“I doubt her performance could top the one she gave to the gentlemen when we all
left the dining room.” This was from a motherly lady whose name I couldn’t
remember.
I walked to the pianoforte and began to play. I played the sonata well enough.
When I looked up, it was to see my husband standing very close to me.
I said quickly, just as soon as the applause died down, “I’m sorry, Lawrence.
The devil made me do it.”
He laughed, turned to the gentleman at his elbow, cleared his throat, and
announced to the room at large, “My wife informed me that the devil made her do
it.”
My reputation, for whatever that was worth, was made.
I had been pronounced an original, Miss Crislock told me much later. When next I
was in London, I would be at the very center of things.
“What things?” I asked her.
“Parties and such, I imagine,” she told me, patted my cheek, then gave me a very
long look. “You don’t look happy, Andy. What’s wrong, dear?”
I nearly swallowed my teeth. “Nothing, Milly. I am quite the perfect young lady.”
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when Lawrence escorted me to The Blue
Room.
He looked down at me, a thoughtful expression in his eyes. “You continually
surprise me, Andy.”
“I hope most of the surprises are good ones.”
“At least half. Don’t worry, this one was delightful. The gentlemen could speak
of nothing else but who was the most charming, the most literate, the most
amusing of us all.”
“That’s what Lady Elizabeth Palmer said the gentlemen would do. Actually, I
surprised myself. Most of our guests are very good sports, sir.”
“Yes, they are. They like you. I hadn’t expected it, truth be told, you are so
very young. You were charming.”
“Now you sound as if you’re no longer certain you liked what I did.”
“Do I? How silly of you to think that. Good night, my child.” And he walked away.
Did he really think of me as a child?
Chapter Twenty-three
Early the next morning I was spreading a rather noxious smelling potion, one of
my grandfather’s recipes, on the healing cuts in Small Bess’s back. There were
seven deep cuts forming a nearly perfect circle, about a quarter of an inch
between them, and looking at them, seeing those ghastly sharp barbs digging into
her back, made me see red. The monster who had done this deserved to be shot
between the eyes, by me, with my new derringer.
“I see she is better.”
It was John. I turned slowly. I didn’t want to see him. On the other hand, I
wanted more than anything to just stand here and stare at him until Small Bess
kicked me out of her stall.
I shook my head free of those futile thoughts. “Yes, she is better, much better,
thanks to Rucker, but it still makes me so angry, I want to explode. It is very
early. I am surprised that you are awake.”
He looked me up and down, and I knew what he saw. I was wearing a very old dark
brown wool cloak and stout boots that were so scuffed they could have been used
for goat food at least a year past. My hair was plastered to my head and pulled
back into a knot at the nape of my neck. Already corky curls were escaping. Then
he smiled. “You’re awake. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You were still all cozy with Lady Elizabeth Palmer when I finally went upstairs
well toward the middle of the night.”
I know he heard the acrimony in my voice. The man wasn’t a dolt. Then he had the
gall to smirk at me. “Actually, you don’t have to say her entire name. Lady
Elizabeth is quite enough. There is no other guest here quite like her, don’t
you agree?”
I did agree, but I wasn’t about to tell him that, which didn’t stop him, not for
even half a second.
“It is interesting that you noticed. I can see that it would bother you to speak
of it further?your lips are just a thin seam of a line?so I will move smartly on