Mrs. McVinnie's London Season (23 page)

Jeannie smiled back and
Lady Smeath cast down her napkin. “Brother, if I hear another
shabby navy toast at this table ….” she threatened.

“
Not
even ‘Jollity and Mirth’?” he asked. “Larinda could use a dollop of
jollity and mirth, my dear Agatha.” He peered closer at his niece.
“My dear, the bloom is quite gone from your cheeks. A dismal
prospect, and the Season only just beginning.”

“
Captain,” Jeannie reprimanded.

He grinned at Larinda
and picked up his fork again.

Course followed dreary
course. The food tasted worse than wood shavings to Jeannie, but
she held her head high, ate what she could, and artfully rearranged
the rest of it on her plate. The dining-room door was open, and she
could smell the spicy scent of roses from the hall.

When the maid and
footman removed the final course, Lady Smeath cleared her throat
and tossed out another ball of conversation.

“
I
say, William, what are we seeing tonight at the theater?” she
asked.

“
I
daresay, precisely what you want to,” he said, and pushed his chair
back a little. He put his hand to his forehead, and Jeannie was
forcefully reminded of his tableau with Lady Jersey the night
before. “Oh, but you are referring to the play, are you not? Silly
of me. I believe it is
The Merchant of Venice
. By
Shakespeare, Larinda.”

“
I
know that, Uncle,” she replied, her voice testy. Jeannie could
scarcely blame her.

“
I am
relieved to hear it,” he murmured, and took another sip of
wine.

This man would drive
the devil to an unnatural act, Jeannie thought as she watched
Captain Summers. No wonder Galen’s Aunt Jeannie McVinnie had
written such anguished letters home. The thought of Will Summers as
a young boy made her close her eyes and bow her head in silent
mirth.

She opened her eyes to
see the captain watching her, a look of inquiry in his eyes. When
she said nothing, he leaned toward her slightly. “You realize, I
need hardly tell you, that it is the height of rudeness not to
share a joke at table,” he said.

She twinkled her eyes
at him. “I will never tell, sir.”

“
Never?”

“
Possibly at a later date,” she amended. “Much
later.”

“
When
I am in my dotage?” he asked helpfully.

She laughed out loud,
and was spared the daggers from Lady Smeath’s eyes by the arrival
of the sweet.

François himself bore
it to the table. Lady Smeath started in surprise. He gazed back at
the dowager with an expression of infinite sorrow, mingled with the
acutest sort of shame that Jeannie had ever seen on a man’s face.
Jeannie looked closer. Were those tears standing on his lashes?
Surely not.

He set the covered dish
in front of Captain Summers. With a sigh he slowly removed the lid,
averting his eyes as he did so, as if the sight was more than he
could bear.

The captain gazed down
at the uncovered, steaming mound before him with an expression on
his face only just short of ecstatic. He looked around at Jeannie
and blew her a kiss.

The footman approached
and François leaned upon the fellow as if unable to sustain himself
any longer. The footman experienced a momentary difficulty with a
cough deep in his throat as he placed a silver dish beside the
steaming pudding.

“
I did
not know if you liked strawberry jam, but it’s a particular
favorite of mine,” Jeannie said.

“
G—Godfrey, I’ve been known to eat strawberry jam from the jar
with my fingers,” he said, his tone reverential.

The footman, still
struggling within himself, placed several plates beside the
pudding. He handed Captain Summers a large spoon, stepped back
until he was out of Lady Smeath’s line of vision, and allowed an
enormous grin to stretch from ear to ear.

Captain Summers cut
into the pudding and sighed. He plopped a generous serving on the
plate and looked at Lady Smeath. “This, my dear Agatha, is currant
duff, the food of the gods, created by Lord Neptune himself. Please
be the first. Of course, you must slather it with jam. Agatha?”

Summer’s sister looked
everywhere but at the plate he proffered her. “I wouldn’t dream of
putting that disgusting concoction on a fork, much less in my
mouth,” she declared. “And strawberry jam? At
dinner
?” She
shuddered.

“
Larinda?” he asked.

Larinda didn’t even
bother to reply. An angry flush was rising from her neck. She
stared in fury at the opposite wall.

“
Jeannie, surely you will join me,” he asked.

“
I
will, sir, but only half that much, please.”

He set the plate in
front of him and spooned out a smaller slice, covering it with jam
before setting it in front of her. Summers poured the remainder of
the dish of jam onto his helping of currant duff as Lady Smeath
looked on in wide-eyed horror and Larinda made helpless sounds in
her throat. Summers turned around to François, who was listing
heavily on the footman’s shoulder.

“
Magnificent, François. You are to be commended,” he said. “I
would kiss you on both cheeks, but then your face would be sticky.
Please accept my undying gratitude. If you remove the remainder and
keep it covered, it’s just as good for breakfast. Cold.”

François lurched back
in dismay. With shaking hands, he covered the duff and whisked it
off the table. He left the room, head down, shoulders bowed, a
broken man.

“
If he
gives me notice tomorrow, brother, you will regret that you were
ever born,” said Lady Smeath.

Captain Summers
appeared not to hear her. He ate his way steadily through the
pudding, pausing only to scrape the last bit of jam from the dish.
When he finished, he leaned back in satisfaction and ran his finger
around the waistband of his breeches.

“
That’s quite the nicest thing anyone ever did for me,” he
said. “Did you put Pringle up to it?”

“
I
did.” Jeannie pushed away her plate. “It’s so filling,
Captain.”

He eyed the remainder
on her plate, regarding it seriously for a moment, and then shook
his head. “I daren’t, do I?”

“
Your
credit is not that good at table presently,” she said.

He nodded, sat a moment
more in complacent introspection, and then tugged out his
watch.

“
Agatha, the curtain rises in less than one hour. I suggest
that we adjourn to the theater.”

Without a word, Agatha
swept from the room, followed by Larinda. The captain watched them
go and turned to Jeannie, the mocking glint gone from his eyes. He
tipped a touch more wine in his glass, reached over, and did the
same to Jeannie’s. He rose to his feet and held up the glass.
Jeannie did likewise.

“
Victorious war,” he said, and drank.

Jeannie followed
suit.

“
So
much for my shabby navy toast,” he said, his good humor unruffled.
“How kind of them to leave the room so I could take this
opportunity to say you look as fine as five pence.”

“
So do
you, Captain.”

He nodded.

“
Will,” she amended.

“
Much
better.” He held out his arm to her. “Are we ready to brave the
lion’s den?”

She hesitated. “Sir,
Will, I believe this concerns only me. I don’t want to involve you
in this silliness with Brummell.”

He took her by the arm.
“Jeannie, the first duty of a captain is to his ship and his men,
even his impressed crew, I find myself …” he paused, as if
wondering how to word it, “vastly involved.”

“
I
cannot imagine why,” she said.

“
Perhaps I’ll tell you later, when you’re in your dotage,” he
said inexplicably, and then tugged at her braid. “Very nice.
Different, but nice. I think Bartley MacGregor would
approve.”

“
Quite
likely,” Jeannie agreed as they walked slowly to the dining-room
door. “I depend on him to propose at least once or twice in these
next two weeks.”

Captain Summers stopped
in his tracks. “My G—gracious, Jeannie, you take that calmly!”

She nodded and
repressed a little laugh. “It is only what he has done since we
were both eighteen, Will. He proposed once a week, without fail,
and once a week I turned him down.”

“
And
Tom?”

Jeannie gazed
thoughtfully at the opposite wall. “He only proposed once.”

The captain was silent
then. In the hallway he helped her with her cloak and then swung
his own about his shoulders. Lady Smeath and Larinda had already
adjourned to the carriage. Captain Summers tucked Jeannie’s arm in
his and walked her down the steps.

Jeannie hung back and
for the smallest moment she leaned against the captain’s shoulder.
“Do you suppose this is how Marie Antoinette felt in the tumbril?”
she asked, her voice an anxious whisper.

“
I
think not,” he whispered back. “Jeannie, I will stand by
you.”

She looked up at him
gratefully. “Do you know, sir, I do not understand why I was so
afraid of you at first. You’re quite the kindest man I ever
met.”

He put his finger to
her lips. “Don’t let it get about, Jeannie. I could never send a
foretopman out on the yards if there were some suspicion that I was
human.”

The Theatre Royal on
Catherine Street was ablaze with flambeaux as the Summers’ carriage
deposited them on the steps. A cold wind blew from the north and
Jeannie clutched her cloak around her. She touched the captain’s
emerald necklace to reassure herself that it was still there, and
traced her finger over the flaw. The stone was warm from her skin.
Then how is it that my hands feel so cold? she thought.

She stood behind the
captain, watching him as he helped Lady Taneystone and Larinda from
the carriage. Wearing his hat and outlined against the lights from
the theater, he looked enormously tall and remarkably capable.
Jeannie sighed. A person wouldn’t have to travel alone on the mail
coach and afraid of everyone with someone like this close by.

She gave herself a
mental shake and patted the emerald one last time. And how odd it
is, that a boy of fifteen should want such a gem and hang on to it
through such desperate years. How tenacious you are, Will.

She found herself
walking beside Larinda, who only glanced at her once but said
nothing. They went up the steps in silence and into the light of
many candles. So many people stood about in the lobby, some of them
in naval dress like the captain. Others wore the elaborately
frogged uniform of the Life Guards, and others the dashing short
capes of the hussar regiments. Jeannie looked again at the captain,
who was nodding and speaking to several of his brother naval
officers.

She admired the dignity
of navy-blue and white. Almost as elegant as Brummell, she thought,
and then winced. Oh, why did I have to think of him? As she hung
back from the Summers’ party, she remembered again the red roses
that mocked her from the dining-room entry hall. Why would he do
such a thing? Men are so strange.

And then Captain
Summers had her by the arm and was gently pulling her forward. She
was introduced to Commodore Sir This, and Captain Lord That, and
then the crowd parted and a large, red-faced man with elaborately
powdered hair of the last century grasped her hand in both of
his.

“
Mrs.
McVinnie,” the captain was saying, “let me introduce to you Admiral
Lord Charles Smeath, First Lord of the Admiralty, and … well,
my lord, are we any actual relation? I am never sure of these
connections.”

Smeath rumbled out a
laugh that sounded like a foghorn. Jeannie regarded him in
fascination. “Damn me, William, your brother George used to say all
the time that you might have been a ditch-delivered foundling, for
all the attention you ever paid to family connections.”

Summers flashed an
angry red as the muscles in his cheek twitched.

“
My,
but that is a rude thing to say, my lord,” Jeannie burst out. Her
eyes grew wide and she slapped her hand over her mouth.

Captain Summers stared
at her, his eyes as wide as hers. To her vast amazement—and the
amazement of his fellow officers grouped around in shocked
silence—he threw back his head and laughed. To her further
amazement, he grabbed her head in both hands and planted a kiss on
her forehead before he went off into another gust of laughter.

Lord Smeath stared.
“ ’Pon my soul,” he said finally, “I believe this is a first.
” He looked around him at the other naval officers. “I say, has
anyone else ever heard Summers laugh before?”

The other officers
looked at one another and chuckled among themselves, but to
Jeannie’s ears it was a relieved sort of laughter. Lord Smeath
joined in and then took Jeannie by the hand again.

Her face flaming red,
Jeannie curtsied deeply and raised her eyes to his. “Forgive me, my
lord,” she said. “I have an imprudent tongue.”

“
Apology accepted,” said Lord Smeath. He patted her cheek with
his meaty hand. “I daresay, Sir William, that you never impressed a
prettier one.”

The captain had resumed
control of himself again. “There is no question about that,” he
agreed, “even if she will spring to my defense like a lioness.”

Lord Smeath fastened
his eyes on her again, looking her over, staring at Summers’
emerald and the cleavage of her dress. “And is she dependable,
too?” he asked.

“
Without question. I’d trust her with everything except a
guidebook.”