Page 52 of The Lady's Companion
“A little mulled wine will be just the thing,” Mrs. Steinman said as she helped Susan from her clothes and into her nightgown. “You get in bed, and I’ll hand it to you. Can you feel the warming pan?”
She could, and between the warmth in her toes and the wine that mellowed its way down her throat, she could have purred with contentment. In a stupefying trance of huge comfort, she handed back the goblet, rested her feet on the towel-covered warming pan and closed her eyes.
Susan had scarcely shut her eyes before it was time to open them again, this time at the gentle insistence of Mrs. Steinman, who called herleibchenandbubelehand offered the further enticement of hot chocolate passed several times under her nose. She sat up slowly in the feather bed that threatened to pull her under again, gripping the brass bars to prevent a return to the horizontal state. The chocolate was followed by a forced feeding of enough little pastry puffs to get her on her feet andwashing herself with wonderful hot water and lavender soap so creamy it was almost sinful. She was humming as she followed a servant to the breakfast room.
“Ah, excellent!” Joel Steinman said as he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin and rose to his feet. “You certainly look better early in the morning than David Wiggins does!”
The bailiff turned around from his perusal of food at the side table and nodded to her. “Smells better, too.” He looked at the clock on the mantel. “We’re promised at Lady Bushnell’s in an hour, Susan.”
She nodded and joined him at the sideboard, searching for more of those same little pastries that had revived her in bed. David had the last three on his plate, so she took one of his without any compunction, winked at him, and sat down.
“I thrashed a man once for stealing from my plate,” the bailiff commented as he sat beside her.
She responded by popping the pastry in her mouth. “You would never do me an injury,” she said, her mouth full.
“No, never an injury,” he agreed, smiled at some secret thought of his own, then tackled his own breakfast. He glanced at her sideways. “Although I might be tempted to...”
“To what?” she asked.
He smiled that slow smile that was starting to bother her on a regular basis. “Oh, just that I might be tempted to. Eat your breakfast, Suzie.”
I should worry when men smile like that, Susan thought. She looked at her own plate, but was distracted by Joel Steinman, who stood beside her chair, then with a flourish, set a present on the table before her.
“Oh, my!” she said, dropping her fork and picking up the package. “Is it in my contract that I am to expect presents from my employment agent? Perhaps I should have read the small words at the bottom. Who knows what else I have promised?”she teased as she opened the package. She stared dubiously at the rectangular object in her hand. “I would like to be delighted, but please tell me what it is, sir.”
Steinman took the object from her hand and set it on the table. With the casual air of someone who had been practicing, he rested his palm on top, and reached down with his fingers to wind the back. He released the object, detached the metal spindle and sat back in triumph over his one-handed effort. “This, Miss Hampton, is a metronome. They are new from Germany andMamelefound it for you.”
As the spindle ticked back and forth in strict rhythm, Steinman jiggled a little weight and it ticked faster. “It is to regulate your piano playing,” he explained when she continued to stare at it. As he leaned closer to her, Susan was amused to observe that the bailiff suddenly leaned closer, too, in a manner that she could only consider proprietary.
“Your letter about Lady Bushnell’s tyranny at the piano was so anguished that I knew I had to make amends,” Steinman told her. “Perhaps I feel I owe you an apology for foisting that job upon you.”
“You owe me no apologies, Mr. Steinman,” she said quietly. “It’s turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Even if we lose it all after our interview this morning?” the bailiff asked, and he sounded peevish.
Are you jealous, sir? she thought in wicked delight. The thought was followed immediately by a most monumental surge of love for the bailiff that went beyond any emotion she had ever experienced before in her life. It left her limp inside; she could only stare at the metronome, because she knew that if she turned her head to even look at David Wiggins, she would cry, or kiss him, or crawl into his lap, or maybe do all three at once. She forced herself to concentrate on what Steinman was saying.
“If it comes to that, Miss Hampton, I must tell you that I haveobtained that job for you with the widow and her two daughters. It only waits an interview, and let me assure you that I have told her you walk on water.”
“What? What?” she asked. “Oh, yes! Well... my goodness.”
Steinman grinned at her and stopped the metronome. “You are supposed to tell me ‘thank you’ prettily for my exertions on your behalf, and not bumble about.”
“Thank you,” she said, feeling as miserable now as she had felt exhilarated only seconds before. If we do not succeed this morning, I will have no choice but to accept Mr. Steinman’s dratted job. I will never see David Wiggins again. She rose to her feet so quickly that both men on either side of her sat back in surprise. “Hurry up, David! We can’t be late!”
As they walked to the Bushnell town house, Susan knew she should have engaged in some of that light patter for which the Hamptons were so famous, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a thing to say. In silence she berated herself for considering for even a moment that just because he was a bailiff, she was proof against him, no matter what Mrs. Skerlong said. I have fallen in love with a bastard Welshman who was a poacher and a sneak thief and a sergeant and now a bailiff. He is of a social class so far removed from my own that I could grow dizzy contemplating the chasm between us, if I allowed myself to. She hurried along, telling herself that the feeling just had to pass, and the sooner the better. I might as well wish away the moon and the tide, she thought, limp again with the anguish of loving the bailiff.
I have been feeling this all along, she thought, without even knowing what the feeling was. Something in the way he had leaned toward her so protectively—so instinctively—when Joel Steinman made her an innocent gift, must have been the spark that finally lit the tinder. It was as though she knew at that moment that David Wiggins would always protect her, and takecare of her, and love her more than himself. The reality of it took her breath away and she stopped and stared at him on the crowded sidewalk.
“Susan?” he asked, looking down at her in alarm. “Are you all right?”
I will never be the same again, she thought. I feel empty and full at the same time, and you ask me if I am all right? “I’m fine,” she lied, and continued at her brisk pace.
It still chafed her to take those steps down to the servants’ entrance, but she swallowed her pride and followed the bailiff. I wonder if I can find anything sensible to say to young Lady Bushnell, she considered, as she stood behind the bailiff in the narrow passageway and admired the broadness of his shoulders. My concern for old Lady B pales beside what I am feeling now about me and David.
After time for a cup of tea that tasted to her like gall and wormwood, the butler showed them into the bookroom. She spent the time in silence, staring at her hands and looking up only once or twice to see the bailiff standing before the cold hearth, his back to her. What are you thinking, sir? she asked herself. Are you wondering at my sudden strangeness, or are you thinking what you will say to Lady Bushnell?
“Don’t worry, Susan,” he said quietly, and she wondered again at his ability to read her.
