Lords of Scandal: The Beleaguered Lord Bourne / The Enterprising Lord Edward. Кейси Майклс
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