Authors: Cupboard Kisses
It was the tiger who mumbled and muttered the whole way back to Kensington. He didn’t care if it wasn’t his place to find fault with his betters, deuce if he’d work for such a cow-handed fiddler. The viscount couldn’t drive worth a tinker’s damn, and he sure as hell was no better at courting the ladies, to judge from how far apart the two sat, stone-faced and still.
None of them gave a moment’s thought to the gunshot.
How could she choose between love and self-respect? To be a fallen woman in the eyes of the world—and in her own mind!—or to live the rest of her life as a lonely, loveless old maid? Maybe there was nothing wrong with giving one’s love where one’s heart led. Certainly Marie and even little Fanny saw nothing amiss in following their desires. Then again, maybe there was a higher goal, as Cristabel remembered her parents’ marriage and their deep abiding affection built on trust and love and respect.
If he truly loved her, he wouldn’t ask. If he did ask, though, if that was the only way to keep him near, to share the warmth of his smile, to rid her stomach of the knot of dread that she might never see him again, what then? Cristabel didn’t know, so she was happy to throw herself into her boarders’ plans for them all to attend the opera the next evening.
It was to be Mrs. Flint’s first social appearance in colors, the Douglas sisters’ first visit to the opera, and one of the few times the Todds appeared out of their rooms at all. There was a great flurry of selecting just the right combinations of fans, feathers, finery. Cristabel took it on herself to go match some ribbons, avoiding most of the hurly-burly, and Winstoke’s next visit.
“Your viscount called,” Marie informed Cristabel on her return. “Dressed to the nines he was, too. Too bad you missed him,” she added, amused to note Cristabel’s discomfiture. The two of them were a pair of lovesick loobies, if she knew anything.
“I told him you were going to the opera tonight along with Mac and the renters. Guess what? He’s going, too. He said he would visit your box during the break.”
So Cristabel went upstairs and emptied
her
wardrobe to select the perfect outfit.
The choice didn’t take long: the just-completed green silk was perfect, simple and elegant. The neckline was filled in, over Marie’s protests, with a triangle of white lace, the gown’s only ornamentation. White gloves and a white ostrich feather sewn to a green headband completed the ensemble—hours before it was time to dress. Marie suggested a nap, but Cristabel was too fidgety. Fresh air and exercise, that’s what she needed. Fresh air would do her room good, too, especially with her gown hanging on the wardrobe door, if she wasn’t to smell like an old dog tonight. She opened the windows and dragged Meadowlark down the stairs, Pug following, of course.
Fanny thought it would be a good idea to get the young hound out back some exercise, too, then maybe it wouldn’t keep chewing on the fence posts or howling. Naturally Boy would have to come along, being the only one who could control the untrained pup. Fanny’s hopeful grin had nothing to do with it; Cristabel was feeling guilty enough about the dog and the neighbors.
It was not the rambunctious foxhound that started all the trouble. It wasn’t even the growly Meadowlark, disgruntled at having her rest disturbed. It was the caper-witted little pug, who felt he had to defend his ladylove from the inquisitive sniffs of a debonair poodle. The poodle was attached, via a silken lead, to a foppish young gentleman’s perfumed wrist.
The barking sent a squirrel flying for the trees, and Beau after, baying
view halloo
for all Kensington to hear. Boy went hollering after, but the stupid dog didn’t even recollect its own name in the joy of the hunt, if it heard Boy’s yells at all. The dandy was wrapped in the poodle’s leash like a Christmas goose, teetering on his yellow high-heeled shoes and screeching. Pug was yapping just out of reach of the now-irate poodle’s jaws while Fanny added her squeals, running in circles after Pug, around the poodle and the fribble, like a very peculiar Maypole dance. And Meadowlark? The nasty old bitch had met her match in an old lady feeding the squirrels from a sack of bread. The two were engaged in a furious, high-pitched tug-of-war over the bag, with the old dog snarling like a hellhound, and the old woman punctuating her strident shouts with whaps of her umbrella on Meadowlark’s thick head. Two nursemaids decided to scream, setting the infants in the prams to caterwauling, and a small boy blew his wooden whistle, just for the excitement of the thing.
Cristabel made a dash toward the fop and bent down to scoop up Pug, just as the sound of a gunshot was heard.
It worked. Everyone was so shocked by the sudden sharp boom that there was silence, and a moment’s stunned immobility. Just enough time for Cristabel to get a firm grip on Pug, and another on Fanny’s wrist, and drag both away. Boy lunged for Beau’s collar and hauled him off, and Meadowlark was already on her way home, tail between her legs but the sack of bread in her teeth.
Trying to ignore the frayed tempers behind her, Cristabel hurried her party out of the park, remembering to call a “Thank you” over her shoulder to whatever gentleman had the foresight to fire his pistol to end the melee.
“Exercise did you the world of good,” Marie told her. “Your cheeks are nice and pink. Are you sure you didn’t overdo it, though?” she worried as Cristabel sank into a chair in the parlor.
“Oh no,” Cristabel gasped. “I’ll be fine in a moment. I wouldn’t miss this evening for the world.”
“Good, good. You missed another caller, though. Not a caller actually, a messenger. That nice Mr. Sparling your Captain Chase sends here for lunch every day. He brought this.”
This
was a letter and a package. “How strange,” Cristabel said when she had read the single sheet. “Captain Chase writes that he came upon a box of my uncle’s papers and discovered that Lord Harwood had left a Swann family heirloom in pawn, for a loan. He used that silly hundred pounds to redeem it. Do you think that sounds right?”
“If he says it’s yours, it’s yours. You can’t dispute the word of a gentleman. Go on, Belle, open it.”
“Oh,” Cristabel sighed, uncovering a strand of perfectly matched pearls gleaming on the velvet. “Do you really think I can wear them?”
“Who else? They should have come to you anyway. That captain did just what’s proper. I wonder if he’ll attend the opera tonight to see you wearing them.” Marie hoped so, so she could hear about him later. Miss Swann and her suitors could put on a better show than the opera.
“What’s that? Oh, I doubt the captain cares for opera.” Opera dancers, maybe, but she didn’t say that. No matter, Winstoke would be there to see her in the beautiful pearls, the ones that came with her family name.
* * *
“Look at that woman over there,” one of the ladies in Perry Adler’s brother’s box said when the lights came up at the first intermission, pointing across the great opera hall auditorium. “She’s hung with so many diamonds she looks like the chandelier.”
The other women raised their opera glasses or lorgnettes and tittered. Perry’s brother identified her as Mrs. Flint, the nabob’s widow, and they all laughed at encroaching Cits and Vulgar mushrooms. Everyone except Winstoke, that is, then Perry, when he noticed his friend still staring at the opposite box. “Zeus,” he exclaimed, following Winstoke’s look, “ain’t that Diamond in the box that Belle woman? How did they ever gull a Puritan Cit like the nabob’s widow into hosting one of MacDermott’s doxies?”
“That
lady,
” Winstoke answered through clenched teeth, “is Miss Swann, Lord Harwood’s niece, and she would grace any company she chose to keep. Will you excuse me?” And he got up to exit the box, leaving two ruffled doves and an angry matron who’d been hoping to snabble Winstoke for one of her sisters.
“Unmannered brute,” she proclaimed.
Perry corrected her: “No, just petticoat fever. Hits a man hard, the first time.’’
“How would you know, you insensitive clodpoll? I’ve been throwing girls at you for years now, and you’ve never dropped the handkerchief.”
Perry nodded toward Mrs. Flint’s box, where Winstoke was seen bowing over Cristabel’s hand. “They never looked like that either.”
* * *
How different this visit to the opera was from last time. There were no foxed soldiers, no indecent décolletages or indecorous behavior, at least not near Cristabel. Even Major MacDermott was as exquisite in his manners as he was in his kilt, the last of his bruises carefully powdered. Mr. Haynes was as tongue-tied as the two awed spinsters he sat between, so Cristabel was able to enjoy the opera to its fullest, not distracted by anything more than the gleaming prisms cast by Mrs. Flint’s dragonhorde of diamonds, and the need, every once in a while, to touch the pearls at her own neck.
That was until the intermission, when he came, filling the box with his elegance, fueling her soul with his smile.
After greetings were exchanged, the others got up to seek refreshment or fresh air. When Cristabel rose to follow, Mrs. Flint gestured her back to her seat. “No, you stay and keep his lordship company. He didn’t come to see any of us.”
“But I shouldn’t—”
“Don’t be getting all missish now,” the forthright matron ordered. “He ain’t going to ravish you, right in view of half the
ton
.”
When the box was empty of everyone but the two of them, Winstoke raised her hand to his lips again, sending shivers through her, and smiled. “If it weren’t for that bit of lace, I’d be tempted beyond endurance.”
She snatched her hand away. “My lord!”
“I’m sorry, Belle. I cannot help teasing you, just to watch you blush. It starts here, and here.” He marked the progress with his eyes, but they both knew this was no innocent flirtation.
“How did you like the first act?” she hurriedly interjected, before he could go further, before he could work himself up to the improper offer again.
Winstoke answered impatiently. He didn’t
want
to make small talk, but he couldn’t find the words. He knew he was off to another bad start—damn, he didn’t know this would be so hard. How could he? He’d never proposed before. Hell, he’d never even been in love before. And all those people with their glasses fixed on this box, and her party due back any moment…
“Those pearls look lovely on you.”
The proposal never came as Cristabel explained how the necklace was part of her uncle’s estate and just restored to her. She wanted it made perfectly clear that the pearls were not an ill-gotten gift.
The proposition never came either, to Cristabel’s relief. She could not help noticing, however, that Winstoke also never offered to accompany her to the hallway for a walk or a cool drink. Was that what a woman in her position could look forward to? Being kept in the dark, so he needn’t embarrass his friends of the
haute monde
by introducing her?
She had to know. “Would you care to walk around a bit before the next act?”
“No, I’d much rather keep you all to myself,” he answered, dreading the thought of someone calling him Chase or Captain.
Cristabel fingered those pearls, suddenly as tight as a noose around her neck.
* * *
The next act was not quite as enjoyable for Miss Swann. At the break she asked Mac to escort her downstairs, for the air in the box was suffocating her. Coming up the stairs, with a pretty young woman in debutante’s white on his arm, was Lord Winstoke. So he could take some society chit out in public, could he, and not her! She turned her own radiant smile on Major MacDermott and laughed up at him. Mac looked stunned—they’d been discussing the dying hero of Act Two—until he noticed the viscount, looking thunderous.
“Oh, no you don’t, my girl. I’m not tasting any more of his home-brewed for you, so you can play off your tricks somewhere else.” And he turned her around to get back to the box, fast.
Winstoke caught up to them at the top of the stairs, dragging his indignant partner by the arm. “Lady Brandice, may I present Miss Swann, Major MacDermott. Miss Swann, Lady Brandice Westmore. Uh, Lady Brandice expressed a desire for some lemonade, Major. Do you think you might accompany her?”
Accompany her? By Jupiter, he’d accompany Old Nick to hell and back, rather than face this particular devil again. He pulled Lady Brandice back down the stairs.
“That was poorly done, my lord,” Cristabel began. “And I doubt Lady Brandice’s family will thank you for introducing us.”
“What? Oh, MacDermott. The family hasn’t a feather to fly with, so there’s no worry about fortune hunters like him. He’ll lose interest as soon as he hears the size of her dowry. She has three brothers, incidentally. You might mention that to the major.”
People were pushing past them now, and he had to speak louder over the noise. “Belle, I don’t care about MacDermott or the chit, that’s not what I wanted to talk about, but we can’t speak here. There is something you have to know, and I swear to tell you tomorrow, if you can just trust me for tonight, no matter what.”
“I have something to tell you, too. I realize I have been moralistic and judgmental, especially for one who has no right to cast stones, glass houses and all, but now I am independent, and could not even say circumstances forced me—”
The lights were dimming. He led her back to her box and told her, “Dearest, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but we will straighten it all out tomorrow. Just don’t listen to any gossip, and trust me.” He quickly kissed her fingers again. “Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow—if she could fall asleep tonight! What with her thoughts in chaos and Meadowlark’s snores, Cristabel could not relax. Her emotions had been through the wash-wringer and come out limp and tangled. She’d known the heart-lift of watching his eyes light up when he first saw her, and the agony of the choice. Could she accept a discreet liaison, instead of
carte blanche,
instead of nothing? That way was despair, thinking she might lose his love altogether. She had known jealousy, too, tonight. If she turned green at that insipid deb, heaven knew what she would do if he took a wife. There was satisfaction also, because he was just as jealous over her hand on Mac’s arm—she knew he was—and hope, that he asked for her trust. Tomorrow was taking forever to get here.
Cristabel started counting the old dog’s breaths as an aid to sleep, but the very irregularity jarred at her consciousness and kept her from slumber. There was a whistling intake, a throat-rattling exhale, with a pause between. Sometimes the breathing out was more like a snort, sometimes the wait between was so long Cristabel wondered if the decrepit animal had breathed her last. The snore would start up again with a huge gasping whoosh—all perfectly audible even with the dog asleep out in Cristabel’s tiny sitting room, the bedroom door closed. Meadowlark’s bed, that old dress not even a ragpicker would deign to touch now, had been moved to the next room after that debacle in the park, when Cristabel found bread crumbs, a shredded sack, and an ancient, smelly cur, all on
her
bed. Fine watchdog the mongrel was anyway, snarling at Cristabel more often than not for disturbing her cache of bones in Cristabel’s closet.
The old mutt was at it again, growling in her dreams at phantom food-snatchers. Now she’d set off the foxhound brought inside to the kitchen at night for the neighbors’ sake. Pug would be yapping, Mr. Haynes would be complaining soon—and Mrs. Flint was shrieking!
Cristabel grabbed up her robe and ran through the connecting door, stumbling over Meadowlark, who gnarled at her, and out to the hallway at the top of the stairs. By the light of the candles left burning there, she could see Mrs. Flint, in yards of yellow satin, beating Nick Blass over the head with her reticule.
“Varmint! Sneak thief! A body can’t be safe in this sinkhole of a city. Thatchgallows! Attacking an innocent woman in her own bed!”
But he hadn’t, Cristabel realized. Nick had attacked the nabob’s widow in
Cristabel’s
old bed. It was her, not Mrs. Flint at all, that he was after with that wicked-looking knife. It didn’t matter to Mrs. Flint, who kept swinging the purse by its strings at the dastard’s head and screaming, or to Pug, who was bouncing around in a wheezing frenzy.
Nick sliced through the reticule’s ties and ran toward the backstairs, until he saw Fanny and Boy brandishing pots and pans and the howling foxhound scrabbling down the corridor. He raced to the front, where Mrs. Flint was joined by Mac, bony ankles sticking out of a yellow satin robe with a feather boa, fire poker in his hand.
“You’ll hang for this, you maw-worm!” he shouted over all the commotion, but he was careful to stay shielded behind Mrs. Flint’s bulk in the doorway of her room.
Not
the stairs from his room, Cristabel noted.
Two heads in identical, frilled nightcaps were peeking around an upstairs door exclaiming “Dear, dear!” and Mr. Haynes was starting an angry march down the stairs, while Cristabel stood frozen at the landing. Then Marie came out of her door, wanting to know what was happening.
Nick looked up at the sound and saw his nemesis. “You!” he spat out and rushed at Cristabel up the stairs, waving the knife.
There was no place for her to go, no handy vase to throw or chair to hide behind; there was only that knife. And the screaming from below.
“You jade, you! You started this whole bloody mess with your fine airs ’n innocent blushes. Hah! Innocent be damned. You wanted my share, is all! I’ve seen you carryin’ on with your fine lord, just like any other whore—”
“Don’t you talk to me like that, you wretched runt. It wasn’t me who made a living off women and terrorized them with vile threats.
I
didn’t rob and cheat and lie!”
“Doxie! I’ll have your kidneys carved up for the dogs! I’ll—”
“You’ll be hanged for sure, you misbegotten dwarf! Look at all the witnesses, fool. You’ll never get away with this!”
He snarled. “It’s too late. At least I’ll have my revenge!” And he leaped at her again. Lights glinted off the steel blade and off the maniac glow in his eyes. Cristabel darted to the side. Marie shrieked. Mr. Haynes tossed his slippers down at Nick’s head and missed, and the tableau downstairs was frozen. Except for Pug.
Meadowlark had wandered out of Cristabel’s rooms to see what the commotion was, mainly concerned if the banging of pots and pans meant a chance of another meal. Nothing smelled like food, so the old dog collapsed in a distempered heap in the hallway. She did snap at Nick’s shoe when he brushed past her, just because she had been disturbed for no good reason. She got up growling and moved to a less trafficked area at the top of the stairs.
Now Pug may have gone into an asthmatic fit at the attack on his mistress, and he may almost have passed out from lack of air, yipping so long and hard, but this was serious business. No one threatened his Meadowlark without suffering the consequences. Those little legs trundled that squat body up the stairs in a blur, and those baby bulldog jaws opened as wide as they could and clamped down on the back of Nick Blass’s ankle, hard. Pop-eyes bulging even more, the little gladiator hung on and on, despite Nick’s shouts and foot-shakings. Nick flicked the knife aside bare inches from Cristabel’s throat, turning to make mincemeat out of Pug.
Cristabel screamed “Mac!” and looked past Nick’s shoulder, to distract him. Mac collapsed in a dead faint at Mrs. Flint’s feet, but Nick did turn around. Cristabel gave his back a shove and he stumbled forward, Pug still keeping him off balance. He tripped over Meadowlark and went tumbling down the stairs.
Cristabel darted back to her room for the forgotten pistol and returned, crying, “Stop it! Stop it, all of you!” as she raced down the stairs to where Fanny and Boy were beating Nick about the head with their skillets, and Mrs. Flint had emptied the elephant-foot umbrella stand and was jabbing him in the ribs with a lace parasol. Mrs. Todd was clutching her husband and sobbing, and Mac was now casting up his accounts. Mrs. Flint’s servants were peering over the bannisters; they disappeared when Cristabel waved the gun in their direction.
Nick was not a pretty sight when everyone stood back. The erstwhile bully was now a broken man, at least one arm’s worth. His good hand held the piece of his ear cut off by his own knife, which Cristabel picked up at arm’s length and handed to Mr. Haynes, who blanched as if she’d handed him a snake. Pug was still shredding Nick’s pant leg, while the foxhound was licking the tears streaming down his cheeks. Blass looked up into the not-quite steady barrel of Cristabel’s pistol.
“That’s it,” he wept. “I lived by women, now I guess I’ll die by a woman. Dust to dust. I were never much, chaps always laughed at me. Now they’re gonna laugh at me bein’ shot by a skirt.”
“I doubt they do much laughing where you’re going,” Cristabel told him dryly.
“Then do it, if you’re gonna. Put me out of my misery. Short people never get any breaks.”
It was Mrs. Flint, Pug now clamped to her ample bosom where he was starting to wheeze again from lack of air, who asked if Cristabel knew how to use the pistol she was wielding, or should they call the watch.
“I shot a tree once,” Cristabel assured her. “But you needn’t worry about my aim. The gun is not loaded.”
Nick looked disgusted and sat up straighter, holding a dirty kerchief to his ear, eyeing the distance to the front door. Boy moved to block his escape, and he hunched over again, blubbering in misery.
“Sure, call the charlie. I got nowhere to run. I been sleepin’ in alleys with the garbage rats. Prison’s at least a roof over my head.”
“I should think attempted murder is a hanging offense, or at least deportation, to say nothing of breaking and entering.”
“What was I to do? I don’t know no other trade ’n the girls ’as all gone respectable or to respectable ’ouses. Now it’s the devil’s necktie for old Nick Blass, that or end a slave in Botany Bay. Mac, too, likely.”
Cristabel and Mrs. Flint chorused: “Mac, too?”
“You don’t expect me to go by myself, do you?”
Cristabel could just see it: the magistrate’s hearing, the witnesses Gwen and Alice and Kitty, the house, the whole sordid mess out in the open, with Major MacDermott’s name in the papers and cartoons, right under hers!
“I didn’t know! I didn’t know!” Mac was crying, on his knees in Mrs. Flint’s bathrobe. It was that lady’s beseeching look which finally decided Miss Swann. The scandal would touch her, and everyone in the house. And Mrs. Flint really cared for Mac, as seemed obvious from his choice of bedchambers…
“Would you rather go in the Navy? I cannot let you run loose in London, Nick. You know that. And I have no call to be lenient with you after what you’ve tried to do. So that’s the choice: I call the watch, or you take the King’s shilling and get out of my life.”
“But we’re at war!”
“That’s the only reason they would take a sorry specimen such as you. Well?”
“The nubbing cheat or the Navy? I knew you were a hard woman the minute you wanted me to wear a bloody uniform. Looks like you’ll get your wish after all.”
Cristabel directed Fanny and Boy to tie Nick up and lock him in the storeroom, and keep watch. She asked Mr. Haynes to watch
them,
intending to hand him the gun.
“Oh no, I couldn’t. I have to go write this up for the
Chronicle.
Mr. Helfhopher will love it. Action, danger, virtue triumphant, even mercy. He’ll have to give me that promotion, an increase, a better desk—”
“Mr. Haynes.”
“Yes, Miss Swann?” he said, halfway up the stairs. “I believe you heard me say this pistol is not now loaded?”
“Yes, yes, I have to remember to put that in.”
“Mr. Haynes, I have the ammunition for the gun right here in the pocket of my robe. Remember this when you even think about mentioning any of the events of this evening to your Mr. Helfhopher or anyone else: I have never missed what I have aimed at. Have I made myself clear?”
“I cannot write anything, not even if I change the names?”
“You do and you won’t need a new desk.”
He gulped. “What was it you wished me to do?”
Cristabel went upstairs to dress, searching for something suitable for a respectable single lady to wear to pay a call on an unrelated bachelor in the middle of the night. If there were such a thing. She found the last of her schoolmistress dresses, the gray merino that hadn’t been cut up for uniforms or rags or used as a dog’s bed. It buttoned to the collar and the cuffs, but with her filled-out form, it did not look like a sack anymore; with the paisley shawl it would serve the purpose.
Marie came in from administering laudanum to the Douglas sisters and shook her head. “You look like you’re dressing for the magistrate’s. I thought you were sending for Lord Winstoke. He would be a lot likelier to do what you want if you looked a little more helpless, or haven’t you learned anything?”
“I am not sending for anyone. It’s too complicated to put in a letter, and what if he wasn’t home, or the servants didn’t waken him? Furthermore, it’s Captain Chase I am going to for help. He would know a lot more about enlisting someone in the Navy, and he offered to stand my friend any number of times.”
“The captain, hm? In that case I better go with you.” Marie scampered away to dress. Cristabel was certain Marie would not look like a dowdy parishioner, not if she thought Jonas Sparling might see her. She was also sure Marie would not have insisted on accompanying her, if her destination had been Winstoke’s lodgings.
That was another reason she would not ask the viscount for help: she didn’t know where he lived. She knew all about the family property in Staffordshire, but he only mentioned a temporary place in Mayfair. Maybe he was staying with friends. No matter, she did not want him hearing the filth Nick Blass could spew in his anger, not when she was trying to convince his lordship of her respectability. Captain Chase would not think the less of her, no matter what lies the guttersnipe made up. And if he did, so what?
If the captain was not at home, if, heaven forbid, he was “entertaining” again, then she would have no recourse but to go to Winstoke with the whole sorry, disgraceful mess, unless she wanted the affair made public. She had no doubt that a hackney driver could find the location of one of London’s premier lords, even if he had gone on to some elegant ball after the opera or one of his clubs. The idea of the viscount entertaining in Captain Chase’s fashion was too abhorrent to consider. Cristabel firmly pinned her hair into a no-nonsense bun and called Marie.
Mac was dressed, and flourishing his sword downstairs in the parlor. He hurried to find her a hackney, relieved she had not asked him to accompany her. “That fellow don’t like me above half,” he explained, touching his eye.
“I thought it was Winstoke who you ah, disliked.” She nearly said “feared” but amended that, for his pride’s sake.
“Yeah, him, too.”