Simply Scandalous Page 24

  The bell rope, when he found it, came away in his hand.

  "Restraint," he told himself firmly. He was Geoffrey Ambler, Marquess of Swale. He would not be defeated by Hastings. He was not helpless. He had ingenuity and intelligence. An investigation of the fireplace unearthed an ancient bedwarmer, which consisted of a large covered pan of copper mounted on a pole. The pan was discovered to contain nearly two dozen old coals that were, of course, ice cold now. He emptied them into the grate and lit them with his own matches, hoping to add the broken spindle to the flames.

  Alas, it was not to be. There were no flames. The white rind covering the coals burned reluctantly at first and then not at all, filling the room with thick, acrid smoke. Coughing, he opened the window and stuck his head out into the sweet-smelling ivy.

  Covering his nose and mouth with his arm, he plunged back through the smoke to the door. For a few minutes, he stood in the hall, fanning the door back and forth and dispersing most of the smoke.

  With longing, he thought of Runnymede just three doors down. True, there was unlikely to be a fire lit, but the bed was large and comfortable, and the servants' bell might actually be connected. Sir Benedict's casual inquiry at dinner had more or less granted him the right to that chamber, but he could not escape the fact that his hostess had, for whatever reason, placed him in Hastings. In Hastings, he would have to stay.

  He found his dressing gown, wrapped himself in it, and laid down on the bed only to discover that it was fully as uncomfortable as it appeared. More of an iron maiden than a bed, really. The pillow had a hard lump in it, and the sheets were so cold that he thought at first they were wet.

  He pulled the thin covers up over his head but felt no warmer, and a strange smell seemed to be emanating from the pillow. "What in hell's name . . . " he muttered, sitting up to investigate.

  The next moment, he jumped out of bed, accompanied by an earsplitting shriek. Almost immediately, as he used the bedwarmer to make sure the rat was quite dead, there began a persistent rhythmic banging from the direction of the ceiling. Recalling that Juliet had told him that the chamber immediately above Hastings was occupied by servants, Swale guessed they were footmen who had achieved their present positions in the household by virtue of their ability to stomp their feet with undreamt of ferocity. He grasped the ancient bedwarmer in his hand and, leaping atop the bed, began striking at the ceiling with it with all his might, shouting, "Quiet, you buggers!"

  The stomping ceased as suddenly as it had begun; the copper pan of the bedwarmer parted from its pole; and the door to Hastings swung open almost simultaneously. A branch of candles was thrust into the room, and the copper pan rolled across the floor and spun at Juliet's feet before falling with a clatter to the parquet floor.

  Behind her appeared the worried face of Fenwick the butler. Behind Fenwick, young Billy jumped up and down, trying to see into the room.

  `Julie!" Swale cried, jumping down from the bed and still holding the pole, which he used to surreptitiously flip his pillow back over the dead rat. "The noise!"

  "Yes, Ginger, the noise," she replied, coming into the room. Her hair was loose, and she was wearing a rich purple dressing gown that made her look even more Minerva-like than usual. "I have come to ask you to stop it. The servants are trying to sleep."

  "Oh-ho! The servants are trying to sleep, are they?"

  "Please, my lord," the butler interjected nervously, "if your lordship would not mind putting down the stick ... ?"

  Swale ignored him and addressed Juliet. "For your information, madam, your servants have been dancing a bloody jig on my head for the past twenty minutes! Or perhaps ... perhaps, it was the ghost of the caribou?"

  "You have broken my bedwarmer," she accused him.

  "Believe me, dear madam, it had ceased to function as a bedwarmer long before I came upon the scene," he told her angrily.

  "What is that smell?" she then demanded. "Have you been smoking in this room?"

  "I was cold," he informed her haughtily. "I made a small fire." He was finding it difficult to maintain his hauteur, however, as he was in his nightshirt with his dressing-gown flapping around his bare legs. "I usually have my hair to keep me warm, but as I have been scalped ..

  Juliet coolly noted the miserable little coals in the grate. "Where did you get the coals?"

  "I am not without resources," he told her. "I found them in the bedwarmer."

  "That bedwarmer should have been emptied long ago," she muttered. "But then, I daresay you would have broken up the furniture for fuel! I had no idea you were one of those thin-skinned aristocrats who must be bundled up like an old woman to guard against trifling little drafts! Poor Ginger! Would you like Fenwick to fetch you a shawl?"

  He glared at her. `Julie, I daresay when I am an old married man surrounded by my affectionate children, it will amuse me to relate all I suffered the time I went to Surrey to win the hand of their beautiful mamma, but at the moment, for me, the joke has worn pretty thin!"

  In her view, this was really too much. For him to boast of his conquest in her very presence-and in front of Fenwick too-!

  "Kindly do not stick your chin out at me, sir," she said with gritted teeth. "Since you have made Hastings quite uninhabitable, I suppose I am forced to move you to Runnymede. I suppose you think you're very clever. But if you think setting fire to Runnymede will gain you Agincourt, you quite mistake the matter!"

  "Thank you, Miss Wayborn. I should be delighted to move to Runnymede."

  "Good night, Ginger," she said with queenly hauteur.

  Fenwick was swept away in her wake, but Swale enticed Billy to remain by showing him a gold coin. "I'm going to need newts, Billy," he said solemnly. "And lots of them!"

  Never before had the written word affected Lady Maria Fitzwilliam so violently as when she broke the seal of her brother's note and read the fatal words: "If you want to see your only brother alive, I am currently lodged at Wayborn Hall. Your affectionate Geoffrey." She could not have been more shocked if she had received a ransom note demanding huge sums of money for her brother's return. She cried out in distress and sank into a chair in her dressing room.

  "She has him!" she cried in a choked voice when her husband came to inquire what was wrong.

  "Who has him, my love?"

  "Miss Wayborn! She has taken him prisoner."

  "Of whom are you speaking?" he asked patiently. "Who has been taken prisoner by Miss Wayborn?"

  "Geoffrey! My brother! She has him at Wayborn Hall!" Maria cried theatrically. "I must go, Henry, and rescue him from her clutches."

  "Nonsense," he replied. "Remember what Mr. Devize told us. Your brother is intent on making Miss Wayborn fall in love with him. He means to break her heart. Rather wrong of him, of course, but I don't see any danger of a marriage. I daresay your brother has a greater disgust for the young woman than even you do."

  "Depend on it," his lady said fiercely, "she will make him fall in love with her if she can. The scheming little minx! She will use all her arts and allurements to inveigle him. Wouldn't she fancy herself as Marchioness of Swale! Henry, you must order the carriage at once."

  Colonel Fitzwilliam, however, was not as biddable as the average Henry. "My dear, it is dinnertime. We can hardly call on Sir Benedict now, particularly when you have been so rude to his family these past weeks. It will have to wait until the morrow."

  Lady Maria acceded to her husband's good sense, but she ate very little dinner, slept very ill, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to eat two bites of a gooseberry tart at breakfast before she was on her way to Wayborn Hall. Lady Serena was enlisted to accompany her friend, who felt in need of an ally on this trying occasion, and Colonel Fitzwilliam said he would call on Sir Benedict.

  Lady Elkins was alone at breakfast when the Silvercombe ladies arrived. Never an early riser, her mornings of late had been devoted to long bouts of self-pity and headache. She stayed very long in the breakfast room and while eating very little, reflected very long on
how badly her friends were treating her over this nonsense about Juliet. The arrival of visitors, and such unexpected and desirable visitors, struck her with the force of a lightning bolt. Forgetting entirely the weakness in the legs that had plagued her all week, she scrambled for the better of the two drawing rooms and received the two ladies with something like composure.

  Lady Serena, looking very dashing in a new hat decorated with ostrich plumes, apologized effusively for neglecting poor Lady Elkins, and Lady Elkins effusively forgave her. Serena then made the baronet's widow known to her friend Lady Maria Fitzwilliam, and the duke's daughter inquired immediately into the whereabouts of Lord Swale.

  "Oh!" Lady Elkins was confused and flustered by the cold abruptness of Lady Maria. She began to make her excuses rather incoherently. She had been ill-she was always the last of the household to rise-she was utterly alone. Sir Benedict would be in his estate office, if he had not gone to inspect the new cottages. Mr. Cary Wayborn had gone to a neighboring village to view a horse. Perhaps Lord Swale went with him?

  "I expect," said Lady Maria dryly, "that Miss Wayborn went along to view this horse? What an exceptional animal it must be."

  "I do not know, my lady," stuttered Lady Elkins, feeling all at once that it was wrong of her not to know where her niece was, though it had never entered her head before. "All these comings and goings! I am too old and infirm to keep up with these energetic young people."

  Lady Serena seemed almost ready to give up and go away again, but Lady Maria was prepared to endure more. "Which farm?" she wanted to know. "When did they go?"

  Lady Elkins grew more confused. "Perhaps it was yesterday they went to view the horse," she murmured. The arrival of a servant with refreshments spared her any further embarrassment. "Peter, where did the young people go? Did they go to view the horse, or was that yesterday?"

  The servant, whose name was Robert, answered cheerfully, "Mr. Cary has gone to Wexton to see Mr. Martin's mare, your ladyship. Miss Julie is just back now from her ride."

  "Ah," said Lady Elkins, as pleased as though she had remembered this herself.

  "Is my Lord Swale with her?" Lady Maria demanded.

  Juliet herself answered this by entering the drawing room with absolutely nothing Swale-shaped at her elbow. Her tousled brown hair was pulled back by a wide ribbon of black silk, indifferently tied in a bow, and her scarlet, military-style habit was stained with grass. The fierce light in her eye matched the style of her habit. She had found out the identity of the morning callers and had come directly from the stables to defend her aunt.

  Lady Maria experienced something of a shock. She had previously viewed Miss Wayborn from a distance at church and had found her tall and slim, though unremarkably pretty and too sun-browned to be fashionable. But she could see now how an impressionable, foolish young man like Geoffrey might be intrigued by her flashing gray eyes and queenly bearing. Artful, presumptuous strumpet, she thought.

  "I beg your pardon," said Juliet coldly. "My aunt has not been well. Perhaps your ladyships would be good enough to visit us another time?"

  "Nonsense, my dear," cried Lady Elkins. "I am so much better today, I would delight in company. Indeed, I am quite recovered. It is so excessively good of Lady Serena and Lady Maria to return our call."

  "My dear Miss Wayborn," Serena called to Juliet, "may I present you to my friend, Lady Maria Fitzwilliam? Her brother, Lord Swale, is your guest, I believe."

  "Ma'am." Juliet made only the barest sketch of a curtsey.

  Lady Maria, exerting the privilege of her rank to the utmost, remained seated and inclined her head in slight acknowledgment of the tall, athletic young lady standing before her in a scarlet habit. Her dark eyes, however, betrayed a vociferous contempt. This treatment was usually enough to send impudent girls crying to their matchmaking mammas, but evidently, Miss Wayborn was made of sterner stuff. She merely looked back at Lady Maria like an equal.

  "I am a little acquainted with Earl Wayborn," Maria said in her coldest, haughtiest voice, which really did not go with her pert, pug nose. "His lordship is a relative, I collect?"

  "I am also a little acquainted with the Earl," Juliet replied carelessly, pulling off her gloves. "The day I was presented to Her Majesty at court, he gave me two fingers to shake and made me free to use my own surname, which I thought pretty well of him since I already had my father's permission. But you won't meet his lordship here. He never comes here, and we never go there, to Westlands."

  "I have been to Westlands," said Lady Maria smugly. "Rarely have I ever seen a house so happily situated. Why, it is twice as large as Wayborn Hall!"

  "No doubt you wish you were there now," said Miss Wayborn. "How pleasant it would be, indeed, if your ladyship were there now."

  Lady Elkins interceded as Maria's nostrils began to flair. "But there is nothing at Westlands older than the year 1700, my lady. The first Earl left everything in Surrey to his younger brother, including all the pictures of our ancestors, when he took possession of Westlands. Juliet, you must take her ladyship to the gallery and show her the pictures."

  "Oh, no one cares to see pictures of other people's relatives," said Juliet. "Lady Maria can have no more interest in our pictures than we have in hers."

  "Indeed," Lady Maria returned smartly. "There is no comparing ancestors with me, as I am sure you must know, Miss Wayborn."

  "I have had occasion to look up the Aucklands quite recently," Juliet admitted. "The Amblers came over with the Hanoverian Elector," she whispered to her aunt before returning to Lady Maria with a bright smile. "To which of the many tribes of Germany did the Amblers belong, Lady Maria? That information seems to have been left out of the latest edition."

  Lady Maria choked on her fury, her little heartshaped face turning red.

  "I must apologize," Lady Serena said quickly, her violet eyes wide and scandalized, "for not returning your call sooner, Miss Wayborn. As I was telling your aunt, with so many calls to return, somehow, I must have overlooked your little cards. Do forgive me."

  `Juliet could never take offense at any trifling thing," Lady Elkins said before her impetuous niece could turn her wrath on Serena. "Indeed, she is the dearest, sweetest girl who ever lived."

  "Indeed, I must be,"Juliet agreed carelessly. "For, not only do I forgive them for not coming sooner, I truly believe I could forgive them for not coming at all! Now, please do excuse me, your ladyships. I must go and change my dirty clothes."

  "You have been riding, Miss Wayborn," Lady Maria called after her, eager to exert her authority and force the insolent Miss Wayborn to remain standing before her when she clearly wanted to leave. 'Was my brother not with you?"

  "Your brother? With me?"Juliet smiled. "Certainly not, ma'am. I haven't seen Ginger since very late last night when he broke the bedwarmer!"

  Lady Elkins slumped as though she had fainted, but unfortunately for her delicate sensibilities, it was only a pose. When one most craved oblivion, one remained stubbornly conscious.

  "Ginger! " exclaimed Lady Maria, unable to conceal her astonishment. "Why, you impudent-"

  "But, now you mention it,"Juliet continued sweetly, "as I was passing the breakfast room just now, I heard some rather disgusting wet noises coming from within. I daresay it was your brother. He makes those noises when he eats, I have noticed."

  She saw with great satisfaction that Lady Maria was seriously discomposed. Her ladyship appeared on the verge of inflicting violence upon Miss Wayborn.

  "Excuse me,"Juliet said sweetly, offering a graceful curtsey before sauntering from the room in the most nonchalant manner. This time, Lady Maria did not seek to detain her.

  Lord Swale was not with Mr. Cary Wayborn, as Lady Elkins had supposed. Nor was he in the breakfast room, as Juliet had suggested. In fact, he was standing in the hall outside Juliet's room with a bucket of newts, and that is where the daughter of the house found him. He frowned at her. "You went out riding and didn't tell me," he complained. "I'd have gone with you." />
  "Bernard was with me, thank you," she answered.

  "You prefer his company to mine, do you?"

  "You appear to have been rather too busy to take me riding," she pointed out, bending to look in the bucket. Two or three brightly colored newts paddled around in the water. "Newts, Ginger?" She shook her head in disapproval. "Not very original."

  "But damned effective! I'm a traditionalist, Miss Wayborn. I don't apologize for that."

  "I'll take those," she said hastily as a door opened further down the hall. "Your sister's come to take you away from this terrible place. You'll find her in the drawing room with a ... a certain lady."

  "Many thanks, Julie," he whispered. "It wouldn't do for me to be caught this close to Agincourt, eh? See you downstairs in two shakes." He trotted away, leaving her to face Benedict with the bucket in her hands.

  "Juliet, I understand we have guests," he began rather crankily, then broke off as he saw the pail she could have no hope of concealing. "What is that?"

  "It's a bucket."

  He looked inside and recoiled. "What did I tell you about newts?"

  "You said, `No newts.' I remember it distinctly."

  His lips thinned. `Juliet, I realize you must be even more eager to banish Lord Swale than you were Mr. Calverstock, but you can't go about the place scattering newts. Give me the newts."

  "Don't hurt them," she said quickly. "It isn't their fault, you know."

  "I'm not going to hurt them," he told her coldly. "I'm going to have Billy take them back to the lake where they belong. If I can ever find Billy ..." he added under his breath.

  Juliet suddenly grasped his arm. "Do you hear that?" she demanded. "Someone is playing my pianoforte!"

  Benedict listened for a moment to a rather frank and yet sensitive interpretation of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. "Playing it rather well, too. You could play like that, Juliet, if you would take the time to practice."

  "Serena! "Juliet seethed. "How dare she come into my house and exhibit on my instrument!" In a flash of scarlet, she rushed down the stairs.