Sheri Cobb South (4 page)

“At least I paid me own way!” pointed out her husband.

“And could do the same for a dozen others, if you wished!”

“Aye, but I
don’t
wish!” retorted Mr. Brundy.

“No, you would deny your sister the same privileges that you take for granted! I never knew you could be so—so
selfish!”

“I am not selfish, and that girl is not me sister! For God’s sake,
look
at ‘er! We don’t look anything alike!”

Until that moment, Lady Helen had never heard her husband raise his voice, and was momentarily taken aback by his vehemence. “Shhh! She’ll hear you!” she urged, glancing furtively at the closed door. “In any case, Ethan, many people bear little resemblance to their siblings. Perhaps she resembles your mother instead.”

“
I
resemble me mother! That’s why she could never be certain ‘oo me father was.”

“Well, of one thing I am certain: it is not at all the thing for us to leave your sister cooling her heels in the drawing room while we argue in the corridor,” replied Lady Helen, and turned to open the door.

“For the last time, ‘elen, that girl is not me sister!” Mr. Brundy ground out through clenched teeth. “And I’ll be ‘anged if I’ll do the pretty over dinner with the scheming little hussy!”

“In that case, we shall miss you, Mr. Brundy,” Lady Helen said placidly, and swept into the drawing room, every inch the duke’s daughter.

* * * *

As darkness fell over Mayfair, the stately homes of Belgrave Square fairly blazed with light while inside, their fashionable residents prepared themselves for pleasures abroad. A shaft of light spilled into the street as the front door of one of these abodes was opened, momentarily silhouetting the fashionably dressed gentleman within before the door closed behind him, leaving him alone in the gaslit street.

In a gesture oddly out of keeping with his elegant evening attire, Sir Aubrey Tabor sagged momentarily against the iron railings fronting the house, breathing an audible sigh of relief. He had survived the obligatory weekly dinner with his widowed mother, during which he had been treated to a lengthy diatribe on his responsibility to increase and multiply.  Furthermore, the dowager Lady Tabor had recommended one Lady Jane Cunningham for his partner in this endeavor. Nothing, not even the gift of a book which Sir Aubrey had purchased that very day in an admittedly craven attempt to forestall just such a lecture, had diverted the good lady’s mind.

Now, dismissed at last from the matriarchal presence, he found himself in dire need of sympathetic (meaning male) companionship. With this end in view, he shouldered his ebony walking stick and set his feet in the direction of Brooks’s in St. James Street. After surrendering his hat and gloves to the porter, he climbed the stairs to the card room and joined the crowd gathered around the macao table. Although the company was convivial enough, Sir Aubrey’s luck was out, and he soon found himself punting on tick.

“Deuced ill luck, Sir Aubrey,” commiserated the knightly sexagenarian Sir Linus Hewitt after one such losing hand. “But perhaps you are lucky in love, instead.”

“Indeed, I am
very
lucky in that I am unburdened by that most inconvenient of emotions,” agreed Sir Aubrey, wondering if the urge to marry off their juniors was characteristic of his mother’s generation.

Sir Linus laughed heartily. “So cynical, at such a tender age! That will change soon enough, I trow!”

“I am thirty!” retorted Sir Aubrey.

“A mere boy,” chortled Sir Linus, glancing toward the door as yet another gentleman entered the card room. “Ah, now here’s a fellow whose example you might look to!”

Sir Aubrey opened his mouth to deliver a crushing snub, but upon recognizing the newcomer, he decided Sir Linus was not worth the effort. “I say, Ethan, come have a drop!” he called to the late arrival, snapping his fingers for a waiter.
“Garçon!
Another bottle of brandy, and an extra glass!”

So summoned, Mr. Brundy ambled over to the macao table to observe his friend’s progress. The Honourable Robert Jemison obligingly moved aside to make room for him, remarking jovially as he did so, “Well, well, Brundy, we don’t usually have the pleasure of seeing you here of an evening. Have you tired of living under the cat’s foot?”

“I’ve ‘ad business at ‘ome to attend to,” Mr. Brundy replied more curtly than was his wont.

“Aye, I remember when I was first wed,” said Sir Linus with a reminiscent gleam in his eye. “As I recall, I often had business at home to attend to, as well—and nine months later, a son bawling lustily in the nursery!”

A great deal of bawdy laughter greeted this sally, but Mr. Brundy neither refuted nor confirmed the implication. In fact, when he spoke, it was not to Sir Linus at all, but to Lord Carteret, who held the bank.

“Deal me in,” he said tersely, tossing off his brandy in a single gulp.

Sir Aubrey had been listening to the old knight’s jests as appreciatively as anyone, but upon hearing this utterance, his mouth dropped open so far that his chin nearly grazed the floor. It was well known that Mr. Brundy never gambled; in fact, Sir Aubrey was one of the few who knew about the high-stakes game in which Mr. Brundy had wagered his cotton mill against his wife’s diamond necklace, which had fallen into the hands of the unscrupulous earl of Waverly.

“Are you feeling all right, Ethan?” asked Sir Aubrey in some concern.

“Never better,” answered Mr. Brundy in a voice which dared anyone to suggest otherwise.

A fine instinct for self-preservation warned Sir Aubrey not to press the issue, and play was resumed without further comment. Mr. Brundy won the first hand, but seemed even more displeased with his winnings than Sir Aubrey had with his losses.  He scowled impatiently at the pile of coins Lord Carteret pushed across the table to him and, with a recklessness which both fascinated and horrified Sir Aubrey, he staked all his winnings on the next hand. When it, too, proved a winner, he pushed back his chair in disgust.

“No more for me, gentlemen,” he said, then collected the pile of coins and rose from the table.

“Quitting so soon?” asked Mr. Jemison.

“No need to be selfish, Brundy,” chided Sir Linus jovially. “You might at least share the wealth—you certainly have enough of it to go around.”

Mr. Brundy made as if to reply, then thought better of it, settling instead for clenching his jaw and leaving the other players without so much as a fare-thee-well.

Sir Aubrey, by this time convinced beyond all doubt that something was troubling his friend, followed and ran his quarry to earth in the reading room, where he was glaring at the financial page of the
Times
with so fierce an expression that Sir Aubrey would not have been surprised had it burst into flames.

“Have you heard the news, Ethan?” he asked with studied nonchalance. “The latest
on dit
has it that your nemesis, Lord Waverly, has skipped to the Continent to elude his creditors.”

Mr. Brundy’s only reply was a noncommittal grunt.

“Not to pry, old fellow,” Sir Aubrey persisted, “but what’s eating you?”

Mr. Brundy’s gaze shifted from his newspaper to his friend while he debated what answer, if any, to return. Good friend though he was, Sir Aubrey would not have been his confidante of choice; that would be Lord David Markham, a rising member of Parliament whose successful campaign he had funded. Unfortunately, Lord David had recently married, and had promptly borne his bride off to Paris. Lord David, he reflected morosely, had the right idea.

By contrast, Sir Aubrey was a confirmed bachelor with inclinations toward dandyism, who was far more concerned with the fall of his cravat than the vacant nursery at Tabor Hall—hardly a promising source to turn to for help with difficulties of a marital nature. Still, Sir Aubrey was possessed of a pair of functioning ears, and had professed a willingness to use them. Mr. Brundy elected to avail himself of the opportunity to vent his spleen.

“Tell me, Aubrey, would you say I’m a selfish man?”

“Is that what’s troubling you?” Sir Aubrey dismissed his friend’s concerns with a wave of his slender, aristocratic hand. “Pay no heed to Sir Linus; he’s more than a trifle bosky, you know.”

“‘Twasn’t Sir Linus I’m thinking on. ‘elen ‘urled the same accusation at me earlier this evening.”

“Oho!” exclaimed Sir Aubrey with a knowing grin. “So the honeymoon is over, is it?”

“In this case, it ‘adn’t even begun,” confessed Mr. Brundy. “We leave for Brighton in the morning—all three of us,” he added darkly.

If it were possible, Sir Aubrey’s grin grew wider. “Three?”

“Aye, laugh if you must! A girl turned up on me doorstep this evening, claiming to be me sister. I know she’s lying, but ‘elen will ‘ave it the girl is on the up and up.”

“How can you be so sure she isn’t?” asked Sir Aubrey. “Nothing against your mother, Ethan, but if she had one child out of wedlock, why couldn’t she have had another?”

“Because me mum was cold in ‘er grave long before this chit ever walked God’s earth!” retorted Mr. Brundy, annoyed at being presented with the same argument his wife had put forward. “Added to that, we don’t look anything alike. The girl’s got blue eyes, and ‘er ‘air’s a sort of reddish yellow.”

Sir Aubrey’s amusement turned to genuine interest. “Indeed? It sounds as if you have a beauty on your hands.”

“A beauty?” Mr. Brundy considered the matter as if such a possibility had never occurred to him. “I suppose she’s pretty enough. What further proof would you need that she’s no kin of mine?” he concluded with a rueful smile.

“That settles it! If you, who can see no woman beyond your own wife, find this girl pretty enough, she must be a diamond of the first water! I suddenly find myself possessed of a burning desire to see this supposed sister of yours.”

“I’d give ‘er to you with me blessing, but ‘elen won’t ‘ear of it. She’s convinced the girl is me sister, and must stay with us.”

“Ethan, for a married man, you know amazingly little about women!” declared Sir Aubrey, shaking his head in pitying disbelief.

“And you, I suppose, are an expert on the subject,” Mr. Brundy remarked cynically.

“Can you doubt it? I have, after all, successfully evaded the creatures for thirty years.”

“Your day will come, Aubrey, mark me words,” Mr. Brundy predicted confidently.

“You are beginning to sound like Sir Linus,” Sir Aubrey informed him. “Nevertheless, I should like to know why, if marriage is the blissful state you would have me believe, you are sulking about here while Lady Helen is no doubt crying into her pillow.”

This was a possibility Mr. Brundy had not considered. “Do you really think so?” he asked, torn between distress at having caused his wife pain and hope that, if she were half as miserable as he was, a reconciliation might yet be effected.

“Trust me, Ethan, they always cry,” drawled Sir Aubrey.

“I’ve no wish to ‘urt me wife,” said Mr. Brundy.

“Of course you do not! The trick is to bring the thing off in such a way that you come out looking like a hero to Lady Helen.”

“And ‘ow, pray, am I to do that?”

“Ethan, do you remember when you first came to London?”

Mr. Brundy remembered his inauspicious introduction to Society very well, since it had only taken place only a few months previously. He had quickly discovered that England’s elite class was extremely reluctant to clasp a weaver to its bosom—and none more reluctant than Lady Helen Radney, the woman with whom he had fallen in love at first sight. Fortunately, by the time he realized how impossible such a match would be, he had already married her.

“Aye, I remember it well,” he said at last, a little smile playing about his mouth.

“The less pleasant parts, I mean,” said Sir Aubrey, correctly interpreting his friend’s beatific expression. “To be blunt, Ethan, no one knows better than you how brutal Society can be to outsiders. Your membership at Brooks’s taxed all David’s powers of diplomacy, and in spite of Lady Helen’s ducal connections, there are still families who won’t receive you.”

“Thank you for pointing that out to me,” said Mr. Brundy, his voice heavy with irony. “Now that you’ve put me in me place, would you mind telling me what that’s got to do with this girl?”

Sir Aubrey’s smile turned demonic. “If she wants to cut a dash in Society under your aegis, let her. She’ll turn tail and run the first time I scowl at her through my quizzing glass.”

“You’d do that for me?” asked Mr. Brundy, much struck.

“I’m a closet romantic,” drawled Sir Aubrey.

* * * *

By the time Mr. Brundy returned to Grosvenor Square, the hour was far advanced, but his spirits were somewhat lighter. He expected Lady Helen to have long since sought her bed; great, therefore, was his surprise when he passed by the drawing room door and found the candles still burning and his wife nodding on the sofa.

‘“elen?” he called softly, advancing tentatively into the room.

Her eyes fluttered open at once, and she rose from the sofa to cross the room on winged feet. “Ethan! You’ve come home!”

“Did you think I wouldn’t, love?” he asked, receiving her in a warm embrace.

“I—I didn’t know,” she confessed. “We’ve never quarreled before. Oh, darling, I’m so sorry—”

Mr. Brundy smothered her apology with a kiss. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, ‘elen. I’m the one ‘oo’s sorry.”

“But I said you were selfish—”

“And right you were, at that. I want you all to meself.”

“But Ethan, what about Miss Crump?  I should feel so dreadful if she were truly your sister, and we cast her off.”

“If you want ‘er to stay, ‘elen, she can stay. Only promise me you’ll not introduce ‘er as me sister until it’s proven as fact.”

“Very well, I shall introduce her as my protégée,” promised Lady Helen. “Oh, Ethan! You are truly the best of men!”

“I know,” he said immodestly, putting an arm about her waist and steering her toward the stairs. “But tell me again.”

Lady Helen was happy to oblige, and side by side they slowly mounted the stairs, billing and cooing like the newly married couple they were. When they reached the first floor, however, Mr. Brundy watched in bewilderment as his wife paused before a door at the top of the stairs.