Surrender to Sin (13 page)

She said aloud, “Then she is a gentlewoman, at least, in spite of her name.”

Mrs. Spurgeon shrugged. “Do you think so? Why, she has Portuguese friends!”

Mrs. Mickleby was horrified. “Portuguese friends? She is not…Oh, my dear Mrs. Spurgeon, can you assure me that she is in no way a Portuguese herself?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Mrs. Spurgeon snorted. “Unless they have started making them with carroty hair and freckles. But she speaks quite proudly of her Portuguese friends at the dinner table. I don’t think the Portuguese suitable for dinner myself. Gentlemen may speak of them over port,” she conceded, as Vera brought in Cato on her arm. A servant followed, carrying the macaw’s perch.

Vera gave Cato a cuttlebone to chew, and he made a good impression on Mrs. Mickleby. At her hostess’s instigation, she offered him a chestnut and he came to take it from her hand, then returned to his perch. Cato remained quietly and aloofly engrossed in chewing, even when Abigail entered the room some time later, accompanied by Mr. Wayborn. They took no more notice of Cato than he did of them. Indeed, they did not notice anyone. They were laughing together, and Mr. Wayborn was taking the girl’s fur-lined cloak.

Vera appeared amused; she quietly went on cracking her chestnuts into a pretty silver bowl. Mrs. Mickleby slowly turned purple. Mrs. Spurgeon adjusted her wig in anticipation of Cary’s attentions. He saw the ladies first. His eye alighted in mild alarm on Mrs. Spurgeon’s brunette curls, then he was all smiles and charm. “Good morning, Mrs. Spurgeon. Mrs. Nashe! And Mrs. Mickleby, too. Delighted! Any chance of a fresh pot of tea?”

He dutifully bent over the ladies’ hands. It was his first opportunity to see Mrs. Spurgeon as a brunette, and he made the most of it, lavishing her with compliments. “But, madam, did we not agree that your delightful bird would remain in my study?” he gently chided her.

Mrs. Spurgeon pouted. “Miss Smith was out. I didn’t think it mattered. He’s the dearest, sweetest bird alive,” she told Mrs. Mickleby in her confidential roar. “Look at him—he’s an angel. Only Miss Smith upsets him. She upsets him most dreadfully.”

Mrs. Nashe quietly set down her nutcracker and took the macaw out of the room.

Cary turned to introduce Abigail to his neighbor’s wife, and discovered, to his exasperation, that the girl was trying to sneak unnoticed to the staircase door. “Miss Smith!”

Abigail started guiltily. “I’m just going to check on Paggles, sir,” she whispered.

“I should like to present my neighbor, Mrs. Mickleby, to you,” he said sternly. “I made you acquainted with her daughters and her son at the Tudor Rose. We have had the most entertaining morning, ma’am,” he told Mrs. Mickleby. “You will never guess what we have been doing. Tell her, Abigail.”

Realizing she could not escape the acquaintance, Abigail came back into the room and performed a wretched curtsy. “How do you do, Mrs. Mickleby?”

Mrs. Mickleby found Miss Smith’s blushing humility, which she perceived as humbug, quite as distasteful as Vera Nashe’s self-assurance. “And what have you been about this morning, Miss Smith?” she coldly inquired in her best grandam style.

Abigail flushed, and began to stammer. “We have been going down the Cascades, ma’am, on a platter.”

“But you have failed to capture the excitement of the experience,” Cary complained. “First off, it was a very, very
large
platter. We sat on it together, and bumbled, and slipped, and glided all the way down to the Tudor Rose. We could have been killed at any moment.”

“I see,” Mrs. Mickleby said, growing colder by the moment.

Cary quickly changed the subject. “Miss Smith lives in London, ma’am. I’m sure she’d be delighted to answer any questions Rhoda might have about her own presentation at Court.”

“I assure you, sir, I am capable of preparing my daughter to meet her Queen,” said Mrs. Mickleby stiffly. “It wasn’t so very long ago that I was presented myself.”

“Yes, of course,” said Cary, “but Miss Smith lives in Town. She will have a more intimate knowledge of the theater and other entertainments, the shops, the museums, and the exhibitions. Miss Rhoda is to have a Season in London this year,” he told Abigail, then turned back to Mrs. Mickleby. “I believe, ma’am, that you are planning to give Miss Rhoda a proper send-off. A going-away party. I daresay Miss Smith could be persuaded to attend. She has no aversion to a country dance, I’m sure.”

Mrs. Mickleby looked sour. “I have already invited Mrs. Spurgeon,” said she. “If
she
wishes to extend the invitation to include Miss Smith, I shall be happy to receive her, too.”

Cary’s eyes narrowed.

“I think I’d rather have Vera with me,” said Mrs. Spurgeon.

“Just as you like,” said Abigail, happy to be spared any gathering where the hostess so clearly did not want her. “Please do excuse me, Mrs. Mickleby. I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, of course, but I must check on my—my friend upstairs.”

Mrs. Mickleby rose from her place. “I do hope, Miss Smith, that your
Portuguese friends
will not be visiting you here,” she said haughtily. “This isn’t that sort of neighborhood.”

Startled, Abigail stopped where she was. “My Portuguese friends?”

“You spoke of them last night over the Madeira,” Mrs. Spurgeon prompted her.

Abigail smiled. “Oh, I see! No, ma’am, my Portuguese friends are all…
bottled up.
”

“Bottled up? Whatever do you mean?” cried Mrs. Mickleby.

Cary glared at Abigail, who was laughing behind her hand. “Figure of speech, ma’am. She means they are all bottled up in Brazil,” he said quickly.

“Brazil?” Abigail repeated in astonishment.

“Yes, of course,” he said, looking hard at her. “Your Portuguese friends are all bottled up in Brazil, in a manner of speaking. At the Court of the Emperor Joao the…uh…Sixth, is it? Where your father—Sir William Smith—serves as private secretary to the Ambassador.”

Abigail’s amber eyes grew wider with every lie. “My father!”

“I think you will find, Mrs. Mickleby, that my cousin has rather a droll way of talking, which has made her a great favorite at the Court of St. James.”

“Your cousin!” exclaimed Mrs. Mickleby, turning pale. “My dear Mrs. Spurgeon, you did not tell me Miss Smith is Mr. Wayborn’s cousin!” she accused.

“I thought you were joking about being this young lady’s cousin, Mr. Wayborn,” said Mrs. Spurgeon. “You said you’d assumed the name of Smith when you sneaked into the Army.”

“I did so,” Cary replied. “But that was because of my Smith relations.”

“Well, there you are,” said Mrs. Spurgeon, turning to Mrs. Mickleby. “That explains it. They are cousins, you see,” she told the stunned woman.

“Only very distant cousins,” Abigail felt obliged to point out.

“Fairly close geographically,” Cary retorted.

“If Miss Smith is your cousin, Mr. Wayborn, she must be related to the Vicar as well,” said Mrs. Mickleby, trying to gauge the extent of her social blunder.

“No, indeed, madam. Did I not say? Miss Smith is one of my
Derbyshire
cousins. Her uncle is Lord Wayborn of Westlands.”

Mrs. Mickleby cried out in pain. “I trust I have not offended you, Miss Smith,” she babbled anxiously. “That was never my intention. It was not made clear to me who you are. Mrs. Spurgeon—”

“Don’t blame
me
,” said the former blonde. “
I
was not rude.”

“You are not offended, are you, Abigail?” said Cary. “Depend upon it, Mrs. Mickleby. Nothing ever offends my cousin. She has the sweetest, most forgiving disposition in the world. I can speak for her; she is not engaged. She will gladly condescend to go to Miss Rhoda’s soiree.”

“I assure you, Mrs. Mickleby, I would not dream of such a thing,” said Abigail, her face scarlet with embarrassment. “I beg you to excuse me,” she added, breaking for the stairs.

She ran straight up to her room, too furious with Cary even to visit Paggles. As she burst into the room, the man’s dog jumped down from her bed and barked sharply, startling her, to say the least. Content to have made her heart jump into her throat, Angel returned nicely to the bed, settled down, and began chewing on something he held propped between his front paws.

Some of the anger Abigail felt for the master transferred to the dog. “You’re not supposed to be up here,” she said severely, dragging him down from the bed by his collar. To her dismay, the red and white coverlet was thickly coated with orange dog hair. “And what have you got in your mouth?” she demanded. “Give it to me.”

Angel contritely dropped the twisted paper into her hand. Abigail smoothed it out on the windowsill. It was a letter addressed to Mr. Cary Wayborn. She ought not to have read it, but she recognized the sprawling, spidery handwriting as her father’s. Mr. Wayborn, she discovered to her dismay, owed Ritchie’s Fine Spirits an outstanding balance of thirty guineas for a case of Gold Label scotch purchased in the year previous. If Mr. Ritchie did not receive said sum forthwith, he would seek satisfaction by court order.

At the bottom of the page, Red had scrawled in giant letters:
Immediate Payment Due
.

Cary—she assumed it was his writing—had scrawled back:
Not Bloody Likely
.

“You said you were going to see Paggles.”

Abigail spun around to see Cary in the doorway. “Get out of my room! How dare you invade my privacy?” she demanded, quite forgetting that she had just been reading his mail.

“I’m not actually in,” he answered, unperturbed. “I’m standing in the hall. I must also point out that, strictly speaking, this is
my
room, not yours. You are only renting it.”

“And while I am renting it, you have no right to come in,” she snapped. “How dare you make up stories about my father? Knighting him, and sending him to
Brazil
, of all places! How can you be so—so
strange
?”

He leaned against the door frame. “I had to explain your Portuguese friends somehow.
You
make up stories. Why can’t I?”

“I do no such thing!” she said indignantly.

“You make up
names
, certainly. Mayn’t I make up a story to go with the name? I only gave your father a little
sir
. You gave yourself ten thousand pounds’ worth of Christmas wrap.” He laughed suddenly. “And I’d hang on to your ten thousand pounds, too. You’ll need them when Mrs. Mickleby discovers you’ve been knocking back pints in the local tavern with her precious son Hector. Though I daresay we can put it down to aristocratic eccentricity.”

“I was not knocking back pints,” said Abigail. “They were—they were
ladies
’ pints. Anyway, I don’t care what Mrs. Mickleby thinks of me. I don’t like her either.”

“Well, I care what she thinks of you,” he said. “
You
may be going back to London, but I have to live with these silly people. I wish you wouldn’t poison the well for me; I’ve little enough society as it is. A man gets lonely out here in the frozen wilderness. Now that she knows who you are—sort of—I’m sure Mrs. Mickleby will treat you with all due deference.”

“I don’t want her to defer to me. Why should she? I just want to be left alone.”

He stared at her. “Left alone? You are quite possibly the most backwards little creature I’ve ever met,” he said. “For starts, you’re my cousin. That alone makes you first in consequence among the ladies of the neighborhood. I wouldn’t allow my humblest relation to be slighted right under my nose by a mere Mickleby, and you are scarcely that.”

She looked at him blankly. “First in the neighborhood? What
can
you mean?”

“My dear girl, you’re the granddaughter of an earl,” Cary said impatiently. “There is no one to whom you should give way.”

“You had no right to expose my connection to that family,” she said unhappily.

His brows rose. “‘That family?’ The Wayborns, you mean. And by ‘connection,’ I can only assume you mean your mother?”

“Lord Wayborn has never acknowledged my existence,” said Abigail. “I have no right to trade on his name, when he so clearly wants nothing to do with me. And now you have made it known he is my uncle. It was very wrong of you to dress me in borrowed plumes—and just so Mrs. Mickleby would invite me to her house! I don’t even want to go to her house.”

“They are not borrowed plumes,” Cary told her sharply. “Rather, it is your birthright. Did your mother never teach you to take precedence, girl?”

“She died when I was only five,” said Abigail.

“Well, that explains it,” he murmured. “I can see now you are merely ignorant of proper conduct. Ignorance can be mended. With my help, you will soon be conducting yourself in a manner befitting your rank.”

“I’m sure I don’t require lessons in conduct from
you
, sir,” she said indignantly.

“And I’m sure you do,” he said coolly.

“Indeed?” Abigail marched over to the windowsill and snatched up Red Ritchie’s letter. “Here’s your bill, sir! The merchant is threatening to have you imprisoned for debt.”

“Where did you get this? Have you been rifling through my things?” All traces of good humor had vanished from his face; Cary was furious.

“In a manner of speaking,” she responded tartly. “I took it out of your dog’s mouth.”

“Quite right, too,” he said, tossing it into the fireplace. “Here is its proper place.”

“Sir,” Abigail cried as the paper blackened on the grate, “that is a bill for thirty guineas!”

“Not anymore,” he pointed out. “This Ritchie fellow’s getting impudent. That isn’t the first bill he’s had the gall to send me. I ought to have him brought up on charges of harassment.”

“But the account is overdue,” Abigail protested.

“No, that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “There’s no such thing as an overdue account. It’s all nonsense conjured up by tradesmen to scare people into giving them money they haven’t got. Accounts are either paid or they’re not. They’ll be tacking on interest and late fees next, if we don’t take a stand against them. It’s insufferable.”