“My father didn’t believe in lady’s maids or companions. He said that—”
But Quill interrupted what he sensed was a flood of information about Gabby’s unconventional father. He didn’t think that Peter would be able to take any more revelations.
“I am soon to be a member of Gabby’s family, Peter. There can be no hint of impropriety if I escort my sister-in-law to her chamber.”
“She’s not yet your sister-in-law!” Peter snapped.
Gabby’s heart sank. Peter didn’t want to marry her. That was clear. She shook off the hand Quill had slipped under her arm.
“Do you not wish to marry me, sir?” Her voice was huskier than normal, due to the tears that were backing up her throat.
Peter gaped.
Lucien put Phoebe on her feet and they soundlessly retreated together to the other side of the chamber. Phoebe might be a mere five years, but she had an instinctive sense of propriety.
“Because we could—we could make some other arrangement,” Gabby said miserably. “I certainly never thought to force you to do anything that you didn’t wish to do.”
Quill was horrified at Gabby’s insight. “Of course Peter wishes to marry you,” he injected, his tone rough. He grabbed her elbow. “Peter is right. You should be in your chamber, changing your attire!”
Gabby ignored him, looking up at her fiancé. “Why didn’t you tell my father that you were not happy with this arrangement before I traveled all the way from India?” Her voice was choking now. “Your father’s letter said that you were…that you were …”
Quill gave Peter a look over Gabby’s bowed head that shook his younger brother to his toes.
Peter reached out and took Gabby’s hand again. “You quite misunderstood me, Miss Jerningham—Gabby. I am looking forward to marrying you.” And when he met Gabby’s drenched eyes, Peter almost felt he could do it. She was so pitiful, standing there in her ragged, stained clothing. His eyes softened. After all, her lack of distinction likely had more to do with the lack of mantua-makers in India than with her own sense of dress.
“My tone was sharp because I was—am—mortified by the deplorable conduct of our butler. I felt all your anguish when I realized the accident that had befallen you. In fact, I believe that I shall speak to my father about having Codswallop dismissed. We cannot tolerate a servant in this household who would act in such a reprehensible fashion. Please believe that my feelings about you are quite firm.
“I can hardly wait for our nuptials,” he added, rather more uncertainly.
Gabby took a deep, shuddering breath. The sight of Peter’s slender white hand, adorned with one tasteful signet ring, mesmerized her.
The hand vanished as Peter realized that his future wife was likely nonplussed by his indelicacy, given that he had held her hand beyond the permissible six seconds.
“I shall escort you to your chamber,” he said, and took Gabby’s arm, drawing her toward the door.
She cast a rather desperate glance back at Quill.
He smiled reassuringly. “I will arrange for Phoebe to be housed near your chamber, Gabby.”
Gabby bit her lip and nodded. It seemed ungracious to plead that Quill accompany them. A mere hour or two ago she had considered Quill a formidable and terrifying presence; now Peter’s querulous, modish accents were terrifying her in quite a different manner. Helplessly, she allowed Peter to draw her into the hallway and up the stairs, listening numbly as he deposited her in a light, airy chamber papered in blue.
“Will Phoebe be in the chamber next to mine?” she asked, as Peter was bowing his way out of the room.
“Phoebe? Phoebe?”
“Phoebe is the child with Mr. Boch,” Gabby explained, only just realizing that Phoebe had not been introduced. “You see, Phoebe was traveling on the Plassey as well, and when her relatives did not appear at the wharf after the ship docked, your brother arranged to bring her here.”
Peter pursed his lips. “It seems most unusual,” he observed. “I cannot fathom why you did not leave her with the ship’s captain. Surely her relatives will suffer unnecessary anxiety if they are unable to locate her.”
“Perhaps you are right. But the problem is that we were not entirely sure whether Phoebe’s living relative—a Mrs. Emily Ewing—ever received the letter recounting the death of her sister and brother-in-law. When Mrs. Ewing did not appear at the wharf, I thought it best to keep Phoebe with me, because what if it takes some time for Mrs. Ewing to be located? Most of the crew of the Plassey disembarked immediately. We were blown far off course, and they were eager to return to their families. I was not at all sure who would be in charge of Phoebe.”
She paused. “I’m rattling on. Please forgive me.”
Peter glanced at the stained glove resting on his arm, and she snatched her hand back. “Not at all,” he said politely, and bowed again. “I can see that you had no alternative other than to bring the child with you. I will arrange to have Mrs. Ewing located.” He bowed yet again and backed out of Gabby’s chamber.
Gabby sank onto the bed and stripped off her gloves. Tears rose to her eyes. Peter may not be set against the idea of marriage, as she had thought for a mad moment, but he was so cool, so self-contained. Obviously, propriety meant everything to him. The tears snaked down her cheeks. It was as if she were tailormade to put him out of countenance. He was on a first-name basis with the future king of England—calling him Prinny!—and she was just as butterfingered as she always was.
Why, but why, did she tell that lie about Codswallop? Peter seemed so horrified by her disarray that the fib just flew out of her lips. What must Quill think of her? She should have confessed. Except that if Peter knew it was her blunder…He would never marry her if he knew what a cowhanded mess she’d made of a simple thing like pouring tea. And she couldn’t go back to her father. Not to her father and his sharp-tongued admonishments as he outlined her many faux pas.
She took a shuddering breath. She simply had to become more graceful, that was all. More like the kind of woman Peter would wish to marry.
There was a scratch at her door. Gabby hastily scrubbed at the tearstains on her cheeks and stood up.
“Enter!”
Quill’s deep voice answered her. “I have brought Phoebe to see you. She seems to have the fixed notion that you might have fled back to India without her.”
Gabby promptly knelt on the floor and stretched out her arms to the little girl. “Sweet, Phoebe, I would never, never have left you here alone.”
The child flew into her arms like a carrier pigeon, Quill thought, watching Gabby rock Phoebe back and forth and whisper into her hair. Lucky Phoebe. He wrenched his thoughts away and strolled across the room to look out the window at his gardens.
“Peter doesn’t mean to be critical,” he said suddenly. “He has a high opinion of his own consequence, but he’s a very good sort, for all that.”
Gabby answered at cross-purposes. “Is there any chance that your father might let Codswallop go?”
Quill turned around, even though the sight of Gabby cuddling Phoebe gave him a queer feeling about his heart. “Feeling guilty, are you?” He grinned at her.
Gabby felt too ashamed to respond to his teasing. “I cannot conceive why I fibbed, Quill,” she said earnestly. “It was just that Peter looked so horrified—”
“I think it was quite a useful lie, as these things go,” Quill pointed out.
“He is right, Miss Gabby,” Phoebe piped up. “Don’t you remember that you told me that a lie was acceptable if it made the person feel better? And Mr. Dewland felt much better once he thought that the butler ruined your gown.”
“From the mouths of babes,” Quill murmured.
Gabby gave him a sharp glance. “It’s all very well for you to make fun,” she pointed out. “I have told a terrible fib about poor Codswallop, and his injuries are actually my fault!”
She looked so dejected that Quill felt a qualm of sympathy. “Don’t worry about Codswallop.
My father would cut off his right hand before he dismissed the fellow—he’s been in the household for years. I’ll go down and bring him your sincerest apologies, how would that be?”
“I shall do it myself,” Gabby said with resolution.
“You most certainly will not!” Quill retorted. “Ladies do not descend into the servants’ quarters with impunity, Gabby!”
“When it comes to one’s own culpability, propriety should stand aside,” Gabby responded. “I’m quite sure that Papa would say so.”
“Your father sounds most peculiar,” Quill observed. “At any rate, Phoebe is right. Peter is now feeling quite happy about the whole episode. It wouldn’t be fair if you leapt into another indelicacy before he’s even recovered from glimpsing your ankles.”
Gabby colored and looked down at her dress. The ripped section of her gown exposed her ankles above her half boots. She met Quill’s eyes as he, too, looked up from her hem. Something in the depth of his eyes gave her a simmering sensation deep in her stomach. She glanced down again. They were perfectly unremarkable ankles, trimly clad in white cotton. And she didn’t believe for a moment that the sight of them stirred Peter in any way.
Quill was discovering that, in fact, his punctilious brother might have been right when he forbade him to accompany Gabby to her bedchamber. Perhaps it was the intimacy of the nearby bed that was making his blood throb. The mere glimpse of Gabby’s slender ankles had thrown him a heady vision of her legs under that drab—and now indecent—gown.
“I forbid you to visit the servants’ quarters,” he said abruptly. “There is no call to throw my brother into more of a frenzy than he is likely to suffer in the natural course of things.”
Gabby’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that cryptic phrase, in the natural course of things? I gather you are implying that my espoused husband is going to suffer by marrying me?” she asked. “That he will suffer because…because I am such a bad bargain?”
“He won’t suffer any more than every man does in his marriage,” Quill said. “Loss of bachelor freedom and all that. That’s why they call it ‘leg-shackling.’
But Gabby, of course, was not done talking. “You forbid me? What right have you to forbid me to do anything that I wish?”
The corner of Quill’s mouth twitched. “In the absence of my father, I am the master of the household, you know.”
A little frown crooked Gabby’s brow. Now that she thought about it, it was obvious Quill was considerably older than Peter.
“But I thought—” She broke off. She could inquire later why her father thought she was marrying the viscount’s heir, when in fact she was marrying a younger son. Instead, she changed the subject. “Phoebe needs to be taken to bed.” Her young friend had succumbed to the anxieties of the day and fallen fast asleep in her lap.
“Mrs. Farsalter has appointed a housemaid to look after the child,” Quill said, observing despite himself the way in which Phoebe’s head nestled against Gabby’s breast. “Shall I carry her into the next room?”
Gabby looked at him and pursed her lips. “Will your leg pain you? Perhaps we might carry Phoebe together. She’s not very large, and if you could carry her head and shoulders, I could carry her legs.”
Quill scowled. “I exercise with dumbbells every day, Miss Jerningham. I can certainly hoist a small child into the next room.”
“Dumbbells? What are dumbbells?”
“Short bars weighted at each end with a knob. After my accident I had a good deal of difficulty moving my limbs. We found a German doctor, Trankelstein, who believes that one must force injured limbs back into service by exercising with dumbbells that he devised for the purpose.”
Gabby’s sympathetic brown eyes rested on him for a moment like a caress. Quill shivered. Why was it that it didn’t really bother him when Gabby referred to his disabled limb, whereas he was thrown into a bitter rage when anyone else did so? He scooped up the little girl and carried her into the bedchamber next door.
As Gabby was introducing herself to the housemaid and arranging to have Phoebe’s clothing removed for cleaning and mending, Quill lingered in the doorway, unable to tear himself away.
She was an annoying, clumsy, plump, untidy woman.
She was a seductive jade whose sooty eyelashes and luxurious hair were begging for kisses.
She was an untidy baggage who had fibbed her way out of an unpleasant spot.
She was the first woman in years who spoke to him as if his lame leg was merely an inconvenience.
Obviously he should avoid her at all costs.
He straightened up and left the room without saying good-bye. An incivility, he thought to himself on the way down the staircase.
Incivility is sometimes warranted by a man’s instinct for self-preservation.
Quill headed for his study with the blind determination of an exhausted plow horse that smells his barn up ahead. He threw himself into his neglected reports, poring over the table of figures that summed up the reasons Quill might be desirous to hold shares in Mortlake & Mudland, Victuallers to the Crown.
And yet, when a footman opened the door and announced that Quill had a visitor, he didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t bring himself to give a hang about Mortlake & Mudland. A bitter loneliness was twining around his heart and making it impossible to concentrate. It was even threatening to cast him into self-pity. Quill had learned years before, in the face of the world’s unrelenting sympathy, that to pity oneself was the way to a morbid hell.
But he was surprised when he read the card. Lord Breksby was the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, on the verge of retirement, or so they said. They had only the slimmest of acquaintances with each other.
Breksby bustled in, rubbing his hands and looking not at all like a man on the edge of retirement. “Good day, sir! I trust you are not overly inconvenienced by my importunate visit?”
Quill ushered him to a chair, wondering not a little what had brought Breksby out of his elegant office in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Downing Street.
“I called to speak to your father, not realizing he was out of the city.”
Quill nodded. “I would be pleased to send him a message. Or, if your visit is a delicate one, I would be more than happy to give you my father’s direction in Bath, Lord Breksby.”
“There’s nothing secret about my visit,” Breksby said jovially. “As a matter of fact, I was calling to congratulate your father on young Mr. Peter’s upcoming nuptials. Heard you will soon be welcoming the presence of Jerningham’s daughter in London. By Jerningham I mean the younger one, of course. Richard Jerningham, brother of the late duke.” Almand, duke of Jerningham, had died recently, leaving the dukedom to his fourteen-year-old son.
“Miss Jerningham arrived today,” Quill observed cautiously. Every nerve was alert. Breksby could not possibly have journeyed over here just to exchange chitchat.
“I won’t beat about the bush,” Breksby said. “We need your father to help us, Dewland. Or perhaps I should say, we need Miss Jerningham’s help.”
Quill frowned.
“Quite right,” Breksby said in response to his unspoken criticism. “Why on earth would the English government need aught from a gently bred young lady? But the fact is that Gabrielle Jerningham’s father is queer in the stirrups. And I’m afraid that no one realized quite how queer until recently.” Breksby’s tone was grim.
“What has he done?”
“It’s less what he’s done than what he’s supporting. He’s put himself up against the East India Company over a matter of internal politics and one of the Indian rulers.”
Quill thought it over. Given that he had been at one time a major proprietor of East India stock, he tended to hear about many of the wrangles in which the company engaged its army. In the previous year, the army had attacked the fortress of Bharatpur, leaving some three thousand persons killed or wounded—and failed to gain Bharatpur, naturally.
“Is the problem to do with the Holkar region?”
Breksby looked unsurprised at Quill’s knowledge of internal Indian politics. “Precisely. Holkar is in the Marathas—the central region of India, you know.”
“The Marathas are not owned or governed by the company,” Quill observed.
“Just so. And that is why I am speaking to you, rather than to anyone at India House or any of the representatives of the governor-general. It is the opinion of quite a few of us in the government that the Board of Control is not sufficiently curbing the, uh, warlike nature of the company’s army. We have been working in a quiet sort of way to make our opinion known.”
Quill did not reveal by so much as a flick of an eyelash what he thought of their “quiet” methods.
But Breksby did not achieve his current eminence for nothing. “I know, I know,” he said with a sigh. “Our efforts are undoubtedly insufficient. Be that as it may, Lord Richard Jerningham has apparently taken matters into his own hands—and in a way that threatens the entire Marathas region.”
“What’s he done?”
“Were you aware that the current ruler of Holkar had gone around the bend?”
“Tukoji Holkar? I heard some rumors,” Quill said cautiously. Actually he had heard that Holkar was addicted to the cherry brandy supplied to him by East India men.
“Utterly cracked,” Breksby confirmed. “Sat around all day swilling brandy until he went ‘round the bend. Apparently his relatives have him tied up with rope and are feeding him only milk. I gather there are a couple of illegitimate heirs waiting around like jackals in the wings. But Tukoji does have a legitimate heir.
“The problem is that Jerningham has secreted that heir away somewhere.”
Quill blinked. “Why on earth would he do that?”
“Supposedly the heir is cracked, too. Jerningham believes that if we put a half-wit on the throne of Holkar it will give the East India Company an inside track to the Marathas. He wants an illegitimate son on the throne and the company out of the region.”
“And you believe that Miss Jerningham knows something of this situation?”