Page 39 of Miss Dramatic
Rose’s joy in the day dimmed slightly. “Were you spying on me, Timmens?”
“I don’t spy, but all manner of fine personages from fine families are here, ma’am. They all brought their fine servants. You’d best recall that the walls have ears and the windows have eyes. More tea?”
Somebody had seen Rose disappear behind the hedge with Gavin last evening and remarked that fact in the servants’ hall.
What of it?She was a widow, Gavin was more than of age and eligible, and the ball had gone missing.
Rose sipped her tea and waited for an internal voice that sounded like Mama, or Timmens, or occasionally Dane, to reproach her. Instead, somebody tapped on the door.
“At this hour,” Timmens muttered, giving the pillow a final smack before answering the door. “My lady.” She curtseyed, and not just a hasty dip of the knees.
“Lady Duncannon.” Rose set aside her tea and curtseyed as well. “Good morning.”
“Let’s have no more of that bobbing about like chickens, shall we? We must plot our strategy, Mrs. Roberts. I’ve chosen you for my team, and we’ll want to get in our practice rounds before the other teams are stirring. Besides, I’m famished. I’m always famished, and I want first crack at the breakfast offerings.”
Her ladyship was, like Rose, a widow. The similarity ended there. Rose considered herself of medium height, medium coloring, medium good family. Lady Duncannon was a countess, a peer in her own right, statuesque, with flaming-red hair, a soft Scottish burr, and a hearty laugh.
She did not put on airs, though she was not a woman to cross lightly.
“I am ready for breakfast,” Rose said. She was also ready to quit Timmens’s company.
“Excellent.” Lady Duncannon slipped her arm through Rose’s and set a brisk pace for the steps. “So what did you think of that Drysdale creature making a grand entrance and taking half the dessert course to do it?”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that, but he did give the company a very long moment to appreciate his approach.”
“Like cavalry charging infantry squares. My late husband was retired military. Excuse the battlefield analogy before breakfast.”
They rounded the landing, and Rose heard a door close on the floor above.
“I do believe your pretty maid was eavesdropping,” Lady Duncannon said, continuing their descent. “To be expected, I suppose. Somebody should tell her to close doors more quietly when she’s about her surveillance. Drysdale did not impress me favorably. He should have taken a room at the inn for the night and come by in the morning. He’s not expected until tomorrow at the earliest.”
The advance guard, Gavin had called him, though how did Lady Ducannon know when Drysdale had been expected?
“And if the Crosspatch Arms hadn’t any room,” Rose replied, “then he should have begged a tray here and taken any available cot, until greeting his hostesses in the morning. Perhaps actors anticipate disrespect and must take evasive maneuvers.”
Lady Duncannon crossed the foyer at the same purposeful gait. “Now I have you doing it, too, with the army talk. Let’s blame my sainted spouse, shall we?”
“You’ve been widowed for some time?”
“Five interminable years. I’ve grown particular in my dotage, though my family insists I must take another husband. I agreed to marry Archie because he was a known quantity. We rubbed along well, and I was confident I could handle him. He had one job—to get me with child, boy or girl, made no difference—and he went to his grave without having achieved that goal. Not for lack of trying, mind. Archie was the determined sort.”
“Not headstrong, obstinate, stubborn, or dramatic?”
Lady Ducannon grinned. “Of course not. He was a man. I, on the other hand, qualified for all of the above plus a few Erse terms generally reserved for goats and donkeys. You?”
“Mulish,” Rose said, smiling back. “Ungovernable.”
“Infernal,” Lady Duncannon said, sailing into the breakfast parlor. “Unnatural, because keeping a lot of fat, bleating sheep and a few grouse moors from the crown’s paws doesn’t strike me as a pressing duty any more, though I suppose I will remarry one of these days. That is a gorgeous ham.”
Rose made her way down the sideboard, though her portions paled beside Lady Duncannon’s. Perhaps her ladyship viewed husbands and hams as occupying similar categories—both for assuaging appetites, both expected to meet certain criteria regarding quality.
“Let’s eat on the west terrace,” Lady Duncannon said, opening a cabinet in the sideboard and producing two trays, to the apparent consternation of the footman who’d just come through the door. “Plenty of shade there at this hour, and my antique complexion requires shade. We won’t have to put up with Lady Iris rhapsodizing over herbs, or Miss Peasegood trying to correct her, though they are, of course, both very dear.”
“Of course.” And old King George was invariably described as good, though he was more than a bit mad. “I take it your family is concerned for your holdings if you leave no heir?”
“They are concerned for themselves,” Lady Duncannon said, leading the way out of the breakfast parlor. “First, the shame—the unbearable, unspeakable shame—of a title reverting to the crown, isn’t to be borne. I will be dead on that dark day, so what do I care? The second consideration is more important: The loss of my title will mean my siblings, in-laws, cousins, nieces, nephews, tenants, neighbors, and passing acquaintances can no longer trade on the reflected glory of association with the peerage. Can’t have that.”
“This matters to you.”
