Carla Kelly (18 page)

“Shut up, Suzie,” he whispered, and she could hear the laughter in his voice. Amazingly reassured by his unloverlike endearment, she slept.

London at two in the morning in front of a public house was different from London at two in the morning after a ball in the Mayfair district, she decided as she stood beside David Wiggins and waited for the coachman to hand down her bandbox. The inn yard was busy with farmers rattling in from the country, their wagons filled with produce and poultry for the great London markets. A yawning crofter’s lad maneuvered a hog past her as she leaped closer to the bailiff. There by the edge of the lamplight sat a beggar with no legs, his army overcoat bunched tight around him against the chill that rose like the tenth plague off the docks. A prostitute stood closer to the inn door, her hair wild and matted from a night’s hard work. She eyed the bailiff and started in his direction until Susan grabbed his arm and glared at her.

“I think I can protect myself,” David assured her, a smile in his eyes. “Not exactly your part of London, is it?”

Susan shook her head, and did not relinquish her grip on the bailiff. “I wonder how many diseases she has?”

“More than you could ever imagine,” he whispered back. “Now be nice. Everyone has to earn a living, some by their wits, some on their back.”

How true that is, she thought as she waited for him to find a hackney. His presence seemed to command less respect in the London inn yard than it had at Wambley. He was shouldered away from the first two hackneys to come along by a drunken company of beau-nasties, who told him to stand back from his betters. The third hackney driver to happen along a half hour later insisted on seeing the inside of David’s wallet before he would take them anywhere farther than three or four blocks. “Ye can’t be too careful-like in this neighborhood,” the jehu assured them as he motioned them in. He looked significantly at the veteran begging by the inn. “I sees plenty of sorry heroes and scaggy hoors. Beggin’ your pardon, miss.”

They rode in silence through streets, which grew less crowded the farther they went from the unrefined, earnest heart of the city. The streets looked familiar now. My goodness, she thought as she learned against the bailiff in her exhaustion, was it only two months ago that I braved ice and snow on this street to find an employment agency?

They stopped then in front of the Steinman Agency, dark now except for a lamp glowing in an upstairs window. “We’ll stay the night here,” David said as he helped her down, then paid the driver. “Joel’s expecting us.” He smiled at the look of surprise she knew was on her face. “I wrote him, too. My dear, remember this piece of advice: if you’re ever lucky enough to save someone’s life, you can always use him in outrageous ways!”

So she was smiling, too, when the door opened on Joel Steinman in nightshirt, robe, and cap. He was followed closely by his mother, who took her by the arm and tugged her inside, whisking her upstairs while the men chatted below.

“A little mulled wine will be just the thing,” Mrs. Steinman said as she helped Susan from her clothes and into her nightgown. “You get in bed, and I’ll hand it to you. Can you feel the warming pan?”

She could, and between the warmth in her toes and the wine that mellowed its way down her throat, she could have purred with contentment. In a stupefying trance of huge comfort, she handed back the goblet, rested her feet on the towel-covered warming pan, and closed her eyes.

Susan had scarcely shut her eyes before it was time to open them again, this time at the gentle insistence of Mrs. Steinman, who called her
leibchen
and
bubeleh
and offered the further enticement of hot chocolate passed several times under her nose. She sat up slowly in the feather bed that threatened to pull her under again, gripping the brass bars to prevent a return to the horizontal state. The chocolate was followed by a forced feeding of enough little pastry puffs to get her on her feet and washing herself with wonderful hot water and lavender soap so creamy it was almost sinful. She was humming as she followed a servant to the breakfast room.

“Ah, excellent!” Joel Steinman said as he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin and rose to his feet. “You certainly look better early in the morning than David Wiggins does!”

The bailiff turned around from his perusal of food at the side table and nodded to her. “Smells better, too.” He looked at the clock on the mantel. “We’re promised at Lady Bushnell’s in an hour, Susan.”

She nodded and joined him at the sideboard, searching for more of those same little pastries that had revived her in bed. David had the last three on his plate, so she took one of his without any compunction, winked at him, and sat down.

“I thrashed a man once for stealing from my plate,” the bailiff commented as he sat beside her.

She responded by popping the pastry in her mouth. “You would never do me an injury,” she said, her mouth full.

“No, never an injury,” he agreed, smiled at some secret thought of his own, then tackled his own breakfast. He glanced at her sideways. “Although I might be tempted to . . .”

“To what?” she asked.

He smiled that slow smile that was starting to bother her on a regular basis. “Oh, just that I might be tempted to. Eat your breakfast, Suzie.”

I should worry when men smile like that, Susan thought. She looked at her own plate but was distracted by Joel Steinman, who stood beside her chair, then with a flourish, set a present on the table before her.

“Oh, my!” she said, dropping her fork and picking up the package. “Is it in my contract that I am to expect presents from my employment agent? Perhaps I should have read the small words at the bottom. Who knows what else I have promised?” she teased as she opened the package. She stared dubiously at the rectangular object in her hand. “I would like to be delighted, but please tell me what it is, sir.”

Steinman took the object from her hand and set it on the table. With the casual air of someone who had been practicing, he rested his palm on top, and reached down with his fingers to wind the back. He released the object, detached the metal spindle and sat back in triumph over his one-handed efforts. “This, Miss Hampton, is a metronome. They are new from Germany, and Mamele found it for you.”

As the spindle ticked back and forth in strict rhythm, Steinman jiggled a little weight, and it ticked faster. “It is to regulate your piano playing,” he explained when she continued to stare at it. As he leaned closer to her, Susan was amused to observe that the bailiff suddenly leaned closer, too, in a manner that she could only consider proprietary. “Your letter about Lady Bushnell’s tyranny at the piano was so anguished that I knew I had to make amends,” Steinman told her. “Perhaps I feel I owe you an apology for foisting that job upon you.”

“You owe me no apologies, Mr. Steinman,” she said quietly. “It’s turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Even if we lose it all after our interview this morning?” the bailiff asked, and he sounded peevish.

Are you jealous, sir? she thought in wicked delight. The thought was followed immediately by a most monumental surge of love for the bailiff that went beyond any emotion she had ever experienced before in her life. It left her limp inside; she could only stare at the metronome, because she knew that if she turned her head to even look at David Wiggins, she would cry, or kiss him, or crawl into his lap, or maybe do all three at once. She forced herself to concentrate on what Steinman was saying.

“If it comes to that, Miss Hampton, I must tell you that I have obtained that job for you with the widow and her two daughters. It only waits an interview, and let me assure you that I have told her you walk on water.”

“What? What?” she asked. “Oh, yes! Well . . . my goodness.”

Steinman grinned at her and stopped the metronome. “You are supposed to tell me ‘thank you’ prettily for my exertions on your behalf, and not bumble about.”

“Thank you,” she said, feeling as miserable now as she had felt exhilarated only seconds before. If we do not succeed this morning, I will have no choice but to accept Mr. Steinman’s dratted job. I will never see David Wiggins again. She rose to her feet so quickly that both men on either side of her sat back in surprise. “Hurry up, David! We can’t be late!”

As they walked to the Bushnell town house, Susan knew she should have engaged in some of that light patter for which the Hamptons were so famous, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a thing to say. In silence she berated herself for considering for even a moment that just because he was a bailiff, she was proof against him, no matter what Mrs. Skerlong said. I have fallen in love with a bastard Welshman who was a poacher and a sneak thief and a sergeant and now a bailiff. He is of a social class so far removed from my own that I could grow dizzy contemplating the chasm between us, if I allowed myself to. She hurried along, telling herself that the feeling just had to pass, and the sooner the better. I might as well wish away the moon and the tide, she thought, limp again with the anguish of loving the bailiff.

I have been feeling this all along, she thought, without even knowing what the feeling was. Something in the way he had leaned toward her so protectively—so instinctively!—when Joel Steinman made her an innocent gift, must have been the spark that finally lit the tinder. It was as though she knew at that moment that David Wiggins would always protect her, and take care of her, and love her more than himself. The reality of it took her breath away and she stopped and stared at him on the crowded sidewalk.

“Susan?” he asked, looking down at her in alarm. “Are you all right?”

I will never be the same again, she thought. I feel empty and full at the same time, and you ask me if I am all right? “I’m fine,” she lied, and continued at her brisk pace.

It still chafed her to take those steps down to the servants’ entrance, but she swallowed her pride and followed the bailiff. I wonder if I can find anything sensible to say to young Lady Bushnell, she considered as she stood behind the bailiff in the narrow passageway and admired the broadness of his shoulders. My concern for old Lady B pales beside what I am feeling now about me and David.

After time for a cup of tea that tasted to her like gall and wormwood, the butler showed them into the bookroom. She spent the time in silence, staring at her hands and looking up only once or twice to see the bailiff standing before the cold hearth, his back to her. What are you thinking, sir? she asked herself. Are you wondering at my sudden strangeness, or are you thinking what you will say to Lady Bushnell?

“Don’t worry, Susan,” he said quietly, and she wondered again at his ability to read her.

Her unprofitable meanderings were relieved by the appearance of Lady Bushnell, who swept into the room, looking almost as disordered as Susan felt, followed by a thin woman in black with a tape measure around her neck, and a man with a sheaf of papers that threatened to spill from his grasp.

“Stop!” Lady Bushnell commanded, raising her hand to the people who almost trampled on her heels. The bailiff turned around in surprise, startled by the circus behind her. Perhaps you were not thinking of Lady Bushnell, Susan considered as she watched him. Then what, sir?

“Madam, how can I finish fitting your wedding gown if you dart about like a minnow?”

“Madam, I must know if you want hothouse plants or spring blossoms for the ballroom. Colonel March says he is allergic to pussy willows, phlox, and lilies. I really must know! The suspense is killing me!” He waved the papers to cool himself, and they fluttered down like leaves from an autumn tree.

With a sigh, Lady Bushnell sat down and glared at the modiste and florist. “Take yourselves off for five minutes!” she said through clenched teeth. The modiste glared right back, but the florist took her arm and pulled her from the room, closing the door behind him with an audible click.

“Colonel March doesn’t much care for daisies, either,” David said from his place by the hearth. “Lady Bushnell, I had no idea that you were marrying
my
Colonel March. Congratulations!”

Oh, but you have a way with women, Susan thought as she watched Lady Bushnell visibly collect herself and relax ever so slightly.

“He is the best, isn’t he?” she said quietly as she patted the chair beside her. “Sergeant Wiggins, you remind me how lucky I am.” She smiled. “Can you not stay around here for two weeks and organize this . . . this . . . balloon ascension I seem to find myself trapped in the middle of?”

He grinned back and relaxed in that casual way of his that seemed to fill Susan’s entire vision. “You’ll manage, Lady Bushnell. Just tell them all to go to hell like your mother-in-law would, and suit yourself.”

She nodded, the picture of peace again. “Perhaps I shall. What brings the two of you here? Please tell me it is good news, for I need some.”

It was not good news, and the bailiff minced no words in telling her. He was still describing Lady Bushnell’s lapse when the door opened and Colonel March came in. The bailiff leaped to his feet from force of habit, and Susan thought for a second that he was going to salute the slender little man dressed impeccably in black. No uniform was necessary; this was a man used to leading armies.

He smiled at the bailiff, and to David’s momentary confusion, extended his hand. “Come, Sergeant, and let us shake. You are a civilian now, and I am soon to become one.”

The men shook hands. “Best of good wishes to you, sir,” David said.

The colonel sat beside his fiancée, took her hand in his own, and kissed it. “My dear, it is done.” He patted his breast pocket. “A special license. What do you say we abandon all these preparations that seem to be taking on a life of their own and elope?”

She turned shocked eyes on the colonel. “I could never, Edwin!” she exclaimed, then allowed herself a squeeze of his hand. “I own that it is tempting.” She indicated the bailiff. “And now David Wiggins brings us glum tidings of Mother. Tell Edwin what you have told me, Sergeant,” she said.

Patiently David repeated the catalog of Lady Bushnell’s troubles for the benefit of the colonel. “The doctor insisted that I tell you, else he would.” He hesitated, less sure of himself. “And he insisted that it was time now to gather Lady Bushnell to the home estate. He feels this is the beginning of her final illness.”