With avid curiosity, she demanded a translation.
“What
does that mean? Does it mean to visit a pawnbroker?” He nodded. “Men do have the most marvelous ways of expressing themselves,” she said. “Poor Miss Tendews. She thought when she was asked to be the governess of an earl’s only daughter that she would be living in quite a different style. But we are a sadly vagabond household, ever on the move.”

“Why so much?” Bret asked. “Your father can’t spend all his time chasing after Roman artifacts.”

“No, though he spends a good deal of his time doing so. He has also financed several excavations, usually in remote locations where we are fortunate to find a tumble-down inn or an unoccupied cottage. When winter comes, we generally retire to Yarborough where he codifies and classifies his finds.”

“You help him with that, I suppose.”

“Oh, no. He usually finds a young scholar to help Mm with that. Wearisome task. I’m afraid, too, that Father doesn’t quite trust me to be accurate. Ever since I was a small girl, I have had rather a blind spot when it comes to the difference between Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger. I feel he’s never quite trusted me on history since.”

Lady Roma had such a gleam of laughter in her roguish eyes that Bret could not tell if she was serious or joking. “You are a complete hand, my lady.”

“I’m sorry to be chattering like a magpie,” she said. “I don’t, usually.”

The tilt of her head was similar to the bird she’d called herself. Yet her eyes looked steadily and a little fiercely into his. Bret felt she’d not really seen him until this moment except as a respectable example of gentleman’s tailoring and a more-or-less pleasant set of features. He found she had a most clear-seeing pair of eyes, hard to meet, and rather disconcertingly penetrating for quite a young lady.

“Your brother officers must have found it difficult to keep any secrets at all while you were in their barracks. Such powers of sympathy must be invaluable to you. I suppose many ladies have told you so.”

He didn’t answer. “What became of your father’s
petite ami
?” he asked.

Lady Roma seemed glad to return to such relatively neutral subjects. “I assisted Miss Fitzgerald with her most pressing needs, informed her of my father’s probable address, and advised her that her position was precarious at best, humiliating at the worst. She really was a very sweet-natured girl and deserved a gentleman who would pay rather more attention to her than my father could. I believe, in all honesty, that he was attracted to her in the first place only because she bore a startling resemblance to a bust purporting to be of Caesar’s third wife. It’s in our stairwell at Yarborough.”

“Did she take your advice?”

“I had heard that she later married a lawyer and emigrated to America, but I cannot be certain.” She put up her gloved hand and whisked away a drop of water from his face, holding up her finger to show the water mark on her glove. “It’s a touching story,” she said, “but not that touching.”

Bret caught at his hat as a cool breeze kicked up, driving some scraps of paper and a few leaves down the street. This brought his attention to their surroundings. “Where in the name of mercy have we got to?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t recognize this street,” she admitted, following his glance. “We must have taken a wrong turning. Do we go back or forward?”

“What is your preference, my lady?”

“Oh,
toujours l’audace,”
she said, quoting Napoleon’s reputed favorite maxim. “Let’s go on.”

The streets were narrower here than was common in modern Bath. Bret was reminded that the town was older, far older, than its heyday of fifty years past. This street had quite a medieval look, with a gutter running down the middle of the broken brick pavement and alleys no wider than his shoulders opening every few yards between thin and crooked houses. He said as much to Lady Roma.

“Yes, quite. All it needs is a few pigs to look entirely period. But I am more interested in the look of the sky.”

Raising his head, Bret saw that the sunshine which had tempted him was being forced back to the west by the advent of towering billows of black clouds, edged with brilliant white. If he’d seen those clouds in a painting, he would have scoffed at the artist’s over-fondness for the palette knife. But one could not criticize nature’s artistic merits.

“I think,” Lady Roma said, “you will regret the leaving of your coat, sir.”

“I regret your umbrella more. I’ll knock at one of these doors,” Bret said. “Someone is sure to give us shelter.”

“Why?” she asked merrily. “I assure you I shall take no harm from a wetting. I have fallen in brooks, held an umbrella over a Roman pavement in a thunderstorm, and ... I fear I am boasting.”

“Not at all. No one would take you for anything but intrepid.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, her eyes laughing. “How alarming. Shall I turn my ankle to show true womanly quality?”

“Not if I may reserve my coat to myself rather than holding it over you without being thought no true gentleman.”

“You may keep it with my good will, Mr. Donovan. Besides, my maid never lets me stir from the house without a thick pelisse, as you see. Oh, curses,” she said, with less theatricality. “I shall never hear the end of my folly from Pigeon if I come home soaked after refusing my umbrella.”

“We shall hurry, then. She had the look of a domestic tyrant.”

“A Heliogabalus in skirts,” she said. Bret waggled a finger at her.

“Ah-ha, no Roman references,” he admonished, and she laughed.

“A bad habit.”

They reached the end of the narrow, medieval way. Lady Roma looked about her with a bright, inquiring eye. “Oh, I know where we are now. That way.” A rumble of near thunder cut across her words. “It’s not far to my cousin’s house. I don’t think we’ll make it all the way home.”

The first cold drops fell with a clatter like a handful of thrown pebbles. A rush of wind came swirling down the street, throwing up an eddying spin of paper, leaves, and other rubbish. Lightning glowed somewhere behind the clouds, and the thunder followed closely. Another dash of rain and then a pause came, the last calm as the storm gathered its strength.

“Come, let’s run.”

She moved like Atalanta, swift and free. The few stragglers hastening onward saw an undoubted lady, skirts slightly raised, running like a boy. Her stylish bonnet must have been singularly well made, Bret thought, since it stayed on her head despite an activity the milliner must never have envisioned.

Watching her, Bret felt an echo of the gladness she must feel. No one could run like that unless she loved the freedom it represented. In his head, he knew he couldn’t catch her or even keep up. Once he would have matched her stride for stride. Yet he found himself, hat in hand, hurrying as fast as he had since he’d wrecked himself. It hurt him, but he continued, glad of the walkways that ran beside the street.

She glanced back with a laugh, but as soon as she saw him, she stopped. Bret slowed to a walk as he approached. Her goddess-like serenity was marred by the stern glance she threw upon him, yet even that had a great regal quality, like a queen preparing to rebuke a minister. Bret doubted he would hear any mawkish sympathy from her. Queens and goddesses were more apt to blame one for misfortunes they themselves would have foreseen and avoided.

Whatever she would have said, however, was drowned when the deluge came down upon them as though the wineskin of heaven had been sliced in half.

Blind, deafened, and drowned, Bret reached out and caught Lady Roma’s hands. Pulling her close to him, he shouted, “Which way?”

She tugged on his hands and led him, quickly, but not at a run, some slight distance. Bret realized that she would have reached her cousin’s dry-shod if she had not stopped to wait for him. They had been caught in the first downpour, but within a few moments, the fervor faded. It was still enough to make it hard for Bret to keep his eyes open. His hat was useless, having the new smaller brim. Wet through, cold, he yet felt a certain warmth from the feel of Lady Roma’s hand.

She let go to knock upon a black-painted door. When it opened, the butler stared. “My lady?”

“Good afternoon, Ganderby. Is my cousin at home?”

“No, my lady,” he said, standing aside at once to let them pass in. “She has gone to spend the evening at Mrs. Granleigh’s.”

“Good. I should hate for her to see me like this. Too much reminiscent of a drowned rat.” Shivering, she was stripping off her gloves. “Oh, this is Mr. Donovan. I’m afraid we were caught in this downpour. Can you help us?”

“Certainly, my lady. There is a good fire in Mrs. Derwent’s room. I shall send her maid up to you at once. And if Mr. Donovan will accept me as valet... ?”

“With the greatest will in the world, Mr. Ganderby,” Bret said. “So long as there is a fire somewhere for me as well.”

“And perhaps a brandy, sir?” the butler said in a low voice as he watched her ladyship drip her way up the stairs.

“You’re a genius, Mr. Ganderby.”

“One for me as well, Ganderby,” Lady Roma called over her shoulder. “I shall be down directly.”

Ganderby confided that he’d spent several happy years valeting for the Honorable Philip Tregillian when a younger man. He had not lost his touch with a hot iron. Bret sat in the kitchen, his feet in a basin of steaming water, watching the portly butler run the sadiron over his damp shirt. ‘The key, of course, is to keep the iron moving,” he said as one imparting a secret of the ages. “Mr. Derwent’s man does not have quite my touch with an iron, though I say it who should not, Mr. Donovan.”

“Do you miss serving as a valet?”

He pondered the question with an air of grave consideration. “Each form of service has its own challenges and pleasures. Naturally, the larger responsibilities of butlering give a man greater scope, yet the satisfaction of seeing the perfection of one’s art, as it were, heading out to meet the admiration of the world . . . there is nothing quite like it, sir.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet a man who takes a just pride in his work, Mr. Ganderby.”

“Thank you, sir. If I may make so bold, sir, may I say that no civilian occupation would be considered of the slightest value were it not for our gallant soldiers.”

“You
may say whatever you please. I am hardly in a position to stalk out of the house in high dudgeon,” Bret said, wondering why feet had to be so lumpy and pale. “But why express these patriotic sentiments to me?”

Ganderby turned on him the pitying smile a man gives a friend who stares agape at a magician’s trick when he knows the secret himself. “One may always distinguish the soldier from the common herd, sir. A certain neatness of dress, the careful handling of boots, a perfection of posture . . . these things are clear indications to the trained eye.”

Bret noticed Ganderby showed considerable tact in not mentioning any of the other indications, those that showed all was not well with the former soldier’s finances. Though the signs of wear on his coat were well camouflaged, Ganderby would have seen them at once. The painstaking darn in the toe of his stocking would have spoken eloquently even to a less observant soul. The army had taught him that a badly darned sock could lead to a sore, a sore to a wound, and a wound to a lack of need for a stocking ever again.

Settling back and taking up his glass, Bret sighed in contentment. “I wish I’d had you with me in the Peninsula, Mr. Ganderby. I should have been the envy of the regiment.”

Half an hour later, all was dry save for the heavier woolen of his coat. He stood before the kitchen fire, one booted foot upon the fender, staring down into the radiating coals. He heard a step behind him, too light to be the butler’s. Bret turned his head. Lady Roma stood in the doorway. She wore a brown silk gown, some inches too short, that doused the golden lights in her eyes. Yet nothing could make her look dowdy, not with such a smile. “I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Donovan. My cousin has returned early from her engagement and would very much like to meet you.”