Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (11 page)

“We did?” Perry questioned, his brow
furrowed. “Oh—oh yes! Of course! Lovely creature—er—lovely
thing!
You ought to see it, Aunt Cornelia. Isn’t that right,
Marcus?”

“No, Perry, that is not correct,” Marcus said
stiffly as his aunt sat forward, looking eager. “If you will
recall, I have already decided to keep the jewel hidden until such
time as I can present it in its best light. You do remember that,
don’t you, Perry?”

As Perry stumbled about, trying to extricate
himself from his verbal misstep, and Cassandra bit her bottom lip
in the hope she wouldn’t burst into laughter, a footman entered the
room to declare: “My lord, ladies and sir. The Reverend Ignatius
Austin.”

“Oh, Aunt, not again,” Cassandra heard the
marquess utter in noticeable exasperation before he turned to greet
the man now striding into the drawing room, “Ignatius! Grand to see
you!”

“Liar,” Cassandra whispered before he left
her standing in the middle of the room to walk to the clergyman,
his hand outstretched in greeting. Taking up her seat beside Aunt
Cornelia once more, she took a moment to inspect this newest player
in what she could only look upon as a typical Regency Era drawing
room farce.

It took her only a moment to place the man,
or at least the type of man the Reverend Ignatius Austin seemed to
represent. He looked almost exactly like a drawing she had once
seen of the character Ichabod Crane, from Washington Irving’s
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Tall, rail thin, and dressed
head to toe in a funereal black suit that showed entirely too much
of both his cuffs and his heavily patched stockings, the man had
the look of a lean and hungry ferret: his nose extended a full two
inches farther than his nearly nonexistent chin. And his dark eyes
seemed to glow red as if lit by either religious fervor or, she
thought, fanatical zealotry. She didn’t know whether to be amused
or revolted.

“Pitiful creature, ain’t he?” Aunt Cornelia
whispered
sotto voce,
nudging Cassandra with one pointy
elbow. “Still, having him here to dinner once a month is a world
easier than sitting through his sermons every Sunday. Wait until
you see him at table. Eats as if the universe will come to an end
before dessert. It is a compromise I’ve made with God, you
understand. As you so astutely pointed out—I must do all my
possible to secure a position in heaven. This little bit of charity
ought to get me a good seat, don’t you think?”

“Front row, center,” Cassandra agreed,
relaxing completely. Aunt Cornelia might put on a stern air, and
her appearance certainly was enough to put a girl on her best
behavior, but the woman was all right. With a little work, they
might even become friends. Cassandra frowned, considering her last
thought. Well, maybe not
best
friends—but at least she
wasn’t afraid of the lady.

“Mr. Austin,” Cassandra heard the marquess
say, calling her back to attention, “may I have the honor of
presenting Peregrine’s American cousin, Miss Cassandra Kelley, who
is to be with us for an indefinite stay.”

With Aunt Cornelia’s pointed elbow prodding
her on, Cassandra extended her hand while murmuring a simple, safe
“How d’you do?” A moment later the vicar was bending over her hand,
kissing it with what she could only consider to be fish lips. Cold.
Almost slimy. “It is nice to make your acquaintance, sir.”

“May the good Lord watch over and protect
you, Miss Kelley, and keep you from the temptations of the flesh
and the devil,” Mr. Austin intoned in his rusty-hinge baritone. He
then dismissed her and turned back to Marcus and Peregrine,
inquiring as to whether it was possible to anticipate his dinner
with a judicious glass of sherry.

“Of course, Ignatius,” Marcus answered,
moving toward the drinks table that stood at one side of the room.
“Perry? Aunt? Cassandra?”

“Nothing for me, Marcus,” Perry answered,
leaning his chubby body against the marble mantelpiece with the air
of a man whose dearest wish was to fade into the woodwork.

“Ratafia, Nephew,” Aunt Cornelia instructed
offhandedly, belatedly noticing the Bible in her lap and hastily
stuffing it between the cushions of the settee.

“Scotch and water, please, Marcus. On the
rocks,” Cassandra replied, busily, assisting the older woman in her
attempt to hide the evidence of her “cramming” as if for a
test.

“I beg your pardon?”

Marcus’s steely tone sliced through Cassandra
and she slapped a hand to her mouth. “
Um—er
—I mean—” She
looked at the marquess in naked terror, knowing she had really
blown it this time. “
Um
—it’s an American drink,” she
inserted hastily. “Much like wine. That’s it. I’ll have a glass of
wine, thank you, Marcus.”

“You’ll have ratafia, missy, and like it,”
Aunt Cornelia supplied testily. “Savage Indians, and now I learn
the gel drinks like a demmed flounder. Marcus, must you continue to
plague an old woman out of her mind with these strays of
yours?”

Marcus approached, carrying two crystal
glasses on a small silver tray. Bending over Aunt Cornelia, he
whispered, “You dare to complain, Aunt, with that death’s head on a
mop stick you’ve got cluttering up my drawing room?”

“Yes, well, I suppose you might have a
point,” Aunt Cornelia conceded, turning to Cassandra. “Sorry,
little girl. I suppose things are quite different in the colonies.
But don’t you worry. We’ll get you up to snuff before the Season.
Good Lord!” she exclaimed in astonished tones, although she kept
her voice low. “Gel—uncross those legs! You’re showing your limbs
to anyone who cares to look. Do you want to send the vicar into an
apoplexy?”

“Forgive me, ma’am. It—it’s another dreadful
American custom.” Cassandra quickly uncrossed her legs, glaring up
at Marcus as if daring him to say anything. After all, he had told
her to keep her mouth closed. He hadn’t said anything about how she
was to sit. “May I have my drink now, please?”

“If you can promise me you won’t try to toss
it off in one gulp, yes,” Marcus told her as Aunt Cornelia turned
to skewer Peregrine with a depressing look and began reading him a
pithy lecture on the merits of good posture. “Although I am not yet
totally conversant with this supposed equality you spoke of
earlier, may I most earnestly beg that you also refrain from
belching at table or requesting to blow a cloud in the gardens with
Perry and me after dinner?”

“I know I goofed, Marcus. Now why not give it
a rest?” Cassandra grumbled just as Goodfellow entered the room to
announce that dinner was served.

~ ~ ~

Dinner passed without incident, Cassandra’s
mother having firmly instructed her in the
why’s
and
where-fore’s
of multilayered serving utensils and the myriad
courses served at exclusive dinners, just as if any of the Kelleys
were in momentary anticipation of being invited to the White House
for an inaugural banquet. Seated on Marcus’s right, and across from
Peregrine, who was barely visible above a large, ornate silver
epergne, she had nothing to do except remember not to slurp her
soup and to nod occasionally as the Reverend Mr. Austin expounded
at great length, and in mind-numbing detail, on the wages of
sin.

However, as the meal progressed, and the
servings of wine varied from course to course, the vicar’s speech
became more and more slurred, until he at last lapsed into a near
coma, allowing Marcus and Peregrine to carry on an intelligent
discussion of England’s latest victory on the Peninsula. Knowing
that anything she could say on that subject would probably only
confuse the issue, Cassandra turned to Aunt Cornelia. The older
woman had graciously allowed her to call her by this name,
tempering her generosity with the information that she abhorred
being called Miss Haskins, and took the opportunity of offering her
first, rudimentary lessons in conduct befitting a young miss about
to make her debut.

This information was couched in the frankest
of terms and had a lot to do with “the social pitfalls inherent in
allowing oneself to be cornered in some dark garden with an overly
ambitious fortune hunter” or “daring to step into the dance with
the same partner more than twice in one evening.” Cassandra began
to wonder if she had slipped through time to Regency England only
to be landed in a bizarre sort of convent where she must take a vow
of stupidity.

Aunt Cornelia’s rather peppery comments and
recitations of social strictures lasted past the time she and
Cassandra excused themselves from the table, leaving the gentlemen
to their port and cigars. The lecture did not end until nearly an
hour later, when the men rejoined them in the drawing room for tea
and evening prayers, by which time Cassandra had been able to build
up a dangerously short temper.

“Find yourself a comfortable seat once the
vicar finishes slopping down his second cup of tea, m’dear,” Aunt
Cornelia warned Cassandra after concluding a homily on the
indelicacy of some young girls who actually dared to wear bright
colors rather than the favored white or pastels. “That’s when he
gets his second wind and takes over evening prayers, calling cown
God’s wrath on all the sinful. Goes down the list one by one, you
know, touching on thieves, murderers, card players, blasphemers,
wanton women, devil worshipers—on and on and on. I think he means
to bore them all into repentance, or to death. I know I’ve
contemplated putting a period to my own existence a time or two,
listening to him prose.”

Cassandra shook her head. “Is paradise worth
this, ma’am?” she asked, for she was already heartily sick of
Ignatius Austin and sensed that the rest of the company felt much
the same way. “Perhaps a large monetary donation would serve your
purpose just as well?”

Aunt Cornelia’s ever-present pointed elbow
jabbed once more into Cassandra’s tender ribs. “What? And spoil the
fun of watching Marcus squirm, falling all over himself trying to
be polite when he’d like nothing better than to have the man landed
on his scrawny rump on the flagway? Every time he allows that
walking cadaver to cross his threshold, he is telling me that he
loves me. A woman my age, and in my precarious monetary position,
needs occasional reassurance. I’m only a courtesy aunt, you know,
gel, at least three times removed. No money, no title, and no
prospects for these past thirty years. Doesn’t pay to be bitter,
but there it is. Maybe I should have married dearest Harold when he
asked, but as his breath would have felled a calvary officer and he
has been below ground these twenty years, I don’t see as how I
should refine on
might-have-been’s,
do you? It’s enough that
the dear boy cares for me. Why, if he should one day deny that
doomsday merchant the house, I should know that I’m no longer
wanted.”

“Marcus would never throw you out, Aunt
Cornelia,” Cassandra said, looking across the room to where the
marquess—a tic visible in his left cheek—stood listening to the
Reverend Mr. Austin. “I realize I’ve only known him for little more
than twenty-four hours, but he seems to be a kind man.” As she
spoke, Marcus turned his head in her direction and surprised her by
winking. “A very kind man.”

Aunt Cornelia sniffed, obviously seeing
Marcus’s playful gesture. “And a bloody handsome fellow—and rich as
Croesus into the bargain, isn’t that right, Cassandra? As I told
you before, you’d be hunting mares’ nests, trying to catch that one
in the parson’s mousetrap. That is what that paper-skulled Walton
is planning, isn’t it? Cementing his position by marrying his
cousin off to his best friend? I didn’t come down in the last rain,
gel, and I already know who’s footing the bill for this debut of
yours. Strange. Hadn’t thought Walton to be such a downy one.”

Cassandra, who had been staring at Marcus
this whole time, trying to decide if her attraction to him had been
born in gratitude for his rescue of her or if her reaction to him
was of a more basic, physical nature, was surprised to hear Aunt
Cornelia’s opinion of her presence in Grosvenor Square. “Is that
all you people think about? Marriage? From the moment we met, all
through dinner, and again now. Can’t a young woman have anything
else to occupy her time, her
mind?
”

“Her mind?” Aunt Cornelia laughed out loud, a
harsh, horsey laugh. “And what else is there, I ask you? Oh, maybe
in my day, when we were freer in our ways. A few of us raced our
own carriages, and gambled deep in private salons. But what else is
there, when you get right down to it? What else is a young lady of
quality raised to do besides catch herself a suitable husband and
breed the next generation of rich, useless gentlemen and giggling,
witless twits?”

“What else?” Cassandra—caught up in her
argument and goaded by the sickening thought that she, a liberated
female, might be trapped forever in this stupid time warp—was quick
to point out what, to her, was the obvious. “Women have brains,
Aunt Cornelia.
You
have a brain. It’s obvious every time you
open your mouth. Yet instead of standing up for yourself, finding a
way to make yourself independent, you play silly games, teasing
Marcus with a bloodsucking evangelist who would make our worst
television preachers blush. And then you perpetuate your
insecurities by denying young women an education that would lead to
independence. Well, let me tell you something—I’ll be damned if
I’m
going to sit around here doing nothing more than looking
pretty and praying some man who’s been raised to think he’s God’s
gift to women will take care of me. Remember, Aunt Cornelia—a woman
needs a man as much as a fish needs a bicycle!”

Cassandra’s voice had risen as her temper
climbed—both at an alarming rate. All her promises to be good and
her acknowledgment of the need to hide the true circumstances
behind her appearance in Regency London had been forgotten. She
nearly jumped out of her skin when the Reverend Mr. Austin, who had
come up beside her as she spoke, broke the silence, his rusty
baritone resounding throughout the room.