Authors: Cupboard Kisses
“Think on it,
ma belle,
I have a pistol and a sword. I’ll protect you with my life. It’s the least I can do if you won’t let me do the honorable by giving you my name.”
His name was as sullied as hers, but he did have a point, a sharp one that with any luck he knew how to use.
“Very well, Major,” she decided, “you may stay until you rejoin your regiment. I hope to rent your suite, of course, so you will have to move to the top floor.”
“But Belle, my leg!”
“Gammon, Major. I have seen you dance. It’s the top floor or nothing. That’s a lot more in keeping with the rent you’ve paid anyway, if you ever did. And it’s Miss Swann.”
“You’re a hard woman, my—Miss Swann.”
“One more thing, Major MacDermott. You will also make it a point to inform Lord Winstoke that we were never, ah, intimate. Your friend Nick intends to spread that lie in his direction.”
“Nick’s got no need to. Winstoke’s no greenhorn, he’ll assume it’s true anyway.”
“All the more reason for you to tell him otherwise!”
“Wind blows in that quarter, huh? You’d do a lot better to have me, if you’re waiting to bring that downy bird up to scratch. He could have done the right thing by you ages ago, if he chose. Matter of fact, he got you into this mess, not me or Nick.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s the way of the world, Belle. Face it, he can look a lot higher, and he will.”
It’s the way of the world. How many times had Cristabel heard that? And always in conjunction with something terrible, like the good die young, and poverty only breeds poverty. It wasn’t fair! And that, too, was the way of the world. Pounding on her pillow wasn’t going to change a thing, only make her even more exhausted after this long, sleepless night.
What a fool she’d been. What a blind, buffleheaded, harebrained fool! There were all those questions she should have been asking, all those answers she hadn’t wanted to hear. Being stupid was even worse than being ruined. Maybe. She’d had a great deal of help in losing her reputation: people did lie to her and miscolor the truth. She had no one else to blame for being witless, however, only herself.
She’d been too busy being frivolous, that’s what. She had let herself be carried along by the fun and excitement, like a little girl in her mother’s dresses, playing at grown-up games. Too many schoolgirl dreams after all, she supposed, or too many of those purple-covered romances. Whatever, she’d forgotten to keep her feet solidly on the ground, she’d forgotten the way of the world. Now everything was ruined, most of all her dreams.
Winstoke could look higher, Mac had said. Of course he could. Gently bred females didn’t come much lower, but he had looked, for all that. He had sought her company, and as a lady, not as a
cherie amour.
She was sure of it. Hadn’t he protected her honor and kept her safe? Hadn’t he held her so she felt…She didn’t want to think about how she felt in his arms, not if she would never feel them again! But if Mac was right, the viscount knew all about the house. If he knew about the girls, he would have to think she was one of them, even without Nick’s poisonous lies. And if he thought that…There was no hope. That was the way of the world.
It was a new chapter. It had to be, if Cristabel was to have any life at all. She hadn’t left Miss Meadow’s drudgery to wallow in gloom and self-pity in London, had she? No, she had not, she firmly announced to herself the next morning, putting her feet on the floor and wincing at the sore head that announced itself back.
No matter. She would get on with making her surroundings look respectable, which she should have done ages ago before being seduced from her purpose by worldly gaiety and smooth-tongued temptations. She had
not
been seduced; that was the important thing. She may have been compromised—No, she amended honestly, she may have compromised herself past redemption, but only with the high echelons of the
ton,
which she had no hopes of entering anyway, with neither sponsor nor dowry. She was already beyond the pale, being in trade. At least she would see it was an honest trade!
Even before dressing, she sat down at her desk and wrote the following: “Furnished rooms and suites available at reasonable rates to persons of refinement. Also, music instruction on pianoforte and harp for young ladies. Inquire: 15 Sullivan Street, Kensington.”
Then she went out to the hallway and called for Fanny.
Not knowing what to expect after last night, Fanny cautiously edged down the stairs.
“Good morning, Fanny. Is Major MacDermott awake yet?”
“What, him? I expect he’ll lie abed till noon, like usual.”
“The devil he will. You’ll please see that he is up and stirring, Fanny. Tell him that I need him to deliver this to the newspaper office while he is at that other errand we spoke about last night. He’ll know the one.”
“You mean going to tell that there viscount how you and Mac—”
“Fanny, you weren’t listening, were you?”
“Didn’t have to, ma’am. Mac kept going on about it while we carried his stuff upstairs. He didn’t think it was such a good idea.”
“That’s the best recommendation I’ve heard yet. Go on, and when you get back we are going to start house-cleaning, before anyone answers the advertisement. This place is a disgrace.” She opened the front door to show Fanny what she meant. “There are the windows, and the front walk, and the railings, to start. Why, respectable people wouldn’t even look inside.”
“Pardon me, Miss Cristabel, but if you’re hoping to improve what folks think, maybe you should consider putting your slippers on at least, afore you go inspecting the outside in your nightclothes.”
“Saucy minx,” Cristabel laughed, quickly closing the door and running back to her rooms to change. Mops and brooms would have to wait while she looked through her heavy old schoolmistress dresses in the back of the closet. No matter what, she would never give up her pretty new gowns, even if she did ask Marie to fill in the necklines somewhat. There was no rule saying a landlady couldn’t be fashionable. She would never wear that heavy black serge gown again, no, not even to be buried in! She pulled it out of the closet, thinking to use it for rags, when she had a better idea, except in Fanny’s opinion.
“What? You mean I’m to wear that musty old thing and stick to you like a leech?”
“No, I mean Marie is going to make a proper maid’s uniform out of it and you will wear it when you accompany me in the park and when you answer the door and curtsy to all the people who will answer the ad.”
“But it’s so plain and ugly, no one will notice me,” wailed the poor girl.
“No one is supposed to notice the maid, you gudgeon,” Marie told her. “She is just there for appearance sake.”
Fanny hefted the gown before lifting it over her head so Marie could pin it. “There’s so much of it I don’t know how I’ll even walk. Why I bet it’ll be like what happened to my mother’s Aunt Margaret. She saved half her days for a wedding gown, but her husband-to-be’s mother died in childhood, like they say in the country. So when she turned forty she had the village seamstress make her up the fanciest black dress you ever did see, enough fabric for two, maybe three gowns, to wear to church on special Sundays.”
“And what happened?” Cristabel asked, knowing Fanny’s tales never ended so easily.
“First day she wore it, she took the long way home, to make sure all the neighbors got a good look, you know. She got tired, though, adragging all that material around with her, so she took a shortcut back, on the stepping stones over the creek. Only her feet got caught up in the hem and in she went. Dress sopped up water like a sponge and weighed her right down. Drowned she did, in three feet of water. They had to wait three days for the dress to dry, too, ’fore they could bury her in it.”
When she was done laughing, Cristabel promised she hadn’t meant Fanny to look like a hired mourner, and Marie agreed to try for a modish look. There was so much extra fabric, Fanny being a little dab of a thing, according to Marie, that there would be enough for one dress and another skirt, especially if she filled the skirt’s hem with some white lace ruffle she happened to have. She knew just where they could purchase a tiny pink apron and lace cap to go with the dress uniform, and those pink ribbons left over from Cristabel’s carriage dress…Fanny was all smiles again. It was time to get to work.
Boy was set to scrubbing the steps after being measured for a new shirt, which would come after a bath, after the house was clean. He may as well get used to soap and water, Cristabel informed him, vowing to throw as many of his pets as she could catch into the tub with him.
Cristabel had inked out two neat new signs to be placed in the front windows as soon as Fanny was through washing them, inside and out, and Marie had already soaked the parlor curtains and was laying them on that small patch of lawn in front to bleach in the sun before she would start the sewing.
And Miss Swann was polishing the brass. She was wearing her ugliest old gown, the brown bombazine with stains on it, and a huge apron found in the kitchen, no less spotted, and part of her old ragged shawl wrapped around her head like a scarf to keep her hair from getting in the cleaning solution. The scarf kept falling into her eyes, though, so she kept pushing it up with wet, grimy hands, leaving streaks up and down her face. But didn’t that door knocker gleam!
She was starting on the railings when one of the neighbor’s doors opened and a woman holding a little boy by the hand came out. A nursery maid followed, pushing a pram. They were obviously on the way to the park—the boy had a wooden ball—and had to pass Cristabel’s house. They did, but crossed to the other side of the street first, the mother giving the boy’s arm a good jerk to keep him from even looking at the house.
There were a few more wet streaks down Cristabel’s cheeks, but she found that one didn’t actually die of shame, no more than of a broken heart. It was a good thing that railing was brass clean through; she’d have scoured off any plating long since.
One set of windows was sparkling, so Miss Swann took time to prop the new ROOMS sign there, only smearing one corner with damp hands. Determinedly, she marched back to the railing, starting Fanny and Boy’s lessons at the same time.
“Do you see that first letter? That is an
R. R
as in
rooms.
Say it after me.
R
as in
rooms. R
as in
respectable.
”
* * *
By the time they were all giggling again over
M
as in
Miss
Fanny,
M
as in
Mister
Boy, Cristabel had her first lodger. With an
L,
as in
legitimate.
“But the ad was only sent in this morning,” she told the thin, bespectacled young man standing in front of her. He seemed to be about nineteen, and nervous. “You couldn’t have seen it yet.”
“Except that I work at the paper, miss! It’s my lunch break, and I hurried over. I don’t know that Mr. Helfhopher would approve. He’s the editor, you know.”
Cristabel liked the young man on sight. He was neatly groomed, in a serviceable brown jacket and an unassuming, if inexpertly tied, cravat. She’d been fooled by appearance before, though, so she asked Mr. Haynes so many questions he finally had to beg her to take his deposit on the smallest, cheapest top-floor room before he was late getting back to work and lost his job altogether.
Mr. Haynes was a journalist, aspiring. There were so many stories he wanted to write, ones he knew Mr. Helfhopher would buy, if only he had a quiet place to compose.
This was the place, and Mr. Haynes and Miss Swann shook hands on the deal, adding printer’s ink to Cristabel’s accumulated filth.
It was the
S
that was Cristabel’s downfall. That slippery, sneaky
S
just didn’t have a proper sound to it. She was so tired by then with the unaccustomed hard physical work, that she just couldn’t think past
silk, seducer, sin.
She sank down onto the marble steps next to Boy’s bucket to finish the bottom half of the very last rail. Put the pasty stuff on, wipe it off. Up and down, up and down. Up was all shiny, down was…a pair of black leather boots.
“Excuse me, I’d like to see one of the women who lives here.”
Without even looking up, Cristabel angrily responded, “They are all gone. None of them are here anymore, so you can go on about your business.”
To which Lord Winstoke, not used to such rudeness from servants, demanded, “The mistress of the house then.”
“There are certainly no mistresses, and never will be!” She pushed the scarf back so she could look up. “And if you don’t go away I’ll—Lord Winstoke, good morning. You came.”
There was that smile, the crooked one that said I know you’re not a noddy, just adorably confused, the one that said of course I came. The words, however, said, “Or you’ll what?”
She could only stand and grin, especially when he pulled a snowy handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the smudges on her face.
“Or I’ll get you dirty.”
“My, my, I think I can risk it.” He looked around and saw a lanky, dark-skinned youth staring wide-eyed at him, and the saucy little freckle-puss maid he recognized from walks in the park, all swaddled in rags, winking from over by the windows. Even that woman Marie was there, on the other side of the window, rubbing the glass with old newspapers, smiling, and nodding. “Could we go inside and talk?”
Cristabel saw her crew relaxing and frowned them back to work. She also saw safety in their numbers. Inside, alone…she remembered the feel of his arms around her. “No. I mean no, thank you, I have to finish this.”
“It’s fairly private, what I have to say.”
“I cannot imagine anything that cannot properly be said in front of my friends.”
The “properly” should have tipped Winstoke off, but he assumed they’d heard proposals such as his many times before. He hadn’t made one, ever, and was not quite sure how to proceed, except in a whisper, with the whole motley bunch pretending not to listen.
“Miss Belle, you have to know how, ah, deeply I regard you.”
Cristabel twisted the rag in her hands. Why did she have to be dressed like a washerwoman?
“And I think that you return my regard?”
She nodded shyly, holding her breath. Drat, she should have taken him inside after all.
“I hoped so. I couldn’t help noticing that you were in some difficulties last evening and it pained me to see you distressed.” The viscount reached his limit with the stilted control of being overheard. Zounds, he’d been agonizing over the emotional decision for hours—no, days, ever since he’d first seen this maddeningly beautiful, beguiling woman. “Belle, dearest,” he breathed, forgetting the audience entirely, “let me take care of you, and cherish you, and show you all the joy two people can share.”
Cristabel’s heart was singing. She closed her eyes to see her dream come true. “Forever and ever.”
“Forever?”
Her eyes snapped open. “Forever. How long did you think marriage lasted?”
Now he remembered the listeners and blushed for the first time he could remember. “Belle,” he said, barely audibly, “even you know better than that.”
“Even I? Even I, the last person to know anything around here? Well, Mr. High and Mighty, despite what others said, even I didn’t think you were low enough to make me an
indecent
proposal.” She was shouting, she was so angry. That little boy in the park must have heard; the cleaners stopped pretending and just sat listening.
“Come now, Belle,” he reasoned, trying to reclaim her usual serene nature. “You know I could not propose marriage. I owe my family and my name more than that.”
Those blue eyes glimmered in fury, at him and at herself, for foolishly hoping again the moment she saw that lovely smile. It was loving, too, she just knew it. Only it was the wrong kind of love, the brass-plated kind that would wear off. The cheap, pinchbeck version, that’s what this miserable swine was offering her. “And what about my honor? What if I had a noble, proud old name, even if you never bothered to ask it!”
Winstoke’s flaming ears picked up the first part, and that rankled. “What honor, living here under MacDermott’s protection?”
“I live under no man’s protection, my lord!”
He was as angry as she now, thinking of her with that court-card. “And you don’t live in his house?”
“This is
my
house, and I
am
a respectable woman, and let me tell you this, I am blessed tired of telling that to people! I don’t know why everyone wants to assume the worst about me, and I may have been ignorant, but I
do
come from a good family and I have
never
done anything that would make them ashamed of me, like offering
carte blanche
to a gently reared female, my lord.” Cristabel took a deep breath and continued:
“Furthermore, I would never, no matter how dire my circumstances, accept cupboard kisses from a man who would hide me away in a little love nest somewhere while he danced at all the grand balls with ‘eligible’ females and even married one. If that is a sign of your ‘deep regard,’ my lord, then your heart is as black as your moral character. You, sir, are a rake and a libertine. I pray I never see you again. Good day.”