Sheri Cobb South (6 page)

“Not at all!” protested his friend. “I had arranged lodgings for myself, but you can hardly expect me to put Mama up in a bachelor flat. The fact of the matter is, if you want my help with this sister of yours, I must ask you to put us up for awhile.”

Mr. Brundy had the sinking feeling that his honeymoon cottage was assuming all the more disagreeable characteristics of a posting house. “Is it as bad as all that?” he protested with a note of desperation in his voice.

“Believe me, Mr. Brundy,” asserted Lady Tabor, “only the direst of circumstances could compel me to entreat your hospitality!”

“Believe me, madam, only the direst of circumstances could compel me to insult you by offering it,” replied the weaver, making her ladyship an elaborate bow.

Lady Tabor, to whom rank and age afforded the luxury of rudeness, was rarely answered in kind, and her son, confident of his friend’s ability to hold his ground, watched in amused expectation for the fireworks which were sure to follow. But he never even heard his mother’s reply (if, in fact, reply she made at all), for at that moment Lady Helen returned from her shopping expedition, bearing with her the plague from which he was expected to deliver the Brundy domicile.

She was surprisingly small, as plagues go, with a trim figure swathed in peach-colored jaconet muslin. She had not yet put off her hat, and this confection, wide-brimmed in the gypsy style and tied under the chin with peach-colored ribbons, framed a heart-shaped face with wide blue eyes, a perfect bow of a mouth, and a mass of riotous red-gold curls. Sir Aubrey raised his quizzing-glass, the better to survey his adversary, but he quite forgot the promised scowl. Mr. Brundy had certainly understated the case when he described his uninvited guest as “pretty enough,” but in all else it seemed he was quite correct in his assessment. Glancing from the delicate beauty in peach to his friend’s rough-edged vitality, Sir Aubrey was quite certain they had never occupied the same womb. The girl was unquestionably a fraud.

“Why, Sir Aubrey, I had no idea you were in Brighton,” Lady Helen’s voice intruded upon his thoughts. “And you have brought your mama! Good afternoon, Lady Tabor. May I present Miss Crump?”

“Enchanted,” drawled Sir Aubrey, making his bow.

“Lady Helen, my doltish son has driven me to Brighton only to inform me that we have no place to stay,” Lady Tabor informed her without preamble. “I hope we may prevail upon you and your husband to take us in.”

Lady Helen glanced at her husband for assistance, but received only an expressive shrug.

“I—of course, we should be delighted, my lady,” faltered Lady Helen.  “Unfortunately, we have only three bedrooms, and—”

“Only three?” Lady Tabor bent a disapproving glare on her host. “I should have thought that a man of your means, Mr. Brundy, would have hired a larger house.”

“I didn’t expect to ‘ave ‘ouseguests,” was his satiric reply.

“There, there, my lady, I am sure we can manage,” Lady Helen said briskly. “You, of course, must have a room of your own. Sir Aubrey may share Mr. Brundy’s room, and I will share with Miss Cr—”

“Oh, no, you will not!” declared Mr. Brundy in a tone which brooked no argument. “The ‘ouse may be full, ‘elen, but this is still me ‘oneymoon, and I’ll be ‘anged if I’ll spend it with ‘im!” he concluded, jerking a contemptuous thumb in Sir Aubrey’s direction.

Lady Helen blushed to the roots of her hair. “Ethan!” she cried, aghast. “What will Lady Tabor think?”

“She already ‘as the poorest opinion of me, so she can ‘ardly think worse than she did before,” he said briskly. “Aubrey can ‘ave a room of ‘is own, and Lady Tabor can put up with Miss Crump. And anyone ‘oo doesn’t like the room assignments,” he added to the group at large, “is welcome to make other arrangements.”

As Lady Tabor was not accustomed to being dictated to, and certainly not by anyone of so humble a station as Mr. Brundy, it was doubtful she could have articulated a protest, even had she made the attempt. As for Sir Aubrey and Polly, they were hardly aware of the quarrel in their midst, being fully occupied in taking one another’s measure.

“Tell me. Miss Crump, how do you find Brighton?” asked Sir Aubrey, all the while looking her up and down in a manner designed to put her out of countenance.

“Oh, very much to my liking,” she assured him. “But will you not call me Polly, sir?”

“No, I will not,” he informed her. “For one thing, we are not nearly well enough acquainted for me to take such a liberty, and for another, I doubt I could bring myself to call you such even if we were. It smacks of the servants’ quarters, Miss Crump. Should anyone be so bold as to inquire, you must tell them it is a diminutive of Apollonia.”

The impostor’s blue eyes sparkled with indignation and, had she but known it, her rounded bosom rose and fell enticingly against her jaconet muslin bodice.   “Well!   Of all the insufferable—”

“What is the matter, Miss Crump? Have you moral scruples against assuming a name that is none of your own?”

Polly stifled a startled gasp.  Her first fear, upon being presented to the fashionable gentleman from the bookstore, was that Sir Aubrey might recognize her.   Now, however, she discovered a more pressing concern. Clearly, he was in Mr. Brundy’s confidence—she really must remember to think of him as Ethan—and was every bit as skeptical of her story as her supposed brother was. Somehow she found Sir Aubrey’s veiled hints twice as threatening as Mr. Brundy’s more forthright animosity.

“I daresay any person of convictions would cavil at telling deliberate falsehoods, sir,” Polly said, choosing her words with caution.

“One would certainly hope so,” agreed Sir Aubrey.

It was perhaps best that Lady Helen interrupted at this juncture, although the news she brought Polly was far from welcome.

“Miss Crump, Sir Aubrey and his mother will be staying with us a few days while they locate a house of their own,” said Lady Helen. “I hope you will not object to sharing your room with Lady Tabor.”

In the face of Lady Helen’s overwhelming generosity to her, Polly could hardly refuse so reasonable a request, and so expressed her delight at the prospect of so exalted a roommate. The three ladies of the party then set out to see Lady Tabor settled comfortably, leaving the two gentlemen behind.

“Well, Aubrey?” asked Mr. Brundy as soon as they were alone. “What do you think of me sister?”

With great deliberation, Sir Aubrey studied the door through which Miss Crump had passed, as if searching for some clue she might have left behind. “Having never met your sister, Ethan, I’m sure I couldn’t say.”

Mr. Brundy picked up a decanter from a small table beside the door, and poured a glass of sherry for his houseguest. “Then you agree she’s a fraud,” he said, pleased to have his own convictions seconded.

“Unquestionably—although a remarkably attractive one,” Sir Aubrey added, taking the glass Mr. Brundy offered. “You’ve been holding out on me, Ethan. The girl is an Incomparable!”

But Mr. Brundy was unimpressed with Miss Crump’s charms. “Never mind that! Can you get rid of ‘er?”

“I’ll do my best, but it won’t be easy. She may well take the
ton
by storm. By summer, the
beau monde
is so bored with its own company that any new face, particularly a pretty one, is always a welcome diversion.”

“Aye, but they’re a fickle lot,” pointed out Mr. Brundy, who possessed the advantage of an outsider’s objectivity. “Tomorrow they may well turn on the one they dote upon today.”

“Too true, my friend. Here’s hoping Miss Crump’s reign may be a short one,” he said, lifting his glass.

“One other thing, Aubrey. Whatever the reason, ‘elen’s taken quite a liking to the girl. I should ‘ate for me wife to be ‘urt.”

“Very well. Lady ‘elen shall not be ‘urt.” Sir Aubrey frowned over this declaration, then tried it again. “That is, Lady
Helen
shall not be
hurt.
You know, Ethan, my mother is quite right. You really are the most abominable influence!”

Chapter 5

DALILA: In argument with men a woman ever

Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause.

SAMSON: For want of words, no doubt, or lack of breath!

JOHN MILTON,
Samson Agonistes

Lady Tabor, wearied from her journey, elected to retire early, and so by the time Polly joined her in their shared bedchamber the elder lady, wearing a short jacket of quilted satin over her nightdress, was seated upright in the bed, leaning back against the pillows and reading a book by the light of a candle on the bedside table.

“Oh!” cried Polly, spying the slim, leather-bound volume. “You like to read, too?”

Lady Tabor had not forgotten her son’s suspicions concerning Miss Crump, but Polly’s enthusiasm for her own favorite pastime could not but gratify, and she bent a thin smile upon the girl. “Since my children have all grown up, I find my greatest pleasure in the pages of a book. Tell me, Miss Crump, have you read
The Lost Heir?”

Polly’s heart leaped into her throat as she recognized the title of the book which had spawned her desperate, and thus far unprofitable, search for her father.  She found Sir Aubrey’s suspicions disconcerting enough without adding those of his mother. Granted, it was unlikely that Lady Tabor would draw uncomfortable conclusions from the plot of
The Lost Heir,
but if her ladyship were to engage Polly in a discussion of that thrilling work, who knew what secrets her guilty conscience might let slip?

“Yes, I—no, I haven’t,” she stammered.

One of Lady Tabor’s delicately arched eyebrows lifted in mild surprise. “Have you read it, or not?”

“I—I started to once, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish it,” Polly finished weakly.

“You did not find it interesting?”

“I found the plot so contrived,” explained Polly, improvising rapidly.   “Surely it is unlikely that Leandro’s father would recognize him on sight, having not seen him since he was an infant. Such things don’t happen in real life,” she added wistfully.

“Of course not!” Lady Tabor replied briskly. “If they did, why should one bother reading about them?”

“Why, indeed?” Polly wondered aloud.

* * * *

Two doors down, in the largest of the three bedrooms, Lady Helen had prepared for bed and was seated at her dressing table brushing her honey-colored hair when the door opened to admit her husband, who had taken a drop of brandy with Sir Aubrey before retiring for the night. As he discarded his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, Lady Helen broached the subject which had been weighing on her mind ever since Mr. Brundy had dictated the sleeping arrangements earlier that afternoon.

“Ethan, have you noticed anything wrong with this bed?” she asked as he sat down on the edge to remove his boots.

“Only that it’s been much too empty of late,” he replied. “I must say. Lady Tabor ‘as ‘er uses. It’s worth putting up with ‘er to ‘ave you back in me bed, love.”

She put down her hairbrush and rose from the dressing table, whereupon Mr. Brundy took her hand and pulled her onto his lap.

“Ethan, darling, you should be aware that this bed—”

“Yes, love?” he asked, nibbling at her earlobe. “What about it?”

“Oh, please don’t do that!”

“And ‘ere I thought you liked it,” he murmured into her ear.

“You know I do, but I find it impossible to—to carry on a rational conversation when you—when you—”

“Why else would I be doing it, love?”

“But Ethan, the bed—it—it creaks! Quite—quite loudly, in fact. I was in the room next door, and I could—oh, my!—I could hear it every time you—every time you rolled over, and—and—oh, dear!”

For quite some time thereafter, there was no sound at all, save for the creak-creak of the bed frame.

* * * *

Floating blissfully in that netherworld between waking and sleep, Mr. Brundy rolled over and reached for his wife, but found only rumpled sheets. Since he was usually the earlier riser of the two, her absence was enough to dispel the last vestiges of sleep, and he opened his eyes to discover Lady Helen already dressed and seated at her dressing table, putting up her hair with deft fingers.

“Up so early, love?” he asked. “What’s the ‘urry?”

“I intend to be finished with breakfast and out of the house before Sir Aubrey comes down,” she informed him, studiously avoiding the sight of his rumpled dark curls and bristly jaw.

“For ‘eaven’s sake, why?   What do you ‘ave against Aubrey?”

She whirled about to fix her husband with an accusing glare. “Ethan, he is in the next room! I tried to warn you that the bed creaks, but you—you seduced me!”

Her unrepentant spouse merely grinned at her. “I ‘eard no complaints last night.”

“Don’t you understand? He
heard!”
Turning back to her looking glass, she buried her face in her hands.  “I am so mortified! I’m sure I shall never be able to look him in the face again! How will we explain all that creaking?”

Mr. Brundy considered the matter, then offered a suggestion. “Mice?”

Lady Helen lowered her hands and regarded him with green eyes ominously narrowed. “Go ahead, laugh! I daresay you find the whole thing vastly amusing!”

“No, I don’t see anything amusing about ‘aving an audience on me ‘oneymoon,” he retorted.    Seeing his bride was unconvinced, he tried a different tack. “You’re right, ‘elen. Let’s not go down to breakfast. In fact, let’s ‘ave our meals brought up to our room the rest of the day, and let ‘em think what they will!”

In two months of marriage, Mr. Brundy had come to know his wife well. The duke’s daughter shot a withering glance at her recumbent spouse, then swept from the room with her head held high.

She might have done better to have remained abed, for in spite of rising early, Sir Aubrey had preceded her to the breakfast room, as had Lady Tabor. She murmured a greeting to both mother and son, and after serving herself buttered eggs and toast from the sideboard and pouring steaming coffee from a green and white porcelain coffeepot into a matching cup, she began to breathe easier. To be sure, there was nothing in Sir Aubrey’s manner to suggest that he had noticed anything untoward, for he rose at Lady Helen’s entrance and obligingly held her chair when she took her place at the table. Alas, her sense of relief was shortlived. Mr. Brundy entered the breakfast room a few minutes later, and although Lady Helen carefully avoided her husband’s eye. Sir Aubrey welcomed his host with a bland smile.