Mrs. McVinnie's London Season (33 page)

T
he watermen deposited them on Whitehall Steps as the
early-afternoon sky puckered up with clouds and rain threatened.
Clare lost her footing on the slimy steps and tipped herself into
the water. Jeannie started after her, but the captain grabbed the
back of her dress again.

“
Edward will do it,” he said, as the boy waded off the lowest
step and into the evil brew that passed for the Thames at low tide.
He scooped up Clare and grabbed her towel doll before it drifted
downstream. Captain Summers took off his uniform coat and wrapped
Clare in it and Jeannie helped Edward up the steps.

“
Edward, you are a hero,” the captain said.

Edward, squeezing off
some of the mud from his jacket, looked up in surprise and grinned
for the first time since they had left the hospital in Greenwich.
He laughed self-consciously and made a face as he held out the
bedraggled doll to Jeannie. “I’d feel more like a hero if you took
this doll, Mrs. McVinnie,” was all he said. He sloshed beside
Jeannie toward the Admiralty House.

The captain watched
them and shook his head. “I don’t know that it is possible to
accomplish an expedition in safety with all of you,” he said.
“Edward, what is that sticking out of your pocket?”

With thumb and
forefinger, Edward pulled out the muddy guidebook.

“
Hand
it here,” the captain ordered.

He set Clare down and
ruffled through the soggy pages, his eyes boring into the pages as
though he searched for some great wisdom that had so far eluded
him. Edward looked at Jeannie, a question in his eyes, but she
merely put a finger to her lips and kept him quiet.

Captain Summers stared
a minute more at the book without seeing it, equally oblivious to
the stares and smiles of brother officers, their hats cocked
forward against the little breeze, who moved toward the steps,
coveted orders in hand.

Finally Will looked up
from his perusal of the guidebook and spoke to none of them in
particular. “Children are a plaguey lot,” he said. “I wonder that
anyone sets out to have them.”

Jeannie hid her smile
behind her hand, even as the Captain fingered Clare’s wet curls and
picked her up again. Guidebook in hand, he started for the street
and then stopped suddenly, set Clare down again, turned around, and
threw the book in a wide arc that took it far out into the Thames.
The officers at the top of the steps looked back at him in
amazement and whispered among themselves. Edward could only stare,
his face long, his mouth half-open.

After another moment
spent in contemplation of the deed, Summers clasped his hands
behind his back in that familiar gesture and walked slowly toward
Edward.

“
Nephew, your guidebook days have ended. I have other reading
in mind for you. Come, you wretched children. If I remain here any
longer, I will lose all credibility and even Lord Smeath will have
no choice but to put me in command of a garbage scow. Lively
now.”

He hurried them along
the walkway to the street, where he stopped a hackney and lifted in
the children. He was helping Jeannie up when he paused, her hand in
his, and looked back at the Admiralty roof, where the weather vane
turned slightly in the light breeze. It moved this way and that,
but it always bore toward the east.

Jeannie watched his
face, noting how the corners of his mouth turned down and his eyes
hardened. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked
down at Jeannie and tightened his grip on her hand.

“
I
have a good first lieutenant. Not brilliant, mind you, but good.”
His eyes went back to the weather vane. “I hope he is good
enough.”

Clare’s teeth were
chattering by the time they arrived at Wendover Square. Captain
Summers held her close, his chin resting on her head. Edward
squirmed in his soggy clothes. Once or twice during the silent ride
home he had opened his mouth to address his uncle, but Jeannie trod
upon his foot and he remained silent.

Despite their stealth
in entering the house, they had the misfortune to encounter Lady
Smeath in the hall. She shrieked, threw up her hands, and ran to
Edward, not touching him, but fluttering about like a cabbage moth.
She darted angry glances at the captain and Jeannie and muttered,
“Outside of enough,” over and over until Jeannie wanted to box her
ears.

As Edward dripped on
the floor, Lady Smeath whirled about to excoriate her brother.
“William, such carelessness speaks of an unsound mind.” She passed
her hand in front of her eyes. “One would think you were determined
to wrest his title and fortune from him by a tumble in the
Thames.”

“
Unworthy of you, Agatha,” Summers said, his lips set in that
thin line that Jeannie dreaded.

Lady Smeath’s demon
spurred her on. “One has to wonder,” she said, and dabbed at her
eyes. “Poor, fatherless child, and him practically an invalid! Now
I suppose you will tell me that he rescued that little Portuguese
by-blow, and I should be happy.”

The captain reeled back
as though she had struck him. Without a word, he picked up Clare
and walked slowly up the stairs, calling for Mary.

“
I’m
sure I don’t know what he is so exercised about,” Lady Smeath
sniffed.

Jeannie stared. No, you
probably do not, she thought as she watched Lady Smeath take Edward
gingerly by the sleeve and head him up the stairs, calling out for
the butler and the upstairs maid.

Jeannie followed
slowly. She glanced at the clock as she mounted the steps. It
wanted less than an hour to five o’clock, when she would be on her
way to Hyde Park with Beau Brummell. The prospect filled her with
dread. I suppose I must be witty and sparkling, she thought. I
would still rather throw all my clothes in a bag and sneak off to
Scotland.

Lady Smeath had gone in
search of the butler, leaving Edward to stand dripping in the hall.
The captain came out of Clare’s room and saw him there.

“
When
you are clean again, come to my room,” he said, and looked about
him with an air of studied disinterest. “Now that your guidebook
rests in Neptune’s back pocket, I will suggest some different
activity. To while away the tedium of the hours, I think it is time
for Pringle to instruct you in navigation. Here now, lad, steady as
you go!”

Edward had leapt
forward to grab his uncle. He laughed instead and lowered his muddy
arms.

“
You
may use my sextant. It is in my room. Pringle knows
where.”

“
Sir!”
was all Edward could manage. “Sir,” he said again, and all rational
thought fled his brain. Tears came to his eyes and he tried to
brush them away, leaving a streak of Thames mud across his face.
“This is the best day of my life,” he wailed.

The captain nodded.
“You must be very careful with the sextant. I lost mine at
Trafalgar. This one was a gift to me from Caleb Matthews, who had
no need to raise a sextant to blind eyes after Trafalgar.”

Edward’s face was
serious again. “I will be so careful, sir,” he said.

“
See
that you are, lad. I have no greater prize, really.” He smiled
beyond Edward’s head to Jeannie. “Not even my emerald.”

They heard Lady
Smeath’s footsteps on the stairs again. The captain opened the door
to his room. “Not a word to my sister yet, my boy. We may have to
wear her around to this idea.”

“
She
will never agree,” Edward said quietly.

Without a word, Jeannie
went into her room and shut the door. She sat down on the bed and
stared at the wall, grateful for the moment to be alone with her
thoughts, which were disquieting in the extreme.

She could not possibly
be in love with William Summers. Even the idea of it was so
totty-headed and irrational that she smiled in spite of herself.
Jeannie remembered her thoughts on the interminable ride from
Kirkcudbright to London, when she had calmly rehearsed in her mind
the prospects of marriage.

She laughed softly and
began to unbutton her dress. She had decided then that her next
husband would have to be just like Tom, with a tall, slim build,
blue eyes, of course, nice dark and wavy hair. She sighed. The kind
of hair to run her fingers through and not worry that she would
pull it out. And above all, any husband of hers would have to be
even-tempered like Tom, someone she could be comfortable with, and
not a bully with a sharp tongue and a wit that could slash like a
cutlass.

Oh, do be fair, she
thought as she went to the dressing room in hopes of finding
something interesting to wear. Will Summers is tall, certainly, and
I’ve never seen anyone so breathtaking in uniform. But that’s not
necessarily so much Will as it is the uniform, she rationalized.
Lord help us, navy men are elegant. I wonder that such distracting
elegance is not against the law. It must be the color of the coat.
Or perhaps it is those hats?

She hauled a walking
dress off the peg and shook it. Strange that he still looks so
good, even when he is not in uniform. He’s even a bit shabby,
because, truth to tell, all his civilian clothes must be at least
five years out of style. Somehow, it doesn’t matter.

With a laugh, Jeannie
acknowledged the sheer idiocy of a proposal from Will Summers and
felt unaccountably better. She put the dress on the bed and sat at
her dressing table to brush out her hair, her comfort restored. The
point is moot, you silly nod, she told herself, which will make the
cure easy. Will Summers, Sir William Summers, was the younger son
of a marquess. He would never marry the daughter of a country
doctor. Never.

Well, possibly he would
if she were wealthy, and beautiful into the bargain. Jeannie
grinned at her image as she brushed her hair. Tom thought she was
beautiful, but Tom loved her. And wealthy? She rolled her eyes. By
careful economy, she could just manage on her widow’s stipend and
the little money her father had left her, if she didn’t indulge in
too many wild extravagances, like this impulsive trip to London and
the purchase of too many clothes.

She considered the
clothes and blushed. The only new clothes had so far been purchased
for her by Captain Summers, and with the cock-and-bull story about
“wanting my crew to look good.” Lord, and I let him. What a silly I
am. And now, if Lady Smeath was correct, she would have a wardrobe
merely on the good name of Beau Brummell.

Beau Brummell. Jeannie
frowned into the mirror and began to brush her hair faster. She
glanced at her watch on the table. He will be here in fifteen
minutes and I am sitting in my chemise. She jumped up from the
dressing table and pulled the dress over her head, wondering how
she would manage the buttons in the back and wishing that Mary were
around. She buttoned all that she could reach from each direction
and sank onto the bed again. None of these careful conclusions,
beyond the obvious fact that he would never ask her, approached the
real reason that she would never consider marrying Will Summers: he
would never be around, just as Tom was never around.

‘‘
Jeannie McVinnie, you have spent all the solitary Christmases,
birthdays, Easters, and anniversaries that you wish,” she said out
loud as she pulled her hair back from her face and secured it with
a barrette. “You are tired of talking out loud to yourself. You
wish someone to answer back. William Summers will never do for
that, not in a million years.”

Where would he be when
I truly needed him? she asked. Where was Tom? She bowed her head.
And where was I when Tom needed me?

The thought chilled her
to the bone. She closed her eyes against it, even as she remembered
Galen McVinnie, and those long days and longer nights when she sat
up with him and he looked at her in that questioning way, as if
measuring the courage of her soul. She opened her eyes. And having
measured her, he had found her sadly wanting. And now there is
Bartley, who has questions, too.

Her hands were cold,
and she clasped them together. The stares in Kirkcudbright were not
so hard to bear, and truth to tell, people have a way of forgetting
about the dead who were never in their midst much anyway. But there
was the regiment, and Galen, devoted to her because he had promised
Tom, and loving her as a daughter-in-law because it was expected of
him. Only when he was tired and his leg pained him did he allow
that speculative look to settle in his eyes. Someday he will ask me
to tell him the truth, she thought, and then what will I do?

Why was it that none of
her questions had any answers to them? Jeannie reached around for
the last few buttons. Drat. Jeannie opened the door and stuck her
head out into the hall, where there was not a servant in sight. She
edged along the wall toward Clare’s room. Surely Mary was
within.

She heard someone on
the stairs and froze, crossing her fingers and hoping it was Mary
to do up her buttons.

Bartley whistled his
way into the hall. He smiled at Jeannie and raised his hand in
greeting.

“
Bartley, what are you doing here?” she asked, her back against
the wall.

“
Oh, I
don’t know,” he replied cheerfully. “After Larinda—Miss Summers—and
I finished sorting out the invitations, she needed an escort to
Hookham’s to return a book, and then one thing led to another and
here I am still. Lady Smeath came stomping down the stairs a moment
back and said that you were up here.” He stopped and looked at her
face. “Jeannie, are you all right?”

“
I’m
fine,” she said, “only I must hold up this wall until I find
someone to button up the back of my dress. Is Larinda
below?”