“His Lordship wishes for me to tell you that he has been most unavoidably detained elsewhere, madam, sir, and to offer you refreshments until he returns.”
“Thank you, Gillett,” Brady said, taking hold of Abby’s pelisse as she slipped it from her shoulders, then handing it over to the butler. “I see your cruel master still has you locked up here against your wishes. Tell me, have you ever thought of simply running away?”
Gillett stiffened his already poker-straight posture, looking at Brady in a way he hadn’t seen since he’d been called in front of the headmaster after throwing a roll at Willie Wilkins after matins and bloodying the idiot’s nose. He’d never forgive Whiny Willie for not having the sense to duck, even if the fellow was a marquis now.
“Forget I mentioned it, old fellow. I should have stopped at ‘thank you,’ I imagine.”
Abby, who had been looking up at the high ceiling, the enormous, glittering chandelier hanging from a decorative stuccoed ceiling done in shades of gray-blue and mustard gold, brought herself back to attention. “Yes, indeed, thank you. I should think a pot of tea would be quite welcome?”
“As you wish, madam,” Gillett agreed, bowing, then leading the way toward a pair of carved wooden doors covered in thick, rich, ivory paint. He opened the doors with a flourish, then stood back as Abby and Brady entered ahead of him. “Oh, yes, forgive me. His Lordship also told me that I should offer Mrs. Harris’s services, if you should like a tour of the premises, madam.”
“Uh-huh,” was all Abby could manage in answer as she stopped in her tracks and looked around the immense drawing room, then walked forward again slowly, trying to drink it all in at once, blowing that to be impossible.
She’d never seen a higher ceiling, or one so heavily decorated with painted stucco. Curlicues, sprays of leaves, intricate borders deeply carved, a bevy of angels circling each other as they danced above her on a clear blue sky dotted with small, puffy white clouds.
And chandeliers. Chandeliers all over the ceiling.
And pillars. Golden-veined marble pillars marched along three of the papier-mache scrolled walls, the combination creating regal frames for paintings so large the figures depicted were life-size, seemed almost real.
Were they looking down their aristocratic noses at her?
A fireplace that could have heated the entire Backworth-Maldon house in Syston stood against the far wall. The mantel and chimneypiece reached nearly to the high ceiling, painted that same thick, creamy ivory, the whole of it intricately carved to look like a flower-filled trellis.
The half dozen windows overlooking the street rose from floor to ceiling, topped by grilled fanlights set deep into the walls. They let in light, sun, a feeling of space, of unlimited space.
Making Abby feel very small.
An Aubusson carpet woven of mustard gold carrying a design of soft green trellised squares joined at the corners by fragile clusters of delicate orange flowers stretched almost from wall to wall. A near square mile of carpet, to Abby’s mind. She stood at the edge of another world, and with no bridge to safely take her there, just the shock of having been transported into an alien land without warning.
In truth, the room could be called a garden. The drawing room resembled nothing more than it did an enormous, indoor garden. Abby felt as welcome as a slug the gardener found hiding beneath the roses, and as sure to be found out as an intruder.
What on earth was she doing here?
The room’s size was so considerable that three separate groupings of chairs and sofas, tables, and even chaises still left ample room for two card tables and their accompanying chairs, several delicate wooden chests, a pair of gilded, half-moon tables spaced along the wall of windows and, lastly, a gigantic glass-fronted chest twice as tall as Abby and half again as wide as itself, displaying an array of Chinese art that had to have cost the earth—and most of the moon.
Beautiful. The room could only be termed beautiful. And this was just one room in the mansion. This huge mansion, whispering of riches beyond her comprehension, and more than capable of chewing her up, swallowing her down, making her disappear forever. A nonentity, overshadowed, overpowered, most definitely out of her depth.
Icy panic gripped Abby, held her.
I can’t live here, she thought.
She held up her hands in front of her, began backing toward the door to the entrance hall as she tried to push the room away from her. “No,” she said weakly, shaking her head, “I can’t do this, Brady. Really, I can’t. I don’t belong here. God, Brady, does anyone belong here?”
“Rather intimidated, are you, Abby?” Brady suggested, putting his hand at the small of her back and propelling her forward into the room, out of Gillett’s earshot. “And here I thought nothing fazed you, my dear. Certainly not Kipp, or a marriage of convenience to a man you’ve just met, or staring down Madame Lucille when she dared to quote you that outrageous price on the pink tulle. I think the woman has probably taken to her bed, frightened that you’ll wish to shop in her establishment again.”
Abby whirled about to face him. “This isn’t amusing, Brady. What was I thinking? I’m not cut out for this. A widow, an orphaned daughter of a simple country squire—a woman of no consequence. I don’t have the background, the knowledge, the... oh, Brady, what am I going to do?”
He took her hands, led her over to one of the couches, gently sat her down. “It’s just a house, Abby. Floors, walls, ceilings...”
“No,” she interrupted, wishing her hands weren’t shaking, that she didn’t believe, just a little bit, that she might actually become sick all over the priceless Aubusson carpet. “This is so much more than a house, Brady. This—all of this—represents who the viscount is, what his viscountess should be. I’m Abigail Backworth-Maldon, Brady. The household staff at Syston is comprised of our cook, two female servants, and a gardener older than the dirt he scrabbles in while pretending to work. The staff here will run roughshod over me, as well they should, for I haven’t the faintest notion of how to go on in such a place.”
She hopped to her feet, began to pace. “I polish the silver myself, and it takes one short afternoon. There’s enough silver in this single room to keep a half dozen servants busy for a week!”
Brady sat back, crossed one elegantly clad leg over the other. “Well, then, that’s settled. You set a half dozen servants to polishing for a week. See how well you’re coping already?”
Abby balled her hands into tight fists. “That’s not the point! I was using the silver as an example, Brady, and you know it. I’m supposed to be in charge here, at His Lordship’s estates, easing his life, contributing something to justify my position. I can’t just make pretend puppy eyes at him in public, produce babies, and then say, oh yes, I’ve lived up to my end of the bargain, my lord, now may I please go traveling in Italy for the summer?”
She was panicking, and not without reason. But that didn’t mean Brady would help her out of her predicament.
Not when he knew in his heart of hearts that this endearingly odd young woman would be the making of his good friend Kipp.
Brady decided on a strategy.
He picked at a piece of lint that had settled on his knee. “I confess to not knowing you that well, Abby, but in our short acquaintance I had never thought you were a coward. I do believe you have disappointed me.”
Abby stopped pacing, slowly turned to look down at him, glare down at him. “Aren’t you supposed to stand up when a lady stands up? But don’t bother, please, as the last thing I’d wish to do is to discommode you in any way when you’re so obviously enjoying yourself at my expense, as you’ve been enjoying yourself at my expense, at His Lordship’s expense, since first we met. However, don’t try to insult me into believing I can do what I cannot possibly do, either. Or do you actually think I don’t know what you’re doing? I—who have used just the same sort of strategy a million times on my family.”
“Forgive me, Abby. I imagine I’m still wallowing in my own brilliance, and have not really considered things from your perspective. What do you wish me to do?”
She sighed, spread her arms, then let them drop to her sides. “Be my friend, I suppose. Be my friend, Brady, and help me!”
“Oh, if that’s all...” he said, turning toward the doorway as Gillett rolled in a refreshment table laden with, God forbid, even more silver. “Gillett? Mrs. Backworth-Maldon is to wed His Lordship this Friday, do you know that? Become his viscountess, come here to five, be his hostess, run his household. All those quite lovely things you must all have missed since your master’s lady mother passed away. Isn’t that nice?”
“Bra—dy.” Abby willed him to shut up, to stop “helping” her.
The butler set the small brake on the refreshment table, dusted his gloved hands against each other. “Yes, my lord. We are all aware of that fact, although I was not aware that I was to appear aware, if you take my meaning. However, I am now pleased, madam, to offer you my best wishes and those of all the staff. We look forward to serving you, madam.”
Brady smiled at Abby, who had sunk onto the couch beside him, moaning softly under her breath. “Splendid, Gillett, splendid! And, lucky, lucky you—you won’t have to look too far forward to find a way to serve the next viscountess. Will he, my dear?”
“I could cheerfully kill you, you know,” Abby whispered, then smiled up at the butler, who looked very much like a prince and not at all like a servant.
He did, however, look like he could be her friend. She’d never had much trouble making friends. Why should it be so different when she was a viscountess? And why couldn’t her servants also be her friends? If such things weren’t done in Society, she didn’t really want to know. Not when her entire future depended on the rightness of her instincts, the results of her own initiatives.
“Gillett,” she began formally, “thank you for your kind words. Truly. But His Lordship is correct, even if he’s the only one who really understood what he just said. I have absolutely no idea as to how to go on in an establishment of this size, I fear. None. And so,” she said, then paused to look at Brady, who nodded his agreement, “I would therefore hope to fling myself on your mercy, Gillett, yours and everyone on the staff, hoping that you may be able to assist me, to teach me all that I should know in order not to interrupt what I can only see as the absolutely flawless running of His Lordship’s household.”
“What do you say, Gillett, old man?” Brady asked as Gillett poured two cups of tea, a hand held steady for more than fifty years now trembling slightly in his sudden excitement. “Still want to run away? No, I didn’t think so. Now, why don’t you sit down here—right here—have yourself some refreshing tea and a nice little coze with the future viscountess, and I’ll just trip over to the drinks table and find myself something a little more familiar to my palate.”
“Sit down, sir? I couldn’t!”
Abby sensed that she had one chance, and one chance only, to make an ally of the proper, straitlaced butler; one chance to establish herself as mistress of this mansion while still gaining the help and respect, and, yes, the friendship, of the staff.
And she took it.
“Gillett” she said, rising to her feet, taking charge of the conversation, taking charge of her life so that she might gain the life she wanted, needed. “I may not know much, but I do believe I feel somewhat cheered in supposing that my lord Singleton here seems to know even less than I. May I please have that tour of the house you suggested earlier? With Mrs. Harris, is that correct? Although I do believe I should like to begin in the kitchens, the heart and soul of any good house. And, as in any good kitchen, I imagine there is a pot on the boil? I’m sure the earl can find something to do to amuse himself while we’re gone.”
“Yes, indeed, madam, there most certainly is, His Lordship most certainly can,” Gillett told her, almost but not quite smiling as he stood back, motioned for Abby to precede him into the foyer, walk toward the baize door she’d seen when first she entered the house.
Within ten minutes, Abby was seated at the large pine worktable in the vast kitchens, sharing a pot of tea and some fresh scones with the most powerful man in the Grosvenor Square mansion—including the viscount.
Within a half hour, she had met every member of the staff, carefully repeating each of their names inside her head so that she would never forget them. She offered them all scones, pastries, bread and butter, thick slices of ham—every delicacy the astonished and flattered chef had put on the table for her delectation.
Within an hour, she had the entire staff eating out of her hand, both literally and figuratively.
She couldn’t believe she’d been such a coward, that she’d been so frightened, so ready to tuck her tail between her legs and run away, give up her dream.
From now on, when it came to deciding who ran the viscount’s households, it would be Abby and the staff who would be completely in charge, and be would simply have to muddle through as best he could, trying to remember that this was what he’d wanted.
The thought made her smile.
~ ~ ~
The special license at last tucked safely in his pocket after a long morning of cajoling and nearly downright begging, Kipp entered the Grosvenor Square mansion and inquired of the young underfootman the whereabouts of his guests.
“His Lordship is corruptin’ Henry in the billiards room, my lord, Mr. Gillett said to tell you. And the nice young lady is off somewheres abovestairs with Mrs. Harris and a clutch of the maids. Heard some scrapin’ a while ago. I thinks they’re doin’ somethin’ to the furniture up there, begging your pardon, my lord.”
Kipp looked at the pimply-faced underfootman for long moments, long enough to wipe the smile off the boy’s face. “Very well, thank you, George.”
“Not a bit of it, Your Lordship. I mean, it’s your pleasure... my pleasure, Your Lordship. That is...”
With a wave of his hand, Kipp walked past the flustered boy, remembering that he was new to his position, having served the last two years as potboy in the kitchens at Willoughby Hall. Gillett had made great strides with George, but there still were some raw edges he might want to smooth. And the man wanted to leave him? How could he!
Kipp sought out Brady first, preferring not to think about what might be going on upstairs now that the managing Mrs. Backworth-Maldon was actually in his house. Rearranging the furniture, was she? The woman certainly didn’t waste any time, not that he hadn’t known that the running of his houses would soon be in her hands. He simply hadn’t expected her to jump in so fast, and with both feet.
The billiards room had once been his mother’s private study, a room she’d repair to in order to plan menus, make up invitation lists, interview prospective servants, consult with tradesmen, pen letters to her friends. Her stamp had been all over the room, from the light, flowered draperies on the tall windows to the watered-silk Chinese wallpaper, to the rose-colored couches and delicate white furniture.
He opened the door, quietly stepped inside, wishing, just for a moment, that he would see those watered-silk walls, his mother’s delicate white-and-gold writing table.
His mother’s private study had since been painted a dark, grass green, with the wooden floor bare of carpeting, racks of cues nailed to the walls, and an enormous, green-felt-covered billiards table eating up most of the remaining space. The optimal retreat for the wealthy bachelor.
The earl of Singleton was bent over the table, stripped to his shirtsleeves, employing a bridge as he balanced a cue in his right hand, squinted at the balls arrayed on the green felt. His right foot was awkwardly raised in the air behind him, for balance, and a lock of dark hair had fallen over his forehead, partially obscuring his vision.
“Brady?” Kipp ventured, amused by the sight in front of him. “How go the wars?”
“Not now, friend, I’m about to sink that lovely orange ball and win myself five million pounds. Right, Henry?”
“Just right, my lord,” the footman agreed. “Just about make you even, too, sir, by my reckoning.”
“Ha! Your lack of prowess at a most simple game never ceases to astound me, Brady. And not the orange ball, you idiot. Go for the blue. At least you have a chance of pocketing that one.”
Brady drew back the cue, shot it forward to send the cue ball moving, then cursed as he watched the orange ball seem to leap high in the air in reaction to being struck. It bounced away across the floor, banged into a corner before Henry gleefully retrieved it.
“The devil,” Brady said, standing up once more, still looking at the tabletop, wondering if the thing were possessed, and had cast a spell of ineptitude over him. He handed over both bridge and cue to Henry, who also accepted the five-pound note Brady shoved into his hand, then exited the room.
“Oh, well, Kipp. My performance is so very exemplary at so many things. It’s only fitting that there’s one small something in this world I have yet to conquer. Otherwise, I might become bored, don’t you think?”
“You’d give your eyeteeth to be able to play billiards, Brady,” Kipp told him, going to the drinks table and pouring them each a glass of wine. He handed one glass to his friend, then leaned a hip against the side of the billiards table. “How did your morning go with Mrs. Backworth-Maldon?”
Brady finished shrugging back into his coat, swallowed down the wine in one long gulp, then grinned at his friend. “She’s given me permission to call her Abby, much to my delight. And the morning went splendidly... somewhere in London. Unfortunately, not in Bond Street, although I thank you for asking. The morning most especially did not go well at Madame Lucille’s, where you told me to take Abby so that she might choose a proper gown for Friday. No, most especially not at Lucille’s, although she may still send you a bill.”
He held out his empty glass for Kipp to refill, grinned. “I’d pay it if I were you.”
Kipp drank his own wine, then went to pour them both another glass. He’d known it. Before he’d even asked Brady, he’d known it. He didn’t know why he knew it, but that didn’t really matter all that much. What really mattered was that his plan to have a convenient wife who politely stayed in the background, leaving him free to do as he wished, now seemed to have been a castle he’d built on rapidly shifting sands.
His initial impression had seemed so logical. Quiet little mouse of a widow of good but not exceptional birth. Commonsensical, able to run a household of fairly unmanageable people without so much as turning a hair. Honest, forthright, desperate enough to be agreeable to his fairly cold-blooded proposition, her head not stuffed with nonsense thoughts of undying love he couldn’t return, and unlikely to run off with some other man who’d been struck love-blind by her great beauty.
Rotter that he was—for his motives and conclusions did have the power to embarrass him—he still believed she was perfect in so many ways.
Besides, it was too late to back out even if he were to have second thoughts. He had the special license. He had personally written out and delivered the wedding notices to all the papers, set to be published on Friday morning. He had read the latest note from Roxanne, pleading with him to come to her tonight, so that they could “talk.” Burned the note in the fireplace in his study.
Besides, he didn’t want to back out, cry off, renege. Not really. Because that would mean starting over, heading back into the marriage mart, suffering through inane conversations with dewy-eyed debutantes, running the gamut of matchmaking mamas who all but tripped him as he walked by... looking pathetically alone and unloved when Merry and Jack returned from America in a few short weeks, a month at most.
“What happened at Lucille’s?” he asked now, motioning for Brady to precede him out of the room, back to the drawing room. “All I asked you to do was to please steer Abby toward a suitable gown, any of the three Lucille had already personally assured me she could have altered and hemmed in time for the ceremony, the ball. How difficult could that be?”
Brady plopped himself down on one of the couches; balanced the wineglass on one knee as he turned it about in his hand. “How difficult? Not at all difficult, if your fiancée were a moneygrubbing, fortune-hunting vixen, that is. As it turns out, the little dear has scruples. Nasty thing, scruples; I try to avoid them at all costs, myself. She refused to even look at anything until Lucille promised her the bill would come to her—not that it needed to, as she brought all of her funds with her, more than prepared to pay down her blunt on the spot. Twelve pounds six, as a matter of fact. All the money of her own that Abby has to her name.”
“Oh, God,” Kipp groaned, knowing he really didn’t want to hear any more.
“Yes, I believe Lucille did call on the Man for assistance at one point. Mon Dieu, madame! Alors!” Brady told him, enjoying himself very much, thank you. “Anyway, once Abby had been pinned into a most lovely gown, and when she started in inquiring as to prices...”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Oh, but I must. Please, it’s too delicious to keep to myself. And what I can tell you, friend, is that the morning pretty much slid downhill after that, with your dear affianced bride pointing out that robbery is robbery, no matter how one tries to dress it up in fine linen or, in this case, quite expensive white silk. Yes, upon reflection, I suppose you should be expecting some sort of bill from Madame Lucille. Oh, and did you know our dear Madame Lucille speaks a quite remarkable cockney when she’s overset?”
Kipp ignored his friend’s banter, to zero in on the crux of the matter. “So she didn’t come away with a gown? That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? No gown, no evening slippers. No shawl, no fan, no gloves. Does she really expect to greet our guests on Friday night dressed in one of the muddy gowns I’ve seen entirely too much of these past days? No, don’t answer me. I already know the answer. Lord, Brady, the ton will eat her up.”
“Yes, I pointed that out to her. And you know what? I don’t think she cares, at least not enough to accept anything as personal as a gift of clothing from a man not yet her husband. Those pesky scruples again. Prickly little thing, when she puts her mind to it.”
“Even when she’s barely trying,” Kipp ruminated quietly, then stopped his pacing to look up at the ceiling as a loud thump sounded above him. “And now, according to my source, she’s upstairs, pushing furniture around, for reasons I don’t think I want to understand. Christ, Brady, what have I done?”
“Well, old friend, if I were gullible enough to believe what you expect the world to swallow whole, you’ve tumbled into love with the dear girl.”
“No wonder so many of your friends still long to bloody your nose,” Kipp remarked, running a hand through his hair, not caring that he disturbed its already windswept style. “This is your way of telling me I was in entirely too much of a rush to have this marriage business settled, that I should have allowed you to pick my bride, isn’t it, or at least consulted you before proposing to Mrs. Backworth-Maldon. Abby. Do you really think you could have made a better choice?”
Brady averted his eyes, coughed into his fist.
“At least you can pretend to know when the safest thing you could do is remain silent while I admit what a fool I am,” Kipp said ruefully, as Gillett entered the room and politely asked if he could speak with His Lordship on a personal matter.
“Oh, please, not now, Gillett,” Kipp told him, feeling very much put upon for a man who had only a day earlier believed he’d successfully settled all of his problems. “I don’t think I am capable of hearing another well-prepared speech listing all the reasons you think will excuse your defection. I’ve got a wedding in three days, a ball that same night, and I won’t even begin to consider muddling through either without you. If you hold me in any affection at all, can’t this wait for another time?”
“I’m sorry, Your Lordship, but I feel I must speak. I’ve come to retract my request to leave your service, my lord,” Gillett said as Brady snorted into his wineglass. “Having met the young lady, and having most thoroughly approved of her I can only consider it a favor to your late mother if I were to be of any and all assistance possible to the future viscountess for as long as she should require it. Sir.”
“Well, there you go, Kipp. Gillett approves. You can’t hope for more than that, can you?”
Kipp looked at his butler, to his friend. His friend who looked as if he was in the midst of appreciating a very fine, very private joke.
Something was going on. Kipp didn’t consider himself a brilliant man, but neither did he think himself so thick that he couldn’t sniff out a conspiracy when it stared him straight in the face.
And then it struck him. If Abigail Backworth-Maldon could run herd on her eccentric brothers-in-law, on her scatterwitted niece and supposedly difficult to handle but so far blessedly unseen nephew, on the rather hazy-looking woman who was her sister-in-law... then managing his household, his servants, his friends—perhaps all of England and parts of Wales and Scotland—couldn’t possibly be easier for her.
That was one of the reasons he’d picked her, after all. But, being a woman, it would not be enough for Abby to “handle” them all. She would need to conquer them, just as she’d damn well better not hope to conquer him.
The woman was amassing allies, that’s what she was doing. Brady, Gillett, probably everyone belowstairs from the lowest serving maid to the housekeeper. She was making herself indispensable, even as he hadn’t had any great need for her management before she came onto the scene.
She was going to make damn good and sure that, once she became his viscountess, she stayed his viscountess, even if he had a change of mind.
She was going to be everything he wanted of her. And, being an intelligent woman, she had enlisted his good friend Brady to help her succeed, even brought the defecting Gillett around her thumb. She was smoothing out his life even as she inveigled herself into every last inch of it.
Was this a good thing? Was this a bad thing? Would marriage to Abby make his life easier, as he’d hoped? And, if it would, as he still felt sure it would—hoped it would—why did he feel so uneasy? So threatened. Maybe even vulnerable.
And, at the bottom of it, did it matter?
“I don’t want to know what’s going on here, do I, Brady?” he asked at last, his temples starting to pound.
“No, old friend, I don’t think you do,” Brady answered, chuckling. “Oh, and Gillett? You’ve got a few crumbs on your jacket,” he ended, before throwing back his head and laughing as the so-proper and so-shocked Gillett brushed away the evidence of his tea party with Abby, bowed, and quickly left the room.
In fact, Brady kept right on laughing until Kipp stomped out of the room, on his way up the stairs, his teeth gritted, knowing he had been left with no other option than to commend Abby on whatever havoc she’d been wreaking in his life in the name of helping him.
He halted on the second stair from the top, suddenly realizing that he was feeling rather angry with Merry for having gotten him into this mess.