My Dear Jenny Read online

  Chapter Three

  Upstairs, in the room to which Mrs. Hatcher had directed them, Miss Prydd was attempting to make Emily Pellering comfortable, with a view toward persuading her to sleep. As the younger woman was still considerably overwrought, this was no easy task. One moment she would meekly agree to lie still and try to sleep, and the next she was sitting up again, fretting at the trouble she was causing and—in the same breath—imploring Miss Prydd not to leave her alone. lphegenia had no idea of doing so, at least until she was sure that the girl was sleeping, and assured her that it was no trouble, that anyone would be overset by such a disruption of plans. Miss Pellering said, with a wry, watery sniff, that Miss Prydd’s plans had also been turned topsy-turvy, and she had not alarmed the company by collapsing in the coffee room. lphegenia replied briskly that no one had ever accused her of owning any sensibility at all. Besides, Emily was to call her Genia.

  Comforted by this homely rebuke, and warmed by the tisane which Mrs. Hatcher’s girl Kate had brought, Emily slept at last. Genia sat by the bed for a few moments longer, then, assured that the girl would sleep for some time, left to seek the others among her fellow travelers. Just outside the door she was nearly trampled by Miss Pellering’s companion, who wheeled unsteadily away from her, mumbled an apology, and started into Emily’s room.

  “Oh, please, she’s only just settled in to sleep. And I know she has been upset by the news and is just a little afraid that you will scold her, as any younger sister would be of an older ... quite older brother. It would be so much kinder of you to let her sleep a while.”

  The man looked blearily at Miss Prydd. “Afraid of me? Little Emmy dotes on me. Silly little widgeon, my siss-ssister. Very overexxcciceitable. Don’t want to waken her. Beg your pardon, ma’am.” He executed an over precise bow and turned on his heel, but Genia heard the faintest of murmurs as he walked away: “Fubsy-faced, interfering female...” If she had not cared particularly for the man before now, this last placed her firmly on the side of Miss Pellering’s friends: lphegenia knew herself to be plain, but she was by no means fubsy-faced, rabbit-toothed, or tallow-eyed. Casting a look of dislike at his retreating form, she shook herself and started down the stairs.

  Domenic Teverley sprang up eagerly at her arrival.

  “Is she all right? Miss Pellering? She’s not seriously ill, is she?”

  “Hardly, only tired and overwrought. I left her sleeping.”

  “That blackguard Ratherscombe!” Dom began hotly, but:

  “Who?” Miss Prydd countered.

  “That queer nabs that’s trying to fob himself off as Miss Emily’s—Miss Pellering’s—her brother!”

  “Oh,” said Miss Prydd slowly, trying to assimilate this news. “Well, I left the gentleman” —a sniff indicated her opinion of Mr. Ratherscombe’s gentility— “with strict instructions not to bother her. I doubt he will, since he does have to keep our company until we can leave this place.”

  “I take it, then, that Miss Pellering has not confided in you?” Mr. Teverley’s voice, clear and unfogged by his recent sleep, startled both his cousin and Miss Prydd. “We seem to have confounded quite a few of Mr. Ratherscombe’s plans.”

  “Meaning that he had somehow persuaded Emily into an elopement?”

  Peter Teverley regarded lphegenia with respect. “That is my guess, ma’am.”

  “Oh, Lord, and now I suppose I ought to feel dreadfully shocked. But really, I can only feel sorry for her, poor little thing. I suppose that, if he exerted himself, Mr. Peller—No, that cannot be right. What is his name?” Domenic supplied her with the villain’s name and began a short treatise on his family, which Peter Teverley quelled with a look. “Well, I suppose that Mr. Ratherscombe could cut a romantic figure if he exerted himself. But now, what are we to do with them? If we try to tell Emily he’s—well, all the things you so astutely suggested of him, Domenic—we shall fail as sure as if we had never begun. To have come so far, Emily must be—er—blinded to his more unpleasant characteristics.”

  “I suggest that we simply concentrate on foiling Ratherscombe’s plans.” Teverley raised himself up from his chair to continue the conversation. “Perhaps the emergence of his true colors under frustrating circumstances will do more to disenchant Miss Pellering than we could hope to do ourselves.”

  Iphegenia turned to him to agree readily and thought of asking him if he had ever had cousins to deal with (a perfectly absurd thought) but lost the thought in her startled discovery of how tall he was, at least to one of her modest stature. More than that, he carried himself with a military dignity and ease that made him seem to tower over everything and everyone, and between his manner, that of a man of influence, and his skin, which was not so much dark, she realized, as burned brown by the sun, the notion of soldiery solidified in her mind.

  Under the pressure of his returned look, lphegenia realized that she had been staring at Mr. Teverley. She felt the blush rise to her face, but went on with the conversation. “I think I shall at least try to learn who her people are, and where they are, to let them know that she is safe and respectably attended—”

  “Good God, ma’am, you make yourself sound like the most appalling antidote!” Teverley objected, plainly revolted.

  “Perhaps not yet an ape-leader, Mr. Teverley, but hardly a green girl.” The memory of Ratherscombe’s mutterings still stung. “And I am respectable, I assure you.”

  There was something disquieting in his look, but she had too little experience of men and the world to more than wonder at her dis-ease, and continued rather quickly onward. “And beside, there is Mrs. Hatcher, and her daughter, and the Reverend Dunham—why, even in her home the child could not have been more respectably companioned.”

  “Obviously she was not always so,” Teverley agreed drily.

  “Mr. Teverley, I am at least endeavoring to be serious.”

  “I can see that, ma’am,” he agreed soberly, but it seemed to her that his dark eyes were warm with amusement for a moment, and she discovered, despite his dictatorial manners, that she liked him.

  “Excuse me, Miss Prydd, but isn’t there something that I—we—that is, I would like to help too.” Domenic Teverley looked eagerly at lphegenia, reminding her forcibly of her cousin William in one of his round-table fits.

  “You must keep Emily company from time to time, and, if you will, endeavor to be her friend, as we all must—but I beg you will not express your dislike of Mr. Ratherscombe to her, for that would undo all the good your cousin and I mean to do. And I suppose you had ought to call me Genia.”

  “I don’t see why any of us should,” Teverley interrupted.

  “I beg your pardon?” lphegenia turned toward him with all the dignity she could muster.

  “I only meant,” he continued reasonably, “that the name don’t suit you. Too Frenchified, too exotic. Nor yet does lphegenia—can’t think what your dam was about, to saddle you with such a name.”

  “Nor can I, but it was the same for all of us—my brother William just barely escaped being named Achilles because Papa put his foot down. Finally.” Genia suddenly remembered that she was quite out of charity with Teverley. “Just what do you suggest I call myself, sir? I cannot be Miss Prydd to my family or my closest friends.”

  “Has no one ever called you Jenny? It suits you much better.”

  “Capital,” Domenic agreed, oblivious of lphegenia’s glare. In fact, she liked it better herself, but did not like to admit as much to the irritatingly assured Mr. Teverley.

  “You may call me what you like,” she announced to Domenic with hauteur.

  “And I may consign myself to purgatory?” Teverley inquired politely.

  “If you wish,” Miss Prydd said agreeably. Again, she turned to Domenic. “You needn’t fear for Emily. We shall all watch after her and confound Mr. Ratherscombe. And now, do you think you can scratch me up some paper and pen and ink? I would like to frame my letter to Emily’s family now, so that I may send it off as soon as
I know their whereabouts.” Domenic, needing no further persuasion, left in search of Mrs. Hatcher.

  “You’ve given Dom a sense of purpose. Thank you for your kindness to him,” Teverley said seriously.

  “Nonsense. He reminds me of one of my cousins, only ten years older.”

  “I can see you have experience with boys. Cousins and brothers?”

  “Only one brother, and he died long ago. He’d have been much your cousin’s age.”

  Teverley looked abashed. “If I have said—”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary, I do assure you, sir. William died almost twelve years ago. Only a widgeon or a lover mourns forever, and most of them don’t do so either.”

  “Very sensible, ma’am. And here, unless I mistake that clodpole’s tread, comes Dom with your writing kit. But do you not wish to ask the chit her direction first?” Teverley accepted the writing materials from his cousin, who instantly disappeared again. “I wonder what bee he has in his bonnet now?”

  “One of the things I early learnt from my cousins, sir, is that it is unwise to try to understand the workings of a young man’s mind.” Iphegenia settled herself at a table near the fire, spread paper before her, and stared at it helplessly. “Oh, dear, how am I ever to begin this?”

  “I was wondering precisely that myself,” Teverley admitted, seating himself in the chair he had occupied earlier.

  “But I had best to do it now, while my nerve is up. So—” She bleakly surveyed the blank paper. “I suppose I had best throw my heart over the fence.” She wrote a few words, studied the paper again. “Oh, Lord.”

  “Would you prefer that I write it?” The voice rose up from the vicinity of Mr. Teverley’s neckcloth.

  “Don’t you think that it would come easier from me?” she asked seriously. “That is, as I said before, I am a respectable female-companion sort, which should ease her situation somewhat. If they have come from London, they could only have left this morning. Oh, drat this! What do I say to perfect strangers? ‘Dear Sir and Madam: Please do not, worry about your’ —what? Daughter? Niece? Grandchild? Ward? I don’t even know who her family are. ‘Emily is perfectly well, but trapped for a while in an inn with a measly child, the rake that she ran off with, and a respectable female?’ Good heavens, what sort of madcap will they think me?”

  Mr. Teverley vouchsafed no answer, and lphegenia suspected that the sound she heard from that corner of the room might be an unobtrusive snore. She shook her head in amusement and bent again to her work. She had made a rough but satisfactory draft, and had begun to copy it out afresh, when that dry voice interrupted the still of the coffee room.

  “Just how have you become such a respectable female companion? I would have thought you were the sort that would have married long since, with a slew of rowdy brats hanging at your skirts.”

  “And what sort is that?” Genia asked without conspicuous rancor—or interest either, it seemed, as her head stayed bent over her work.

  “Damme, now you have caught me properly, haven’t you? No matter what I say I’m damned for it, and serve me right for making such a fatuous statement. All right, then, Miss-Prydd-whom-I-may-not-call-Jenny, will you tell me what brings you traveling, and all alone? You obviously are of a good family, if a little purse-sprung, but what they can be thinking of to let you travel the London road unattended I do not know.”

  “If they think of it at all, I am sure they are confident that I can take care of myself.”

  “Your parents—” he began.

  “Have been deceased these many years,” she answered calmly.

  “Stuck my foot in it again. Damn, you do have a knack for putting a man at a disadvantage.”

  “On the contrary, I should rather say that it was your own genius.” Before he could protest, she continued. “As for myself, I was, until this afternoon, going to London to see a school friend through her sister’s wedding and to help set up her nursery. I collect that she is the sort of woman you meant before, only the differences between us are quite enormous. At any rate, I did have a maid, but the stupid girl would not come into the inn. Insisted that everyone would be staring at her.”

  “Considering our present case, I wonder that you would call her stupid. Prescient, I should think, is more the word. One more prying question, then. What are these enormous differences between you and your school friend?”

  “Just the ordinary and very important differences of money and beauty. Mary has both, while I—I am simply a respectable female. My mother used to say that I was a born companion, and it was no use to groom me to anything else, meaning to marry, I suppose.”

  “Your mother,” Teverley said, “sounds like a Gothic fool. Why on earth did she decide to put such a fustian notion in your head?”

  “More practical than fustian.” lphegenia had given up on her copywork, put aside her pen, and capped her inkpot. “I was rather a disappointment to my mother. We always knew there would be no money for any of us, of course, only Cassie and Sephie are quite delightfully pretty. Cassie is the absolute beauty of the family. Remains only me, and I’m afraid I take after Mamma, on a smaller scale. As you can see, she was no beauty, and without that, I suppose she felt it not worth the effort. Poor Mamma. She never really forgave me for looking like her, or my father for being as handsome as he was, and giving Cassie and Sephie his looks. But how,” she asked, after a moment’s reflection, “did I come to be speaking on this topic? I shall have to think of some questions to put to you.”

  “I note that the word prying is conspicuous by its absence.”

  “Not prying, Mr. Teverley. Merely odious.” Miss Prydd smiled a smile of much sweetness and uncapped her inkwell again.

  “Piqued, repiqued, and cappoted. Lord, Miss Prydd, if I said before that you bear any of the attributes of a lady’s companion, I beg your pardon. You have far too quick a tongue for that drab sisterhood.” Mr. Teverley swung himself out of the chair and made for the door. “My own fault, of course, for allowing myself the luxury of straight talking with a stranger. Your pardon, ma’am.” He opened the door and stepped out.

  “Mr. Teverley, I didn’t mean—” she started, but he was already gone. A little nonplussed at herself, lphegenia regarded the half-copied letter before her with scant attention. Most of her mind was taken up in trying to understand what, after a mere two hours’ acquaintance, could have possessed her to speak to a complete stranger in such a fashion. But that sort of question only produced more questions, raising more questions than she could hope to answer before dinner. She returned to the letter.

  o0o

  More than two hours later, lphegenia was discovered by Mrs. Hatcher, dozing over the final draft of her letter. Informed by the landlady that henceforth meals would be served family style in the dining room, she gathered up her papers and answered Mrs. Hatcher’s preoccupied fretting as to the simplicity of the evening meal with the statement that for herself, a bowl of bread and milk would have been sufficient, and the promised French-dressed veal would be elegant beyond imaginings. The older woman made several curtsies in Miss Prydd’s direction, then went off to apologize to the Reverend Dunham for dinner. Iphegenia took advantage of her landlady’s distraction to escape to her room.

  She found Emily Pellering lying in bed, her dark hair charmingly askew on the pillows, her mouth half open and her arms outflung. The pose would have been exceedingly unbecoming on anyone else, but somehow, Emily appeared distractingly pretty. After considering the relative merits of waking the girl or letting her sleep, Miss Prydd decided to wake her and persuade her to take supper with them all.

  “Oh, heavens, what a cake I made of myself. I do hope you can be brought to forgive me, ma’am.”

  “When you contrive to recall that I am Genia—or rather, since I have been new-baptised by Mr. Teverley—Jenny.” Her manner was as brisk as a governess’s. “I intend you shall come dine with us; you must be entirely famished, what with no food since—ah, but you were taking a collation when I ente
red the coffee room this noon.”

  “Yes, but that was only wine and biscuits. I’ve had no real food since last night, before I left London.” She seemed to recall that she was engaged in a proceeding wherein names and places were to be guarded; she blushed a deep red and, as lphegenia intently ignored the blush, stammeringly begged her to tell which gentleman Mr. Teverley was.

  “Of the three who are strangers to you, he is the very tall man with brown hair and a soldier’s carriage, very swarthy and dark-eyed. And his cousin Domenic is the young fair-haired fellow, and rather a nice one at that. And Mr. Dunham, the cleric. Then there is myself, of course, and finally, there is—” Here lphegenia took a chance. “—Mr. R-Ratherscombe, your—er—stepbrother.”

  This sally produced (if it was possible) an even deeper blush from Emily, which lphegenia blithely ignored. Inwardly she found in it confirmation of all the theories she had formulated with Peter Teverley, and wondered if she had been wise to provide Emily with so easy an excuse without consulting him first. “You will come dine with us, will you not?” she persisted. “And, as we will eventually be allowed to leave this place and go our separate ways, will you tell me something of London? I’ve never been to the city, and I know I shall have no notion at all of what is what there.”

  This bland self-indictment of hopeless bumpkinism conquered Miss Pellering’s last reserves of distance: She began to explain to her some of the people she might expect to meet, and what to wear to the opening of the opera (a great event, some weeks in the future). Feeling very much as if she had somehow stumbled back into the nursery at her Aunt Winchell’s, lphegenia played lady’s maid, assured the younger woman that she looked charming, and managed to get a moment with mirror, hairbrush, and face cloth for herself. So open was Emily with her newfound friend that, by the time the two descended to dinner, Miss Prydd had learned not only the names, ages, and respective tempers of Emily’s parents, and their address in Hanover Square, but the names of Emily’s two dogs, her best friend, the sort of hair pomade favored by her dancing master, and the fact that Emily had a considerable fortune.