The Bad Baron's Daughter (7 page)

Katie looked up doubtfully. “I hate to say, my lord. I daresay you’ll be shocked.”

Linden folded his arms across his chest. “I will strive,” he said drily, “to bear up. Who is Papa?”

“Baron Kendricks,” said Katie regretfully.

“Kendricks!” said Lord Linden in a voice that made Katie jump and stick herself again. “I don’t suppose it would have occurred to you to have included that somewhere in your gibberish last night? What in the fiend’s name is a chit of your birth doing serving rag water at a place like the Maidenhead?”

“But I explained that,” said Katie, puzzled. “You see, I persuaded Zack to give me a job there.”

“What you haven’t explained, my little idiot, is how you came to know a man like Zack to begin with.”

“Oh. We lived together. When we were children. Zack’s mama and my papa were like this.” Katie held up two crossed fingers. “But they never married because Zack’s mama said Papa was too unsteady to make a good husband. One night Papa lost a great deal of money at play so she and Papa had a fight and she said that she was going to move on to greener pastures. She did, too. She lives in Vienna, in a villa.”

“God! Zack should be shot, but what your father needs,” said Lord Linden with feeling, “is to be drawn and quartered. Didn’t you have any relatives to object to his lodging you under the same roof with his mistress?”

Katie made a jumbled knot and broke off the thread with her teeth. “Only Grandfather, my mother’s father. But he was a merchant, and Papa told him that he’d be damned if he’d listen to the moralistic nonsense of a cit. That made Grandpa mad and he said that I’d be better off dead than raised like that and he never wanted to hear of my existence again. I did write to Grandpa before I left Essex and told him that Papa had disappeared and I would be at
The Merry Maidenhead
. Grandfather hasn’t contacted me, so there you are.”

“How often,” asked Linden, “does Papa disappear?”

Katie sucked thoughtfully on her needle-stabbed finger. “Oh, all the time. But never before for so long and without leaving me
any
money.”

Linden frowned. “Haven’t you any idea where your father is?”

“No. The man Papa owes ten thousand pounds to thinks he’s gone to the Continent to escape his debts, but the more I think about it, I recall that Papa often talked about going to America—he said that there is a lot of opportunity for gamblers there.”

“Mmm,” said Linden, looking sardonic. “Isn’t there anyone besides Zack to take you in until your father can be located? Friends?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Katie sadly. “People tend to disassociate themselves from the families of card-sharpers, and we moved a lot to avoid Papa’s creditors. I don’t have any friends. Besides Zack.”

“Did you come here last night because you decided I might be a better bargain than Zack?” asked Linden, regarding Katie steadily.

Katie flushed. “Was that how it looked? Zack only told me that he was taking me to the house of a friend where I’d be safer than at
The Merry Maidenhead
. You see,” said Katie, the pain fresh in her voice, “I trusted Zack.”

Lord Linden could not have looked less sympathetic. “Katie, a newborn infant would have known better than to trust Zack.”

Katie regarded Linden with her astonishingly blue eyes. “Even if my father said I could trust him?”

“Particularly if
your
father said you could trust him, nitwit. I know I wasn’t in much of a humor to listen to you last night, but don’t you think you could have tried a little harder to tell me all this, considering what you had at stake?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t easy for me to think clearly because Zack had drugged me with laudanum.”

“Oh, you were drugged, were you?” said Linden caustically. “That certainly adds an irresistibly sordid piquancy to everything. Do you feel all right now?”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” said Katie. She set down her needlework and took another sip from the clay cup.

Linden scowled. “What are you drinking?”

“Milk. It was downstairs. I hope…”

“Yes, yes, you hope I don’t mind.” Lord Linden took the cup from Katie’s hand and gazed at the curdled contents. “Jesus. This is sour. How long has it been since you’ve eaten anything? No, never mind, I don’t want to know. Finish your jacket and we’ll go out for breakfast. Sour milk. Are you trying to make yourself sick?”

“No, my lord. I never get sick.”

“Truly? What a convenient creature you are. You don’t get sick. You don’t cry. Our little misunderstanding of last night aside, is there anything else that you don’t do? Yes, you
ought
to hang your head, that’s the closest I’ve ever come to raping anyone. Throw the milk out now, there’s a good girl.”

Katie walked over to the clear bay window, opened one hinged pane and dumped the milk outside. Unfortunately, it was not clear sailing to the pavement and Katie, hearing an indignant scream, looked out the window to find that she had tossed the spoiled milk squarely onto the lavender parasol of an elegant young lady who had been taking her morning promenade below.

“Oh, dear,” said Katie, dragging her head inside hastily. Lord Linden joined her by the window.

“Oh, dear is right. Are you trying to have me evicted?” said Linden, his dark eyes washed by laughter.

“But that’s what they do in the Rookery, toss the garbage out the window.”

“My dear child, this is not the Rookery, this is Bennett Street. And here ‘they’ do
not
toss their garbage out the window. What a life you must have led!” said Linden. “Tell me,
chérie
, who looked after you during those times that Papa disappeared?”

“Ladies that Papa hired, mostly, though none of them stayed very long because Papa forgot to pay them most of the time. When I got older, I stayed alone. Papa says that every tub must stand upon its own bottom.”

Lord Linden pinched Katie’s chin gently between his fingers. “Katie, if we are going to get along, I think you had better stop telling me what Papa says. Frankly, I am beginning to develop a profound dislike for that gentleman.”

“Are we going to get along, my lord?” asked Katie wonderingly.

Lord Linden sighed, released Katie, and sat down in an open-backed armchair. He couldn’t send the chit back to the Rookery and Nasty Ned. It would be nothing short of murder. “I’m afraid so,
petite
. At least until I can find your father and bring him to some sense of his responsibilities. That is, if he hasn’t gone to America.”

Katie had great faith in Lord Linden’s powers of persuasion, but an intimate knowledge of her father’s character told her that it was beyond the power of mortal flesh to bring him to a sense of his responsibilities. “It’s not that Papa doesn’t like me,” she explained, “it’s only that he doesn’t think about me very often.”

Lord Linden looked grim. “Then we’ll just have to remind him.”

London shone rose that evening and on Bennett Street the bandtailed pigeons strutted to and fro on the rails of the ironwork balconies, chuckling softly to themselves. Katie could hear them as she lay on her stomach on Lord Linden’s bed, watching him tie his white silk cravat.

“How did you know that I didn’t have French pox?” asked Katie. She lifted her slim ankles from the bed and bounced them one by one against the mattress.

“Because,” said Linden, immersed in the mysteries of knotting.

“Because why?” pursued Katie.

Lord Linden started to say something and then stopped as though he had changed his mind. “You really are very innocent, aren’t you? If your friend Zack was so eager to introduce you into the muslin company, it seems to me that he ought to have used a little more energy making sure you knew the facts of life.”

“Well, I do know them. Once I saw a cow and bull. Zack says that’s all you need to know.”

Linden gave a quick gasp of mirth. “Which partially explains your reluctance last night.”

“Are you still angry with me about that?” asked Katie uncertainly.

“No.”

Katie thought a minute. “Lord Linden, do you recall that lady who came into the restaurant while we were having breakfast? The one who is your grandmother’s friend? I think she might not have believed you when you told her I was your nephew. She wasn’t very friendly, was she?”

Linden smiled at some secret thought. “Don’t worry, child, it was directed at me and not you.”

Katie wriggled to the side of the bed and let her head hang over the edge. “How do you think she knew I wasn’t your nephew?”

“Probably because she knows that none of my sisters would ever allow their offspring to traipse around London looking like the loser in a dogfight,” said Linden crushingly.

Katie digested this in silence. Then she dropped her hands to the floor and rubbed her knuckles against the rug. “I think you look beautiful. Will it be much fun at the party you’re going to tonight?”

“Lord, no, dull work, my dear. A
soiree
at my grandmother Brixton’s, of all the damned things. Banal as a banker’s bath water.”

“Why do you go then?”

“Because
grandmère
‘ll raise holy hell if I don’t show up. And that means she’ll send my mother a long, detailed letter about what a hell-bound babe I am and my mother will send
me
a letter, splattered with tears and lavender scent, begging me to stop breaking her heart with my wild ways. My mother can work herself into hysteria rapidly, I assure you. And, it not being possible to slap one’s mother in the face, I’d have to endure a certain amount of it.” He grinned suddenly and looked very young. “Actually,
Grandmère
and I have a lot in common. She’s got Caligula’s own temper, too.”

“Was Caligula one of those Greeks?”

Linden gave his cravat a final pat and came to sit on the bed beside Katie. “No, barbarian. He was a Roman emperor.” He tapped her nose lightly. What a problem this girl was. A short stop at Bow Street had set inquiries in motion concerning the whereabouts of Katie’s father. They had found that there were others interested in this subject: the baron’s creditors. Housing her until her father was found was a problem. Lord Linden could well imagine the reaction of any London hostess requested by him to provide shelter for a young girl of Katie’s glowing beauty and present circumstances. No one would believe he hadn’t made her his mistress. If that wasn’t enough to damn her, her father’s reputation surely would. Baron Kendricks was a notorious cheat, and nothing short of the sponsorship of a duchess would ever open society’s doors to the Bad Baron’s daughter; As he looked down into Katie’s soulful blue eyes, he thought how unfair it was that Katie should be tarnished with her father’s reputation. In spite of her rearing, the girl was an unfledged innocent. It spoke volumes for Katie’s inexperience that she still trusted him after last night.

Katie sat up, hugging her knees. “Is your grandmother’s house far away?”

“No, it’s about four blocks down Bennett Street. Are you afraid to stay here by yourself?”

“No, but I don’t understand why you don’t want to come back here after the party. It will be a lot of trouble for you to stay somewhere else and it would be so easy for me to sleep in the drawing room.”

“Perhaps.” Linden rubbed the back of Katie’s hand with his finger. “Unfortunately, it would also be so easy for me to forget my good resolutions. I’m a dissolute creature, child, and you want to beware.”

The big blue eyes smiled into his trustingly. “You’ve been kinder to me than anyone has before. You know, Lord Linden, about last night…”

“Yes?” He let his finger wander over her wrist.

“If I was going to be anyone’s mistress, I would like to be yours. But you see, when you got tired of me, then I would have to be with just anybody, and I don’t think I could do that.”

Linden rose abruptly from the bed. “Don’t tease yourself about it, child, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got to be off now. Don’t burn the house down while I’m gone. And don’t open the door for anyone; I won’t be back before morning, so if anyone knocks, it won’t be me.” He reached over and chucked her under the chin as she sat, crosslegged, on the bed. “Good-bye now.”

She listened to his steps on the stairway and heard him lock the door behind him. She was alone. Her face brightened with an idea, and she bounced from the bed, skipped across the room, and opened the French doors leading to the balcony. The pigeons scattered with a wild flapping of wings as she leaned over the wrought-iron railing to look for Lord Linden. He was nearly at the corner, sauntering elegantly through the golden evening.

“Enjoy yourself!” she called through cupped hands, and waved. He turned and touched the brim of his top hat with the brass tip of his cane in a farewell gesture, and she watched him, hands on chin, until a slight bend in the street took him out of her sight. The late breeze ruffled playfully at her auburn hair and flapped at the curtains on the French doors behind her, ran in to make a turn around the room, and passed by her again on its way out. She stood idly, in reverie, as the pigeons returned to coo softly at her feet.

“Well,” she said aloud. “Pigeons certainly make a more pleasant noise than fighting cocks.” As if it understood her, one of the smaller pigeons walked stiff-legged between her feet and stood there, rubbing its wings against her ankles. “Dear little thing,” she said.

She remembered then that the pantry had been freshly stocked that day from funds from Linden’s ready pocket. They had bought bread, dried meat, fruit, cheese, and especially for her, he had said, a strange bundle of yellow, smooth-sided tubular fruit, connected together at one end in a way she thought was vastly clever.

“Bananas,” he had responded to her query, smiling to himself. “From the Canary Islands. No, they aren’t attached for shipment; they grow that way, in bunches. Little monkeys eat them in the jungle, they say.”

So now I’m going to eat monkey food, she thought. Katie looked doubtfully at the oblong yellow fruit. If only there was a monkey around to tell her how to eat it. She brought it out of the pantry into the little kitchen, took a knife from the rack and cut it in half. She found it was filled with a delightfully scented white fiber. Possessed by a culinary brainstorm, Katie sliced two pieces of bread and squeezed both halves of the banana out onto them, carefully daubing the fruit around to make sure it was evenly distributed. She cut two pieces of cheese and laid them on top, poured a sparing glass of white wine and carried the snack upstairs. Katie changed into a comfortable old nightdress, and sat crosslegged in a giant overstuffed armchair that she pulled before the open French doors of the balcony. And there she had a royal feast, entertained by the flutterings of the pigeons and watching the comings and goings of the finely dressed passersby. It seemed everyone was going to a party somewhere, and she was having a party herself. The shadows grew longer and blacker, spreading across the street until they had diffused the sunset into darkness. The swallows and bats began to dart once again. Katie put aside her plate, having reduced the mongrel sandwich to a small pile of crumbs, and dozed contentedly.