Sheri Cobb South (6 page)

“Indeed she is, my dear,” Sir Humphrey concurred. “But I was speaking of Miss Amanda’s elder sister.”

“Margaret? She is hardly a dragon. I only wish she would forget about finding her sister a husband, and concentrate her efforts on finding one of her own.”

Peregrine threw up his hands. “Not interested, thank you!”

Lady Palmer gave a most unladylike snort. “And a very good thing, too, for you haven’t the sense to appreciate a good woman! Amanda Darrington is a sweet child, but her elder sister is worth ten of her—as you men would see, if you would be guided by your brains, instead of your—”

“Aunt!”

“Martha!”

Shocked horror was writ large on her husband’s countenance, and unholy glee on her nephew’s.

“Your
eyes,”
she insisted. “I was going to say your
eyes!”

“Of course you were, Aunt,” said Peregrine, still grinning. “Now, how soon can you introduce me to the Misses Darrington?”

“I might have done so this very afternoon,” said Sir Humphrey. “I’ve only just returned from the Darrington place.”

“Uncle! Is that any way to treat your own flesh and blood? You might have taken me along!”

“So I might, had you not decided on a dip in the river,” Sir Humphrey reminded him.

“I trust you found them all well?” asked Lady Palmer in some concern. “I confess I am at a loss as to why they felt the need to send for you. Unless—surely Hattie Blaylock has not—”

“Oh, Mrs. Blaylock is in blooming health, as are her nieces and nephew. The trouble concerns Master Philip’s new tutor. Seems the fellow had a run-in with a ruffian or two on the Montford road.”

“Tutor?” Peregrine was not at all pleased at the idea of another man poaching on his preserves. “What is the fellow like? Young? Handsome?”

“Probably about your own age. As for handsome, well, I should say that depends on whether Miss Amanda has a partiality for black eyes and bloody lips.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Peregrine, his brow clearing.

“On the contrary,” put in Lady Palmer, “some women relish the role of ministering angel.”

“That tears it! This tutor fellow must not be allowed to steal a march on me. Aunt, I throw myself upon your good graces. How soon can you arrange an introduction?”

“We see the Darringtons every Sunday at church. I shall introduce you to Miss Amanda after services, and not one moment before,” she said, resigning herself to the inevitable. “Although for my part, I should take Miss Darrington.”

“Excellent!” declared Peregrine, grinning at his aunt. “You may have Miss Darrington, and I will take Amanda!”

Lady Palmer gave him a withering glare, and departed in a huff.

* * * *

Dinner with the Darringtons was so pleasant and peaceful a meal that James would have been surprised to know just how controversial was his presence there. Indeed, he might well have been relegated to taking his meals in the schoolroom, had Aunt Hattie not overheard her niece giving the cook instructions to that effect.

“The schoolroom, Margaret?” she echoed in some consternation. “Surely not!”

“Why not, pray?” asked Miss Darrington, a hint of a challenge in her voice.

“You cannot expect poor Mr. Fanshawe to take his meals all alone!”

“If he wishes for company, perhaps Philip could join him,” suggested Margaret.

Aunt Hattie, usually the most biddable of females, gave a snort of derision. “Philip has been dining with the family these two years past. He would be highly offended at being treated as if he were back in leading strings—and who could blame him?”

“Perhaps Mr. Fanshawe would not want his company, in any case,” Miss Darrington persisted. “After spending his days trying to drum Latin and Greek into Philip’s head, he might welcome a quiet evening to himself.”

“If that is the case, we will certainly excuse him. But the choice should be his to make.”

There was very little that Margaret could say to this argument, at least while the cook was listening with every indication of interest. But as they left the kitchen, she could not resist chiding her aunt.

“I cannot think it wise to allow Mr. Fanshawe to dine with the family, Aunt Hattie.”

“Why not, pray? You sound as if you dislike the poor man.”

“I don’t
dislike
him, precisely,” said Margaret, frowning slightly. “But I dislike very much the way he looks at Amanda. Surely you have not forgotten the last tutor—or the stable boy, or the dancing master!”

Aunt Hattie sniffed. “Dancing master, indeed! A very ill-bred fellow, to be sure! I thought so the minute I laid eyes on him.”

“Oh, Aunt, how can you?” retorted Margaret, laughing. “When you said at the time that he was the most charming man you had ever met!”

“Yes, well, I always say that any man with that much charm cannot be trusted.”

Margaret, who had never heard her aunt express any such sentiment, merely gave her a knowing look.

“Poor Mr. Fanshawe, on the other hand,” continued Aunt Hattie, “appears to be every inch the gentleman.”

“Given his extraordinary height, that encompasses a great many inches. You must think him very gentlemanly, indeed,” observed Margaret, conceding defeat. If her aunt had already designated the tutor “poor Mr. Fanshawe,” then no argument on earth would have the power to move her.

And so it was that James arrayed himself in his threadbare evening clothes and took his place at the dining table. He noted with wry amusement that he was placed between Hattie Blaylock and Margaret Darrington, and wondered if he had Miss Darrington to thank for a seating arrangement that put as much distance as possible between himself and the fair Amanda.

Not surprisingly, conversation at first centered upon Sir Humphrey’s visit, and speculation as to the likelihood of anyone being arrested for the assault upon James’s person. From there it broadened, for James’s benefit, to a description of Sir Humphrey’s habits, property, and family situation. On the latter subject, Aunt Hattie provided a contribution that perhaps interested the family more than it did their tutor.

“The vicar’s wife informs me that Sir Humphrey’s nephew has come down from London for a visit,” she said over the fricassee of veal.

Amanda looked up sharply, but Aunt Hattie continued, unnoticing.

“I believe Sir Humphrey and Lady Palmer are much attached to the young man, although Sir Humphrey says he is a rackety sort of fellow.”

James smiled at this description. “One wonders how he would have characterized a nephew for whom he felt no affection at all.”

“Oh, that is just Sir Humphrey’s way,” Aunt Hattie assured him. “Surely there must be a great deal of good in a young man who would spend his time visiting his aunt and uncle when he might be enjoying the delights of London.”

Amanda, unconvinced, took exception to this assessment. “If he is so devoted, why have we seen no sign of him before now? Depend upon it, he is nothing more than a worthless town-beau, devoted to nothing but his own pleasures. I daresay he came to Montford for no other purpose than to sponge off Sir Humphrey while hiding from his creditors.”

This scathing denunciation of an apparent stranger caused Margaret’s eyebrows to draw together in a worried crease. What sort of deep game was her sister playing? If this was Amanda’s attempt to demonstrate for the tutor’s benefit her lack of interest in a life of fashionable frivolity, it was possible that his interest in her was not entirely unreciprocated.

“Oh, dear, do you think so?” fretted Aunt Hattie. “I feel sure you must be mistaken. While it is true that the conduct of the doctor’s eldest son while
he
was in London might have been calculated to break his poor father’s heart, one must own that he was a sadly ramshackle sort even as a boy— plucking tail feathers from Lady Palmer’s peacocks, stealing apples from the duke’s orchards—” She shook her head over the youthful sins of the doctor’s eldest son, having unwittingly reduced her youngest niece to chastened silence.

Margaret, however, noted her sister’s guilty expression, and correctly interpreted it. “Have you been making free with the duke’s apples? Really, Amanda, you must not!”

“But he said I might!” Amanda protested.

“The old duke said so, but you have never met the new one, and
he,
you know, may feel quite differently on the subject.”

James, beholding his goddess’s discomfiture, came swiftly to her rescue. “The duke’s orchards,” he said. “Might those be the ones I glimpsed from the window of my bedchamber? We must have driven past them on the way, but I fear my impressions are somewhat hazy.”

“And no wonder! But yes, the orchards may indeed be seen from the westward-facing windows. If the fine weather holds, perhaps Philip might show you about the place tomorrow after his lessons.”

“Or even,” put in Philip,
“instead of
his lessons.”

James grinned. “Your generosity overwhelms me, Philip, but afterwards will allow us sufficient time, I’m sure.”

And, he added mentally, allow him an opportunity to look about him for any clues as to his past or, for that matter, his present.

In this unexceptionable manner, the remainder of the meal passed. The ladies did not withdraw from the table, as Philip was too young to indulge in after-dinner port, and apparently even Aunt Hattie felt that it would be too great a familiarity to allow the tutor to enjoy in solitary splendor the fruit of her late brother’s cellars. Instead, the entire company forsook the dining room in favor of a small but comfortably furnished withdrawing room situated at the rear of the house.

James, settling his long frame on one end of a worn horsehair sofa, took stock of his surroundings. A framed watercolor painting of the Darrington family home held pride of place over the mantel, while on an adjacent wall hung a charcoal sketch of a young boy whom he had no difficulty identifying as his pupil.

“You have an artist in the family,” he observed, moving nearer for a closer look at the sketch.

“Yes, our Amanda is very talented,” agreed Aunt Hattie proudly. “That portrait of Philip is very like, is it not?”

“As well it should be,” grumbled Philip. “She forced me to sit on the most uncomfortable chair in the house, and wouldn’t let me move for hours!”

“I did no such thing!” protested Amanda.
“It was twenty minutes at the very most.”

“Hours,”
reiterated Philip emphatically. “So if she suggests taking down your likeness, you would do well to heed my advice.
Run!”

“I shall bear it in mind—although I fear my appearance at the moment is hardly a fit subject for any artist.”

Her muse now fully awakened, Amanda studied her prospective subject with interest. “No, but I could paint you
en silhouette,
and the bruises would not show. I think you would look very well in profile, for your nose has great character.”

“It certainly has great
something,”
conceded James, rubbing his rather prominent proboscis. There arose in his fickle memory a vivid image of himself as a skinny schoolboy, being teased by familiar yet nameless tormentors. “It was a great trial to me in my younger days. As I recall, ‘Weathervane’ was the nickname of choice.”

Amanda wrinkled her
retroussé
little nose. “Schoolboys can be perfectly beastly! I daresay once your bruises have faded, you will look quite distinguished.
Do say you will let me take down your silhouette. I assure you, it will not take long, no matter what Philip may say!”

The smile accompanying this appeal was almost blinding in its brilliance. James was not proof against such persuasion. With much stammering and many protestations of his own unworthiness, he at last abandoned the unequal struggle, and agreed to sit for Miss Amanda.

It was a very merry group that set about rearranging the room. The artist, her eyes sparkling in anticipation, busied herself in stretching a sheet of thin paper across a vertical wooden frame, while Aunt Hattie and Philip debated the best placement of a lamp for throwing the shadow of Mr. Fanshawe’s distinctive profile onto the makeshift canvas. As for Mr. Fanshawe himself, he had little to do but sit where he was instructed and follow the often-contradictory advice of the various Darringtons.

The only person who did not seem to enjoy the proceedings was the eldest of the three siblings, who watched with a thoughtful frown creasing her forehead. Long experience had taught her that Amanda was at her most fetching when in the grip of her muse, but the bedazzled tutor, unfamiliar with her sister’s idiosyncrasies, might well mistake her animation as a sign of partiality. She took what comfort she could in the realization that these were hardly the ideal circumstances under which to conduct a courtship, as James’s infrequent attempts at conversation were met with scolding reminders that he must remain perfectly still.

Alas, even this small comfort was short-lived. At last Amanda laid aside her brush and pronounced her creation finished.

“There you are, Mr. Fanshawe,” she declared, removing the paper from its frame and surrendering the painting to its subject for his inspection. “And quite distinguished, too, as I predicted.”

Thus dismissed, James rose somewhat stiffly from his seat. “I fear any credit must go to the artist, rather than the subject.”

Amanda turned quite pink with pleasure. “You are too kind, Mr. Fanshawe. Handle it carefully, for the paint is still quite wet in the middle, and may smear.”

In fact, it had already done so, for a streak of black paint now adorned the corner of Amanda’s mouth. The effect should have been ridiculous, but Margaret acknowledged that it was all too likely to inspire a susceptible male with a sudden urge to kiss it away.

“It’s lovely, Miss Amanda,” James said, although in fact he was not looking at the silhouette at all, but at the dab of paint on her cheek, and his thoughts were running along lines very similar to those imagined by Margaret. “May I keep it?”

“Of course you may! And someday, when Philip is quite grown up and no longer requires your services, you can look at it and remember your time with us.”

James regarded it with awe and wonder. “I shall treasure it forever.”