Abandoned to the Prodigal - Mary Lancaster Page 0,34
regret the haste of his actions—Jeremy’s actions, note, exonerating his father from blame—but not the decision to end the engagement. Pipsqueak! However, they are prepared—prepared!—to keep their promise to attend Kitty’s engagement dinner. His mother will attend, he says specifically, to support Lady Cosland. Bah! And, he so magnanimously leaves it up to me to decide whether or not Juliet will be present!”
“I believe I would like to punch him straight in his smug mouth,” Ferdy observed.
“No, no,” their mother said unexpectedly. “This could be the very thing for Juliet, Cosland. If they meet in friendship, it will silence some of the talk at least. And who knows? If things go well, the engagement could be resumed, and most people will put the other nonsense down to the Prince Regent’s spite. After all, Meg Winter was also named, and who is going to take on her father and you?”
Juliet opened her mouth to squash this hope, but Kitty kicked her below the table.
“Don’t,” Kitty warned under her breath. “You needn’t marry him, but a resumed engagement is exactly what you need. You may easily jilt him again when this nonsense has blown over.”
Juliet blinked at her. “When did you learn so much social wisdom?”
“It isn’t social wisdom,” Kitty denied. “It’s simple common sense. As is not fighting with Papa.”
*
At the request of his aunts, Dan took Gun straight round to the back of the house to stop him from spreading dirt and chaos through the front. To his surprise, he found his mother in the kitchen garden, gossiping with the cook, who, however, raced back to the kitchen as Jenny came to meet him.
Gun gave her his usual boisterous greeting, jumping around her as they walked together toward the walled garden.
“You take a long walk every morning,” his mother observed.
“I like to.” He pushed open the gate to the walled garden and wrestled with the knot of Gun’s makeshift leash.
At last, the dog bolted to freedom, and they shut him in.
Jenny regarded the leash. “Why are you using a lady’s ribbon as his leash?”
Dan shrugged. “I didn’t have one at all because he just follows me around. But it struck me rather belatedly he would be a hazard in the country until he learned what he could and couldn’t chase. Someone on the stagecoach gave me this.”
“It must have been very pretty at one time.”
“Have you had breakfast?” Dan asked.
If she noticed the deliberate change of subject, she made no comment. “Not yet. I think there might be a little more of it now.”
“Now that you have twisted the cook around your little finger?”
Jenny smiled, though he noted she did not deny it. They entered the house via the back door and took the passage past the kitchen and the servants’ hall to the baize door that separated the servants’ domain from the main part of the house.
“I’ll join you in a few minutes,” Dan said. “I’d better wash off some of this dirt first.”
As he ran up the stairs, a maid was hurrying across the landing toward the servants’ stairs. No one else was around.
“Susan,” he called, and she paused, glancing warily back at him. “A word, if you please.”
She obeyed with odd reluctance, though whether because she feared he would take liberties or ask awkward questions, he could not tell.
“Don’t look so worried. You may walk out with whoever you wish on your day off,” he said lightly.
She met his gaze. “As may you, sir.”
It wasn’t quite insolence, more of a pact, he thought, to keep each other’s secrets, although she had no idea, he hoped, of who he had been with at the river.
“Indeed. I wanted to ask you about something else. Why do you use the name Smith?”
Her breath caught. “Same reason anyone uses any name, sir.”
“Really? Because I traveled north on the stagecoach with someone who reminds me of you. Her name was Harper.”
Emotions surged in her eyes, too quickly for him to read. But it was clear the name meant something to her.
“She was coming in search of her daughter, in fear for the girl’s safety,” he said.
“Oh, no,” Susan whispered. “Why did she do that? She was right about Jim, but I don’t need my nose rubbed in it!”
“She didn’t come to say I told you so,” Dan said impatiently. “She just wants to know that you’re safe and well. You’ll find her at the Black Cat in Kidfield, tearing her hair out with worry.”