Page 27 of Once an Angel
He strode toward the fields, the music of Emily's curses still ringing in his ears.
* * *
Penfeld was moping. Even the creases in his trousers looked droopy. Emily fussed over him with unrelenting cheer, bringing him conch shell after conch shell of tea heavily sweetened with precious treacle. In the course of a day, their roles had oddly reversed. The valet reclined on his pallet, his hands folded over his belly in plump wings. He hadn't made a single remark about Emily's miraculous recovery. Even in tragic defeat he remained tactful.
Emily clucked into his untouched shell of tea. "This won't do at all. If I didn't know better, I'd swear
you were sulking."
"A good valet never sulks, miss. He mourns."
"I am terribly sorry about your tea service. It wasn't entirely my fault, you know." She shot Justin's
back a dark look.
Her host stood at the stove, flipping the sweet potato pancakes she had molded earlier. He had the
good grace to turn around at her pointed words, but she almost wished he hadn't. There was something hopelessly compelling about a man as virile as Justin wearing an apron. Her toes started to feel sticky,
and she realized she was pouring the lukewarm tea over her feet. She dried them with the hem of Penfeld's coat.
"Emily's right. It wasn't entirely her fault." Justin pointed his spatula at the impassive lizard perched on
a stack of books. "Fluffy must have been dipping into the rum again. You know how clumsy he gets
on one of Irish drunken rampages."
Emily, Penfeld, and the maligned lizard all glared at him.
Justin threw up his arms. "I confess! I murdered those innocent cups and sugar bowls with my own ruthless hands. But I've promised you new ones the very first chance I get. Even if I have to swim all
the way to Fleet Street to find them."
Penfeld's long-suffering sigh was enough to make Emily weep. "You can't afford it, sir. Your every halfpenny is promised to Miss—"
Justin flashed a warning glance toward Emily. If Fluffy had been blessed with visible ears, she was
sure they would have perked up.
Penfeld snapped his mouth shut and began toying with his suspenders. Miss who? Emily wondered. Miss Auckland Strumpet? Miss Greedy Mistress with Soft Blue Eyes and Not a Freckle on Her Body? Justin obviously wasn't channeling his fortune to his ward. Was some New Zealand beauty bleeding him dry? Did he have a shrewish paramour and five mewling brats tucked away somewhere? She supposed it would serve him right after what he had done to her father. So why had she suddenly lost her appetite?
Their meager supply of plates had been broken, so Emily began slamming pancakes on palm fronds.
Justin crouched beside the pallet. "Picture it in your mind, Penfeld. A gleaming vista of Waterford
goblets and Wedgwood jasperware. Linen napkins heaped like snowy Alps beside each plate."
The valet only sniffed. "How arrogant of me to think I could preserve a tiny corner of civilization in this wilderness, a small fragment of the mighty dignity of the British Empire in this wasteland of . . ."
He droned on. Justin shrugged at Emily over his head, indicating it best to let him ramble. As they sat, picking the sand out of their pancakes, a trilling cry interrupted Penfeld's recitation.
A long, tanned leg jutted over the windowsill, followed by a tattooed arm waving a bottle of rum. "Greetings, most noble companions. I come bearing liquid sustenance for your delectable banquet."
"Doesn't Trini know any words under six syllables?" she hissed at Justin. She was still cranky from envisioning him adrift in a welter of milk-skinned, golden-eyed babies.
"Of course he does, but he prefers the ones I taught him."
"That explains why he's so pompous."
