A Season for the Heart (7 page)

“Could you have not stayed with Aunt Tabitha?” inquired the Earl. “Unless of course she lives in the same house as your Great-aunt Sophronia?”

“Oh, no, Tabitha lives in Bath, and is very much in the social swim there. She would have found me a husband immediately—but not a nobleman. Probably a fortune hunter, Papa says.”

Pommy, faint but pursuing, took up the saga. “Then, being forced to return to your papa in London, you were held up by highwaymen who took your coach and forced you to flee for your life?”

“Oh, no!” replied Isabelle kindly.

The Earl gave a snort of laughter, which he disguised by coughing vigorously.

Isabelle was explaining. “My father’s horses are not really the finest, more showy than sound, our coachman says. Well, on this return trip to London, first one and then the second developed trouble in their limbs—do not ask me for the particulars, for the groom and coachman were busy quarreling about who should go for help in the storm, and did not bother to explain to me the exact nature of the trouble. Which is probably just as well, for I should not have understood it anyway. I am not,” said Isabelle with her dazzling smile, “very bright.”

“I am sure you have no need to be, looking as beautiful as you do!” cried Pommy, incorrigibly supportive of the downtrodden.

The Earl’s shoulders were shaking, she observed with annoyance, and his blue eyes upon her were full of laughter.

“Let
me
guess,” begged the irreverent creature. “You finally got down into the road to settle the argument, since night was coming on and you were cold and hungry? Then, as you made your way to the lee of the coach, where the servants were quarreling, something spooked the horses, and they took off without you. The servants, fearful of their master’s wrath on being informed of the loss of his showy but unsound team, took to their heels in pursuit of the runaways. You were, naturally, not best pleased at being abandoned in the middle of nowhere in a pelting storm, so you ran after them. When you beheld us approaching, you tried to wave us down.”

Isabelle’s beautiful eyes were fixed upon Milord’s face with almost worshipful awe. “But it is as though you had been there!” she breathed. “Only I was running in the opposite direction to that taken by the runaway team and the servants. All else is exactly as it occurred!”

The Earl sustained Pommy’s scorching glance with aplomb. “Why,” he inquired of the vintner’s heiress, “did you run in the opposite direction?”

Both her auditors waited while the Beauty considered her answer. “I think,” she said breathily at length, “because the wind was behind me, that way. I did not like the rain in my face.”

“A rational action,” commended the Earl. “As you see, it brought you to us and to safety. I shall send a courier to your papa when we reach Exeter, so that he may not be in a fret at your disappearance.”

“Oh, I should not think he would be,” answered Isabelle. “He will believe I am still with Great-aunt Sophronia getting my mind changed, for the servants will be reluctant to return to London, even if they should have caught up with the coach, until they have found me.”

“You see it is quite simple, Pommy,” the Earl advised her with those laughing blue eyes,” and not at all romantical or tragic.”

“I am not,” agreed Miss Boggs, “Romantic.”

It is a shame
, thought Pommy in a quite unexplainable depression,
that one who is so perfectly the example of a Heroine should utterly refuse to be Blighted. If only I had her looks
, she thought rebelliously
, I should find a way to—

At this moment, she caught the Earl’s glance upon her, so intent and warmly amused that she knew he was reading her like an open book. A moment later this was verified, for he said softly, “How much more you could have made of all this, my dear Pommy! It quite saddens one to consider the wasted opportunities!”

“Do not,” said Pommy crossly, “be silly!”

Isabelle joined politely in the Earl’s shout of laughter, but rather spoiled the effect by saying, wistfully, “This is how it always is with me! I know something witty has been said, but by the time I have puzzled it out, everyone has stopped laughing. So now I just laugh when the rest do.” She sighed. Then, “Was it quite correct of you to call His Lordship ‘silly’?” she asked Pommy.

“No, it was not, but he was, so I did,” retorted Pommy defiantly, at which the Earl laughed again, and Isabelle, after a bewildered moment, chimed in.

When the Earl’s party reached Exeter, the coachman drove them at once to the Angel’s Rest, a very grand inn indeed, where ordinary travelers were warned off by the grooms and sent summarily down the street to less important houses. The Earl’s party, however, was greeted by Mine Host himself, who hastened to assure His Lordship that His Lordship’s servants had arrived the evening before, and that all was prepared, even though His Lordship’s delayed arrival had caused considerable consternation.

Completely disregarding this rigmarole, the Earl led his party into the inn and sent his anxiously hovering servants about their various tasks. In the twinkling of an eye, the young ladies were installed in a gracious bedroom, and Milord in the inn’s finest, where already fires burned brightly. In a private parlor connecting the two rooms, a tasty collation was quickly set up, and the travelers, not at all weary, were cosseted into forgetting the rigors of their journey. All except Pommy.

“I shall never forget this trip,” sighed Pommy, making inroads into a game pie. “It is the most wonderful experience I have yet had!”

Both the Earl and Isabelle looked at her searchingly, for to their possibly jaded taste nothing could have been less attractive than the wretched weather, while the two inns at which they had put up were nothing to the comfort and elegance of London living. Then the Earl’s glance softened.

“Pommy has enjoyed traveling in our company,” he advised Isabelle softly. “She is paying us an unconscious compliment.”

Isabelle nodded, looking vaguely puzzled by accepting the man’s judgment.

“I have arranged,” began the Earl, “for a dressmaker to wait upon you both in your bedroom within the hour. She will have a seamstress with her, and a number of garments suitable for your consideration. I have also required her to include shoes and all the accessories to a lady’s toilette—”

Since both the ladies present were regarding him with surprise mixed with consternation, the Earl adopted his loftiest manner.

“Your father, Miss Boggs, would not fault me for providing his daughter with a suitable costume for her arrival at her home. It would not do at all for you to return home in a bedraggled condition. The servants would be bound to talk.” He grinned suddenly. “Do not be stuffy, my dear children! I am finding this whole mad excursion unexpectedly amusing, and I know you would not wish to deny your Benefactor a brief respite from the onerous and solemn duties which are his daily lot.”

Miss Isabelle obligingly agreed that
she
would not, for the world! but Pommy cast a wary and incredulous eye upon her benefactor. It was true, he had promised her employment which was unexceptionable, and she knew it, and valued it. If he wished her to present a decorous and suitable appearance before her new employer, it was surely reasonable. Still—!

He caught her rather dubious glance. “That’s right, Pommy. You will have to bite the bullet. And you must realize, a girl with your
nous
, that the regimen of a Peer of the Realm is not entirely composed of Romantic flights and primrose dalliance.”

“You are doing it again,” charged Pommy. “Teasing me.” She stared hard at his handsome features, then she smile reluctantly. “You are a
very
domineering man!”

“But you like it,” completed her host, imperturbably.

The dressmaker, when she arrived, proved to exercise a kind of magic. She had been briefed, obviously, for her offerings were exactly what was both suitable and attractive for a young beauty of conservative taste, and for a genteel companion to a great lady. Pommy, eyeing the delicate moss-and-leaf-green materials spread out for her inspection, did not even consider that these might be thought unsuitable. Her chief worry was that they might cost more than the nearly three pounds which she wore in a cloth bag pinned to her chemise. Her concern was soon allayed, as the dressmaker mentioned quite casually that this color was so difficult for the average young lady to wear, that she was most grateful to be getting it off her hands, and named a price for the finished garments which was fortunately within Pommy’s budget. If the girl had any fear that she was being subsidized by Lord Austell, this was soon dispelled when the price quoted for the pale blue dress chosen by Isabelle was also extremely modest.

“I must return to this town when next I wish to replenish my wardrobe,” Isabelle chirruped, happily. “I swear I have never found such bargains!” and she took the required sum from her reticule, which most fortunately had been hanging from her arm on its cord when she descended from her father’s coach the previous day. Since Milord had left after introducing Madame Helene, Pommy was able to follow suit, and the dressmaker, an expatriated Frenchwoman who was awake upon all suits, had nothing but admiration for the English Milord who could keep two such charming females happy in their independence while discharging her own formidable account in private.

Miss Boggs’s dress being already made, and the appropriate accessories chosen by both young ladies, Madame’s seamstress proceeded to measure Miss Rand for her dress, and promised to set to work upon it at once. “For I know that
ma’amzelle
has need of it by this evening, her own trunks having been lost in the accident,” Pommy was told.

As soon as she decently could, Pommy sought out the Earl.

“What is this about an accident?” she queried sharply.

“You are annoyed? I had thought you would be willing to go along with my
libretto
. You made no demur at being my niece,” teased His Lordship.

“Oh, no, you mistake my concern, Lord Austell! I merely wished to know the details of the events I am supposed to have taken part in.”

The Earl grinned unrepentantly. “It was really a masterly creation. We were bowling along in the storm, when, on crossing a swollen river, the bridge supports gave way and my carriage was precipitated into the flood. Acting with my usual quickness of wit, I rescued both you and Miss Boggs, but alas, your trunks were beyond even my great strength. The servants,” he added meticulously, “rescued themselves. It is only you and Miss Boggs who are very much beholden to me.”

Pommy chuckled. “Milord, you are a barefaced fabricator—a worse Romancer than I ever was! Especially when you must know that the host of this inn witnessed our arrival in your own carriage—”

“He had eyes only for the charmingly
déshabillées
young ladies—
neither
of whom could produce a trunk to refute my story!” He smiled. “What difference does it make? We are not even a ten-minutes wonder to these people. Believe me, they have seen many travelers more colorful and less decorous than we! I can only hope Miss Boggs’s literal mind will not compel her to deny my
histoire
and make me look all no-how!”

I should think she will never learn of it,” commented Pommy. “She does not seem to be very curious about the affairs of anyone except herself.”

“Thank God for that,” said the Earl devoutly. “We have still to get you to my sister-in-law without arousing the curiosity of the quizzies!”

Pommy smiled back at him, feeling herself in such perfect charity with this worldly, handsome man as she had never before felt for any human being. She did not stop to consider why she should feel thus about a man she had known a brief two days, and, moreover, one who was so far above her sphere as the very sun in the sky. It was enough that they shared a rather reprehensible sense of humor, and a vivid imagination. Pommy was only grateful for such a comfortable sponsor.

By the exercise of almost unbelievable skill and expedition, Madame’s seamstresses delivered to Pommy not one but
two
dresses by eight o’clock that evening. Pommy was able to come into the parlor where the Earl’s guests were served, wearing the leaf-green gown, which seemed much more beautiful and modish than she had envisioned it, and made her eyes shine like emeralds. While they were dressing, Isabelle had admired it graciously, and had said with authority:

“My dear Pommy, you must let me dress your hair for you tonight! While your braid is quite suitable for traveling, it will not at all do with that dress! Sit down, now, and hand me your brush!”

Seated before the vanity mirror in the new dress—the finest and most beautiful she had ever owned—Pommy’s bemused stare fixed itself upon her image in the mirror, and could hardly accept that the face she saw reflected was her own. Great waves of shining black hair flowed down about her shoulders and almost reached her slender waist, lending interesting shadows to her sparkling eyes, softening her features, and framing the pale creamy face with subtle allure.

“Now I must find some way to catch it up into a becoming coiffure,” Isabelle said.

Pommy watched, fascinated, as the other girl brought beauty out of what had always appeared to her to be her unrelieved plainness. When she tried to express her gratitude, Isabelle brushed it aside calmly. “I had an excellent governess,” she said. “While Miss Pomfrit frequently told me she could do nothing to enlighten my ignorance in intellectual matters, she did admit that I had a rare knack with the more social graces—except conversation.”