“With my usual subtlety, yes. Wear the yellow. It suits you. But put up your hair. It will drive him mad. He shouldn’t be the only one to have slipped half her wits, should he?”
And then Richard was gone, and Doreen was pouring a mere two inches of heated water into the small tin tub.
Jessica was just putting the final pin in her slightly damp hair when Doreen knocked on the bedchamber door to tell her his lordship had sent in his tiger. His name was Thomas—the cutest little scrap, really, and all dressed in the finest livery—to beg Mrs. Linden didn’t keep the earl’s bays standing above five minutes, because that’s what he said, and he said it quite nicely, and called her ma’am and everything, all so very prettylike.
“I’m ready,” Jessica responded quickly to cut Doreen off, grabbing up her bonnet and shawl. “How do I look?”
“Like spring itself, Mrs. Linden,” the maid of all work and front door sentry exclaimed, clapping her hands. “You ain’t worn the yellow since last summer, now have you, and it’s a shame the sun shines so little here, though thank the saints it’s fine today, because the fog is yellow itself at times and dirties everything. Why, it took me hours to brush it all away last time you wore it. Now when was that? Oh, yes, last summer.”
“Thank you,” Jessica told her, chagrined that she’d so forgotten herself as to think Doreen could give a simple answer to a simple question. Still, if there were ever a person who could stall a constable on the ground floor whilst Jessica and Richard and their patrons hastily stowed the cards and markers and pulled out the tomes of poetry, it was Doreen.
The maid’s prattle followed Jessica all the way down to the street and outside, where Doreen pointed to the young tiger and said, “See? Cutest little imp. Now you hold on tight once his lordship puts you to riding back there, young man,” she called out, wagging a finger at him.
Jessica avoided Gideon’s amused expression as the tiger helped her up onto the seat. He was, as usual, looking fine as nine pence as he lightly held the ribbons while his bays signaled their willingness to spring, his curly brimmed beaver at a jaunty angle on his head, his cravat a miracle of snow-white cloth. And no golden rose stuck in the center of it.
“And again, thank you, Doreen. I understand it’s to be the dreaded fish chowder tonight. You must have a considerable amount of chopping to do?”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Linden. First the onions. They always make me cry, so I get them out of the way directly at the start. Then there’s the pork fat, and that needs must be sliced thin, and all of the potatoes and the parsley and such. Mr. Borders brought us back some fine bunches of carrots, and I was thinking about putting in some of them while I was about it, seeing as how fish chowder takes most anything, doesn’t it, and mayhap some—”
Jessica waved to Doreen as Gideon released the brake the moment the tiger was up behind them and then turned her face forward to hide her smile. “Doreen quite delights in detail,” she said as they moved into the light noon traffic at the corner.
“The correct term is excruciating detail. I had a tutor rather like that. Max and I put a frog in his bed. Seven frogs, actually, and all at once. People always expect an even number. Although we think it was the fifth that had him hastily penning his resignation. Still, if you ever wish a comprehensive accounting of the major agricultural products of India, feel free to apply to me. You look exasperatingly pretty today, Mrs. Linden. Were the pins truly necessary?”
Jessica touched a hand to her bare nape, her bent elbow nicely concealing her triumphant smile. “Richard thought so. Exasperating was exactly what he’d hoped for.”
“Your uncle doesn’t care for me?”
“More correctly, he cares for me. He believes you may be out to destroy me.”
Gideon didn’t react by so much as a flicker of an eyelid. “Really? Has he given any indication as to how I’m to go about this destruction?”
“He believes you’ve already begun. But I assured him I know what I’m doing.”
“Good for you. And you’re convinced of that?”
She turned to look at his profile, which could have been chiseled out of the finest marble by a master sculptor. Except that she knew his lips were warm and soft, not cold and hard like stone. A lie seemed in order. “Utterly.”
“So you didn’t dream of me last night?”
Jessica folded her hands in her lap. “No.” As she’d barely slept at all and then it had been the deep sleep of exhaustion, that answer was mostly truthful.
He turned to look at her, his dark eyes alive with mischief. “Now there’s a pity. I dreamed of you. Would you care to hear about my dream?”
“Again, no.”
“Again, a pity. It all but had me flying to Jermyn Street at dawn, to knock down your door.”
“I thought we’d agreed. That doesn’t happen again.”
He turned to face forward once more. “You pronounced, Jessica. I agreed to nothing. If we’re to work together, we may as well continue to enjoy each other.”
She very nearly opened her mouth to say she hadn’t enjoyed him at all, but even she knew she couldn’t tell that particular clunker with any hope of being believed. “I won’t be your mistress. I’ll keep the five hundred pounds you all but tossed away at the faro table because half of it is by rights Richard’s, but don’t insult me like that again. You’re banned from the cards at Jermyn Street. Besides, four women should be more than enough for any man.”
He laughed. “Four? At one and the same time? Madam, I enjoy my pleasures, but that much pleasure would have me a bent and crippled man by now.”
“Richard’s never wrong.”
“Richard should withdraw his nose from my business before he loses it. Who are these women?”
“I’m not going to continue this discussion,” Jessica said, belatedly remembering the young tiger hanging on to the back of the curricle. “Pas devant l’enfant.”
“Not in front of the child? Ah, you refer to Thomas. He’s been in my employ for two years, and rendered impervious to shock long before, and if not then, long since.” Without turning around, he raised his voice to ask, “Haven’t you, Thomas?”
“Sir?”
“See, he isn’t even listening, are you, Thomas?”
“Singing inside my head, my lord, like always. Would you like me to sing outside it for his lordship?”
“Perhaps another time. Go back to your inside singing.”
Jessica shot a quick look behind her, to see the tiger had closed his eyes and was tipping his head from side to side as his lips moved, clearly singing “inside his head.”
“He’s really singing inside his head?”
“Yes, and much preferable to having him sing outside it, which he’s only allowed to do around the horses, that unaccountably seem to enjoy the sound of Thomas’s joyful noise. I think they’re reminded of the goat we keep in the stables at Redgrave Manor to bear them company. Both bray with great enthusiasm.”
Don’t make me like you, Jessica warned him mentally…and perhaps herself. “The first is kept in Mount Street, the second is a Covent Garden warbler and the others are society ladies. The widow Orford and—oh.”
“The widow and the niece of two of our murdered society members, yes, cultivated—but not in the literal sense—for any information they might have. But to be fair, the usually infallible Richard couldn’t know that. As to Curzon Street and warbling, he is, sadly, behind the times. The warbler sings elsewhere, with my full approval