Page 44 of Libby's London Merchant
“If you do not, the doctor will feel uncomfortable, and if he is uncomfortable, there is nothing in any room that is safe,” she teased.
“Surely your Aunt Crabtree will object,” he said, even as he winked at her.
“Aunt Crabtree is almost as famous for her nearsightedness as she is for cheating at Patience,” Libby said.
“I wonder that your mother left her to chaperone,” the duke murmured as he allowed himself to be pulled along.
“You may blame Uncle Ames,” she said. “He has any number of female relatives who would leap at the opportunity for a summer of free room and board.”
His resistance was only token, although he would not have told her that, not yet. The thought of dinner by himself was unthinkable, especially with Libby Ames below, entertaining the doctor. He wanted to be part of their conversation, wanted to sit there in peaceful silence and enjoy the society of people who were rapidly become indispensable to him.
“I have no pants, Libby,” he had offered as his only excuse.
“No matter. Wear that robe of yours. After dinner I will hem my father’s pants for you,” she had said. “We have suffered this long with the sight of your hairy legs and I do not see how you could ruin our appetites.”
He wanted to keep her longer in his room, but she had grabbed up her papa’s pants and danced out of his reach, intent on other errands. You will probably keep going at a dead run until you collapse in exhaustion over your plate of soup, he thought. It puzzled him that she had no abigail of her own, but he did not question it. He knew that most of the servants had been dismissed for a summer holiday of their own. Still, it was odd that an heiress of her scope would deign to shoulder the burden of housekeeper, for that was what she was. He put it down to the eccentricity of the Ames household and considered it no more.
Dinner was as pleasant as he had dared hope, Joseph cheerful but quiet, his attention riveted on the marvelous courses that kept coming from the kitchen. Dr. Cook was also closely involved with the plate in front of him. Aunt Crabtree sniffed at the cook’s art, called for bread and milk, and slurped it noisily. She darted little glances at Nez and hitched her chair far away from him, to his amusement. Libby managed to put away a respectable meal in jig time, and still find time to see to the comforts of her guests.
It was refreshing to see a female eat so well, Nez thought, remembering only two weeks ago a dreary, endless dinner with Lady Claudia Fortescue, his sister’s latest project. He had watched that paragon consume a piece of fish the size of a farthing, a thimble of wine, then roll her eyes, dab her dainty lips, and declare herself replete. It was a hum, and he knew it.
Nothing about Libby Ames was a hum. She ate with relish, cried if she felt like it, fought like a tiger for her brother, and laughed with her head thrown back and all her marvelous teeth showing. Lady Fortescue would have slid under the table in a faint over such female enthusiasm. The duke, on the other hand, was delighted.
“Divine, Miss Ames,” Dr. Cook exclaimed after Candlow removed the squab skeleton that he had picked clean. He managed a discreet belch behind his napkin. “How grateful I am that your cook is too devoted to abandon your household when Uncle Ames goes to Brighton. ”
“So am I, sir,” she said. “Uncle Ames would have cut up stiff if Mama had not consented to accompany him and fulfill his wildest culinary dreams.”
“Your mother cooks?” the duke asked. “You are a talented family. I suppose now that you will tell me you are a seamstress of renown and also make your own hats! ”
Libby stood up and twirled around, showing off the pretty primrose muslin he had been admiring with sidelong glances throughout dinner. “One shilling, sir, and the ribbons off an older dress.”
The doctor applauded, shouted, “Hear, hear,” and Libby curtsied and beamed at him. No wonder the Ames fortune is reputed to be bulging at the seams, the duke thought as he admired the dress and the pretty girl in it. His own fortune was respectable enough. Think how it would benefit, placed alongside that of an heiress who knew how to make a guinea dog sit up and beg. Libby Ames is much too good for you, Eustace Wiltmore, the duke thought as he raised his glass of water to her.
No one felt like lingering over port, particularly as the doctor had waved it away immediately, before the duke had time to form an opinion on the subject himself. And there was the daunting prospect of Aunt Crabtree, sound asleep and snoring softly. Libby helped her aunt to her feet and took her upstairs while the men sat at the table and contemplated nothing more strenuous than coffee.
“Very good,” said Libby when they joined her in the sitting room. “I get so impatient when men linger in the dining room, as if they are afraid to come out.” She threaded a needle and stuck it in her dress front, ordering the duke to try on a pair of her father’s pants in the next room.
When he returned, she made him stand on a footstool while she circled about the floor, pinning here and there and casting a critical eye on her handiwork. He was content to move about at her order as he listened to the groans of anguish from a corner table where Joseph appeared to be defeating Dr. Cook at checkers.
Libby looked up at him, a twinkle in her eyes. “I think Anthony Cook lets him win. Isn’t he kind?”
The duke nodded. Kind to a fault. He thought again of the horrific scene in the pasture and the capable way the doctor had handled all of them, horse included. He felt a twinge of envy, wishing that Libby would look at him that way, as though he could do no wrong.
“But then he will stumble over his own feet, or the carpet pattern, and I must confess to the giggles,” Libby said, bursting that little bubble. “Dear man. I wonder what woman will ever have him?”
The duke sighed in spite of himself. Safe. In another moment he was comfortably ensconced in his chair again, ankles crossed on the footstool, while Libby sewed new hems in her father’s pants and hummed to herself.
It was all so domestic and peaceful, and Benedict Nesbitt found himself contented right down to his toes. If I were to tell these people that I used to grace four and five parties, routs, and balls each evening, they would stare at me as if I were an Iroquois in Westminster Abbey, he thought, and chuckled at the idea.
Libby lifted her eyes from her needlework and raised one eyebrow at him.
“I was just thinking how pleasant this is,” he said hastily, “and contrasting it with . . . with Waterloo.”
“I already told you we are dull dogs,” Libby said mildly, and turned to attention back to the pants in her lap. “But perhaps that was what you were needing, Nez?”
How she could get so unerringly to the heart of the matter continued to astound him. The duke nodded, struck by the fact that never before in his entire life had he ever felt part of a family like he did here at Holyoke Green. His father had died when Nez was in Belgium, and he remembered him now as a dimly seen figure on the edge of his growing up. Life had been a succession of nannies and then boarding schools with early hours, hard beds in cold rooms, hazing by the upper forms, and loneliness that had doomed him to painful heartache, until he became sufficiently cynical. His mother and sisters had paraded through his life at appropriate intervals, but never when he needed them.
None of them had sat with him through long hours like Libby Ames, holding his hand, as if it were the most important task that would ever fall her way. No one had ever allowed him to talk and talk, the way Anthony Cook had encouraged him. He thought of Candlow’s numerous solicitous kindnesses, and of Joseph’s genuine pleasure at seeing him up and about, and he knew that he owed these people more than he could ever repay.
