Somerville Farce (18 page)

“What’s his name,” he muttered resignedly,
seating himself once more, “and what do I have to do to make you
turn off the waterworks?”

Trixy heard Harry before she saw him, his
angry, raised voice meeting her halfway through the foyer on her
way to the drawing room. “One hundred and forty pounds for gloves?
For gloves? Last time I looked, Aunt Amelia, the girls each had
only two hands. What are these gloves made of—unicorn hide?... No,
you say? Well, it must be something equally rare to cost one
hundred and forty pounds.”

Trixy entered the drawing room to see Harry,
dressed in his evening clothes, pacing agitatedly in front of the
settee, both his hands full of tradesmen’s bills, while a stylishly
clad Lady Amelia perched nervously on the very edge of the settee
like a child called before its parent for a scolding, her hands
twisting in her lap.

“We could not stint, you know, nephew,” Lady
Amelia said, her head moving from side to side as she followed the
duke’s path up and down the carpet. “With the piddling portions you
settled on dear Eugenie and Helena to lure husbands for them, it
was imperative we outfit them to their best advantage. A pretty
frame for a pretty picture, we always say.”

Harry stopped to turn about abruptly and
wave a sheaf of bills at the woman. “And what do ‘we say’ about
this bill for a single sea-green gown, madam, if everything was for
the twins, whom you’ve been dressing alike from head to foot?
That’s what I really want to know. And this bill—for a single
jonquil gown, and a single Clarence-blue walking dress, and a
single bottle-green pelisse with swansdown trim—must I go on?”

Trixy, who was standing just behind him,
wearing the “single jonquil gown,” bit her lip and waited for Lady
Amelia to explain. “Why, don’t be silly, nephew,” the woman began,
giggling, “you know those things were for your dearest Trixy—”

“My dearest Trixy?” Harry interrupted, his
angry bellow threatening to straighten the tight gray curls in Lady
Amelia’s hair. “Then it is just as I thought when I came home today
to find my study knee-deep in bills! The woman’s a companion to the
twins, Aunt, and a necessary evil, but she’s not my ‘dearest’
anything! Whatever gave you such a harebrained idea?”

“But... but you said... or at least we
thought you said... but maybe, now that we think on it, perhaps it
was dearest Trixy who said... Oh, dear, we’re so confused!”

“Good evening, all,” Trixy hastened to
interrupt just as she was sure Lady Amelia was going to give the
game away by remembering that it had been Trixy who had told her
the duke wanted the twin’s companion rigged out for the Season,
although she had been following his orders—sort of. “My goodness,
Lady Amelia, don’t you look especially lovely this evening? And
you, Harry. Are you by chance joining us at Lady Hereford’s? Roddy
will like that, as he was just saying last night that he doesn’t
see enough of you anymore.”

“I saw enough of him this afternoon to last
him for a while, I should think.” Glynde whirled about to face
Trixy, his hot gaze running quickly up and down the length of her,
then switching to the jumble of bills he held in his hands.

“Jonquil, I presume, Miss Stourbridge?” he
said at last, smiling evilly. “How gratifying it is for me to help
you bait your hook for Sir Roderick. You don’t do anything by
half-measures, do you?” He bowed in her direction. “My compliments,
madam. You do your ‘business’—and your entire
profession—proud.”

Trixy dropped him a quick curtsy. “Thank
you, your grace,” she said evenly, knowing the worst was past—for,
indeed, nothing could be worse than the opinion the duke already
had of her. “One does what one can to keep body and soul together
in these trying times.”

“We don’t think we understand,” Lady Amelia
piped up, her voice very small. “Didn’t you want us to outfit
Trixy? We could hardly have her accompanying the girls in anything
taken from the meager wardrobe she had with her at Glyndevaron.
Besides, nephew, as we have been assured you are interested in
Trixy for yourself, we certainly couldn’t see you allowing her to
be embarrassed in any way. Oh, dear. Poor Harry—has Sir Roderick
beaten you out? No wonder you’re so crotchety. We’re prodigiously
sorry.”

At Lady Amelia’s last words, Harry looked
piercingly at Trixy and mouthed something that she was sure was
“I’ll get you for this” before turning back to his aunt. “Forgive
me, Aunt Amelia—I’ve been acting the fool. Of course I wanted you
to outfit Trixy as well as the twins. And I do hope there are
purchases for yourself numbered among these bills. I was just
overset—not having ever launched anyone before—and was momentarily
taken aback by the cost of the thing. Two dozen pairs of gloves?
Now that I think on it—are you quite sure two dozen pairs are
enough?”

“Thank you, nephew. And Sir Roderick?” his
aunt pursued, beginning to look teary-eyed.

“Ah, dearest aunt,” Harry countered with a
wink that could have meant anything, “who is to say about matters
of the heart? Will the girls be down soon? It’s growing late, and
you know how Lady Hereford is about punctuality.”

Trixy hid a smile behind her hand as Harry
threatened to make a cake of himself trying to redirect his
aunt—who had immediately risen to ring Pinch to check on the
twins—but her smile faded quickly when she perceived he would deal
less kindly with his “dearest Trixy” sometime later, when he found
her alone.

Willie and Andy entered the drawing room
close behind Pinch, relieving Trixy from the trouble of attempting
to stay clear of Harry and his bound-to-be-cutting whispers until
the twins came downstairs and they could leave for Lady
Hereford’s.

“And I still say she is not,” Willie was
protesting hotly as the two walked to the drinks table, barely
nodding to the other occupants of the drawing room.

“She is too,” Andy answered, pouring himself
a glass of sherry, which was all Harry would allow either of the
boys to drink. “Not only that, but she’s most probably not going
with us tonight, so sick with love the chit is. I tell you, Willie,
you’re wasting your time. Better to skip this dull hash tonight and
buy a ticket for the stalls. If we’re lucky, the play will be bad
and we can toss cabbages at the stage.”

“Not going?” Willie halted in the midst of
pouring himself a glass of sherry. “You never mean it, Andy. And me
spending above an hour trying to get this neckcloth right. How
ungrateful can a woman be? Why, you know what, Andy, I believe I’m
getting heartily sick of this love business. I never bathed half so
much, for one thing—and I don’t think I even like to dance.”

“Then we can go to the theater?”

Willie slammed down the glass so hard that a
bit of sherry splashed onto his shirt cuff, but he didn’t take any
notice. “To the theater, and to Astley’s tomorrow, and to a mill if
we can find one where the fighters are promised to go at least
twenty rounds! Now, come on, Andy, there’s no sense hanging around
here all night, is there?”

Trixy, Harry, and Lady Amelia watched in
silence as the two boys walked arm in arm out of the room without
acknowledging anyone else’s presence.

“We sometimes wonder about our nephew,” Lady
Amelia said slowly after the front door slammed shut behind the
boys a few moments later. “We think he takes a bit too much after
our dear, departed Uncle Augustus. You remember, nephew, Uncle
Augustus was the one we visited in Herefordshire. Never married,
and was all the time taking off his boots in company to talk to his
toes.”

Harry caught Trixy’s eye and, in a rare
moment of complete harmony, the two openly smiled at each other as
one of the twins floated into the room, looking exquisite, although
sad, in her white taffeta gown.

“Eugenie has the headache, Lady Amelia, and
has taken to her bed,” she said, looking down at her toes, her
entire body displaying the attitude of melancholy the girl had
donned like a cloak around the time of the come-out ball and had
refused to discard ever since. “She has Lacy with her, and has
begged us to go on without her.”

“Oh, dear,” Lady Amelia said worriedly, her
hands once more twisting in her lap. “We like it so much better
when both of them are together—they match so perfectly, you
understand, that they attract the most wonderful compliments, for
which we may take at least some of the credit, as we had the
outfitting of them. And Mr. Saltaire will be terribly upset when we
meet him at Lady Hereford’s and he learns that his Eugenie has
taken to her bed.”

She turned to Trixy, who was busily
inspecting Helena as if for flaws, a confused frown on her face.
“Perhaps you might forgo the evening’s entertainment, my dear, to
bear our poor little Eugenie company in her discomfort.”

“She will not,” Harry answered before Trixy
could open her mouth, for he had decided that he was not about to
stand back idly while his good friend Sir Roderick literally threw
his life away on such a calculated, conniving hussy, and he had a
few plans of his own for the evening. “Her maid is with her, and
that should be sufficient.”

Trixy broke off her scrutiny of Helena to
look at Harry out of the corners of her eyes, sensing that the duke
had something nasty up his sleeve but not knowing exactly what it
was.

“Eugenie is probably still worried about Mr.
Saltaire’s toplofty mother opposing a match between them,” she
offered by way of explanation. “Her maid told me all about it.
Poor, dear Eugenie.”

Helena emitted a small sob, causing Lady
Amelia to ask if both twins might be sickening for something, but
Harry stepped in quickly to repeat his admonishment about Lady
Hereford’s dislike of tardiness, and within five minutes the party
was on its way outside to the waiting coach.

Upstairs, peeking out from behind the
draperies in her bedchamber, the supposedly ailing Miss
Somerville—who still had the fingers of one hand crossed behind her
back—grinned from ear to ear for the first time in a long
while.

T
rixy yanked at the
intricate clasp of the garnet necklace, nearly breaking it in her
haste to rid herself of any reminder of the gathering at Lady
Hereford’s. It had been quite the most frustrating, unhappy, and
maddening few hours of her life, and she had the horrid,
insufferable, obnoxious Duke of Glynde to thank for every miserable
moment of it!

From the moment Sir Roderick had entered the
Hereford drawing room to take up his place beside Trixy, Harry had
not budged from her other side, his contributions to the
conversation dealing with tales of fortune-hunting females and
their hapless victims, various forms of torture employed by nobles
in the Middle Ages on thieves and blackmailers who dared ply their
trades on them, the prospects of any gently bred female prisoner
reaching Australia without perishing along the way, and innumerable
other subjects too terrible in content to contemplate.

Sir Roderick, whom Trixy had grown to like
very much, but who seemed to reckon himself an expert on everything
and, likewise, appeared unafraid to expound on that “everything”
without a thought to the notion that he might be boring his
audience to flinders, had joined into each discussion at some
length, not realizing that Trixy, who knew exactly what Harry was
trying to do, had believed herself to be dying a slow, agonizing
death for the entirety of the evening.

Tying the sash of her dressing gown about
her waist, Trixy sat at her dressing table to begin taking the pins
from her hair. How she longed for the Season to be over so that she
could leave London and do her best to forget she had ever clapped
eyes on the Duke of Glynde. Her fingers halting in midair, she
stared at her reflection in the mirror, to discover that she was
crying.