Mrs. Clifford the Elder, thankfully not present at the moment, was Imminent Disaster rolling on wheels, and Thornley, with his highly developed sense of self-preservation, had dedicated himself to not watching what Fanny Clifford did, hearing what she said, or speculating on what she might do or say next.
Mr. Clifford Clifford, Thornley had decided within five seconds of meeting the boy, was a dead loss, and he refused to think of him, either.
Although the mother, the Widow Clifford, held a certain nerve-shredding appeal. Thornley believed in an armful of woman, and Daphne Clifford could fit that bill very well. She had dimples, not just in her plump cheeks, but at her elbows as well, and Thornley had scolded himself mightily when he’d found himself cogitating the odds of dimples also decorating the lady’s knees.
All in all, Daphne Clifford had a look of faded glory, gray eyes like the dust of roses, and hair once red but now streaked with silver. A woman of some beauty, for all her short stature, and quite beyond Thornley’s touch. Everyone above a housekeeper was beyond Thornley’s touch; he had accepted that long ago, and had resigned himself to bachelorhood without many regrets.
He would not even speculate upon how very comforting warm, dimpled knees might be, pressed up against him, spoonlike, on cold winter nights.
“Good afternoon, Thornley,” Emma said, stripping off her gloves. “And see if you can turn off that watering pot behind me, if you could, please. It was no more than a simple walk in the Square. You’d think I just led a forced march to Hampstead Heath and back. Mama,” she added, “Riley will be happy to take your things for you.”
Daphne Clifford, who had been staring at Thornley, and smiling rather dreamily, quickly pulled off her gloves, mumbling, “I…I was just doing that, dear.”
“Yes, miss,” Thornley said, bowing to Emma, then glaring at the sniffling Claramae in his practiced, penetrating way, which quite naturally served to instantly silence her, mid-snuffle. “If you’ll forgive her, miss, Claramae has quite a fear of fog such as we’ve been enduring these past three days. She once became lost for more than two hours, as I recall, not ten feet from the kitchen door.”
Being a proper butler, and loyal to his staff, Thornley refrained from adding that Claramae could also most probably become confused and misplace all sense of direction in a small linen closet. While carrying a blazing lamp. And while gripping a length of stout string tied to the doorknob.
Daphne Clifford who, after giving over her gloves, bonnet and pelisse, had been doling out a lint-dusted penny to Riley, snapped her thin purse closed and added her mote to the conversation: “Why the child thinks we needs must take the air for a full hour every day, even when that air tastes of coal dust and we can’t see our own fingers in front of our faces…why, I sometimes wonder for her mind.”
“Yes, Mrs. Clifford,” Thornley said, bowing once more, even as he shuddered inwardly at this clearly too-intimate conversation with the woman. Wasn’t it enough that he was attracted? Did she have to make matters worse by smiling at him? Showing him those dimples? “It is my understanding that all social events have been postponed again for this evening due to this pea soup, as we here in London call it.”
Thornley would bow and agree with anyone, even the devil himself, if it would get these two ladies out of the foyer and upstairs before the tea grew cold (or his libido grew any warmer). Thornley liked an orderly household, one that ran to his schedule, and Miss Clifford’s daily walks around the Square at three o’clock pained him, and that schedule, dearly.
With a sharp look to Riley, and then to the door, the footman jumped to, pushing a rolled-up carpet firmly against the bottom of the door, to keep the yellow fog in the Square, rather than allow it to seep into the mansion. Similar measures had been taken at every door, every window, and the lack of aesthetics bothered Thornley, but not as much as waist-deep fog in the mansion would do. Mrs. Timon had already developed a hacking cough and had been ordered to her bed.
“Is there—” Daphne began, and Thornley ended, “Tea and fresh, warm biscuits await both you good ladies in the main drawing room. I do believe there is also blueberry jam, your favorite I noticed, Mrs. Clifford. If I might lead the way, madam?”
Thornley realized at once that he had made a verbal mistake, adding that bit about the jam in some absurd thought of puffing himself up in Daphne Clifford’s eyes. She immediately grabbed hold of his arm at the elbow, as if they were man and woman, not butler and well-born tenant. A lesser man would have felt a jolt of hope, but Thornley was not a lesser man. He knew his place.
“You’re so good, so kind, Thornley,” Daphne trilled, batting her remarkably lush eyelashes at him. “La, I fear we must be quite the burden to you, new to London as we are.”
“Not at all, madam,” Thornley assured her as Miss Clifford, whom he had instantly recognized as the wits as well as the anchor of the entire Clifford family, turned to pat Claramae’s arm.
“We’ll take no more walks until this fog is dissipated, I promise. I was foolish to insist, but I do so hate being cooped up inside, ever, no matter how pleasing my surroundings. And I’m very sorry you were frightened out there, Claramae,” she apologized in her pleasing voice.
Indeed, all of Miss Emma Clifford was pleasing, to the ears, to the eyes. Even to the mind, unless one was the sort to be frightened by an intelligent female. Still, for all her perfection, she hadn’t got her mother’s dimples, which at least Thornley could only consider a pity. A bleeding pity.
“Yes, miss,” Claramae said, stuffing a soggy handkerchief back into her apron pocket even as she dropped into a quick curtsy. “’Tis just that robbers and murderers lurk in the fog. Everyone knows that.”
“Possibly, Claramae, but if those cutpurses and cutthroats encountered the same problems we had in seeing even two feet in front of us, I imagine they’re all still out there, bumping into each other, cutting each other’s noses off, and no worry to us.”
“Yes, miss. I’ll take your things, miss? Everything will need a good brushing, as it’s so dusty out there.”
Emma handed over her bonnet, gloves and pelisse, and Claramae scuttled off toward the baize door under the stairs, leaving Emma to follow in her mother’s wake.
She could hear Daphne Clifford still nattering nineteen to the dozen to Thornley.
Emma sighed, shook her head and mentally attempted to compose a small homily that would convince her mother that, while Thornley was admittedly a well-setup gentleman, he was their butler, not their host.
Not that this would matter a whit to Daphne, Emma realized on yet another sigh. She had never before noticed her mother’s proclivity to gush, to eyelash bat, to simper and giggle. At home, Daphne concentrated on her embroidery. At home, Daphne still spoke well of her husband, dead these three years. At home, Daphne behaved herself.
Here, from absolutely the first moment her mother had set eyes on Thornley five short days ago, the woman had been afflicted with some strange mental aberration that had her believing she was a young girl on the flirt.
It was embarrassing, that’s what it was, and that Daphne’s old chum, Lady Jersey, seemed to encourage her was only to be considered criminal. Emma knew that Sally Jersey was laughing behind her hand at Daphne, but Sally Jersey had also issued them all vouchers to Almack’s, so Emma had steeled herself to overlook the woman’s rather perverse humor. But only until she had snagged herself a suitable husband. After that, she would cut Sally Jersey dead, and hang the consequences, no matter how much her mother seemed to admire the woman.
Emma entered the large main drawing room just as her mother was asking Thornley to please “play Mother” for them and pour the tea. She’d stopped short of asking the man to sit down, spread a serviette over his knee and join