couldn’t give me him, could you, and just keep the girl for yourself? You go about looking nearly as bedraggled half the time anyway. I mean, she’s wearing trousers. My stars!”
Fanny, unable to help herself, actually snorted, and Rian rushed into speech to cover her rudeness. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said for lack of anything more intelligent springing into his mind, bowing yet again. “My lord, again I apologize for the monstrous inconvenience my sister and I have put you to, and I would like to say that I am more than cognizant of your forbearance and—”
“Oh, for the love of heaven, Becket, shut up,” Brede said wearily, looking at Fanny. “Lucille, what do you think? Can you rescue that?”
“In time for the Duchess of Richmond’s ball this Saturday night? That’s only four days away. Oh, I hardly think so, Valentine. My stars. When have you known me to perform miracles?”
Brede smiled slightly. “A miracle? Surely, Lucille, you don’t see Miss Becket here as on a par with loaves and fishes?”
Lucie gnawed on the side of her index finger as she looked at Fanny, who was caught between amusement and longing to wring the Ogre’s neck with his own snowy cravat. “I suppose a bath might be of some small help? And then I could have my Frances attempt something with the hair. And there’s this lovely little modiste a few blocks from—Yes, all right, Valentine, if I must. I shall gather all of my depleted strength and attempt to do my best.”
This last was completed with the tragic pose and half-gulping voice of the truly put-upon, and Fanny looked at Rian, whose shoulders were shaking as he attempted to tamp down his mirth at her expense.
“That’s my brave Lucille. The trials you endure for your quarterly allowance,” Brede said bracingly, wondering idly if he was right as to Bonaparte’s current position, and the possibility of riding there, lashing himself to the mouth of one of the French cannon. “You’re dismissed.”
Lady Whalley got to her feet, clearly in a huff. “Dismissed, is it? You drag me away from a perfectly marvelous lamb cutlet, just to dismiss me? Oh, very well.” She looked to Fanny yet again. “Tomorrow. But no one can see her until I work this miracle you require of me. Bring her round to the servant’s entrance tomorrow morning at eleven. Clean, if possible.”
Fanny didn’t bother to either curtsey or bow as Lady Whalley swept out of the small room, trailing her ruffled black skirts and enough scent to make a meal of by itself, and then turned back to glare at the Ogre. “Definitely your sister, my lord. There’s no question there.”
Brede ignored her, the cheeky brat. When forced to deal with females, ignoring them had always topped his list of the ways preferable to him. “Lieutenant, you will accompany me tomorrow morning at precisely eight of the clock. You’ll be quartered with other more junior members of the Duke’s staff, which means the food will be good and the beds dry. Take any opportunity to ride out these next few days, familiarize yourself with the topography of the area—I suggest you concentrate on the area south of Brussels, all the way to Quatre Bras, Ligny, and beyond—as I expect you’ll be traveling that ground quite often in the next week or two. But keep an eye out for Boney’s advance parties. I last spied one only a few miles below Givet. He’s been there before with his army, years ago. But he won’t wait for us to come to him there, fight on traditionally French soil. For the moment, I suggest you scare up Wiggins from where he’s hiding himself and he’ll show you to your chamber. The same goes for you, Miss Becket.”
“I’ll want a bath,” Fanny dared.
“If you are applying for my opinion, I completely concur. However, I do not number that among my duties to Jack Eastwood. There are other females in this house—I’m sure I’ve glimpsed at least two of them. Go find one, Miss Becket, and beg a tub. Difficult as this may be for you to comprehend, I have other things to do.”
Fanny watched, her mouth screwed to one side, her fists jammed on her hips, as the Earl of Brede quit the room in much the same way his sister had moments earlier. The sound of the door to the street slamming behind him lent her the happy information that the Ogre was gone.
She turned to Rian and grinned. “Papa would adore him, wouldn’t he?”
Rian gave a single shake of his head. “If he didn’t kill him, yes.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WIGGINS HAD WORKED a small miracle of his own, Fanny decided the next morning as she donned the freshly laundered and pressed gown she’d rolled up and stuffed in her pack. She’d had a bath last night before slipping in between clean, fresh-smelling sheets, and felt very nearly human again. Her only regret was that she’d slept the sleep of the dead until nine, which meant that Rian had gone off without saying goodbye to her.
But she’d find him again, she had no fears there. After all, she’d found him before, hadn’t she?
After breakfasting in her chamber, something she did at Becket Hall only if she was ill or, when younger, when being punished for something or other and temporarily not allowed to “associate with reasonable human beings,” she made her way downstairs, leaving her pack and uniform behind her, for Wiggins had promised he’d have the pack sent round to Lady Lucille’s later in the day. She’d miss those trousers.
She’d only just entered the small drawing room, wondering when the Ogre would make an appearance and toss her off to his sister, when the Earl, in the act of passing by the entrance, saw her. Stopped. Walked into the room.
She narrowed her eyes, daring him to say anything cutting.
He was dressed in buckskins and a dark blue superfine jacket, and still held a small riding crop in his right hand. He smelled vaguely of horse and tobacco and sunlight, and she knew he’d been out and about, delivering Rian to Wellington’s headquarters.
“My lord,” she said, dropping into a very abbreviated curtsey. “Rian is now situated with—”
“Hush,” he said, using the riding crop to tilt up her chin as he examined her, head-to-toe. He walked slowly around her, and she was rather forced to turn with him until he allowed the riding crop to slide from her chin to her modestly revealed shoulder, skim across her back, and finally come to rest against the base of her throat before he, now standing in front of her once more, removed it. “I was afraid of this,” he said at last. “The hair remains an issue, naturally, but you’re quite attractive in that gown, Miss Becket.”
Would he stop looking at her that way! The way, she realized, her cheeks flushing, she was looking at him!
“And…and that’s made you unhappy, my lord?” she asked, unable to tear her gaze from his.
“Uncomfortable, Miss Becket,” he said, abruptly turning away from her to pick up a folded newspaper that someone had placed on the table between the couches. Reading whatever ridiculousness the French newspapers were spouting now was much preferable to looking into those exotic green eyes. “There’s a difference. How old are you?”
Fanny felt herself bristling. But he’d been nice to Rian, and he still hadn’t said anything about sending her back to England, so she bit down her anger. “Twenty, my lord.”
Then she lifted her chin, the chin she’d swiped at the moment he’d taken away the riding crop. She had needed the feel of him gone. It had been bad enough, looking into his tired, hazel eyes, and when she’d transferred her gaze to his full mouth that had been…well, that had been worse, although she wasn’t sure why. She merely knew that the Earl of Brede bothered her. More than a bit.
“Twenty? My, my,” Brede said, dropping the newspaper back onto the tabletop as he looked at her again. “Quite ancient.”
“Not nearly as ancient as you, my lord,” she said, tiring of this dance he seemed to be doing around her.
“True, Miss Becket. I’m two and thirty, and many mornings feel twice that. This morning, alas, being one of them. Tell me, what did you use to hack at that lovely blond hair? A dull sickle?”