Miss Billings Treads The Boards Page 2

  “Admirable, my lord,” said the solicitor, coming around the desk to walk his client to the door. He stopped, his hand on the marquess’s shoulder. “Do you know, my lord, you could do me a favor.”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “What, sir? You would ask a favor of a lazy fub who runs from matrimonial entanglements and is not beloved of his nephew?”

  The solicitor went back to his desk and rummaged in one of the drawers. “A small matter. It will require a little exertion on your part, but only a very little.”

  “We have already agreed that I need a little exertion, Abner. What is your errand and how can I help you? Only name it, and I will tell you if it is out of the question, or merely dashed inconvenient.”

  Abner smiled. “It is only a small matter. I have another client name of Katherine Billings. Last week I was settling her father’s estate for her.” He sighed and sat down again. “He was a sad case.”

  Henry perched himself on the edge of the desk. “How so?”

  “Oh, Reverend Mr. Billings was a raging eccentric who had a small fortune that he spent on sketches of the Italian masters, too many of them forged, I might add. He and his daughter spent years in Italy, even though he had a vicarage and a living in Dorset. Seems he got in over his head and spent beyond his means. When he died last month, it was necessary to sell everything he owned to squeak through with his creditors.”

  “It seems a strange occupation for a vicar,” said Henry, interested in spite himself.

  “I always considered him one of England’s finest eccentrics. From a good family, though, the Billings of Motlow. Loved the plays of Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Congreve, too, if I am not mistaken.” The solicitor laughed. “His daughter tells me that his sermons—when he got around to them—were interlaced with the most colorful literary allusions. Quite unlike the usual liturgical fare, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Henry nodded. “He had the one daughter?”

  “Yes, poor little thing. He dragged her here and there, and she went without a murmur.”

  “Spineless?” Henry asked. The conversation was beginning to bore him.

  “Lord, no,” said Abner emphatically. “She was merely a woman of no means. Tell me if such a one has an opportunity for free expression.”

  “I neither know nor care, sir,” Henry replied, examining his fingernails.

  “Well, the fact of the matter is this. He had one remaining sketch. The daughter had hoped to turn it into a bit of cash for herself, quite naturally, but my initial report said that it was a forgery and therefore worthless.”

  “And now you find out this is not the case?”

  “Quite so. I have other clients seeking to verify the value of paintings and the like, and I gave her information intended for someone else. The sketch is worth a tidy sum—one that might allow her, if she manages carefully, to set up housekeeping and avoid her present duty.”

  “Which is?” Henry prompted.

  “She is taking up a post as governess.” The solicitor made a face. “So you see, with these tidings, you will be rather a knight in glittering array to this damsel in distress.”

  Abner took out a sheet of paper and wrote on it. “The little sketch is by some bloke named Giotto, and it is of a couple of chunky angels flying about. I only hope she didn’t discard it at my bad news. Deuced if I know how such fubsy angels could remain airborne, but you know those Italians.”

  Henry allowed as he did. “And the damsel’s name and direction?”

  The solicitor wrote. “Katherine Billings, and she is going to Leavitt Hall. Leavitt is not far from the Great North Road, near to Wakefield.” He handed the paper to Henry.

  Henry looked at the name and folded the paper into his pocket. “Well, Abner, a description?”

  “I told you they were chunky angels.”

  “No, no. I mean Miss Billings. I don’t want to blurt out this information to just any Katherine Billings I chance to meet at Leavitt Hall,” he joked.

  “Oh, a typical young female.” Abner thought a moment more. “No, that’s not all. In fact, far from it.” He chuckled. “You won’t have any trouble making sure you have the right female. She has a head of black hair gorgeous enough to make a man get ideas. She’s twenty-six, I believe. At any rate, past the age when I would ever dare ask. She also has a most magnificent figure, a trim ankle, and beyond that, I didn’t notice.”

  Henry grinned. “Thank goodness for that! I’ll do your good deed, Abner, as long as it promises to be only a little exertion. I’ll improve my faulty character gradually, thank you.”

  “I doubt she’ll relieve your boredom, Lord Grayson, but Kate Billings is certainly worth a glance as you breeze in and out of her life.” The solicitor walked his client to the door, where the clerk waited with his money for the journey. “It won’t be but an hour or two out of your way.”

  “You promise I won’t feel the strain?” Henry teased and shook hands with his solicitor. “Then I accept your commission. How hard can it be to help a damsel in distress?”

  Chapter 2

  It was nothing a lady should think, but as the miles lumbered by, Miss Katherine Billings began to realize how much she was enjoying travel on the mail coach.

  She had begun her journey in London, prepared to endure the misfortune of boorish company all the way to Wakefield in Yorkshire. As she took her seat, she vowed she would keep her own counsel, read the improving books she had brought along, and otherwise let the inmates of the mail coach know that she was not One of Them. But then Goodwife Winkle and her little daughter Jane climbed aboard at Shelly, and Jane would have dark curls that cried out to be combed around one’s finger, patted, and rearranged. Of course the only place to do all that was from Katherine’s lap. As the coach became more and more crowded, this did somewhat relieve Mrs. Winkle, who, from the look of her lap, would very soon present Farmer Winkle with another olive branch.

  That should have been sufficient condescension among the lower classes, if only that pensioned third mate of the old Agamemnon hadn’t stumped on board, wooden leg and all, at Cross Corners. He insisted on regaling them with his adventures at distant Trafalgar, bringing it down through the years until it seemed only yesterday since the French lords and Spanish dons had come out to play in what became England’s bathtub. The old sailor’s language was a bit salty, and at times Katherine had to clap her hands over Jane’s ears, but he kept them wide-eyed and open-mouthed all the way to Baskin. Even Mrs. Winkle, who had every right to complain, could only regret his leaving, even though it did allow them a breathing space on the mail coach.

  “ ’Tis an education you can get on the coach,” she commented to Katherine as the coachman cracked his whip and the journey continued.

  Katherine smiled and tucked Jane more tightly into her lap as they rocketed along at ten miles an hour, maybe more. “I had not expected it, but you are right, Mrs. Winkle.”

  A schoolboy, returning home, had joined them at Baskin, along with a tonsured priest, and a young person, who, from the looks of her muscled arms and faint odor of sour cream, was probably a milkmaid.

  Mrs. Winkle looked at Katherine expectantly. In another minute she understood. Dear lady, you want to know more about me, don’t you? she thought, as Jane began to slumber, but you are too polite to ask a question of Quality. She looked out the window then, a frown between her eyes. But I am no more Quality. She took a deep breath and turned again toward the farmer’s wife, who regarded her.

  “I do not suppose the education I am getting today will be of use to my new employer, Mrs. Winkle,” she said, and in the saying realized that she had stepped over a wide gulf from which there was no retreating. “I am to be a governess at Leavitt Hall. Do you know it?”

  “Who doesn’t, Miss … Miss …”

  “Billings. Katherine Billings,” Katherine responded, matching Mrs. Winkle’s wary look with one of her own. “What can you tell me of the place?”

  She hesitated a moment, then her words came out in
a rush. “They say Squire Leavitt is a noted lecher, Miss Billings.”

  The milkmaid nodded vigorously. “I work for the old loose fish, ma’am,” she offered. “And don’t he come around to try out the new milkmaids?”

  “My dear!” admonished Mrs. Winkle.

  “Heavens!” said Katherine, her voice faint. “I have met only his wife. She appears to be somewhat sickly.” She remembered well the interview in the office of Sheffield and Johnston, her late father’s solicitors. Mrs. Leavitt had seemed on the verge of collapse throughout her interrogation of Katherine’s background and skills.

  Her eyes on the schoolboy, who appeared to be sleeping, and the priest, who was deep in his Breviary, the milkmaid leaned toward the other two women. “And don’t I always say that the woman who stays healthy has a husband who knows where his own sheets begin and end?” She cast a significant look at Mrs. Winkle’s bulging middle as Katherine blushed.

  “True enough,” Mrs. Winkle murmured. “My Edward knows his own pasture.” She looked at Katherine with real concern. “Do you think this is such a good idea, Miss Billings? I mean if you was forty-five and with snaggle teeth, it might be a different go-round. I don’t know, miss. I think I would worry for you.”

  “Oh, I am sure that I can take care of myself.”

  Take care of myself. As the milkmaid and farmer’s wife continued speaking to each other in low tones, Katherine sighed and looked out the window again, her enjoyment in the day wiped away. She was twenty-six and on her own, to make her way in a world that seemed to grow more unkind after Papa’s death.

  He had died suddenly, hit by a drunken carter as he crossed a rain-swept London street. When a neighbor summoned her into the street from their rented rooms, she found Papa gasping his life away and still clutching the oilskin packet purchased from the art dealer, which was to have been her twenty-sixth birthday present.

  “It’s Giotto, my dear. Happy birthday,” had been his final words to her as she cradled his ruined head in her lap.

  Even now tears came to her eyes and escaped to her cheek. She tried to brush at it, but Jane was a heavy weight in her arms, and she could not. Another tear followed, and another, and then Mrs. Winkle was wiping her eyes for her. “Dearie, maybe it won’t be as grim as we fear,” she crooned as she would to her own child. “But I say it is too bad that women are at the mercy of men. Too bad.”

  Katherine shook her head. “I wasn’t thinking of Mr. Leavitt, not really. I …” She paused, wondering what she was doing, confessing her own grief to these women so obviously inferior. But her own heart was breaking, and she took another step away from her upbringing. “Papa died two weeks ago, and I am alone in the world.”

  The words came out of her in a rush, and it was done. She accepted a handkerchief that smelled strongly of incense from the priest, who had put away his Breviary and was also listening intently now. “Tell us,” he said, and his eyes were kind.

  With only the slightest hesitation, she told them of Papa, who was much better at spending money on art than he was at being a vicar. “He lived for old paintings,” she said as the tears flowed freely. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. “We even spent three years in Rome.” She gave her listeners a watery smile. “He was supposed to have been studying homiletics and the writings of Paul, but he spent most of his time in art galleries.”

  The coach rolled on through the greening countryside, awakening to summer, as she told of Papa’s good birth and comfortable circumstances, squandered on art he could not afford. She did not tell them of his passion for Shakespeare and the Restoration dramatists, figuring that too much of that would convince them that Papa was a flibbertigibbet. And what if he was, she thought to herself as she blew her nose again, and the priest provided another handkerchief. What if he was? She had not regretted a minute of their eccentric life together, not really, except that it ended so ignominiously on a rainy London back street.

  “But all those paintings?” asked the ever practical Mrs. Winkle. “Surely they were worth something? Do you have to be a governess?”

  “Most of them were forgeries,” Katherine said. “Papa loved art, but I fear he was too easily gulled. My solicitor was able to sell the occasional sketch or charcoal drawing, but the rest of it …” Her voice trailed off. Papa’s accumulated fakes and forgeries had made a most excellent bonfire. By selling his library and the few good paintings, Abner Sheffield, Papa’s solicitor, had seen to it that she was debt-free, but broke in the bargain.

  She almost told them of the Giotto Papa had clutched even in death. It was a penciled cartoon of two angels, probably intended as a pattern for a fresco. Rolled up and lovingly wrapped in oilskin, it rested in the bottom of her trunk. Sheffield had assured her of its worthlessness and advised her to consign it to the fire, but she could not. It had been Papa’s last gift to her, and she would not part with it, no matter its little value. But she did not tell them of the Giotto. It was a matter too close to her heart, and she could not bring herself to cry again.

  “And so I have to work,” she concluded as the coachman blew on his yard of tin and the coach began to slow down. “It won’t be so onerous.”

  Mrs. Winkle patted Katherine’s knee. “Dearie, I hope you are right. If some other situation should present itself, I would consider it, if I were you.”

  “Maybe you’ll marry,” suggested the milkmaid.

  “With what?” Katherine asked. “Most men look for at least some dowry.” And I have nothing but a worthless, rolled-up sketch of two fat angels bumbling through an Italian sky. A man would have to be crazy …

  The milkmaid uttered an expletive of her own that made the priest jump and dive back into his Breviary again. “Why must it always come back to men, I ask!” she declared indignantly.

  That appeared to be the unanswerable question. As the coach lumbered and creaked to a halt, Mrs. Winkle straightened her dress and looked out the window, blowing a kiss to the sturdy, sandy-haired member of the agricultural fraternity who waited impatiently for the coachman to drop the step. When the door opened, he grinned at his wife and retrieved his sleeping daughter from Katherine’s lap.

  Mrs. Winkle left the coach first, helped by the priest. “Miss Billings, I know I am dreadful forward, but if you ever need help, our farm is ten miles south of Heanor. Everyone knows it.”

  Touched beyond words, Katherine could only smile and blow a kiss of her own. Still Mrs. Winkle hesitated. With an effort she leaned close to Katherine’s ear. “And I hope to heaven you can tell good men from bad ones, miss.”

  “I do, too,” agreed Katherine, “oh, I do, too.”

  The schoolboy and milkmaid remained on the coach, and it filled to overflowing with clergymen of the Scots persuasion, frugal with words, space, and interest in others’ business. They crowded close together, but no one spoke. It had begun to rain, and the parsons smelled of wet wool and oatmeal.

  As the miles rolled away, the rain worsened. As Wakefield neared, Katherine felt her stomach begin to tangle into troublesome knots. Mrs. Leavitt, in that breathless, tired voice of hers, had warned Katherine to be watching for Wakefield. “I will send a boy with a gig for you there. You can wait in the taproom of the Queen Anne until he arrives.” Well, thought Katherine, a taproom will be another new experience. I only hope the boy with the gig isn’t tardy.

  “Wickfield,” bawled the coachman finally. It was raining harder now, and his voice was indistinct through the curtain of water.

  Katherine wrapped her cloak tighter about her. When the coach stopped, she helped herself down while the coachman hurriedly unroped her trunk from the top and carried it in great splashing steps to the tavern. Katherine squinted through the rain at the sign that swung back and forth. It was the Hare and Hound, not the Queen Anne. She started to protest, but the coachman was already back in his place, whistling to his horses.

  The ostler’s boy had already taken her trunk into the taproom, and she followed him. “This is Wakefield?” she aske
d, hoping to make herself heard over the rain that drummed down. Mrs. Leavitt had certainly not mentioned the Hare and Hound, and there didn’t appear to be another tavern in the village, or not one that Katherine could see in the pounding rain.

  The boy nodded and held out his hand. Katherine begrudged him a penny of her dwindling supply, and he tugged his forelock at her. He left her in the room that was empty, except for a barmaid polishing glasses behind the tall counter. Katherine settled herself on a bench by the door, hopeful of rescue, and soon.

  Time passed and the rain thundered down. She made herself small in the corner when several men came in for ale and conversation. She examined the coins in her reticule again, hoping that there in the dark with the drawstrings closed they might have multiplied into enough coins to see her back to London. But what would there be in London? The thought was depressing in the extreme, but her mind kept worrying around to it, no matter what else she thought: she had nowhere to go except to Leavitt Hall.

  The rain let up as the long June afternoon dwindled. After the men drained the last of their ale and left, Katherine went to the doorway and peered out, scanning the road for Mrs. Leavitt’s promised boy and gig. As she watched, anxious to get her future underway, a gig came tooling down the road toward the Hart and Hound. She looked closer. It was no boy at the reins, but a man.

  As he came nearer, the fear that it was Squire Leavitt himself dissolved. It was a young man, dressed casually in leather breeches and open-necked shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. He held the reins in one hand, perfectly at ease with himself and the horse. He was handsome, too, with hair as dark as her own, but curly, and worn rather longer than fashion dictated. He had drawn it back with a ribbon, reminiscent of her father’s era. He was somewhat thin-lipped, but he had a generous mouth, with prominent laugh lines. Katherine let out her breath and loosened her grip on the doorsill.

  He pulled the gig to a neat stop directly in front of her and leaped from the gig with all the ease of a true athlete. He walked gracefully toward her, holding out his hand. Surprised, she took it and stood blinking at him as he made a great flourish and kissed the back of her hand.