Mrs. McVinnie's London Season (4 page)

“
Poor
little thing,” Jeannie said out loud.

The housekeeper pulled
herself up sharp. “You’re feeling sorry for your betters? I marvel
that Madame Coutant keeps you on, for all that your stitches are
wondrous small.”

“
It is
a source of some amazement to me, too,” Jeannie murmured as the
door to the room closed.

The Scotsman sighed.
“It’s amazed I am that you have kept any position at all, miss.” He
peered closer at her when she seemed disinclined to comment. “How
long have you worked for that dressmaker?”

Jeannie twinkled her
eyes at him. “You would be astounded how long I have worked for
her.”

The Scotsman ventured
no further discussion. He led her to the door of the room she had
passed in such a hurry on her way to alter Larinda’s gown. Jeannie
slowed down in spite of herself and the Scot regarded her with some
compassion. “He’s not so frightening, Miss … Miss ….”

Jeannie did not choose
to enlighten him with her last name. “I would rather suspect that
he is worse,” she replied as she tightened her lips and searched
about for the courage to enter the room.

The Scotsman gave her a
little push. “He’s rather worse if he’s kept waiting, but I doubt
that he has ever flogged a seamstress,” he whispered as they
crossed the threshold together and Jeannie stood face to face with
Captain Sir William Summers.

There was nothing about
the captain to give her one moment’s confidence, Jeannie decided as
she looked at him, curtsied, and fought down the urge to bolt the
room. He was tall—so tall that she wondered how he could have
accommodated himself to life aboard a ship. He had the sort of
figure she admired in a man, broad of shoulder and solid. His
posture was impeccable, his hair curly and light brown, and
receding somewhat from his high forehead. His features were
unremarkable. If anything, his nose was too beaky by half and his
lips too thin.

She decided that the
only thing truly remarkable about Captain Summers was his mahogany
tan. He was deeply tanned, a thing surprising, considering that it
was early spring. It was the tan of someone always outdoors in good
weather and bad. His face was lined in a way that reminded her of
the shepherds in the Highlands who spent a lifetime facing
continually into the wind.

Jeannie’s critical
review of Captain Summers stopped with his eyes, and she decided
that nothing could soften the hardness in them. They were the green
of the sea, the color of Solway Firth when the tide was in spate.
They were regarding her now with an expression that held nothing
but irritation and a sort of ill-concealed energy that troubled
her.

“
I
trust that you have satisfied whatever curiosity about me that you
may have harbored,” he said. His voice was low, but it carried, and
Jeannie felt a small shiver traverse the length of her
spine.

You, sir, are a big
bully, she thought as she raised her eyes fleetingly to his again
and then lowered them just as quickly. And you know precisely what
I am thinking, don’t you?

The notion was
disconcerting in the extreme, but it compelled her to look him in
the eyes again, even as her legs trembled. His glance had not
wavered from her face and she realized with an uncomfortable start
that she recognized the look. It was the same measuring stare that
a border collie would fix upon a sheep, particularly a sheep
contemplating a bolt from the flock.

Jeannie cleared her
throat, exasperated with herself. “You have a loose button, sir?”
she asked, not daring to raise her voice.

He regarded her another
moment in silence until she was sure he could hear the heart
beating in her chest. He pointed to a gold button on his uniform
front and then clasped his hands behind his back.

Jeannie turned to the
Scot beside her. “Could you help the captain remove his coat?” she
whispered.

The captain shook his
head. “I’ll not wrinkle it further. Just come a little closer.
Surely you can jury rig a button while I’m still in the coat.”

She did not budge. Her
feet had turned into blocks of wood.

With a sigh that seemed
to come from his shoes, the captain took a step toward her. “You
silly baggage,” he said, biting off the words. “I only bite when
the moon is full and the tide is running.”

Startled, she looked
him in the eye again, and was rewarded this time with the tiniest
glimmer. It may have only been a reflection from the lamp on the
dressing table, but it gave her the heart to move.

“
Very
well, sir,” she said, and motioned to the Scotsman beside her.
“Pray, what is your name?”

“
Pringle,” the Scotsman said. After a moment’s reflection, as
if he were deciding whether to confess, he continued. “Erasmus
Pringle.”

“
Erasmus?” asked the captain, and the little twinkle in his
eyes deepened. “You never wrote that on a ship’s
manifest.”

“
Indeed not, Captain,” replied Pringle. “But she did ask, sir.”
A slow flush was spreading up his face.

“
And
in all the years of our acquaintance, I do not remember when I have
ever seen you blush, Pringle,” continued the captain inexorably. He
rocked back and forth on his heels and addressed his next remark to
the ceiling. “Overmuch dissipation such as we are currently engaged
in will ruin us both, I daresay.”

“
Aye,
aye, sir,” Pringle replied.

“
And
now, Pringle, if you will,” said Jeannie. “I need some thread from
that workbasket.”

Relieved to change the
subject, Pringle handed Jeannie a spool of navy thread and found a
needle in the pincushion.

Jeannie threaded the
needle and approached the captain. In silence she stood right next
to him and felt the button on his coat, breathing in the bracing
odor of bay rum and noting the row of medals that marched across
his chest. She sewed in silence, acutely aware that he was watching
her face the whole time. And he was so close.

In silence she knotted
the thread. She glanced in the workbasket that Pringle still held,
and then remembered that she had left the scissors on the chest in
Larinda’s room. She stood on tiptoe, leaned forward, and cut the
thread with her teeth.

The captain touched her
shoulder to steady her. She should have leapt back the second she
finished, but before she was even aware of her actions, Jeannie
patted him on the chest and arranged the large, star-shaped medal
precisely in the front of his uniform.

“
You’ll do now, sir,” she said. “Now hold still a moment
more.”

His neckcloth had been
bothering her since she entered the room. She reached up and
straightened it, pleating the folds until it was entirely to her
satisfaction.

“
Are
you quite, quite through?”

The captain’s soft
voice cut through the silence like a dagger flung at a distant
target. Jeannie froze, her hands still raised to his neckcloth.
Slowly she lowered them and put them behind her back like a small
girl in a china shop.

“
I
mean, if you are through fiddling over me, and if Larinda, my
beloved niece, has put a momentary curb to her whining, and if my
sister, the dragon in gossamer, can be forced to exert herself …”
He stopped and took a deep breath, standing even taller. “Ah, but I
have no business speaking like this. You are dismissed. Pringle,
see that she is paid something.” He turned abruptly back to his
dressing table for another look in the mirror.

He looks as though he
does not like what he sees, Jeannie thought. I wonder if he has
ever smiled.

She watched as he
picked up the handsome peaked hat on the stand by the dressing
table and tucked it under his arm. He turned to the door again and
eyed her with an expression centered somewhere between exasperation
and resignation.

“
Are
you still here?” he snapped. “And I wish you wouldn’t look at me
like I am a monkey in an exhibit.”

Jeannie’s chin went up.
Only the greatest force of will prevented her from uttering the
retort that rose to her lips.

She was spared the
bother of reply. The dragon in gossamer swept into the room, the
feathers in her headdress nodding and bobbing.

“
Oh,
it is too, too bad,” she declared in tones more appropriate to the
stage at Covent Garden. “Edward has chosen to lie down with a sick
headache and cannot accompany us. And this was to be a family
dinner at Lord and Lady Dearden’s. I am sure I will grow
distracted.”

“
You,
madam?” murmured the captain. “Surely not.”

“
Indeed I will,” she declared. And her voice rose another notch
even as she dug about for her vinaigrette. “And I feel my heart
already beginning to race.”

“
It
wouldn’t dare,” replied the captain blandly.

Jeannie turned away to
hide the smile on her face. She stole a glance at the captain and
noticed for the smallest second that twinkle in his eye. She might
have been mistaken. The look he fixed upon Lady Smeath was all
business. She must have been mistaken.

Without a word, Jeannie
followed Pringle into the hall and down the stairs. She felt
herself relaxing. In another moment, she would be safely on the
front steps again. She could retrieve her bags and hurry away
before anyone in the Summers household was any wiser. She would
chalk up the whole wretched adventure to experience and never
venture beyond Hadrian’s Wall again.

The footman stood at
the bottom of the stairs. “Your carriage waits at the door,
Captain.”

Pringle touched
Jeannie’s arm. “We’ll go belowstairs and wait for them to leave,
miss. And didn’t Mrs. White promise you a bite to eat?”

“
Truly, it is not necessary,” Jeannie said. Gracious merciful
Lord, all I want is out of here.

“
Oh, I
insist,” Pringle said. “You can’t go out on this raw kind of night
without something to keep you warm.”

I can indeed, thought
Jeannie. Just watch me.

They entered the
hallway, the captain and Lady Smeath close behind. Standing by the
open front door was a tall, thin woman who was gesticulating in a
Gallic fashion with the butler.

“
Blast
and damn,” said the captain under his breath. “And who is this Long
Meg?”

The butler separated
himself from the irate woman and came forward in some relief. “Sir,
I fear that a great deception has been practiced upon this
household,” he began, and fixed Jeannie with a basilisk stare.

Jeannie dropped her
gaze and noticed for the first time that her bags were resting in a
growing puddle inside the door.

She heard a gasp behind
her. Lady Smeath shouldered herself forward. “Madame Coutant,” she
declared, “whatever does this mean?”

“
It
means that I came as quickly as I could to see to whatever had to
be done to your daughter’s dress. A regrettable incident, to be
sure, my lady, but only think upon all the dresses I am called to
create at the beginning of the Season.”

“
I
neither know nor care,” said Lady Smeath as she stiffened and then
looked around until her gaze rested upon Jeannie McVinnie, too.
“And who, pray tell, are you?” she asked. She swung around to the
dressmaker again. “Madame, do you employ this young person in your
establishment?”

It was Madame Coutant’s
turn to stare. “I have never seen her before this moment, my
lady.”

“
I
really think I should be going,” Jeannie said as she attempted to
edge toward the open door.

Captain Summers grabbed
her. “Perhaps you had better explain yourself, and then I will
decide whether to summon the watch.”

Lady Smeath staggered
to a chair and sank gracefully into it. “Please. Not a scene. My
nerves could never bear it. Oh, where is my vinaigrette?”

“
It is
in your hand, Aunt Agatha,” Larinda said.

“
Captain, I can clear up part of this mystery,” the butler
said. “I suspect she must belong to these bags I discovered when I
opened the door to admit Madame Coutant.” He paused then for
dramatic effect, and the captain sighed.

“
I
took the liberty of opening one of the bags to determine their
ownership and found this Bible,” said the butler as he reached
inside and pulled out the book in question.

“
You
are to be commended in your search for righteousness,” Captain
Summers snapped.

The butler cast him a
wounded look. “Sir, I merely read the inscription upon the flyleaf.
It says, ‘Jeannie F. McVinnie.’ ”

The captain started and
tightened his grip on her arm. He pulled her around to look her
full in the face. “You cannot possibly be Jeannie McVinnie,” he
declared with such conviction that she almost believed it
herself.

“
I am
Jeannie McVinnie,” she insisted.

Lady Smeath gasped and
clutched at her chest. “Is this the woman you thought to foist upon
my household? ‘She is old and steady,’ you told me.” The feathers
in her headdress quivered. “William, I would never have thought you
worthy of such a stunt!” With hands that trembled, she took the
vinaigrette to her nose and sniffed deeply. “Poor dead George would
have been mortified if he knew the depths you had sunk. Although we
have wondered—”

“
That’s quite enough, Agatha,” said the captain, biting off
each word and glaring daggers at Jeannie.

His sister threw up her
hands. “Whoever she is, I am glad that I did not pay her! I leave
you, William, to pay for your own doxie. And keep them out of my
house.”