The Battling Bluestocking (28 page)

“Mr. Liskeard is below, Miss Jessica,” the old man said with one of his stately bows. “He has come to make Viscount Woodbury’s acquaintance, he says.”

“Very well, thank you, Bates,” Jessica told him, stifling her disappointment. “I shall go down to him at once.”

Lady Susan had not yet stepped forth from her bedchamber, but Jessica desired one of the housemaids to acquaint her ladyship with the fact that Mr. Liskeard had come to call and to remind her that the viscount was expected momentarily. As it chanced, their second visitor arrived before Lady Susan had completed her toilette. Viscount Woodbury was ushered into the drawing room, even as Jessica was welcoming Andrew.

She turned to greet the newcomer, a gentleman in his mid-thirties, of medium height and coloring, who stepped toward her with alacrity.

“How do you do, my lord?” she inquired, holding out her hand to him. “I am Jessica Sutton-Drew, and this gentleman is Mr. Andrew Liskeard.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” responded the viscount, taking her hand and nodding to Andrew. “Where is Jeremy?” he asked, getting directly to the point.

“My aunt’s butler had orders to fetch him as soon as you had arrived, sir. He will be down shortly.” She had been measuring the viscount rather narrowly, and she liked what she saw. His smile, though anxious, was warm, and his light brown eyes had a kind expression. Still, she feared he would be in for a shock. “I should perhaps warn you,” she said diffidently, “that Jeremy is no doubt a good deal different from the way you remember him.”

The viscount sighed. “Don’t think I haven’t realized it, Miss Sutton-Drew. Gregory warned me how it would be, of course, but I’m not such a cloth-head that I don’t realize it’s going to be something of a shock no matter how well prepared I think I am. That’s why I didn’t bring the boy’s mother with me. She would have come, but she was already fairly done up over my father’s death, for they were very close, and I decided it would be best for her to have time to rest before she has the lad to deal with.”

“His wounds are nearly healed,” Jessica said gently. “There are still one or two burns that the doctor recommends dusting regularly with basilicum powder, and there will be some scaring, but he has already begun to fill out a bit, so he doesn’t look nearly so frightful as he did when he first came to us. Dr. Knighton assures us that there should be no other damage and insists that the best cure for everything that presently ails him is fresh air, freedom, and a good deal of love.”

The viscount smiled at her. “You cannot know how grateful we are that you found him, ma’am.”

“You should be thanking my aunt, sir. It was she who rescued. Jeremy from the sweep.”

“A dauntless woman. I look forward to making her acquaintance.”

He was to be granted that privilege immediately, for Aunt Susan came into the room just then with Bates and Jeremy at her heels. Andrew let out a low whistle at the sight of the boy. He had scarcely clapped eyes upon him since the day of the rescue, and the child who entered behind Lady Susan was hardly recognizable as the scrawny, begrimed skeleton of a waif he had seen before. Jeremy had suffered through a thorough bath nearly every day since coming to Hanover Square, and his skin was now pink and white, if still a bit fragile in appearance. His hair had been properly cut and-washed, his nails had been cleaned and pared, and he wore nankeen trousers, a frilled white shirt, and a blue jacket with large brass buttons—clothes befitting his station in life. While Jessica introduced Lady Susan to the viscount, who could scarcely mind his manners long enough to respond with proper courtesy, the silent boy looked him over narrowly, chewing his lower lip from time to time nervously.

As soon as Lady Susan had been introduced, Jessica turned to Jeremy, gently squeezing his thin little shoulder as she drew him forward.

“Jeremy, dear, this is your papa.”

The boy’s eyes widened as though until that very moment, despite whatever Bates may have told him, he had doubted the truth of the matter. But the viscount immediately knelt down before him and held out his arms.

“Come to papa, Jeremy-lad.”

There was a moment’s doubt in the boy’s eyes before he took one hesitant step and then another. “Papa?” The word seemed foreign to his lips. But then he repeated it as though its flavor were becoming more pleasantly familiar, and the next step had less hesitancy. A moment later he found himself crushed in the viscount’s arms. Seeing tears suddenly leap to the light brown eyes meeting hers over the boy’s shoulder, Jessica felt a stinging in her own eyes.

“It is all right, Jeremy-lad,” the viscount muttered, turning his face toward the soft hair curling about the boy’s ears. “Everything will be all right now. I’ll take you home, and no one will ever hurt you again.”

“Cor,” the boy said softly a moment later, when he stood back a little and looked at the others in the room, “’tis like a fella done died and went to ’eaven.”

Jessica shot a swift look at the viscount. Jeremy’s speech had improved dramatically just in the time he had been in Hanover Square, but he still suffered frequent lapses. The viscount seemed unperturbed, however, and merely stared at the boy as though he could not look long enough upon him.

“Jeremy, dear,” Lady Susan said then, “have you the bundle that Mrs. Birdlip made up for you to take with you? Just a change of clothing, my lord, and a few odds and ends that Jeremy has acquired since his arrival here,” she added when the boy nodded.

“I left it in the ’all,” Jeremy said.

“Well, I’ve something else for you to put into it,” Lady Susan said briskly as she crossed the room to the table near the fireplace. When she turned back, she was holding the snow crystal. “This was our first clue that you weren’t what you appeared to be, you know. I feel that you ought to take it with you. To remind you occasionally that you have friends in London, you know.”

Jeremy took it from her, turning it slowly in his hands, watching intently as the tiny carved village became engulfed in snow. Then he looked up at her, and when she held out her arms to him, he went straight into them, giving her a hug.

“What will you give Albert, m’lady, to remind ’im of
’is
friends?” he inquired innocently as he stepped back again.

The silence engendered by his question caused him to look from one to the other of the adults in the room until Andrew bracingly told him not to bother his head about Albert.

“He’ll be well looked after,” he said.

“Who is Albert?” asked the viscount. When the explanation was made, he nodded, admitting that he had indeed heard something of Lady Susan’s troubles since coming to London. “What do you intend to do with the boy if you win your case in court?”

Lady Susan smiled. “We have not really considered that point, my lord. Time enough when everything
does
go well. No sense getting his hopes up before then.”

“My aunt would like to send him to school,” Jessica put in.

The viscount’s bow knitted thoughtfully. He glanced at his son. “This Albert a friend of yours, Jeremy-lad?”

“Aye.” The boy nodded forcefully.

“Would you like him to come home to Woodbury with us?”

“Aye!”

The viscount looked at Lady Susan. “If you agree, my lady, I should be most pleased to take the lad back with me. I’d see him trained to a good trade, and I assure you he would be treated with utmost kindness at Woodbury. I am persuaded it might make things a deal easier for young Jeremy here if he had someone by him who was familiar.”

The notion clearly appealed to Lady Susan, but then a thought occurred to her which made her face fall. “But he can go nowhere until after the trial,” she said.

“Then Jeremy and I will simply remain in town until that time. Only a few days, after all. Then everything will be settled.”

Jessica wished she could feel the same confidence the viscount expressed, but she could not, and it did not help matters when she visited her sister in Duke Street late Monday afternoon, to hear that Lady Prodmore was known to be exceedingly confident of victory.

“You just missed meeting Lady Jersey,” Lady Gordon informed Jessica with a deep sigh as she pushed her into a comfortable chair and bade her forget her worries for a moment or two while they indulged in a dish of bohea together. “I’ll just ring for a pot and some of Cook’s little cakes. I don’t know how it is, but I seem to be hungry all the time now, if I am not being disgustingly sick.”

“Oh, Georgie, is it awful?”

“Not in the least,” responded her ladyship cheerfully. “To be sure, I did think, for some days, anyway, that it was going to be a severe trial. Especially once Cyril began fussing about like a mother hen. I wonder,” she added musingly, “if mother hens
do
fuss. Animals always seem so sensible about things that it seems prodigiously unlikely, don’t you think?”

Jessica chuckled, beginning to feel herself relaxing. “I haven’t a notion. I collect, however, that you are in prime twig.”

“Indeed, I have never felt so well, and I am even learning to manage Cyril. There are uncomfortable moments, as I said, but even they are sometimes helpful, as when I can tell callers that I must be excused from the room if I particularly wish them to leave.”

“Is that how you got rid of Silence?”

“Oh, dear me, no.” She cocked her head quizzically. “Do you think such a ruse would succeed with her? I am persuaded she would merely await one’s return if she thought there was more gossip to be wormed out of one. Besides, today she was talking more than she was listening,” Lady Gordon confided, “and I felt it was my duty, under the circumstances, you know, to encourage her. I even had out Mama’s fruitcake from last Christmas, and we only serve that to really favored guests, so I was able to flatter her, which I think served to encourage her to speak more than she would otherwise have done.”

“With as much brandy as Mama soaks into that fruitcake, I shouldn’t wonder if it loosened her ladyship’s tongue considerably,” Jessica said, grinning. “But what did she have to say that was so interesting?”

Lady Gordon opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again when her butler entered and began to serve their refreshments. After he had gone, she picked up the teapot and poured out two cups, handing one to Jessica with a rueful look. “You will not like what she said.”

“No one does, I should think. Though I cannot imagine that she would gossip about me to you.”

“Well, you are out, then, for that is exactly what she would do. Just to put a word of caution in my ear, or because she thought I might be able to exert my influence over you, or some such thing as that, you know.”

“Merciful heavens, Georgie, what have I done that she wants to warn me about?”

“Why, nothing at all,” replied her ladyship. “It was not you she was speaking about at all. I merely meant she
would
if she had anything of purpose to impart.”

“Georgie, for heaven’s sake, what
did
she say, then?”

“Only that the betting in all the clubs is on Lady Prodmore, and that that lady herself appears to be in no doubt as to the probable outcome of Wednesday’s proceedings. It seems that she actually paid a morning call to Berkeley Square only this morning, and Lady Jersey, though she insists that entertaining the woman was a sad ordeal, felt we ought to know how matters seem to stand.”

“But how can they be so certain in the clubs?” Jessica asked, feeling tension creep into her body again. “Surely they do not set such store by what her ladyship—Lady Prodmore, I mean—says.”

“Well, you know, dearest, even Cyril says the law takes no notice of a black child, and no one questions that Albert belongs to Lady Prodmore. Evidently, however much Cyril would like to speak confidently to me, he appears to set little store by the fact that Sir Reginald Basingstoke means to prove that since Albert is a person, he cannot be subject to the same disposal as a chunk of real estate. Not that he does not wish Aunt Susan to win her case,” Lady Gorden added hastily. “’Tis merely that I fear he cannot help but be in agreement with the odds-makers. And Lady Jersey said Lady Prodmore is already making plans as to how she will punish poor Albert when she does get him back. She seems to have no doubt, Jess, that she will get him.”

So shaken was Jessica by this information that she went home immediately and scrawled a hasty note to Sir Brian, begging him to call in Hanover Square at his earliest convenience. Indeed, the news of Lady Prodmore’s confident assumption that the trial would end in her favor so unsettled her that Jessica scarcely enjoyed the sense of gratification she ought to have felt when Sir Brian presented himself less than an hour later. She experienced only relief when Bates pushed open the drawing-room doors to announce him.

Jumping to her feet, she held out her hands. “How good of you go come so quickly, sir.”

“I came as soon as I received your note,” he said, stepping rapidly toward her, his expression anxious. But just as she thought he meant to gather her into his arms, he took both hands, gave them a hard little squeeze, and led her firmly back to her chair. “What has occurred to put you in such a state, my dear?”

Swallowing her disappointment, she cast him a rueful glance as he drew another chair up close to hers and sat down. “You will no doubt think I am suffering a crisis of the nerves, sir, but my sister informs me that it is all over town that the outcome of my aunt’s trial is a foregone conclusion. I confess, I fear for her.”

A gleam of amusement lit Sir Brian’s eyes before the lids drooped to conceal it. “You sent for me to request advice in this matter?”

“Yes, please,” she responded with unaccustomed meekness.

“Merely because I am a justice of the peace and can be thought to know something of matters of law?”

“No…that is, yes, I…” She broke off, confused. Then, spreading her hands, she said quietly, “I don’t know what to do, sir.”

“Nonsense,” he returned, his amusement turning to sudden briskness as he leaned forward to pat the hands she had folded in her lap. “You will do what you must. It may help you to know, however, that tomorrow morning’s proceedings will be merely a preliminary to the main event. There is, it seems, a point of law to be contested before your aunt’s case can be argued before a jury.”