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“Definitely,” the earl agreed, trying hard to contain his mirth. “I had no idea I had wed such a clever puss—matching such disparate persons as my uncle and the estimable Will Plum with such gratifying results. Is this a special talent of yours, or was old Will a fluke?”
Jennie knew Kit was teasing her, but she refused to allow it to rankle. She had always prided herself on her ability to settle people into niches she personally carved out for them, deriving satisfaction by aiding her fellow human beings.
Her maid, Goldie, was a prime example of the success of her humanitarian endeavors, and so she proceeded to inform the scoffing earl. “She was totally hopeless in the dairy, you understand, being mortally afraid of cows.”
“Sad,” Kit commented, clucking his tongue in commiseration.
“Poor Goldie. She felt herself to be an abject failure, and her mother, a widow and dependent on Goldie for her support, came to me and begged me to take her daughter in hand.”
“Naturally you agreed,” Kit interjected cheerfully.
“But of course—how could anyone so petitioned do anything else?” Jennie countered emphatically. “We tried Goldie in the laundry, but the soap made her sneeze, and even I could find little to praise in her needlework. She was so dejected we could scarcely catch a glimpse of her grandest possession, for she smiled so seldom. She has a truly magnificent gold tooth smack in the front of her mouth, you know, which is why we call her Goldie even though her name is Bertha.”
“This is a most affecting story. I can only wonder if I am strong enough to hear the rest,” lamented the grinning earl, earning himself a killing glance from his new bride.
“I’ll disregard your sarcastic attempt at humor, if only to prove my point,” she told him crushingly.
“Oh? There’s a point?” Kit exclaimed in disbelief. “How gratifying.”
“Of course there is. The point is that there is a place for everyone if one but takes the time to seek it out. In Goldie’s case the search was a bit longer than usual, as she soon proved incapable of serving at table without overturning the soup tureen or losing her grip on a stack of dirty plates. But I really had hopes for her as a kitchen assistant—you know, peeling vegetables and chopping things and such—until Papa’s silly French chef threatened to hand in his notice if Goldie wasn’t permanently removed from his sight.”
“Got on the bad side of the fellow, I assume?” Kit opined, and Jennie vigorously nodded her agreement.
“I still don’t see what all the fuss was about,” she ended, her expression one of sublime innocence. “After all, it wasn’t as if his mustache wouldn’t grow back eventually. He removed the rest of it after Goldie’s little accident with the knife, you see, which was just as well considering he looked rather lopsided with half of the droopy thing gone.”
That did it. Kit was unable to contain his mirth any longer, and his full, masculine laugh reverberated inside the closed coach as he gave voice to his amusement.
Within seconds Jennie’s delicious-sounding giggles blended with her husband’s throaty chuckles as the two leaned against each other for support as they enjoyed the joke—causing the coachman to remark later to the postilion that Lord and Lady Bourne seemed to be taking to each other right quick-like, which was a good thing considering they was bracketed like it or nay.
After a quick stop for luncheon Jennie allowed herself to be talked into resting her head on her husband’s broad shoulder, and the rest of the journey passed with Lord Bourne alternately gazing dolefully at the scenery passing by outside his window and doing his best to ignore the soft, warm bundle nestled so trustingly against his chest.
JENNIE FELT she had somehow been transported to another world. It wasn’t as if her father’s house had not been comfortable, and she had run tame at Bourne Manor for as long as she could remember, but nothing in her experience had prepared her for the opulence of the Bourne mansion—no stretch of the imagination could convince her that this massive structure was any ordinary townhouse.
Bourne Manor had been furnished with an eye for comfort rather than elegance, but the many-storied dwelling in Berkeley Square was crammed cellars to attics with furniture and accessories that intimidated her with their grandeur.
Even the walls and ceilings, festooned as they were with intricate stucco designs and painted Cipriani nymphs, seemed to mock her as she roamed aimlessly from room to room, feeling smaller, less significant, and increasingly more insecure as she encountered Sheraton sideboards, Darly ceilings, Shearer harlequin tables, Zucchi pilasters, arches, and panels, Thomas Johnson clocks, Chippendale parlor chairs, and even an Inigo Jones chimneypiece that had been carted there from heaven only knew where.
“Love a duck, miss, ain’t it grand?” Goldie gushed for the hundredth time, her eyes nearly popping out of her head as she followed in her mistress’s wake, nearly cannoning into Jennie before she realized the girl had stopped dead at the entrance to the master bedchamber.
“Th-there’s no need to go poking about in here,” the new Countess of Bourne stammered nervously before beating a hasty retreat back down the wide hallway to her own chamber, closing the door behind her, and leaning against it as if to block out the rest of the world.
“Is that any way for a countess to enter a room, racing and romping and slamming doors behind her?” Miss Bundy, never raising her eyes from the trunk she was in the midst of unpacking, asked in her best stern-governess voice. “And what is that infernal banging?”
Jennie opened the door an inch, saw Goldie’s hand raised for yet another assault on the heavy door, grabbed the maid’s arm, and hastily pulled the plump form inside. “Land sakes, missy, what didya see in there ta set ya off like a cat in a fit?” the maid asked, darting a quick glance out the crack in the door as if to catch a glimpse of some horrifying creature barging down the hallway.
“I didn’t see anything, Goldie,” Jennie responded a lot more coolly than she thought possible. “I just suddenly remembered that we left poor Bundy alone all morning to unpack while we gadded about the place gawking like country bumpkins, that’s all.”
As Goldie had been more than aware that Miss Bundy had spent the morning toiling while she, in a very un-maid-like way, had done nothing more strenuous than inspect her mistress’s new digs, and as Goldie had secretly delighted in this unaccustomed freedom, her only answer to this damning statement was to flash her gold tooth at Jennie and wink broadly before picking up a paisley shawl and making a great business out of folding it over her arm.
Thank goodness, thought Jennie, releasing her pent-up breath in a long sigh. They’re both too busy either working or avoiding work to tax me further. I’ll just have to learn to control myself better and not do anything else to arouse their suspicions. Why, if Goldie knew I’d been frightened by a mere bed she’d tease me to death, while Bundy would see it as ample reason for yet another blistering lecture on the punishment of “Evil”—the evil in this case having more than a little bit to do with “giving false witness” only to “reap what you have sown.” Hummph! Jennie thought with a toss of her blond curls. I need another lecture like that like I need another freckle on the tip of my nose!
Snatching up a book from a nearby table, Jennie made her way past opened trunks and pieces of her personal belongings Bundy had divided into various towering piles, the purpose of which only she knew or cared to know, and took up residence in the deep, robin’s-egg-blue velvet-padded windowseat that overlooked the square and the statue that depicted a much younger, trimmer Prinny on horseback—the royal frame all rigged out like some long-dead Roman emperor for reasons only Princess Amelia, who had commissioned the piece, knew.
The book spread open on her lap (she never did take notice of its title), Jennie let her thoughts drift to the preceding evening and what she knew had been the markedly less than regal London debut of the new Countess of Bourne—considering she had slept through the entire business.
The strain of the wedding had somehow temporarily overcome her wariness of the man she was henceforth to love and cherish and—she gritted her teeth as she had done when the minister bade her repeat the word—obey, and against her better judgment she had allowed herself to fall asleep against his shoulder, thereby missing her very first sight of London by night.
It was only when the sound of hushed but obviously angry voices intruded on her slumber that she had roused sufficiently to realize that she was no longer in the coach, but reclining, cloak and all, upon an extremely comfortable bed.
“It’s indecent, that’s what it is,” hissed the first voice, which Jennie had readily recognized as Bundy’s.
“God’s teeth, woman, I was merely loosening the ties of her cloak, not taking the first step in any serious pursuit of debauchery,” a second masculine voice had hissed back angrily.
“Kit!” Jennie remembered she had screamed—fortunately only in her sleep-befuddled mind and not aloud. Squeezing her eyes shut, she had tried to feign sleep once more, hoping they would all just go away and leave her alone, but the earl was too sharp not to notice the sudden tenseness in the lower limb he had just then been in the process of divesting of its footgear.
“Ah ha!” he had crowed, more than a hint of triumph in his voice. “Methinks yon beauty awakes! Dash it all, foiled again. Just when I was about to have my evil way with the innocent, not to mention unconscious, damsel.” This last was said with heavy sarcasm, which, as Jennie could have told him, sailed completely over the head of the hovering Ernestine Bundy.
That overwrought female, torn between her duty to her charge and a strong inclination to indulge herself in a bout of strong hysterics, had then somehow steeled herself to throw her body between Jennie’s and that of her would-be ravisher and declared in a quavering voice, “Over my lifeless, bleeding body, sirrah!”
Even now Jennie’s shoulders shook slightly as she remembered Kit’s immediate descent into the ridiculous—clasping his hands to his chest and fervently denying any intention to harm so much as a single hair of the lady’s gray head while backing toward the door mouthing absurd apologies that had Jennie stuffing her knuckles into her mouth so that she would not laugh out loud.
“I saved you for now, young lady,” Bundy had told her charge as she helped her undress before throwing a nightgown in her general direction and stomping heatedly out of the room. “But I shan’t always be here to protect you. Remember,” was her parting shot, “you have made your bed, my dear—and now you must lie upon it!”
And lie upon it Jennie had done; long into the dark of the early-morning hours, tossing and turning but never finding her rest until a thin, watery sun rose above the horizon.
By the time Goldie had roused her with her morning chocolate, Jennie felt like the proverbial last bloom of summer—faded, more than a tad wilted, and increasingly unable to put on a brave face for yet another chilly day.
But being young, and therefore fairly resilient, by noon Jennie had been sufficiently restored in spirits for her to drag the willing Goldie on the tour that had ended abruptly at the sight of the massive bed in what she knew was the chamber she would soon be expected to occupy with her husband.
I can’t do it! she shrieked silently, her small hands clenching into fists and thoroughly wrinkling the green sprigged muslin skirts now clutched between her fingers. Kit said I had to marry him. Papa said it was my duty. But I and I alone will say whether or not I have to share his bed. And I say no!
“Jane. Jane!” Miss Bundy repeated more loudly. “Woolgathering again, I suppose. Some habits never change. Why, I remember when you were seven and I found you daydreaming in that tree in the garden. I had to call you a dozen times before—”
“Before you startled me out of a very pleasant daydream, as I recall, and I toppled to the ground and broke my arm,” Jennie ended for the lady. “Papa wasn’t best pleased, you’ll remember.”
Miss Bundy merely sniffed, obviously still feeling she had been more victim than sinner in that particular incident.
“Well?” Jennie asked after some moments when Miss Bundy seemed to be lost in replaying old hurts.
“Well, what?”
“You called my name, Bundy, remember?” Jennie sighed, a small smile lighting her face as the familiarity of this little scene made her feel less an alien in an unfriendly land.
Miss Bundy puzzled a moment, tapping one long finger against her pointed chin, before declaring brightly, “I remember now. How very remiss of me. Renfrew gave me a note earlier for you—which I opened, of course—”
“Of course,” Jennie sighed fatalistically.
“Don’t interrupt, Jane. All my many hours of instruction on deportment and still you—but never mind. The note says that the earl desires the pleasure of your company in the main saloon—that’s the huge room just off the foyer, the one that houses the Jones chimneypiece, my dear—at half past three of the clock today. My goodness, it’s that now! You’d best hurry, dear, but do let Goldie straighten your hair first.”
“There’s no time for that, Bundy. I’m late as it is,” Jennie said in reply, already moving toward the door. Now that she had made up her mind about the direction she wished this marriage to take, she was all at once bursting with the necessity to share her decision with Lord Bourne—whom she graciously acknowledged to possibly have some slight interest in the business.
THE EARL OF BOURNE was pacing the main saloon, glass in hand, looking about him with what he hoped was bored disinterest. This place is a far cry from your bachelor digs in the Albany off Piccadilly, even if Byron, Macaulay, and Gladstone shared the same address, Kit, my lad, he mused, positioning himself with one arm propped negligently (he hoped) upon the mantelpiece.
If only he could get over the disquieting feeling that at any moment some long-lost Wilde with a better claim to the title would come bursting through the door and roust him outside and back into the real world.
Kit had never dreamed he would one day inherit his uncle’s title, lands, and great wealth. In fact, the most he had hoped for—when he dared to hope at all—was for the old boy to leave him a broken pocket watch or some such useless trinket.
But fate works in strange ways; in this case by eliminating all close heirs by way of accident or unfortunate illness. And while Kit had been striving to make a name for himself as a soldier, his male relatives had all been conveniently dropping like flies in order to pave his way to the earldom.
And fate hadn’t stopped at the earldom either. Dame Fate, not one to indulge any mere mortal to the point where he might tend to get cocky, had then leavened Kit’s triumph a bit by saddling him with a totally unnecessary gift—a wife.
He abandoned his studied pose—his lordship reclining at his ease—to check the watch at his waist. His late wife, he pointed out to himself, just as there came a noise at the doorway and Jennie entered with more haste than decorum, skidding to an ignominious halt about three feet inside the double doors.
“I…um…I mean, Bundy…er…that is…you wanted to see…um, talk to me?” Now that’s an auspicious beginning, Jennie berated herself mentally, her outward grimace bringing a pained smile to the earl’s face.
Yes, infant, Kit replied silently, I do want to see you—waving goodbye as you ride out of my life. But he did not say the words. Jennie was his wife now, for good or ill, and they were just going to have to make the best of the cards Dame Fortune had so capriciously dealt them.
“Sit down, Jennie,” Kit said gently, then waited impatiently as she took up her seat on a straight-backed chair positioned at the far side of the room. “Would you like me to ring Renfrew for some tea? No? Then I suggest we get right down to it.”
Jennie jumped slightly—just as if he had suggested they lie down on the Aubusson carpet and proceed to make mad, passionate love—and Kit hastened to explain the reason for his summons. “We must organize this household, Jennie, as Renfrew and the skeleton staff my late uncle kept here are not sufficient to our needs if we mean to entertain during the Season.”
“We mean to entertain?” Jennie asked, trying to imagine herself in the role of hostess of this great mansion and failing dismally.
“We do. Unless that presents a problem?” Bourne inquired, deliberately needling her.
“Of course it doesn’t,” Jennie assured him through clenched teeth, wanting nothing more than to box his lordship’s ears. “I’ll set about hiring extra staff as soon as possible.”
“Renfrew will arrange things with a reputable agency, and you will only have to select from a group of eligible applicants.” Kit saw no possible way Jennie could land in the briers with the resourceful Renfrew to guide her.
“Oh,” Jennie murmured confusedly. “I had thought to place an advertisement about, as we do at home sometimes if the need arises.”
Kit quickly explained the folly of ever advertising for domestic help—heaven only knowing what sort of riffraff might then show up in Berkeley Square looking for a handout. At Jennie’s nod he promptly considered the matter to have been satisfactorily settled and went on to discuss a more delicate topic—one he had been secretly dreading to broach.
“Jennie,” he said gently, dropping to one knee beside her chair, “after giving the matter a good deal of thought, and with due consideration of your sensibilities and the uniqueness of our situation, I have decided not to ask for my husbandly rights just yet. I believe we should first become more comfortable with each other.”
“Oh, good!” Jennie exclaimed happily, before she could temper her response. “That is, I mean, why?…No! Don’t answer that. I don’t mean why, exactly. Disregard that if you will, please. What I mean to say is—thank you.” As Kit’s eyebrows shot up, she stumbled on hastily, “No! I didn’t mean that either, did I? I’m sorry I interrupted you, my lord,” she said, belatedly striving to behave like something more than completely brainless. “Please, continue. You were saying—”
“Actually, pet, I was done saying,” he told her, stifling his amusement at her obvious agitation. But this amusement changed rapidly to confusion as Jennie’s eyes took on a hard glint and her chin lifted in determination. “Now what?” he was then foolish enough to inquire.
Jennie, who should have been feeling nothing less than tremendous relief, had suddenly decided that the man in front of her was nothing less than the greatest beast in nature. How dare he decide not to exercise his rights? How dare he tell her anything? It was she who would do the telling!
As Kit watched, Jennie’s face did its little chameleon trick yet again and became soft and almost pleading in its woebegone expression. “Then you do not want me, my lord? I do not appeal to you—perhaps even repel you?”
Looking up at her, his heart touched by her wide, sad eyes, Kit protested passionately, “Of course I want you, infant. You appeal to me immensely. Isn’t that how we found ourselves in this situation in the first place?”
Now Jennie smiled in earnest. Rising to look down on her still-kneeling husband, she informed him brightly, “That is a great pity, my lord husband. For I do not want you, which is why I was so glad you requested this meeting. I was looking forward to telling you that you may have taken my hand in marriage, but that is all you will take from me.” So saying, and with her gape-mouthed husband looking on, she swept out of the room, at last looking every inch the countess.
CHAPTER FOUR
KIT ENTERED the dim main room of the Guards Club and cast his eyes about in the gloom with the alert, roving gaze of a man who has served on the Peninsula. He quickly spotted and nodded to several acquaintances, but it was not until his scrutiny was rewarded with the sight of one fellow in particular that he smiled and started across the uneven sanded floor of the converted coffeehouse.
“Ozzy, you old dog,” he called out loudly as he advanced on a painfully stylish young man of fashion sprawling at his ease at a table in the corner. “I knew I could count on you to be here.”
Ozzy Norwood, who had just then been profoundly contemplating a fly walking backward up the table leg and wondering that such powers would be given to a mere insect and yet denied one such as himself, was so startled at this violent intrusion upon his thoughts that his legs—which had been propped on a facing chair—slid from under him and his rump took up a closer association with the hard floor.
His mood, as he had over the years become accustomed to his own clumsiness, was not darkened by his ignominious position, and he swiftly if not gracefully regained his feet in time to be caught up in Kit’s enthusiastic bear hug of a greeting.
“Kit! Kit by damn Wilde! I’d heard you cashed it in at Badajoz,” Ozzy exclaimed when he could get his breath. “You’re no ghost, though. My bruised ribs can attest to that, by God! Let me loose, you great hairy beast, and let me look at you. What a sight you are, man.”
What Ozzy saw was his old friend and fellow officer: a little leaner, perhaps; a little tougher, most definitely; but those smiling eyes were still those of the Kit Wilde Ozzy had hero-worshiped since they were both in short coats. “You look wonderful, friend, and I mean it truly. Sit down. Where did you spring from? Last I heard you were wounded and not expected to make it. I took a ball in the shoulder in a damn silly skirmish in some benighted Spanish slum village soon after Badajoz and sold out—my heart just wasn’t in it, what with you gone and all—but I couldn’t get word of you anywhere. It was as if you fell off the face of the earth. Girl! Bring us a bottle of your finest! Sit down, I said, Kit, and stop standing there grinning like a bear. Have you nothing at all to say for yourself?”
Kit could only laugh and shake his head. “I find it gratifying in the extreme, Ozzy, that some things never change. You’re still chattering nineteen to the dozen, and woe betide anyone who dares to attempt to slide a word in edgewise.” Seating himself across the table from his friend, he took up the bottle the servant wench had brought and drank from it, saying, “Best order another for yourself, old man, as I’ve got plans for this one.”
“Girl!” Ozzy bellowed, thinking Kit was out to make a night of it and more than willing to match him drink for drink. “Bring a bottle. Bring a dozen bottles! Eh? Oh, yes, Kit, of course. And two glasses, you silly chit; what kind of heathens do you think you’ve got here?”
Three hours and more than a half-dozen bottles later, Kit and Ozzy were still sitting at the table, their reminiscences of the Peninsula having brought tears as well as smiles as their thoughts passed over events past and friends lost, and they were at last ready to speak about the present.
“Earl of Bourne, is it?” Ozzy repeated, clearly pleased for his old friend. “Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch. And there you were hobnobbing around the muck of Spain like the rest of us, just as if you was ordinary folk. Why ain’t you rubbing shoulders with the rest of the nobs at White’s or Boodle’s, instead of this lowlife at the bottom of St. James’s?”
“Oh, cut line, Ozzy. You belong to both those clubs, and Almack’s to boot, as I remember your tales of that woeful excuse for a select gathering spot for the haut ton and the ugly ducklings your mama forced you to bear-lead around the floor.”
“Snicker all you wish, you cynic,” Ozzy shot back, thinking to trump Kit’s ace, “but you’ll soon be hounding me to get you a voucher—need one, you know, if you’re on the hangout for a wife. Stands to reason you’ll be wanting to settle down now that you’re a blinkin’ earl.”
Kit drank deep from his glass. “I’ll take you up on that offer of securing a voucher, but I have to tell you, friend, I have been nothing if not thorough since last we met. Within a week of hitting these shores—having happily put those months of convalescence in Portugal behind me—I acquired a title, a large estate, a, I must say, considerable fortune, and a wife.”
Ozzy sat up straight in his chair, knocking his halffull glass over into his lap in the process. “Ain’t you the downy one! How could you get yourself tied up so fast? It’s not like you was hanging out for a wife so soon—no rich young bachelor would be so dense as to forgo the joy of wading through the debutantes for at least one Season on the town. Tell you what, you were in your cups—or suffering from some lingering fever caused by your wound. I’m right, aren’t I? Say I’m right, Kit, and then tell me her name. Is she pretty?”
“Put a muzzle on it, Ozzy,” Kit implored, his head beginning to reflect the combined assault of drink and his friend’s garrulous tongue. “Her name is Jane Maitland, and her father’s land runs alongside my estate.”
“Greedy bugger, ain’t you?” slipped in Mr. Norwood, earning himself a hard stare from the earl, who had hoped to find more sympathy from his oldest and best friend.
“That’s an insult, Ozzy, damned if it ain’t,” the new earl declared, slurring his words only slightly. “Damned if I won’t cut you dead when next we meet. Besides, Jennie’s a charming enough nitwit; I might have pursued her anyway, without her father threatening revenge if I didn’t do right by her.”
“You did wrong by her? And who’s Jennie? Thought you said her name was Jane.” Clearly Ozzy was perplexed. “You know, Kit, sometimes you don’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“I’ve been known to have that reputation,” Kit said ruefully. “Ozzy,” he continued, leaning forward across the table confidingly, “I need your word of honor that this goes no further.”
“Word of a gentleman!” Ozzy swore, then hiccupped. “I’ll be quiet as a tomb, I swear it.” He leaned forward to put his nose smack against Kit’s. “Spill your guts, my friend, Ozzy’s here.”
And so, as the dusk gave way to darkness, and before drunkenness turned to near insensibility, Kit told his tale to his awestruck audience.
When the story was done and Ozzy had commiserated with his friend’s ill luck, the question was raised: “And what are you going to do about the chit? Can’t wish her gone, can’t do her in, not without the father kicking up a fuss.”
“Do with her?” Kit repeated, concentrating on the mighty task of directing his hand in the general direction of the bottle before him. “I don’t see that I have to do anything with her. After all, Ozzy, how much trouble can one small female be?”
FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Kit was conspicuous in Berkeley Square only by his absence—a fact Jennie duly took note of, sent up fervent thanks for, and secretly credited to her masterful handling of that single interview the day following their hasty marriage. Sure that her parting shot had put her firmly in the position of power—with the tenor and direction of their marriage to be dictated solely by her—she felt she had left the earl with no option but to cool his heels while she became “more comfortable” with their delicate situation.
And she had been immensely “comfortable” in his absence, as Kit had seemed to abandon even his half-hearted suggestion that they get to know one another better. If the truth be told, there were times Jennie almost forgot she was married at all, pretending instead that she was in town for the come-out her father had promised, then conveniently forgotten to deliver. If only Renfrew would refrain from calling her “my lady” every time she so much as passed in the hallway. And if Bundy would only cease her endless sermons on the behavior befitting a countess (and the folly of thinking one could play with fire without being burned—as if Jennie’s inadvertent compromise was the act of a misbehaving child with Kit cast in the role of a highly combustible match). And if only Goldie would stop dropping into a comical knee-cracking curtsy each time Jennie looked her way—which had driven Jennie to walking about with her eyes averted in some other direction, leading to more than a few stubbed toes and bruised shins.
