.
chastising myself for being seven kinds of fool.”
“Somebody should,” the valet answered, nodding his periwig-topped head. “It will take me days to brush all the road dirt from your buckskins, if they are to have so much as a prayer of ever being again presentable, which, sadly, I very much doubt. I’ll continue in my duties, then, my lord, if you don’t need me.”
“I would no doubt perish without you, Wigglesworth,” Justin assured the man. “Carry on.”
Justin was only half teasing, and both men knew it. Not that Justin needed his valet to survive. Not literally, and not since Bonaparte had been caged a second time and the world was again free to muck itself up without him. But it was Wigglesworth who still kept the facade of Lord Justin Wilde intact, and for a man like Justin, who’d felt himself in need of concealment and for so many years and so many reasons, the foppish, overdressed, fussy little fellow remained the perfect foil.
Plus, Wigglesworth understood the complete necessity of never overstarching one’s shirts. One should never undervalue such talent.
“Still no sign of an Austrian or Czech flag in the harbor, Wigglesworth. I shudder to think we might be forced to endure another day in this dreary hovel before the lady arrives. The prince’s man assured me he’d had word her journey was proceeding according to plan as of two days ago.”
“A man of your sensibilities, my lord, could not but be rendered maudlin by such a thought. If the lady’s ship does not appear by three, I shall make it a point to prepare your supper myself. You must not be made to endure both this inadequate chamber and a less than excellent repast.”
“Be sure to take our good friend and personal protector Brutus with you again if that unhappy event should become mandatory,” Justin warned, as Wigglesworth remained the only man in all of Creation to believe it was his consequence, and not the hulking Brutus’s mountainous physique (and fearsome expression) that opened the doors to sanctuaries like inn kitchens. Bless Brutus, he was an army unto himself, and invaluable to Justin.
“Yes, my lord.” Wigglesworth brushed some imaginary lint from the foaming lace jabot at his throat. He was a man who believed in his heart of hearts that Mr. Brummell should have been horse-whipped for convincing the gentlemen to give up their silks and satins and laces in favor of looking as if they were all a flock of penguins heading off to some perpetual funeral.
He fluttered about the inn bedchamber now like a small exotic bird himself, uncertain where to land.
Poor Wigglesworth. The man had a mind alive with bees….
Wringing his delicate hands, the valet finally flitted to the dressing table, counting for only the fourth time the number of brushes, combs and other silver-backed necessities of the well-groomed English gentleman to be sure none had slipped into the swift and crafty hands of the inn servants who had visited the chamber to light the fire or deliver his lordship’s breakfast, the fine repast Wigglesworth himself had overseen being created in the kitchens.
“Will you be climbing down from your usual worrywart alts anytime soon, Wigglesworth?” Justin at last inquired lazily from the chair beside the window before the man could suffer some injury to himself for lack of anything to do. “Or will I be forced to find a bootjack in this decrepit establishment in order to remove my boots? You did notice this spot on the left toe, did you not?”
Wigglesworth threw up his hands in horror and joy at the same time. How he needed to be needed. “Merde! A spot? A smudge? Say it is not so!”
Justin rubbed lightly beneath his nose, as it wouldn’t do to allow his valet to see him so amused at his expense. “Wigglesworth? Do you have any idea what you’re saying, have been saying ever since you broke bread in the common room last night with the chevalier’s valet?”
“Your pardon, my lord?” Wigglesworth asked as he ripped through the contents of one of the many pieces of luggage the baron required for an overnight stay on the road, at last coming out with a fresh white cloth and a tin of boot black. “And what is it I would have been saying?”
“Merde, Wigglesworth. You have been almost constantly parroting the word merde all the morning long.”
Wigglesworth dropped a small rug fashioned just for the purpose in front of his lordship’s chair before carefully placing his mauve satin-clad knee to it and motioning for his lordship to, if he pleased, lift the leg currently bearing the offending footwear.
“Yes, I have, haven’t I? Frenchmen are by nature a filthy people, but their language is quite melodious, don’t you think? So much better to say merde than mercy, which sounds so…plebian.”
Justin allowed his good angel and his naughty angel a few moments of debate before deciding he should be a better man. “Merde is not French for mercy, Wigglesworth. It is, in point of fact—and forgive my blushes—the word employed most often by the French in referring to…excrement.”
Wigglesworth, who prided himself on having risen from the depths of being put out as a chimney sweep in Piccadilly forty years previously to the heights of caring for arguably the most exquisite gentleman in this or any realm, looked up at the baron with tears in his eyes. “I am devastated, my lord. Ashamed. Aghast. Humiliated.”
“Yes, I should think you would be. Shall I give you the sack?” Justin asked him as Wigglesworth applied boot black and began rubbing an invisible mar with everything that was in his pitifully thin body.
“If it would be your wish, my lord.”
Damn. It was difficult to joke with Wigglesworth. The man was much too committed, too serious. “No, I shan’t dismiss you. After all, if you left you’d probably take Brutus with you. I would miss his conversation.”
“Brutus doesn’t speak, my lord,” the literal-minded Wigglesworth pointed out as he gave one last swipe at the boot and stood up once more.
“Precisely. Which puts him head and shoulders above most people. He can be counted on to never say anything boring. Ah, much better, thank you. I shall now not be ashamed to show myself in public.” He looked toward the window once more, and frowned to see a new flag blowing in the breeze. “Wigglesworth, it would seem the lady’s ship has just dropped anchor. Promise me you will not flee screaming from the docks if she should not be all you believe necessary in my wife.”
“I will do my utmost to contain myself,” the valet promised. “It remains to be known what you will do, my lord.”
Justin accepted his hat from the valet and headed for the door. “Prinny took refuge in cherry brandy, as I’ve heard it told, when he first espied his affianced bride. I think I’d rather face my potential demon fully sober. Although, if our worst fears are confirmed, I suppose a blindfold as I enter the bedchamber for the first time wouldn’t come amiss.”
“We shall hope for the best, then, my lord. It’s important that she’s presentable, if she is to bear our name, if you are to have her hand on your arm as you go about Society. Pleasing to the eye.”
Justin hesitated at the door, and Wigglesworth ran forward to throw it open. “Physical beauty is over-rated, you know. As long as she is passably intelligent and well-spoken, and does not eat little children or frighten the horses, I believe we’ll term the thing a success. Not that we have a choice. We must also remember that this marriage is not the lady’s fault. Why, she may take me in complete dislike.”
“Never, my lord,” Wigglesworth said, bristling. “She is the most fortunate of women.”
“Oh, hardly that. I fear I am not an easy man.”
“You are a very good man, my lord,” the valet said, following the baron into the hallway.
“Why, Wigglesworth, I don’t believe, in our nearly half-dozen years of acquaintance, you have ever before so insulted me.”
Brutus, stepping out from the shadows to make one of his own with his considerable height and breadth, made that snuffling noise that passed for laughter, anger, bemusement and most any other