Earl's Invention Read online

  on.

  “Insofar as the nickname is concerned, Thomas’ ancestors were Scottish . . .” His voice trailed off, and, if possible, he pulled Bonnie a bit closer. “But what does it signify? The important thing, if I may repeat myself, is that our dear niece has come to England.”

  “Umm,” Lady Hellier grunted.

  “Which does not, of course, in any way tarnish my feelings for Francis,” the earl hastened to add. “No more than a father’s love for his first child is diminished by the arrival of the second. Indeed”—he sighed—“since I shall never have children of my own, that is a very apt analogy.”

  He stopped again and bit his lip, as though this tragic analogy had occurred to him only a few seconds before he blurted it out.

  “My point being,” he went on bravely, “that I have always regarded Francis as a son, and I am overjoyed to discover I have a daughter as well.” He clapped Bonnie’s shoulder so enthusiastically that she was hard put not to wince. “And like the father I alluded to, l find that my affection is more than sufficient to encompass them both. My affection and”—he provocatively fingered the sleeve of Bonnie’s spencer—“and whatever modest wealth I may possess.”

  Her ladyship flushed to a shade somewhat brighter than the unfaded scarlet stripes on the nearby couch, but before she could respond, there was a commotion in the vestibule.

  “Briscoe?” The bellowing male voice was followed by a thud of heavy footfalls. “Where the devil are you?”

  The footsteps grew louder, and even as Bonnie glanced curiously toward the entry hall, a man loomed up in the library doorway.

  “Judith!” he snapped. “Where the deuce is Briscoe? He took the key to the liquor cabinet ...” His querulous complaint sputtered off, and he squinted into the room, swaying a bit as he craned his neck over the threshold. "Davey? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Robert.” The earl’s arm, still round Bonnie’s shoulders, stiffened with distaste. “Yes, it is I."

  Sir Robert staggered forward, and had Bonnie entertained any lingering doubt that he was Briscoe’s “faithful tippling companion,” it would have been dispelled by the powerful aroma of spirits wafting ahead of him. He was very foxed indeed, and it required no prior intelligence to deduce—from his bulbous red nose and the myriad of broken veins across his cheeks—that this was his normal condition.

  “Davey!” Sir Robert repeated.

  He had made his perilous way across the rug, and Bonnie observed that, like his wife, he was dressed in the height of fashion. However, the baronet’s splendid clothes in no way enhanced his appearance, for years of excessive drinking had rendered him appallingly fat. As a consequence of his great weight, there was a substantial gap between the bottom of his waistcoat and the waistband of his pantaloons—a gap through which an enormous belly protruded—and his swollen jowls sagged well over his high, starched neckcloth. At one time.

  Bonnie conjectured. Sir Robert had probably possessed exceedingly fine gray eyes, but now they were nearly lost above the massive mottled pouches of his cheeks. And as if to heap insult upon injury, he had lost the bulk of his hair: a narrow gray fringe, circling from ear to ear, surrounded an otherwise bare scalp.

  The baronet extended his hand, swaying again as he did so, and Bonnie suspected he was seeking as much to maintain his tenuous balance as to offer a gesture of welcome. But David reluctantly lowered his arm from her shoulder and proffered his own hand, and Sir Robert energetically pumped it.

  “Davey,” he said once more. “If I could but locate Briscoe, I should offer you a glass of brandy."

  “Forget your brandy, Robert!” Lady Hellier hissed. “Did you fail to notice that David has brought a guest?” She grasped Bonnie’s wrist and yanked her into the baronet’s full, if dubious, view. “This is Bonnie Carlisle, Cornelia’s daughter.”

  “Cornelia?” Sir Robert released David’s hand and shook his head in puzzlement.

  “My sister, you goose!” The fingers snaked round Bonnie’s wrist were quivering with vexation. “I learned but a few minutes since that my sister has a child. Whom she has sent to us all the way from the Indies. Bonnie is my niece. David’s niece. Francis’ cousin.”

  “How delightful!”

  The baronet lurched to Bonnie’s side, and she was terribly afraid he would clasp her in the warm embrace Lady Hellier had eschewed. But he merely snatched her free hand and began to pump it up and down as he had David's.

  “Francis’ . . . cousin,” her ladyship repeated slowly, emphatically. “Related to David in the same degree as Francis himself. Indeed, David tells me that—just as he’s always regarded Francis as a son—he now regards Bonnie as his daughter.”

  “Davey is so generous.” Sir Robert sighed with admira

  tion, then knit his gray brows. “Where is Francis, by the by?”

  “He went out in the phaeton,” Lady Hellier reminded him icily.

  “So he did.”

  Sir Robert nodded and dropped Bonnie’s hand. Lady Hellier simultaneously freed her wrist; and having adjusted her stance to the pressures on either side, Bonnie nearly lost her own balance.

  “You must see my new phaeton, Davey,” the baronet said as Bonnie regained her equilibrium. “It is magnificent.”

  “And magnificently expensive. I’ll warrant." David's dry tone prompted Bonnie to remember that this was the carriage he had been compelled to pay for. “I trust you purchased it from Hatchett’s?"

  “Of course.” Sir Robert indignantly squared his plump shoulders. “I should patronize no one else. But since it isn't here, perhaps you can return tomorrow. You'll wish to introduce Barbara to Francis at any rate.”

  Bonnie cleared her throat, but before she could deliver a correction, she heard the creak of the front door and the rapid tap of footsteps in the foyer.

  “Uncle David?” A male voice again. “It is you.” The figure attached to the voice had materialized at the library door. “I thought I recognized your curricle.”

  The new arrival could only be Francis, Bonnie reasoned as he hurried across the room, and she stifled another gasp of surprise. She had collected from the earl’s reference to a “lad” that his nephew was still an adolescent, but the man now wringing David’s hand was approximately her own age. Four-and-twenty at the least, she estimated; more likely twenty- five or -six. And while Bonnie didn’t personally favor his type, she fancied that by any objective standard, Francis Hellier would be counted quite handsome: he was tall and huskily built, with arresting blue-gray eyes and dark blond hair. Though his hair was already thinning, Bonnie noticed.

  and she speculated that, like his father, he was doomed to baldness in his middle years.

  “You have not yet met our other caller, Francis,” Lady Hellier said shrilly. “This is your cousin, Bonnie Carlisle. The daughter of your Aunt Cornelia.”

  “Cousin?” His eyes briefly widened with shock, but he soon recovered himself and—again displaying a keen likeness to his father—enthusiastically pumped Bonnie’s hand. “Cousin!” he repeated happily. “What a bang-up surprise! And such a pretty cousin! it is clear that Aunt Cornelia must be as beautiftil as Mama.”

  If Lady Hellier was comforted by this gallant compliment, she betrayed no hint of it; to the contrary, she emitted a little sniff of exasperation. Francis dropped Bonnie’s hand, and she discreetly flexed her fingers, fearing they had been quite crushed by the fervor of his and Sir Robert’s greetings.

  “What a marvelous surprise!” Francis reiterated, smiling down at Bonnie. “But why did Aunt Cornelia not notify us you were coming?”

  “Cornelia realized it would require some months to exchange letters across the Atlantic,” the earl said smoothly. “By then, the Season would long have been over, and naturally she wished Bonnie to be introduced into society at the most advantageous time.”

  Francis bobbed his head in agreement, but Bonnie noted the sudden narrowing of his mother’s sapphire eyes.

  “Come along now, Davey!” Sir Robert
spoke so very loudly that Bonnie started. “Come and see my phaeton before it’s unhitched and put away. You, too, Francis; you’ve mastered its modem features better than I. Come and show your uncle how everything works.”

  He lumbered toward the door, Francis obediently trailing behind him; and David, with a grimace of annoyance, began to plod in their wake.

  “I ... I should like to see the carriage as well,” Bonnie screeched.

  In truth, she was not remotely interested in Sir Robert’s phaeton, but she was terrified by the prospect of a private conversation with Lady Hellier. She stumbled forward, intending to race after the men, but her ladyship’s fingers once more clamped around her waist.

  “Don’t go, dear,” Lady Hellier said sweetly. “Let us avail ourselves of their absence to become more closely acquainted."

  Bonnie could offer no objection—not unless she was prepared literally to wrestle herself from her ladyship's grasp— and she stared miserably at the library doorway until the earl had disappeared. At length, the front door squeaked open, slammed closed; and Lady Hellier released her wrist so abruptly that Bonnie stumbled again.

  “Sit down, dear,” her ladyship suggested kindly, waving at the sofa.

  Bonnie desperately needed to sit, and she walked unsteadily to the striped couch and perched on one end. expecting Lady Hellier to occupy the other. However, her ladyship assumed a position just beside the sofa, a position from which she could peer directly down at her guest, and Bonnie belatedly perceived that she had been outmaneuvered. Mr. Powell— who had never been burdened by a surfeit of modesty—had often described the various techniques he utilized to intimidate his business rivals, and chief among these was his practice of remaining on his feet after cleverly inviting his opponent to sit. But Bonnie’s knees were so weak she doubted they could have supported her long at any rate, and she gazed up at Lady Hellier with as much bravado as she could muster.

  “He is putting a very good face on it,” her ladyship said, now expelling a little sigh.

  Bonnie could not but concur; indeed, she had initially been astonished by the obvious sincerity of Francis’ welcome. She had then recollected the earl's opinion that his nephew was a trifle “skitter-brained,” but since she could scarcely relay this view to Francis’ doting mother, she groped for an innocuous response.

  “I daresay Cousin Francis realizes he has no reason to be overset,” she rejoined at last. “As Uncle David stated, he continues to regard Francis as a son—”

  “I wasn’t speaking of Francis,” Lady Hellier interposed. “I meant to convey that David is putting a very good face on it.”

  ”I don’t understand.” Bonnie politely shook her head. “My dear child.” Her ladyship’s warm words were belied by the glitter of her eyes, which shone as hard and cold as the jewels they resembled. “Surely you were told the circumstances of your parents’ marriage.”

  Bonnie essayed a cautious nod.

  “Then you must comprehend that your presence is prodigious embarrassing. Embarrassing to myself as well as David; I shan't pretend to an entirely unselfish interest in the matter. But since you’re residing with your uncle, the brunt of criticism will inevitably fall on him, and he is far too much the gentlemen to turn you out. I consequently judge it my duty to advise you of the proper course.”

  “The proper course,” Bonnie echoed carefully.

  “Did it not occur to you to wonder why your mothe. you to England without warning?” Lady Hellier’s voice was once more growing shrill around the edges. “David mentioned the short duration of the Season, but if Cornelia wished you to be brought out this spring, she could have written months ago. She deliberately neglected to do so because she knew neither David nor I would consent to receive you.” “But Uncle David did receive me,” Bonnie protested.

  “He received you because he had no choice,” her ladyship hissed. “That is precisely my point: when you arrived unannounced, he was forced to take you in. And if you remain in England, the scandal of your parents’ elopement will be revived and haunt us all for years to come. Which is why you must return to Jamaica at once.”

  “Barbados,” Bonnie corrected absently.

  “Barbados.” Lady Hellier inclined her head. “I am delighted you agree.”

  Bonnie had agreed to nothing, of course, but she elected

  not to issue another correction. “I fear it is too late, Aunt Judith,” she said instead. “Too late to keep my visit a secret, that is. Apparently you are unaware that Uncle David escorted me to Lady Lambeth’s assembly Tuesday evening.”

  “That is unfortunate but hardly fatal. At the risk of wounding your feelings”—her ladyship sketched a brittle smile—"I must remind you that the city abounds in handsome young women at this time of year. A few of the people you met may inquire your whereabouts at the next ball, but after that, you will be forgotten. After David explains that you grew homesick and sailed back to Antigua.”

  “Barbados," Bonnie snapped. “And at the risk of wounding your feelings, I must advise you that I’ve no intention of leaving. My mother wanted me to have a London Season, and i shall abide by her wishes.”

  Lady Hellier’s eyes narrowed to the merest sapphire slits, but before she could speak again, the front door creaked open and there was a tattoo of footfalls in the vestibule.

  “Davey was most impressed by the phaeton." Sir Robert reported as the men strode up to the library doorway. “Were you not, Davey?”

  “Oh, yes,” the earl said dryly. “Yes, I believe it is worth every groat you paid.”

  “How nice,” her ladyship cooed. "And while you were inspecting the carriage, dear Bonnie and I had a lovely chat. I pledged to do all I can to ensure she’s introduced to the most eligible young men in England. I am certain that was also your objective, David, but a girl’s debut really should be supervised by a woman. I shall therefore take Bonnie personally under my wing at General Whitfield’s assembly tomorrow evening.”

  This was so far from what Lady Hellier had actually said that Bonnie was compelled to bite her lip lest her mouth drop open with amazement. She detected a flicker of surprise on David’s face as well, but Francis and Sir Robert were happily nodding; and the latter declared that if only they could locate Briscoe, they would have a glass of brandy to celebrate the

  family reunion. However, the earl declined this offer with somewhat indelicate speed, insisting that the Helliers needed to recover from their strenuous journey.

  “Indeed,” he added, “I should not have called the very day after your return had I not been so eager to share the joyful news of Bonnie’s arrival. But now you’ve met her, we shall leave you to rest and look forward to seeing you at General Whitfield’s. Come along, Bonnie.”

  She rose and—the Helliers chirping more or less in unison how thrilled they had been to make her acquaintance—hurried to David’s side. Since there was still no sign of Briscoe, they let themselves out of the house, then descended the front steps and crossed the footpath to the earl’s curricle. A groom was just climbing the ladder to the seat of Sir Robert’s fabled phaeton, and David silently assisted Bonnie into the seat of his own carriage, took the place beside her, and clucked the matched black geldings to a start.

  “How very odd," he mused as they trotted beyond the servant’s earshot. “Judith’s initial reaction was quite what I’d anticipated, but it now appears she is fairly dying to launch you into society—”

  “That isn’t what happened at all,” Bonnie inteijected grimly.

  She related the substance of her conversation with Lady Hellier, and she was reminded of the day she had described her life with the Powells; for the earl began to chuckle halfway through her narrative, and by the time she had finished, he was howling with laughter.

  “We have won then,” he crowed triumphantly when, at length, he was able to control his mirth. “Did you not perceive what she was at? Judith knows very well that the presence of Cornelia’s daughter would not embarrass me in the slightest. A
nd insofar as her own reputation is concerned. ...”

  He chuckled again and shook his head. “Robert’s antics have so damaged my dear sister’s respectability that she has monstrous little reputation left to preserve. No, Judith urged you to return to the Indies because she fears that if you stay in England you will further worm your way into my affections. Robert was too foxed to see the danger, and Francis doesn’t possess the first grain of sense, but Judith realized at once that their inheritance is in jeopardy. However, as she thinks on it . . .”

  His voice trailed off, and they clattered on in silence a moment. Then David cleared his throat, and when he continued, he spoke with not trace of amusement.

  "As she thinks on it,” he repeated slowly, ‘‘Judith will come to understand that the time of your departure doesn’t signify. She will recognize that no matter when you leave, I shall continue to entertain fond memories of my ... my niece. And could readily decide to bequeath her a substantial portion of my estate. . . .”

  He stopped again, coughed again; Bonnie had never before seen him so uncertain.

  "Let me not hide my teeth,” he resumed at last. “Yesterday you expressed a ... an inclination to take the next stage to Cheshire. And if that is still your desire . . . Well, now you’ve deceived Judith, I am prepared to release you from our agreement.”

  His words were like a physical blow, a fist unexpectedly slamming into Bonnie’s stomach and sucking the air from her lungs.

  "Is ... is that what you want?” she managed to stammer, struggling to regain her breath. “For me to go on to Cheshire at once?”