His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen #4)(69)
Good God have mercy.
Hessian took her hand. “I’m suggesting… me. I’m suggesting that you trust me.”
He kissed her fingers and waited for her answer, though he had no earthly idea, not a hint of a glimmer of a notion, how to proceed if Lily accepted his offer.
*
“She’s avoiding me.” Roberta was as certain of her conclusion as she was sure that Dorie Humplewit was putting on weight. The evidence was incontrovertible. “Lily Ferguson thinks a ducal grandpapa makes her better than anybody else, and that I would not dare expose her family’s soiled linen.”
Penelope occupied the seat closest to the window, as if having light to read by ever consoled a woman for the damage the sun did to her complexion. Roberta was on her feet, inspecting for the dust about which she’d lectured her housekeeper earlier in the week.
“Perhaps Miss Ferguson was simply out paying calls, ma’am. Yesterday did turn fair as the day progressed.”
The words You are sacked! begged to be flung across the parlor.
Penelope was Roberta’s third companion in as many years. As finances had become constrained, Roberta had realized that spending a month interviewing candidates for the post of companion meant a month when no salary need be paid. During those companion-free weeks, much sympathy could be earned lamenting the inconstancy of young women in service.
The number of agencies supplying companions was finite, however, and Roberta had already patronized the top three.
“If you knew that I could ruin you with a word, Penelope, would you be larking about Town, trying on bonnets, and gamboling in the park?”
Penelope put down her volume of Wordsworth. She kept that naughty Bryon by her bedside, proof of a wicked streak in her character.
“If you were determined to ruin me, I might be calling on my friends in an effort to gather their support. Marshaling my troops, as it were.”
What a vexatious creature, and why, having seen to the dusting, hadn’t anybody bothered to polish the brass candlesticks on the mantel?
“Lily Ferguson hasn’t any friends. Her uncle fends off the bachelors. Her lack of charm defeats other connections. This must be what Grampion likes about her, for a more dull, humorless fellow I could not imagine, and that is precisely why we must act on Amy Marguerite’s behalf.”
Roberta had tossed and turned the night away, mentally drafting the letter she’d anonymously send to a half-dozen semi-reputable newspapers. In the morning, she’d taken one look in the vanity mirror, seen the toll Lily Ferguson’s stubbornness had taken, and decided that subtle machinations were a waste of time.
The sooner Amy Marguerite took her proper place in Roberta’s household, the sooner Grampion’s coin would follow.
Then too, Walter Leggett would doubtless pay handsomely to keep his sister’s peccadilloes quiet. Grampion would similarly pay to be spared scandal. To blazes with Lily Ferguson, for the nonce. If the idiot woman ever wanted to see her mother’s letters, she could jolly well join the list of people from whom Roberta would extract a goodly sum for a goodly number of years.
“We must act?” Penelope asked, clutching Mr. Wordsworth to her chest. “In what regard?”
“Your part is simple. You enjoy reading, you enjoy fresh air. You will become a fixture in the park until such time as you know the schedule upon which Amy Marguerite is let out to play. Nursery maids and governesses cannot function without schedules, and Grampion of all people will insist the child’s day be rigidly organized.”
Never did a young lady spend more time vapidly gazing out of windows than Penelope Smythe. Perhaps she expected a handsome prince on a white charger to come cantering up the street.
“When I have established Miss Amy Marguerite’s schedule, then what?”
Then, Penelope would be sacked and replaced with a governess. “If you see an occasion to win the child’s trust, that’s all well and good, but your sole objective is to report her schedule to me.”
Penelope rose. “It’s a fine morning. You’ll want me to be off, I take it?”
“The sooner the better. Wear something inconspicuous. You were with me when I called on Grampion, though I doubt he noticed you, meaning no insult. A titled gentleman will pay no mind to a woman who’s neither young nor pretty nor well-dowered. You mustn’t take it personally.”
As if that statement of the obvious required pondering, Penelope stood for a moment by the window.
“I’m sure you are correct, ma’am. I’ll be about my assigned task now.”
“Take a biscuit or two with you for the girl. Or some bread crusts for the ducks. You needn’t abandon your post for the midday meal either. I’ll manage without you here.”
“Very good, ma’am.” Penelope bobbed a curtsey and took her leave.
She’d sit in the park getting freckles by the hour, provided she could take a book along. Roberta would write Penelope a decent character when it came time to let her go, for such a passionless soul was surely deserving of pity, and Roberta was ever kind to the less fortunate.
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
“Where are we off to on this glorious day?” Oscar asked.
Lily had dragged him to the milliner’s after yesterday’s call on the Kettering household. “My glovemaker, by way of a call on the Countess of Rosecroft.”