“Let the lad eat, Bill,” said his wife, heaping Simon's plate with eggs, crisp rashers of bacon, a couple of plump brown sausages, and bread fried in the drippings.
Banishing memories of sea biscuit washed down with long-stored, greenish water, he set to and for some time was unable to continue his explanation. Mrs. Wickham beamed with satisfaction and pushed a pot of homemade strawberry jam toward him.
“Thank you, ma'am, I couldn't eat another bite,” he said, taking a draft of ale and pushing back his chair. “I shan't need any dinner tonight.”
“Just what do ye mean, lad?” persisted the bailiff, still troubled. “I don't like the notion o' teaching ye to be poking and prying into some poor soul's business.”
“It'll be my own business,” Simon assured him incautiously.
Wickham frowned. “Ye've an estate o' your own, then? And a man to manage it for ye?”
“Oh hell! I can see I'll have to confess. Pardon my language, Mrs. Wickham, but I didn't want anyone to know who I am.”
She refilled his glass. “And who might that be, lad?”
“As a matter of fact I'm Lord Derwent. Sir Josiah was my mother's elder brother—and my father is the Marquis of Stokesbury.”
“If I didn't think you've an air of authority about you for a lad with his way to make in the world,” marvelled Mrs. Wickham.
“I was an officer in the navy,” said Simon, abashed. He told them how he had become Earl of Derwent on his brother's death, and they murmured condolences.
“Seems to me it's the marquis's job to show ye how to go on, my lord,” said Wickham doubtfully.
“Please, don't call me that. Mr. Hurst, if you like, but `lad' will do very well.” He smiled at Mrs. Wickham. How was he to avoid revealing that his father was a negligent landlord who despised his new heir? “The marquis is a busy man. My cousin, Lord Litton, suggested that I couldn't do better than to learn from you, sir.”
“I've a high opinion o' Lord Litton,” grunted Wickham. “If his lordship wants me to give ye a hand, I'll do it, and keep my mouth shut too. And so will ye, mind, Bess,” he admonished his wife.
“Thank you, both of you.”
Going off with the bailiff to set about the morning's studies, he wondered whether it was nonsensical to insist on keeping his incognito. No, if his true identity was revealed, his aunt's neighbors would be offended at being deceived—and no doubt they would expect him to start dressing and behaving like an earl. He had had enough of attempting that in London.
Besides, he wanted his dance and kiss from the princess before she found out who he really was.
Some six hours later, he saddled his horse and set off to call at Salters Hall. It was still raining, but after Wickham's stuffy office the air was clear and fresh and Simon was glad to be outside. Besides, rain made it more likely that Miss Lassiter would be at home, he thought, cantering past the mere and across the flat green pastures. He did not flatter himself that the prospect of his visit at an unspecified hour would have detained her.
Rather than going around by the lanes, as the carriage had, he had asked Wickham for directions across the fields. His bay gelding, Intrepid, was no hunter so every gate had to be opened, then shut behind them.
He was performing this task when he realized that the paddock before him must be the one his hostess had referred to last night. The pond in the hollow had a raw, new look, without reeds or other water plants, only a solitary golden-green willow sapling growing to one side. A gray heron hunched near the edge. Three horses stood beneath a chestnut at the far end of the field, staring at the strangers but showing no disposition to leave their shelter to investigate.
Miss Lassiter might be pleased with a report on the progress of her liberated tadpoles. He rode down to the pond, reined in Intrepid on the muddy, hoof-trampled bank, and dismounted.
The heron fixed him with a beady eye, flexed its wide, arched wings, and flew off with an indignant honk. As the ripples of its departure faded, Simon saw that the raindrops plinking into the pond made it impossible to see beneath the surface. Remounting, he rode on.
The Lassiters' butler admitted grudgingly that his mistress was at home, but he made no move to invite Simon in. His gaze appeared to be fixed on the floor. Puzzled, Simon glanced down. His boots had picked up a generous quantity of mud by the pond, and even as he looked, a small clod broke off.
His laugh was rueful. Surely no one would believe he was a nobleman if he tried to claim it! “Since I am come to see Miss Lassiter's tadpoles, perhaps I had best go straight round to the kitchen door, if you will kindly direct me thither and inform her of my arrival.”
“That won't be necessary, sir.” The butler's manner thawed somewhat. “May I suggest that I call a footman to remove the boots and give them a quick cleaning before I show you to the drawing room.”
This expedient being adopted, Simon was ushered into Miss Lassiter's presence a quarter hour later with nothing worse than a sort of tidemark around his ankles.
The young lady's dark head was bowed over a piece of needlework. On hearing his name announced, she looked up and smiled.
“How do you do, Mr. Hurst,” she said demurely. “How kind of you to visit us in this sadly damp weather. You met Mrs. Forbes last night, of course.”
He bowed to the faded chaperon with a vague recollection of having been introduced. “Of course. How do you do, ma'am. I trust I find you well?”
“Well enough, thank you, Mr. Hurst.” She set down her knitting, some garment of indeterminate color and inordinate length, and withdrew a skein of yarn from her workbox.
“Pray be seated, sir,” said Miss Lassiter. “Ma'am, do you wish me to hold the wool while you roll a ball?”
“I hesitate to ask it when we have a caller, Mimi, but if you wouldn't mind...”
“Not at all.” She began to fold her own work.
“You are already occupied. Allow me to be of assistance,” Simon offered, sitting down beside Mrs. Forbes. To his disappointment, the Indian princess was behaving today as sedately as any well-bred milk-and-water miss, but he decided to play up to her lead. Perhaps she had been raked over the coals for her unseemly liveliness last night, though he had thought her to have more spirit than to be cowed by a scolding. He took the skein from Mrs. Forbes. “You will have to show me what to do for you, ma'am.”
“So kind.”
Patiently he followed her muddled instructions until he had the yarn settled around each hand and stretched between them. She began to wind the ball, and at last he had attention to spare for Miss Lassiter.
She was watching him with wickedly sparkling black eyes, her lips pressed together so firmly he knew she was trying to hide her amusement. She was saucy Mimi again, not the decorous Miss Lassiter. Oddly reassured, he came to the conclusion that gentlemen callers did not as a rule offer their services for winding wool. If Gerald had foreseen the possibility, no doubt he would have warned against it. Simon sighed.
“I trust you are not regretting your kindness already, Mr. Hurst?”
“Certainly not, Miss Lassiter.” There was a jerk on his hands and he nearly dropped the lot.
Mimi let fall her own work. “Oh dear, you must not hold it so taut. And you need to move your hands just the tiniest bit, in rhythm with Mrs. Forbes's winding. Here, let me show you.”
She was at his side, her little hands holding his wrists. He breathed in the warm, rich smell of her smooth skin. For a moment he was as breathless as if he were drowning in her fragrance—then he recalled that she was a princess and he was a frog. Frogs don't drown. He surfaced as she giggled.
“Heavens, it's much easier to do than to demonstrate. Perhaps I should...”
“Sir Wilfred, ma'am,” announced the butler.
With a startled jerk, she moved away from Simon, then stepped forward to greet the baronet. Today the young man was dressed less like a popinjay. In fact, Simon suspected that Gerald would have approved of his garb, except for a shudder at the pink roses embroidered on his blue waistcoat. His coat was tight-fitting but neither padded at the shoulders nor pinched in at the waist, and his boots had an admirable gloss.
Simon glanced down regretfully at his own footwear.
“Servant, Mrs. Forbes. Servant,…ah…Hurst.” Sir Wilfred raised contemptuous eyebrows at the sight of the yarn linking the two.
Feeling foolish, Simon nodded in acknowledgment of the greeting. “You'll excuse my shaking your hand, Sir Wilfred,” he said dryly.
“I was about to take Mr. Hurst to see my tadpoles,” said Mimi. Gone without a trace was the demure young lady who had so recently labored at her needlework. “I hope you have reconsidered your decision, Sir Wilfred, and will go with us?”
“Er... better not.” The baronet looked round for inspiration, then produced an unconvincing sneeze. “Atchoo! Slight cold coming on, don't you know.”
“Then you ought not to be out in this weather. I hope you don't mean to pass it on to the rest of us, Sir Wilfred,” said Mimi severely, to Simon's utter delight.
“No, no, assure you, ma'am. Nothing to it, be better directly. All the same, best not to risk it, standing in the damp on a cold stone floor, don't you know. Daresay Hurst will like to take himself so you won't be obliged to desert a guest.”
“Mr. Hurst is as much my guest as you are, sir. If you don't care to come, I daresay you will be so obliging as to help Mrs. Forbes with her work.”
They left a very pink-faced baronet attached by a strand of wool to an agitated chaperon. Simon was hard put to it to restrain his mirth until the drawing-room door closed behind them.
Mimi chuckled, but then said guiltily, “I hope he doesn't make poor Mrs. Forbes too uncomfortable. I've used her badly, I fear, for she is never at ease with visitors in the best of circumstances. Now why, I wonder, is Sir Wilfred so set upon not seeing my tadpoles?”
“That's a good question. I suspect he is afraid for his dignity. He'd be bound to be noticed by your servants, and doubtless the tale would spread.”
“Oh yes, he'd hate that. I really must try to get him to the scullery.”
“What the devil are you about, Princess?”
She laughed merrily. “I cannot tell you.”
“Then you have a purpose?”
“Now that would be telling.” She pushed open the kitchen door. “Cook, we won't be disturbing you now?”
“Nay, lass, come on through. There's nowt doing in t'scullery this while.” She curtsied to Simon, who smiled and nodded.
Crossing the kitchen, he noted that it was high-ceilinged, light and airy, with an impressive, new-looking closed stove. The colonel, it seemed, was as solicitous of his servants' well-being as of the plight of unknown orphans, a trait Simon appreciated after being responsible for the crew of HMS
Intrepid
. The stone-flagged scullery, with its iron pump and zinc-lined sinks, was spotlessly clean.
Mimi went straight to a Crown Derby casserole sitting on a draining board near the window. “Here they are.”
“They must be the most expensively housed tadpoles in the world.”
“But they don't seem very happy.” She peered anxiously into the bowl. “I think those two are dead.”
“Very. You need to give them clean water, I expect. See how murky it is? What do you feed them on?”
“Bread crumbs.”
“Well enough, but they'd probably like a bacon rind to nibble on, maybe even some minced beef. Remember frogs are carnivores.”
“Yes, of course, I had not thought. Did you keep tadpoles when you were a boy?”
“No, I was never allowed to. I had a pet frog at school, though.” Simon had forgotten Leaper, who had won several wagers for him. The memory cheered him. “He was a splendid jumper and I was very fond of him. I was going to let him go down by the river, but he had an unfortunate encounter with a cat.”
“How sad.” She touched his hand in sympathy. “I don't want any more of these tadpoles to die. How shall I change the water without letting them escape?”
“Hmm, let me think. If we pour off the dirty water through a sieve, then we'll catch any that slip out.”
“Do you mean to help me?”
He grinned at the mingled surprise and caution in her voice. “Don't worry, I shan't claim a reward.”
A fiery blush mantled her golden cheeks—like a stormy sunset, he thought. At that moment the door to the kitchen court opened and a skinny lad in the dress of a groom appeared.
“Jacko!” She seemed delighted at the interruption.
Halting on the doorstep, the boy touched his hat. “Beg pardon, Miss Mimi, I di'n't know as you had comp'ny. I just come to take a peek at them tadpoles.”
“Come in, Jacko, you can help us. This is Mr. Hurst. We're going to change their water.” She explained Simon's plan.
“Right, miss. I'd best draw some water in a bucket so's we c'n fill up the dish right away.” He went to the pump and started to work the handle.
“I'll ask Cook for a sieve.” Mimi went into the kitchen.
Simon quickly reached into the casserole and scooped out the two dead tadpoles. The pathetic little scraps lay on his palm. “What the devil shall I do with these?” he demanded.
“Stick 'em down the drain, sir, quick afore she comes back,” Jacko advised approvingly. “They'll wash down wi' the dirty water.”
They exchanged a smile at their complicity in protecting the tender sensibilities of the female sex.
Mimi came back. She held the sieve over the sink while Simon carefully poured most of the water from the casserole. Two adventurous tadpoles that managed to slip out were quickly tipped back into the inch of water that remained, to join their squirming brethren. Simon set the dish down in the sink and Jacko poured in clean water from his bucket.
He poured too fast. The water sloshed over the side, taking with it three of the captives. Simon hurriedly put his hand over the drain hole and they were left high and dry in the bottom of the sink.
“You'd better rescue them,” he said to Mimi, wondering whether she would actually venture to touch the tiny, twitching creatures. “Your fingers are more delicate and will do less damage.”
Without the least hesitation, with the utmost gentleness, she picked them up and returned them to the casserole. “Poor little things,” she said. “We must be more careful next time. I do believe they are already happier with the clean water, though.” She lifted the dish out of the sink and set it on the draining board.