The Duke's Gamble. Miranda Jarrett
Читать онлайн книгу.
diversion.
“I am most sorry for your pain and your loss, your grace.” Robitaille bowed his head in sympathy, as dutifully full of respect as any mourner hired for a burial. Almost as an afterthought, he looked down at the bracelet still in his hands. “Might I ask where the bracelet should be sent, your grace?”
“To Penny House, St. James.” Guilford smiled, glad to be done with the sighing and moaning over Charlotte. “To Miss Amariah Penny.”
“Miss Penny, your grace?” Robitaille’s mouth formed a perfect oval of surprise. “Miss Amariah Penny of Penny House? Oh, your grace, you amaze me!”
His wonder was so complete that Guilford laughed. “Do you think she’s unworthy of me, Robitaille, or that I am unworthy of her?”
“Neither, your grace, of course not,” the jeweler said quickly, “but Miss Penny is…a different sort of lady, isn’t she?”
“She’s some old parson’s daughter, she has hair as red as flame, and she’s clever enough to earn her own keep,” Guilford said, smiling as he recalled how upset she’d been with him last night. “I suppose that does make her a change from my usual fare.”
The jeweler laid the bracelet back down upon the silk-covered pillow on the counter, straightening the links with the tip of one finger into a neat line.
“She won’t take the bracelet, your grace,” he said definitively. “Not Miss Penny, nor her sisters, either. They won’t accept gifts from this shop from any of my gentlemen. They claim their position won’t permit it.”
“Hah, that’s nonsense, Robitaille,” scoffed Guilford. “I’ve seen how she decks herself out every night at the club, sparkling like a queen. She didn’t get diamonds and sapphires like those from her papa in the vicarage.”
Robitaille sniffed with disdain. “They’re all paste, your grace. I’ve seen her myself, from afar. Good paste, from Paris, but paste nonetheless.”
Guilford frowned a bit, unable to accept this. To him, genuine or paste looked much the same, but he did believe in the value of quality, and in paying for it, too. “Why the devil would she wear paste, when she could have the real thing?”
“Charity, your grace,” said Robitaille with a fatalist’s resignation. “She wants nothing for herself, nor did her sisters. I cannot tell you how many pieces have been sent to the ladies of Penny House, your grace, and exactly the same number have been returned.”
“But they haven’t been sent by me,” Guilford said, his confidence unshaken. “Miss Penny and I have always gotten on famously. You’ll see. This bracelet won’t come back.”
But the jeweler’s doleful face showed no such conviction. “As you say, your grace,” he said with the most obsequious of bows. “Thank you for your custom, your grace. I’ll have it taken to the lady directly.”
“Good.” And as Guilford turned away from the counter, he realized his pride had just made another, unspoken wager with Robitaille: that his bracelet would be the first accepted and displayed upon the lovely pale wrist of Amariah Penny.
It was the muted rattle of the dishes on the breakfast tray that first woke Amariah, followed by her maid Deborah’s tentative whisper.
“Good morning, Miss Penny,” Deborah said as she set the tray down on the table at the end of the bed. “Miss Penny? Are you awake, Miss Penny?”
Amariah rolled over in bed, shoving her hair from her eyes as she squinted at the face of the little brass clock on the table beside her head. She felt as if she’d only just fallen into bed, her head so thick and her eyes as scratchy as if she hadn’t slept at all. Surely Deborah had come too soon; surely it couldn’t be time to wake already.
“What time is it?” she asked, her voice scratchy and squeaky with sleep.
“Half past noon, miss,” the maid answered apologetically. “I know you must still be dreadful weary after the wedding and all, but Mr. Pratt said you’d have his head if he let you sleep any later.”
“Pratt’s right.” Groggy, Amariah kept her face still pressed into her pillow for another second more. It was time she woke; she usually rose at eleven, and now she’d lost that hour and a half of usefulness forever, never to be recaptured. “I would have his head.”
Somehow she found the will to push herself upright just as Deborah drew back the curtains to the window, letting the bright noonday sun flood the room, and with a groan Amariah flopped back onto the pillow, her arm flung over her eyes.
“Forgive me, miss, but Mr. Pratt said it’s the only way to—”
“I know what Mr. Pratt said,” said Amariah, marshaling herself for another attempt, “though knowing he is right doesn’t make it any more agreeable.”
“Forgive me for being forward, miss, but everything will be more agreeable after a nice dish of tea.” Deborah lifted the small silver pot and poured the steaming tea into one of the little porcelain cups, adding sugar and lemon. Then she tipped the fragrant liquid into the deep-bottomed dish and handed it to Amariah. “Your favorite pekoe, miss.”
“Thank you, Deborah.” Carefully Amariah took the saucer, her fingers balancing the worn, gold-rimmed edge. Painted with purple irises, the tea set was one of the few things the sisters had had from their mother, and for Amariah, using the delicate porcelain each morning was a small, comforting way to remind herself of her long-past childhood in Sussex.
Deborah shifted the tray to the bed, reaching behind Amariah to plump her pillows higher. “You see, miss, that Mrs. Todd cooked your eggs just the way that Miss Bethany—I mean, Lady Callaway—did for you, with them little grilled onions on the side.”
“Shallots,” Amariah said wistfully as she looked down at her plate. “They’re a special breed of onions called shallots.”
Deborah beamed. “See now, miss, isn’t that just like Mrs. Todd, knowing the difference, and knowing you’d know, too?”
Amariah smiled in return, but without any joy. Mrs. Todd, Bethany’s assistant in the kitchen and a master cook in her own right, had made an exact copy of one of her sister’s best breakfasts, but it wasn’t the same. It never could be, not without Cassia and Bethany to share it. Breakfast had always been the one meal the sisters had together, sitting in their nightclothes before the fire to laugh and gossip and plan their day before their work began in earnest.
Now Bethany and Cassia must be taking breakfast with their husbands, pouring their tea and buttering their toast, while she would be here at Penny House, with only—
“Miss Penny, miss?” The scullery maid standing before her was very young and very new, her hands twisting knots in her skirts and her face so pinched with anxiety that Amariah feared she might cry. “Miss?”
“What are you doing here, Sally?” Deborah scolded. “You’ve no business coming upstairs and bothering Miss Penny! Go, away with you, back where you belong!”
The girl’s eyes instantly filled with terrified tears. “But Mr. Pratt said—”
“What did Mr. Pratt say, lass?” Amariah asked gently, preferring to earn her staff’s loyalty through kindness, not threats. “Is something wrong?”
“No, Miss Penny. That is, it be this, Miss Penny.” Sally made a stiff-legged curtsy before she darted forward, a folded letter in her hand. “I was sweepin’ th’ front steps, Miss Penny, an’ found this there, up against th’ door, an’ Mr. Pratt said I must bring it to you at once.”
“Thank you for your promptness. You did exactly the right thing.” Amariah took the letter from the girl, her heart making a small, irrational flutter of hope.
Why would Guilford leave her a letter by the door, instead of handing it to a servant? Why, really, would he write to her at all?
“You’re