Somerville Farce (5 page)

The bomb finally exploded. “You did
what
? They’re tucked up
where
?” Harry shouted, his
head shooting up so quickly he thought he heard a small snap at his
nape. “Willie, you didn’t?” He grabbed his brother on either side
of his neck, shaking him until the younger man’s teeth rattled
audibly. “For the love of heaven, Willie, tell me you didn’t!”

Willie raised his hands to pry his brother’s
fingers away from his Adam’s apple. “I... we... that is, damn it,
Andy, help me!”

“There’s no need to choke the information
out of him, your grace,” interrupted a female voice from the
doorway. “I should be more than happy to take the explanation from
here as, at the rate they are progressing now, it will be years
before they’ve finished.”

Harry, his hands stilled in the act of
throttling William, looked past his brother to see a tall, slim
red-haired woman past her first blush of youth standing just inside
the study, her arms folded neatly at her waist.

“Who in bloody hell are you?” he asked, his
usual good manners having somehow become a casualty of his
brother’s exploding bomb. “And how the devil did you get here?”

“We added another traveling coach at the end
of the coaches we used coming back from town,” Andy supplied
quickly, feeling much braver with a woman in the room, as the duke
wasn’t likely to commit murder in front of a witness—and most
especially this particular witness, who had the most disturbing way
of turning another person’s misfortune to her own advantage.
Besides, if his grace was going to wreak violence on anybody, it
appeared William had been elected as the most immediate target.

“Mmm-mmfffh!” Willie gurgled unintelligibly,
still vainly clawing at his brother’s stilled, yet nevertheless
tightly gripping hands.

“It all seemed easy enough,” Andy hastened
to add before his courage deserted him, “what with you riding up
front in the lead coach. We figured you’d never notice another one
tagging along behind, especially as we had packed them a lunch so
that they didn’t have to eat with us and told the coachman to drive
directly to the stables, while you were let off at the front door.
And you didn’t. Notice anything, that is. Only there wasn’t
supposed to be anyone in the coach save Miss Somerville—save one
Miss Somerville.”

The duke ignored the youth to continue
staring at the red-haired woman, who was now walking about the room
idly inspecting the bookshelves. “I repeat, ma’am—who are you?”

“I am Beatrice Stourbridge—known to my
charges as Trixy, a truly horrible name, almost as horrible as
Beatrice. I have been, over the past several years, variously
employed as governess, companion, and general drudge, forced to
earn my living by squiring about young girls whose main purpose in
life is, it seems, to torture me with their inanity. You don’t know
me, but I have heard of you—and your dislike for my employer, for
which I can only commend you, as Mr. Somerville is a truly odious
man. You may not know this, your grace, but you are to be my
salvation, my release from the drudgery of ape-leading simpering
misses until I am so frayed and worn I slip, unlamented, into an
early grave. Isn’t that right, boys?”

Harry slid his bemused gaze from Miss
Beatrice Stourbridge to his brother, belatedly realizing that he
had been all but choking the life out of the young scamp. He let
his hands fall limply to his sides. “Don’t say another word,
William—just let me hazard a guess. She’s the one with the pistol,
right?”

A
ndy, who had been
quiet much longer than was his custom, stepped forward to take up
the story. “She had the twins tie us up while, right on the spot,
she thought up the most terrible scheme you can imagine.” He leaned
close to the duke to whisper in the man’s ear, “I don’t think she’s
a real lady, your grace. Her mind’s as sharp as a tack—her tongue
too.”

“What is this scheme, Andrew?” the duke
whispered back, still looking at Miss Stourbridge, who seemed to
have lost interest in the conversation, as she was showing all the
outward signs of being engrossed in a volume of Plato. “How did she
force you to bring her here?”

Andy rolled his eyes at the man, obviously
wondering how a supposedly bright man like the duke could ask such
a silly question. “She had the pistol—that’s how. Remember?”

There was a short tinkling laugh, uttered by
Miss Stourbridge, who could not have been as engrossed in Plato as
Harry had believed. “How do you stand them, your grace?” she asked,
smiling. “I imagine it will be easier for me to tell you the whole
of it. To reiterate, Mr. Myles Somerville is not, forgive me, a
nice man. He deserted his twins—within minutes of hearing about
your arrival in town—and without making any plans to reclaim them
ever again. He left us with two full months’ rent owing on the town
house, not a copper penny in the house, and no prospects. Yet, just
as I was at my wits’ end, your brother and his friend showed up to
save the day. It’s simple, and, I must say, rather brilliant—my
plan, that is.”

Harry looked at the woman through narrowed
eyes. “Go on,” he said smoothly, reaching out to hold his brother’s
elbow, as the youth was showing signs of wilting to the floor.

“My plan, your grace? As I have already
said, it is really quite simple. For my silence in the matter, you
shall provide me with a way out of my personal dilemma, your grace,
by gifting me with a small, modest cottage somewhere near the
sea—I’ve always enjoyed the seaside—as well as a comfortable but
not overly ambitious allowance with which to support myself.

“I shall, thanks to you and your brother, be
free to live out the rest of my life in some peace of mind, never
fearing that one of my inane charges will someday lead me to
committing mayhem—either on my charge or on myself, I will not dare
to conjecture. However, as I have, against my own good judgment I
assure you, grown rather fond of Eugenie and Helena, I cannot in
good conscience abandon them and still rejoice in my own good
fortune.”

“She says they’ll end up making their living
on their backs otherwise,” Willie put in quietly. “Well, don’t look
at me like that, Harry—she’s the one that said it!”

“If I might continue?” Miss Stourbridge
replaced the book on the shelf and walked over to join the
gentlemen. “The girls will have to be settled, your grace, before
my mind can be made easy. That’s where you come in—again.”

Glynde pulled himself up to his full
imposing height and glared down his aristocratic nose at Miss
Stourbridge. “I can’t see how, madam,” he intoned icily. “As a
matter of fact, I can’t see where I figure in any of your greedy,
overly ambitious plans.”

She smiled, showing her even white teeth.
“Can’t you, your grace? I should have thought it was obvious. Your
brother tried to kidnap two innocent young girls so that you could
have your pick of which one to ravish in order to revenge yourself
on their father.” She shook her head. “That wasn’t nice, your
grace. It wasn’t nice at all. As a matter of fact, I daresay it was
downright criminal.”

The right side of Harry’s mouth lifted in a
wry smile. “But—for a price—you, I gather, won’t tell anybody.
That, for want of a better word, is blackmail, Miss
Stourbridge.”

She smiled again. “Yes, your grace, it is.
How good of you to point that out to me. It is not, however, kidnap
and ravishment, is it? Those are much worse crimes, both legally
and in the court of opinion—in society. I pointed that out to your
brother and his friend, and they were quick to agree.”

“At which point, Miss Stourbridge, they
gathered up you and the twins and brought you all here, to
Glyndevaron, so that I could pay you off.”

“Don’t forget the maid, Harry,” Willie
added. “She’s Irish, and ever so fat. We had to bring her too, or
else Eugenie wouldn’t come. She even cried—Eugenie did—when we said
we wanted to leave the dratted woman behind.”

“Eugenie is extremely attached to Lacy,”
Miss Stourbridge corroborated, wincing slightly. “As a matter of
fact, Eugenie is quite attached to a multitude of things—a most
loving, devoted, caring child. Perhaps you shall wish to
concentrate on Helena instead. She’s not nearly so quick, but she’s
an amenable-enough little wigeon.”

Harry was confused. He thought he had been
handed a problem that could be settled with the simple application
of money. “Why should I have anything to do with either of them
beyond gifting them with a few hundred pounds?” he asked, hating
himself for having to voice the question.

Miss Stourbridge smiled yet again, and
Glynde realized he was fast becoming very disenchanted with the
woman’s smile, as it smacked of condescension. “Why, your grace, I
would have thought it should be obvious. I wish to have my charges
settled—permanently. What better way, I ask you, than to have you
pick one of them for your wife?”

Willie and Andy tried to make a break for
it, but were halted in mid-flight when Harry’s hands clamped down
hard on their respective shoulders. “My
what
?” he all but
yelled. “Madam, you must be insane!”

Miss Stourbridge turned smartly on her heel
and headed for the door. “I hardly think so, your grace,” she said,
not turning around. “After all, you must consider the alternative.
You can’t murder four women without raising some suspicion, and you
can’t just set us off to tell our sordid tale of revenge and rapine
to anyone who will listen. I can think of at least three newspapers
where my story would most likely gain an interested audience.”

She stopped and turned to incline her head
in farewell. “And now I must bid you good day, your grace, for it
has been, all in all, a most exhausting day. I’ve already informed
your butler—Pinch, I believe the man said he was called—that the
Misses Somerville and I will be taking our evening meal in the
comfort of our rooms, so you may feel free to tear off strips of
the lads’ hides anytime from now until tomorrow without fear of
upsetting any female sensibilities.”

T
rixy Stourbridge
retraced her steps to the west wing, her head held high, her
footfalls even and purposeful, her outward appearance—although her
gown was most depressingly outdated, a problem shared by her twin
charges, who had dissolved into tears more than once while
discussing the subject—one of complete and utter composure.

Inside, however, Trixy Stourbridge was a
seething mass of apprehension.

His grace was so imposing, so fiercely
masculine—so unexpectedly handsome. She was surprised she hadn’t
melted into a senseless puddle the moment she clapped eyes on him.
Having prided herself on her ability to outwit any man, she had
been momentarily taken aback by the cool shrewdness that had shown
through the anger in Glynde’s dark eyes.

Trixy had nearly forgotten what it was like
to see some hint of intelligence peeping at her from the eyes of a
man. She hadn’t been gifted with that sight since the death of her
beloved schoolteacher father six years earlier, an untimely death
that had left Trixy all alone to face the world, and completely
penniless into the bargain.

It had been a long six years, made even
longer by the drudgery of the various employments she had been
forced, without connections, without references, to accept in the
interim. Her first positions had been more menial than instructive,
and she had wiped far more childish noses than she had opened young
minds to the glory of learning.

Difficult as it was to believe now, her
position as governess-cum-companion to the Misses Somerville for
the past two years had seemed to be a giant leap upward in her
checkered career, with hopes of helping Myles Somerville present
his beautiful blond twins to society in just a few short months
acting as a carrot to give her lagging spirit the energy to go
on.