The Rambunctious Lady Royston (22 page)

With a vehement shake of her golden curls, Isabella denied it was Lord Clarion who had so upset her. "Besides," she explained ingenuously, "however amusing he may sometimes be, he owes much of his humor to a bottle and is at times prone to become more oppressive than entertaining in his antics. No," she told her sister solemnly, "I cannot like Lord Clarion."

"My, my, how deftly you sugarcoat your censure, dear Izzy," gibed Samantha. "But, in this case, I fear you are right. St. John told me once that Lord Clarion downs at least five to eight bottles a night, and would sip ink if nothing else were to hand. But if your problem doesn't concern money or men, just what is the matter?" Samantha pursued doggedly. "Anyone can see you're under some great stress. Have you discussed it with Aunt Loretta?"

At last Isabella showed some little sign of animation when she sniffed and said, "Aunt Loretta is of no help to me. She has a mind filled with—with feathers."

Looking down the room at the somnolent woman, Samantha remarked impishly, "Her mind filled with feathers, you say. That explains then why she pillows her head at every opportunity." Samantha laughed gaily at her joke until she noticed that, instead of joining in with a chuckle of her own (which would after all have only been polite, even if it was a rather weak joke), her sister was instead indulging herself in one or two irritatingly unreadable, long, heart-felt sighs.

All at once Samantha had had it up to her back teeth with Isabella's histrionics. "You are fair bidding to become a genuine tragedy queen, Izzy, what with all those secret sighs and that die-away air you're sporting."

Isabella lifted speaking eyes to her sister and confessed, "I have allowed myself to sink to irreclaimable depths of depravity."

"You? Oh, good grief, Izzy, you wouldn't know how to do that," Samantha declared, laughing, although she was really rather angry with her sister's refusal to tell her what was going on inside that pretty blonde head. "Then again, if you say so, I'm sure you are indeed past all salvation—if your hopes were to tread the boards at Covent Garden, that is. As to your ever committing any sin more dastardly than the time when you were ten and you fibbed to Aunt Loretta about having a bellyache, when in truth you were too embarrassed to go to church the day after Freddie Symons caught and kissed you in the spinney and then ran through the village shouting to everyone what he'd done—well, I'll not believe it until I hear it."

Isabella lifted her face to her sister, her expression so woebegone that for a moment Samantha's heart was truly touched. But then Isabella vowed again that her secret was just "too awful" to share, not even with her beloved sister, and Samantha's ire rose to block out any tender feelings.

She made a move toward Isabella, her hands reaching out in a sudden urge to throttle the girl, before common sense told her (to borrow a phrase from Zachary's crew on the yacht) to try another tack. "Very well, Isabella," she agreed, her smile amicable although her tone was a trifle terse. "You don't have to knock me down with a brick before I can take a hint."

She moved to a chair directly across from Isabella's and sat down decorously. "Your problem is not to be a topic for discussion. So," she queried airily, "what shall we talk about?" She hesitated a moment, as if in thought, and then said brightly, "The weather. Yes. That's a capital idea. We shall discuss the weather."

But no sooner than she had begun to wax poetic over the unusually sunshiny days they had been experiencing than her sister interrupted, saying, "Aunt Loretta's as dead as a house, Samantha, did you know that?"

Samantha, cutting off her speech in mid-rapture, frowned, and then agreed with her sister.

"It's there, you know, right in front of her, just as plain as the nose on her face," Isabella complained. (Samantha stole a peek at Aunt Loretta's quivering nostrils, tucked beneath her aristocratically humped nose, and thought, "and nothing can be any plainer than that") "And yet she failed to see it."

Samantha also felt herself to be a dismal failure, for she also had not a glimmer of whatever "it" was. But nonetheless she sat back, comfortable in the knowledge that her sister, once started on one of her rare tangents, would soon satisfy her curiosity on all points.

"Anyway, since Aunt Loretta wouldn't help me, and there was no one else to turn to, I decided to come to you."

"How above all things wonderful to know that I am to be taken into your confidence only as a last resort." Samantha allowed herself a small smile. "Still, that was very commonsensible of you, dearest, to come to me. But perhaps if you looked upon me more as a confessor than as a soothsayer who can divine your problem by, say, examining the entrails of a freshly-butchered chicken, I could be of more help to you."

Yes, Samantha thought wearily, Izzy will tell me all sooner or later. But a person could grow old in the waiting!

Isabella looked down at her hands and reluctantly agreed with her tactless sister. She had decided that Aunt Loretta couldn't help her, she had decided to be guided by Fate, and she did acknowledge that, in this instance, Dame Fate had a mighty resemblance to her younger, hey-go-mad sister.

Nothing was left now but the presentation of the problem. This Isabella would do clearly, concisely, and truthfully, no matter how strongly the resultant emotions tore at her sensibilities. And if, once she had stripped her soul virtually naked before her sister's eyes, if that infuriating girl chose to laugh at her—she'd murder her!

"I'm in love!" Isabella blurted out at last, totally dumbfounding Samantha—who all but had her sister guilty of committing high treason or worse.

"Is that all?" Samantha fairly sneered, and relaxed her taut muscles in relief. "Who is he? Do I know him?"

Isabella sighed. "I doubt it, dear. His name is Robert—that's all, just Robert, that's all I know—and he works for a glover in Conduit Street. There," she ended daringly. "Now that you have the whole of it, do you see what a bad person I am?"

"Bad, Izzy? I'm not sure you're a bad person," Samantha drawled slowly. "I do admit that you have filled me with dismay, however, as I can see no happy ending in sight for you and—what's his name?—your glover. It certainly is a good thing you didn't confide in Aunt Loretta, for she most probably would have been immediately convulsed in strong hysterics, throwing her right off her schedule. And you know how out-of-sorts she gets when she hasn't gotten her quota of naps for the day: why, she becomes as cranky as a baby for days on end."

Bobbing her head furiously in agreement, Isabella added, "Even worse, she'd fly straight to Father with the story, and—as we all know she hasn't gotten the straight of anything in her life—she'd garble it beyond recognition."

Samantha took up the conjecturing from there. "Then Father would call down a lecture upon your head that would leave your ears still blistered as you marched down the aisle with the first eligible man he saw looking in your direction," she prophesied, with unwarranted gaiety. "Gad, Izzy, for a girl I roasted as having no adventure in her soul, you certainly went to great lengths to prove me wrong."

That sobered Isabella. "I have about as much chance of marrying Robert as I do of being wed to Napoleon Bonaparte," she murmured miserably.

Lifting her eyebrows in rueful agreement, Samantha concurred, "You have two chances, Izzy, as I see it: slight and none. But before we give up all hope, you must tell me more of this Robert," she encouraged.

Before Isabella could speak, the tea tray arrived. It was a half-hour late and pushed by none other than Carstairs himself, his supercilious expression plainly showing his distaste at performing such a menial task. But the footmen were all helping out in the stable with a half dozen new cattle the Earl had just purchased, and the housemaid had been so overcome by sneezes after working with the flowers that the housekeeper had sent her to her cot. That left only the haughty butler to man the tea trolley.

After he had set out the cups, bowed ever so slightly, and marched out of the room, Samantha remarked, "Be careful to taste the cream before adding it to your tea, Izzy. I've often thought old Carstairs's puss could turn it."

"Why do you put up with him?" Isabella asked, adding an extra sugar in lieu of the cream she was now reluctant to touch. "Can't you turn him off or retire him or something?"

"He was an inheritance from Zachary's father, I was made to understand, and is almost a fixture in the household," she replied. "I must admit, though, that the man fair makes my flesh crawl sometimes. He only tolerates me so that he can eavesdrop on my conversations and carry tales to Zachary after my every misstep. But enough talk of snoopy-snooty old Carstairs. Tell me more about your Robert."

So Isabella told Samantha of her trips to the Conduit Street Glovers and her meetings with Robert. She began by expounding on the intricacies of proper glove-fitting (Samantha hid a yawn) and went on to explain that a proper fitting could easily take two hours or more.

"First, you see, they have to measure each finger. Robert measured my fingers," she admitted, a rosy blush stealing into her cheeks.

"Please, Izzy," Samantha cut in rudely, "all this measuring and fitting is just too much. I readily acknowledge the giddy adventures you had, having your hands held by this Robert for over two hours, but please, spare me my blushes and let us not drag out your story by going over all these lurid details."

Isabella pouted. After all, this was as close as she had ever come to romantic intrigue, and besides, it was her story. But she firmly suppressed her newborn flair for the dramatic, and was about to proceed, when Samantha interjected—for no good reason—that she had been bored to flinders at her first and only glove fitting, and had commissioned plaster models of her hands to be made and delivered to her own glover's for future reference.

"Sam," her sister said, in complete disgust, "you have no romance in your heart. Not a single drop."

"Never mind about me. Tell me more of this Robert," Samantha countered, dismissing a statement so ludicrous (especially after the decidedly romantic events of the previous evening) it was not worthy of rebuttal.

Sam learned that Robert (no known last name, an omission that bothered Samantha no end) lived above the glover shop with the owner, Jack Bratting, and Bratting's wife. The two men had served in the army together, and Jack offered Robert employment after their muster home to England. About his past, admitted Isabella, Robert was strangely reticent.

All that Samantha really knew, she had discovered almost immediately: that Isabella was in love with this Robert person and—if her sparkling eyes and heightened color were any indication—that she was ready to toss her bonnet over the windmill and marry the man.

A plan began to form in her mind.

There was nothing else for it and Samantha said so. "I shall have to meet this Robert for myself. As Mr. Smythe-Wright, I should have no problem striking up a conversation with the man at his place of business or the tavern he undoubtedly frequents after hours."

"Oh, no," Isabella wailed, "not another one of your harum-scarum ideas. I forbid it! What if Royston were to get wind of it?"

Samantha shrugged unconcernedly. "So what, if Zachary finds out I wore breeches again? What of it? He's aware I've done it before, heaven knows. I'm not saying he'll like it above half, but he'll not kick up about it."

Isabella—not privileged to see the fingers Samantha had prudently crossed behind her back, said doubtfully, "I don't know, Sam. The Earl seems a bit—just a bit, mind you—stuffy to me."

Smiling at some secret reminiscences, Samantha blithely replied, "Zachary is never stuffy. On the contrary, he is the most easygoing, pleasant-natured man of my acquaintance. He is also forward-thinking and—and emancipated in his views. Oh, no, Izzy," she purred, "my Zachary is never stuffy."

"But going abroad in breeches is dangerous," persisted Isabella, to which Samantha replied succinctly, "Twaddle!"

Then Samantha had another thought. Her eyes narrowed as she asked pointedly, "Are you ashamed of Robert, Izzy? I hope he's not some dull stick, or knocker-faced, or such an effeminate twiddlepoop that you're afraid to let me meet him. Or," she pressed on, "is he some pretty-faced, smooth-talking fortunehunter who's leading you on, bamming you with false stories and taking you royally to the fair with promises of marriage—but only after living with him for the time it would take to travel to Gretna?"

Isabella could not listen to another word. She jumped out of her chair and drew herself up in her most formidable, aggressive posture: shoulders back, chin high, chest out. "How dare you!" she shouted, incensed. "You do not wish for me to speak ill of the Earl, though all I said was that he seemed a bit stuffy. I did not cruelly malign him, as you did my Robert. In return I must ask you not to say another word—not another word—against my Robert. Is that clear, Samantha?"

Isabella was furious. Samantha was impressed sufficient to rise, cross to Isabella, and put her arms around the livid young woman. "What you're saying, sister, in plain language, is that I'm to shut up about your Robert. I agree: I was overstepping the bounds of sisterly candor." She stepped back a pace, lifted Isabella's drooping chin with her fingers, and said what she knew she had to say, "But he isn't your Robert yet, is he, sweets? Let me work on it, will you?"

Smiling through a haze of tears, Isabella launched herself at her sister and exclaimed, "I'm such a gudgeon, Sammy. Please forgive me!"

The bell rang then, signaling time to dress for dinner. The sisters roused Aunt Loretta and steered her towards the Ardsley carriage.

Isabella was eager to get home herself—as her appetite was back at last now that all her problems had been dumped in her sister's (she hoped) capable lap.

Of the three women, only Samantha (for nothing was known to have ever dulled Aunt Loretta's appetite) picked at her food that evening. Her mind was too preoccupied with other things to register any pangs of hunger.

Only later, in her husband's arms, was Samantha able to banish the vision of her sad-eyed sister from her mind. But once in those arms, it was a simple matter for Samantha to postpone further thoughts of Robert and Izzy until the morning.