Page 9

“ O h, Miss! Miss Catherine, look!” Bethie squealed, rousing Catherine from a drowsing state.

Reluctantly, Catherine opened her eyes. Seated opposite her, Bethie’s body was awkwardly twisted, her nose pressed against the glass carriage window.

“What is it?” Catherine inquired in a distracted manner.

Three days of rocking and swaying in the carriage, passing numerous towns, villages, pastures, fields, and windswept heaths, had dimmed her interest in her surroundings.

Her mind was occupied with memories of the previous evening's embarrassing events and the disturbing, penetrating gaze of her rescuer.

The decidedly vexatious realization that her thoughts dwelled more on Lord Stefton than on the effrontery of the inebriated gentlemen gave her a throbbing headache and an unwarranted snappish demeanor.

The gentleman cut up Catherine’s peace in a manner entirely foreign to her experiences.

Every time she’d been aware of those steel-gray eyes upon her, she felt a strange tightness in her chest overlaid with a tingling that rippled through her, threatening to descend to her toes!

Humbly, Catherine admitted that perhaps there was some merit in her relatives’ decision to ship her off to London.

The previous evening's incident made patently obvious to her the necessity for acquiring the town bronze Deirdre mentioned.

But it did not sway her from her chosen course.

Nonetheless, the notion that gentlemen of Kirkson’s ilk should buy and ride a Burke horse was distasteful. Thankfully, she doubted Dawes would accept his coin for any horse, particularly not after the nasty black eye Maureen now sported.

Poor Maureen! That bruise completely mortified her.

If it had been possible, she would have confined herself to her bedroom until the telltale colors faded.

As it were, from somewhere she’d managed to conjure a bonnet with a broad, deep brim to shade her face.

Furthermore, at every carriage stop she walked with her head down and a hand raised to clasp the bonnet brim as if to save it from escaping in an errant wind.

Catherine would have laughed at Maureen’s machinations if she wasn’t aware of how deeply affected the woman was by the injury.

Bethie, on the other hand, seemed to have been invigorated by the incident. There was about her a renewed sense of excitement. All day she’d been in a high gig and looking forward to arriving in London.

“Miss Catherine,” Bethie said again, this time turning around to tap her mistress’s knee, “It’s Lunnon! Quick, look before we descend the hill, for I’m afeard you’ll not see such a sight again.”

Dutifully Catherine looked out the window, an indulgent smile on her face.

Then she gasped. In the distance was the blue ribbon of the Thames River winding around tall buildings and spires that caught the late afternoon sunlight.

Farther to the east, the sky was steel blue, heralding approaching rain.

Against the darkening sky, the buildings glowed with golden color.

The city was beautiful, and for the first time, Catherine felt a tiny surge of excitement growing.

“See, Miss?” Bethie softly asked a look of awe in her eyes.

“Yes. Thank you,” Catherine returned, smiling happily for the first time in days.

“What are you two going on about?” Maureen asked, leaning toward them to look out their window. She sniffed. “Looks like we’ll have rain before we reach town.”

“Oh, Maureen,” Catherine said, laughter bubbling up inside, “but doesn’t it look beautiful from here?”

Maureen Dawes looked at her queerly before settling back against the brown velvet squabs.

“Rain clouds is rain clouds, and mark my words, you’ll not be thinking it so nice when you have to get out of this carriage into the rain.

What a fine impression you’ll make on that aunt of yours then, all wet and dripping. ”

Catherine shrugged. “I’m not interested in making a good impression.”

“Shame on you, Catherine Shreveton! What a thing to say when your aunt has opened her house to you and is offering to present you and all.”

“Well, it’s true. And just think what sort of relatives I must have if that young gentleman of last evening--Orrick, wasn’t it?--really is my cousin.”

“I’m sure he’s just young and mixed up with bad company.

I certainly intend to discover who his parents are and inform them of his disgraceful behavior,” Maureen said severely as her hand came up to touch her sore cheek gingerly.

The hand dropped back into her lap and she sat straighter.

“I’m certain they will see he is punished. "

“Oh, really, Maureen,” Catherine said, laughing, “he is not a schoolboy.”

“Nevertheless, I shall see they are made aware of his disgraceful behavior.”

Catherine shook her head doubtfully and turned back toward the window. Unfortunately, they’d already begun their descent from the hill, and the delightful aspect of London in the distance was lost from sight.

Maureen Dawes’s prediction of rain before they reached London was all too accurate.

The heavy downpour painted the city in drab shades of gray and brown and created large muddy puddles of water on the cobbled streets that splashed the carriage to its windows, obscuring the dreary view from sight.

Inside the carriage, a damp chill prompted the inhabitants to draw closer for shared warmth.

Maureen succumbed to morose reflection on her injury, but somehow, Catherine’s and Bethie’s spirits remained high.

Later, descending from the carriage at Harth House on Upper Grosvenor Street, Catherine did not hurry to cross the pavement to climb the wide stone steps.

Instead, she found herself enjoying the rain, much to the consternation of Maureen, who urged her to bestir herself, for she could not enter the house before Catherine, and she did not like standing in the rain waiting for her reluctant charge.

Standing beside his wife, Raymond was a drenched, muddy mess; yet he acted as if it were of no concern, thereby further irritating Maureen.

Lady Harth’s butler instructed that Bethie and the luggage be conveyed to the house’s back entrance. Then, his thin nose flaring, he escorted Catherine and Mr. and Mrs. Dawes into the hallway.

“I shall inform her ladyship of your arrival,” he said austerely, adding, “if you would be so kind as to wait.” The sneer on his face told Catherine he had indeed noticed their wet and muddy clothes and had no intention of showing them to a comfortable room to wait.

A loud yelp of pain, followed by a thump and the crash of breaking china came from behind the closed double doors of a room further down the hall, past the stairway. The butler winced, closing his eyes briefly as a look of resignation twisted his arrogant features.

“What was that?” Catherine exclaimed, moving toward the closed door.

“Do not concern yourself, Miss,” the butler said hurriedly, placing himself between her and the door. “A common household accident.”

Gone was the urbane, superior butler. In moments he’d been changed into a harried, nervous man. The transformation was so complete and instantaneous that Catherine found herself halting in surprise and wonderment.

The doors behind the butler opened and a red-faced, sweating footman came out of the room. He awkwardly carried a tray of broken china before him as he moved in a bandy-legged fashion, the front of his uniform wet from the waist down.

“Mr. Pennymore, I’m giving notice,” he said, shoving the tray into the butler’s hands.

“Let’s not be hasty, John, please,” implored the butler, hurriedly putting the tray on one of the empty side tables.

“Hasty! My manhood’s scalded and you tells me not to be hasty?”

“John!”

Catherine bit her lip to contain a giggle, while behind her Maureen gasped in shock, and a pained look of empathy pursed Dawes’s mouth and twisted his features.

“She don’t even apologize, just reprimands me for calling out in me pain. No sir, I’ll not stay another day in this madhouse. I’ll just be changing and collecting me wages.”

“A raise, John? How about a raise?”

“No sir, it ain’t worth it,” proclaimed the footman as he turned to make his way carefully down the hall.

“Double your wages?” Pennymore offered desperately.

The footman stopped for a moment, then carefully turned to look at the butler. “It depends on how me fragile condition heals,” he said loftily and continued down the hall.

Watching him leave, Catherine valiantly struggled to repress an urge to laugh without success.

Pennymore smoothed his thinning hair back into place and turned around to stare down at her as if she were some insect under a magnifying glass. He had transformed once again and was the epitome of the arrogant butler.

“If you will wait here, I will, as I told you before we were so rudely interrupted, inform the countess of your arrival.” He sniffed dismissively, then turned to proceed into the room.

Her curiosity increasing with each moment, Catherine began to examine her aunt’s home.

She walked down the hall. It was elegant in its architectural design, a black-and-white marble floor, marble pillars, a graceful curving stairway, and deeply patterned plaster medallions on the ceiling highlighted with gold leaf were among its features, yet the house seemed strangely barren.

The hall was devoid of decorative accoutrements.

Niches in the wall, obviously designed for statues, were bare.

Side tables, intricately carved and layered in gold leaf, stood well out of the way in almost inaccessible corners, devoid of vases, trays, or other items.