The Waltzing Widow/Smith Page 6

  Tony stayed discreetly away from Chenely for a few days, and neither Avedon nor Lady Sara went near Rose Cottage. The latter was occupied with arranging her garden party, and Avedon stood too high on his dignity to be seen hanging around the meadow.

  The men continued moving earth around, making a deal of noise and generally having such a holiday as they had never before enjoyed. The Percys were much discussed at Chenely, but there was no direct news of them. The servants, who could have told them the whole tale, were reluctant to receive Avedon’s wrath.

  On the evening of the third day, Mrs. Percy’s nerves were frayed from all the commotion, and she retired early to her dusty chamber. Avedon’s frustration at not knowing what was going on reached a peak, and he had his mount saddled up. With great inconvenience he worked his way through the meadow to Rose Cottage. He arrived powdered in dust, with his hands pricked from a detour into nettles to reach the stable, and his cravat disarranged from branches flying against him. He surveyed with grim satisfaction the damage done to his road and the piles of earth all around the exterior of the cottage.

  At the rear he saw one of Tony’s milchers tethered to a post, grazing idly. He uttered a low curse just before his lips clenched angrily. The henhouse of wire and wood had been hastily constructed. Movement within told him it was already stocked. He went around to the front and stopped short. His eyebrows rose when he spotted the seedlings planted in what used to be a lawn. Mounds of dirt that surely held cucumbers had been formed along the west side. Other neat rows bespoke carrots and onions.

  Very much accustomed to having his way, Avedon was vexed with the ladies’ tactics. His nostrils pinched, but there was an unwilling wisp of admiration, too, at such high initiative and low cunning.

  He fully expected to find Tony inside and went to the door ready to haul him out by the ear. He was greeted by a butler—such ostentation, a butler in a cottage—and shown into the parlor, where Lucy sat at the tambour frame in a state of the utmost serenity, to judge by her placid smile. The butler had alerted her to Avedon’s arrival, and she had had time to compose herself.

  “Good evening, Lord Avedon,” she said very civilly, with just a glint of battle showing in her dark eyes. “So kind of you to drop by this evening.” She cast a bland look at his disheveled toilette and said, “And what a job you had reaching us, too. You took pity at our being cut off, I assume?”

  He batted at his dusty trousers while trying to think what to say. “Is Miss Percy out this evening?”

  “How could she be? She doesn’t have wings. She has retired early. The dust and noise bother her a little. If you feel your reputation can withstand sitting alone with me, I shall invite you to sit down.”

  “Thank you. I have no fear for my reputation.”

  “Nor I for mine,” she said demurely. “My being a widow allows me a certain latitude in social matters.” Avedon took a seat, and she continued, “Dear Tony usually accompanies me in the evening, but he has deserted me tonight.”

  This speech was intended to irritate her visitor, and did so to a satisfying degree. Avedon’s brows rose and his lips tightened. “Indeed,” he said.

  “Oh, my, yes, I don’t know what we should have done without him in our hour of distress. So very kind of him to insist on giving us a cow and hens, and supplying our every need now that we are cut off from the world. He sent over a couple of his men to put in our garden, just in case the laying of the tiles should be delayed. I daresay using your own untrained men instead of the crew from Canterbury must set the work back a little.” Lucy continued plying her needle as she spoke.

  Avedon was left without a word to say. His attack turned into a defense, and he muttered something about getting on with it, since the plans were made. “Where is Tony this evening?” he asked, to cover his embarrassment at being caught dead to rights.

  “His mama returned late this afternoon,” she replied. The incongruity of her telling him details of his own family delighted Lucy. “Cousin Morton came with her for a visit. You must forgive my calling him by such a familiar name, but Tony always calls him so, and I truly do not know whether Morton is his first or last name.”

  “Morton Carlton is his name.”

  “I should be learning these things.” Lucy lifted her eyes from her work and smiled boldly at Avedon at this thrust, which conveyed that she hoped to join the family.

  Avedon felt a burning sensation in his throat and said, “These details are not likely to be of much interest to you once you leave. Have you considered my offer to remove to another place? I have found a cottage quite similar to this—half timbered, with leaded windows.”

  “So very thoughtful of you, but we have no intention of removing at all. In fact, we like it so well we may spend our full twelve months here, and not just the summer as we originally planned.”

  He was through with controlling himself and flared into a towering rage. “You waste your time and money, madam, if you think to marry Lord Bigelow. When he enters into marriage, in ten years’ time, it will not be to a soldier’s widow five or ten years his senior, but to a lady of his own kind and station.”

  “Tony tells me he is only six months short of reaching his majority. Your careful perusal of my face has misled you, sir. I am not thirty years old, nor even twenty-five, but scarcely twenty-two.”

  “I tell you quite frankly, your age is the least of your disadvantages. Your circumstances are in every way ineligible.”

  “You know nothing of my circumstances, sir.”

  “I know you are an officer’s widow, living on your late husband’s half pay. Don’t try to con me, you are not wealthy. If there were property in the family, you would have some better place to go to than a hired cottage. Your social position is infinitely inferior to my nephew’s, you are too old for him, and your manners are too free by half. Your persistence in hanging on where you are so patently not wanted will yield you nothing but a very disagreeable summer.”

  “I am wanted by your nephew,” she pointed out. Lucy was so happy to have got Avedon into a pelter that she managed to control her own temper, though it was difficult.

  “I am in control of my nephew,” he said categorically. “I repeat my offer to move you elsewhere.”

  Lucy’s nostrils dilated and she said in a tightly controlled tone, “Where was it you had in mind, milord? Coventry, perhaps?”

  “We have already discussed a suitable destination at our former meeting. Tunbridge Wells is where I usually send Tony’s flirts.”

  “Is it indeed? I take leave to tell you, Lord Avedon, that you will not send me there or anywhere else. I am here, and I shall stay. I have a signed contract for this hovel, for which I might add, I am paying an exorbitant five hundred pounds a year. Don’t think I couldn’t have Tony this month if I wanted him.”

  “I will be more than happy to refund the five hundred and another five hundred with it.”

  Lucy’s eyes flashed dangerously and her color mounted. “Are you trying to buy me off? Yes, you are. I expect you have the check in your pocket, on which you have already stopped payment. I recognize that trick.” She came to a gasping stop.

  Avedon examined her with a sardonic grin. “I am surprised you choose to admit it, ma’am. No, I would not attempt to weasel out of payment on such an experienced shrew as yourself. How much did you screw out of your last victim?”

  “Oh!” It was a squeal of outrage. “How dare you insult me under my own roof?”

  “If you care to step outside, I will undertake to insult you more fully.” Her hands were rigid, clasping and unclasping her skirt. Examining them, he noticed she wore no wedding ring and began to wonder if she was married at all.

  “You could hardly do so!” Lucy charged angrily.

  “Do you consider five hundred an insult? I’ll make it a thousand, then. Mrs. Lacey, the local lightskirt, settled for five hundred last month. Tony would not have actually offered for her. She came hobbled with two children. Do you have any children,
ma’am?”

  “How should I have children when I’m not even—” Lucy clenched her jaws. “No, I have no children,” she said grimly.

  “Not even married, eh? Well, well. You find the guise of widow elicits sympathy from susceptible bantlings, I expect. There is much to be said for a maiden, however. There is just a little something about a secondhand woman....”

  Lucy rose majestically to her feet. “Get out,” she said, pointing to the door. “I will not hear any more of your insults.” Her breast rose and fell as she tried to contain her wrath.

  Avedon remained seated, consciously adding an unspoken insult by doing so. Lucy stalked from the room and left him alone. Deserted, Avedon got up and sauntered toward the hallway. Lucy had said a word to the butler, and was just on her way upstairs.

  She stopped and looked down over her shoulder, with fire flashing in her eyes. “Do pray tell your sister I look forward to seeing her at her garden party tomorrow, Lord Avedon. She invited Miss Percy and myself the day she arrived, and Tony is most eager for me to go and meet all his family.”

  Avedon was much impressed with her gall and sought quickly for a leveler. “Lady Sara managed to hire some extra girls from the village,” he replied with a satirical smile. “She won’t require your services to hand around the ices.”

  Lucy felt an overwhelming urge to stamp her foot, but quelled the childish impulse. “I am going, and don’t think you can scare me away,” she said, and continued on her way upstairs.

  “I shall personally escort you off my property if you set one toe on it,” he answered, but he didn’t think she heard him. She neither turned around nor stopped but continued to her room.

  Lucy longed to pour into her aunt’s ears the iniquities that had been heaped on her head but did not like to disturb her. The man was a monster! To put her in the same class as Ronald Pewter—a fortune hunter. And to think she would have that silly twit of a Bigelow, whom she could hardly endure the sight of! To insult her under her own roof, to call her thirty years old, and to laugh so slyly when she let slip she wasn’t married. To put her in a class with Mrs. Lacey, whoever that was! It was infamous.

  She was of half a mind to marry Tony to show Avedon a lesson. And she would go to his sister’s blasted garden party. What a temptation to put on an apron and go as a servant, still hanging on Tony’s arm. It would serve him well. But she would not wear anything so unappealing. Her best garden bonnet, which framed her youthful face to a nicety, was what she would wear, and a flowing gown and a parasol. If the other local ladies were as unattractive as Lady Sara, she would put them all in the shade.

  She had a strong desire to show Lord Avedon it was not only his nephew who found her attractive.

  * * * *

  Lord Avedon had already made the discovery for himself. Mrs. Percy was younger than he thought. Twenty-two she claimed, and there was no point thinking she had lowered her age more than a year, if at all. She was also much too attractive for him to think he could control Tony if it came to a contest between them. A beauty was what the girl was. If he were not aware of her designs, he could fall in love with her himself. Not that he would ever marry such a creature. A strumpet, posing as a widow to curry pity from schoolboys. It was disgusting.

  The war was a boon to her sort. They could claim alliance with some respectable person, dead and unable to defend himself. He’d look into this business of a Captain Percy. Ciudad Rodrigo Sal had mentioned as the place where the husband was supposed to have died. Perhaps if he confronted Tony with proof of her lies, he would see the light. He wondered if she would really attend Sal’s garden party. He certainly did not put it a pace past her. To go setting up a farm on his doorstep to enable herself to remain, after all his work and expense to be rid of her. He had met a manager precariously close to being his own equal, but she wouldn’t get her talons into Bigelow.

  Chapter Seven

  “Lady Sara has got beautiful weather for her garden party,” Lucy said the next morning to her aunt. Lucy stuck by her intention to attend the party but felt her aunt would not go with her if she knew Lord Avedon’s threat. It struck Lucy as better in every way that her aunt not attend, in case of unpleasantness.

  “I forgot all about it!” Mrs. Percy exclaimed in consternation. “Tony has promised to send the Craw-ley boys to me this afternoon to weed out the back garden. I cannot leave them unattended after the shambles they made of the roses.”

  “We dare not leave them alone,” Lucy agreed.

  After a great deal of discussion, her aunt decided she must miss the party. “Be sure to make my excuses to Lady Sara,” she said. “She will understand. It is so difficult to hire anyone, since Lord Avedon has employed every odd-job lad in the neighborhood. I expect he added them to the Canterbury crew to hasten the work,” she said, trying to make sense of it. “I daresay Tony will be happy to escort you, so you need not go alone.”

  Her niece said not a word to enlighten her. Tony used the loan of the Crawley brothers as an excuse to call in person at Rose Cottage that morning. He was delighted to escort Lucy, and after a hint or two from her, he suggested that his mama and Cousin Morton might as well go with them—a family party. No word was mentioned of Lord Avedon’s visit the evening before.

  Avedon was less circumspect in broadcasting his visit to Rose Cottage. He told Lady Sara the whole of it over breakfast. “The brazen hussy refuses to budge an inch. She has got a cow and a batch of hens from the idiot, and says she will see you at the garden party this afternoon.”

  “She would not be so bold!” Lady Sara gasped, delighted at such melodramatic doings. “I hope you let her know she will not be welcome.”

  “Ho, much she cares about welcome. She’ll be here if she has to shoot her way in, and you may be sure she’ll be hanging on the idiot’s arm, so we can hardly ask her to leave.”

  “No, Tony will come with Isabel and Cousin Morton.”

  “Possibly. But what shall we do if she comes?” Avedon asked.

  Lady Sara gave it her deep consideration. “We can hardly turn them off after I invited them. We shall give them a cold shoulder, and the neighborhood will see what we think of women of Mrs. Percy’s kidney.”

  “You aren’t fully aware of the nature of her kidney, either. I don’t believe she was ever married at all,” Avedon said. “She let something slip last night.”

  Lady Sara promptly demanded all the details. “She may not even be a Percy for all we know,” she said after the tale was unfolded.

  “She could be anyone. There is a respectable family of Percys at Dorset, but I doubt she’s any kin to them. You know that fellow in Hampshire who was in the Peninsula, Sal. Can you find out form him if there was a Captain Percy there, and if he was married?”

  “Yes, George Wesley lost an arm, poor soul. I shall write to his mama this very day. Mrs. Percy is a scheming woman, come here to snap up Tony, but we shall soon be rid of her. How could she have heard of him, Adrian? Your advertisement was so discreetly worded.”

  “Mrs. Lacey, perhaps. No doubt the muslin company has a freemasonry amongst themselves to share word of their victims. If they have, Tony’s name must be at the top of their list. It is a great pity Mrs. Percy is so attractive. She just might succeed in nabbing him.”

  Lady Sara shot a suspicious glance at her brother, but Adrian was not susceptible to upstarts. He held too high an opinion of himself for that. If Adrian had a fault, which was by no means positive, it was pride. His angry face assured her he was in no danger from Mrs. Percy, no matter how pretty she was.

  “We shan’t worry any more about it till we see whether she comes. Her sister-in-law may deter her. She, at least, seems well-bred. Of more importance to me is my husband. He deserves that appointment, Adrian. And after he is archdeacon, he will be a bishop. It is only right that he should be called a lord, for I am Lady Sara. He’ll never manage it by himself. All he thinks of is the church; it is for us to make the connections. I am sure that a word dropped in the righ
t ear would secure the appointment for him. Papa’s old friend, Judge Almont, is acquainted with the archbishop, is he not?” The conversation turned to the other inevitable subject, and Mrs. Percy was forgotten.

  With a letter to write to Hampshire and the arrangement of a garden party that must eclipse every other garden party in the county, the morning was a busy one for Lady Sara. There were the ices, always a dreadful nuisance but essential, as no one else served them. There was the punch, and the squeezing of three dozen lemons for lemonade, and only two squeezers in the whole house. There were the meat pies and lobster patties for the adults and sandwiches for the children. Cakes and petits fours and cream buns had to be tasted for freshness and quality—no tiresome part of the morning for Lady Sara, who enjoyed tooth work.

  On top of her other duties she had to examine the grounds for signs of slovenly gardening, to count the chairs and tables and see all was in order. One hundred and four bentwood chairs. One hundred was such a nice round number that she decided to take the four extra back to Hampshire with her. And perhaps that little iron-topped table for the rose garden.

  She found little fault with anything. Say that for Adrian, his house and grounds were properly maintained. As to the kitchen, though, it was a shame for the waste that went on. Four hams in the larder. One would never be missed when she left.

  At two o’clock the crowd began to arrive. At two-thirty, with his eyes weary from scanning the gate for Mrs. Percy, Avedon began to relax and think she had decided to stay away. His first swell of satisfaction gave way to regret as two-thirty turned into two forty-five. It was a demmed dull party after all. Mrs. Percy had scored a minor victory. She had kept Tony and his family away. Avedon wondered what they were all doing. Lady Beatrice got hold of his arm for a “nice little coze,” as she invariably described her endless gossip.