Page 56 of The Lady's Companion
The colonel nodded. “Where you will speak up promptly and tell them what you want, so they won’t think it is I seeking another license and looking like a bigamist. We’ll stop at St. Andrews afterwards, and make arrangements for tomorrow morning, so you will have time to catch the mail coach back to Quilling.”
They dropped her off at the Steinman Agency, where she was accosted by both Steinmans, plied with tea and Viennese pastry, and obliged to divulge all. Her narrative was interrupted by Mrs. Steinman’s “I knew it, I knew it,” and Steinman’s grin that grew wider and wider and threatened to split his face.
“See here, sir,” she said, putting down her teacup in the face of his relentless good humor, “how long am I to believe you have been plotting this?”
“Since I laid eyes on you, Miss Hampton,” he admitted promptly.
“Even if you were fully aware how socially mismatched David and I are?” she accused, amused at his enthusiasm.
He shook his head at another pastry from his mother, who dropped it on Susan’s plate instead, with the admonition, “To keep your strength up, dearie.” He picked up the metronome still on the breakfast table, and set it in slow motion. “Susan, we live in a new age, an industrial age, one where a Jew can run a company without fear of windows broken, or business ruined by rumor or bigotry.”
He moved the weight down and the pendulum swung faster. “It is a modem age; consider yourself a pioneer in it, you and your good bailiff. What else is there to explain?” He looked at her, as if asking himself if he should continue. “And I do owe him.”
“I do not understand.”
“Perhaps you will someday, when you’ve had a little more experience with your bailiff.”
She could think of nothing to add to Steinman’s artless remark,even if he looked like he wanted to say more, which he did not. She knew she had greater explanations ahead of her. Susan nodded to Mrs. Steinman and left the room thoughtfully.
This will not be so easily explained to my father, she considered later in the solitude of her room. She took off her shoes and lay down on the bed, struck suddenly by the thought that she would not have many more days or nights of lying in bed by herself. “I hope you are ready for this, Susan Hampton,” she told the ceiling. She knew she was. Making love with the bailiff, although a new experience, would not be a difficult task. The difficulty lay in the preliminaries; Sir Rodney Hampton should know their plans. “Susan, I am certain your father will not be ready for such glad tidings,” she told herself sternly, “and we aren’t even discussing Aunt Louisa!”
For a long moment, she thought about not saying anything to her father, but knew, in the deepest part of her heart, that such an action would never do. He was sure to find out, and then he would think she was too ashamed to tell him. She turned on her side and rested her cheek on her hands. How sad that I meet the man I love and want to marry and have children by, and I have to worry about what others think. The strange thing is, I do not know if I am trying to protect myself, or him.
It was a sobering thought, and she took it to sleep with her, dreaming of her father searching for her long-gone pearl necklace, and settling for the pence on Lady Bushnell’s eyelids as she lay dead on top of a cotton bale in New Orleans. And there was poor Charlie, tugging at her sleeve, pleading with her not to send him into battle again.
“Suzie, wake up.”
She opened he eyes with a gasp to see the bailiff seated beside her, his hand on her arm. She stared at him, thinking for one terrible moment that he was Charles Bushnell, then she touched his arm to let him know she was awake.
“It looked like a bad dream,” the bailiff murmured, kissing her forehead. “I thought to wake you easy from it.” He must have noticed the question in her eyes. “My dear, I have a lot of experience in bad dreams. Imagine, if you will, a whole regiment twitching and mumbling.”
“It is bad enough that I was dreaming of my father,” she said, drawing up her knees and tucking her skirts about her legs. “I don’t know what to do about him.”
“May I suggest a course of action?” David asked. “I think we need to see him and tell him what we are doing tomorrow morning.”
She sighed, and reached up to touch his hair. “I suppose we must.”
“We must.”
After a brief interlude involving masterly restraint on his part, the bailiff thought it best for him to retreat to his room and put away the special license before it was too wrinkled to read. Susan replaced the pins in her hair, looked in the mirror to note that she would probably never need artificial coloring for her cheeks, and went downstairs to wait for him. Mrs. Steinman kept her company in the sitting room and found time to offer her three kinds of pastries and tea better than she was used to. Susan ate to oblige her, smiling inwardly with amusement as Mrs. Steinman reached over every now and then just to touch her knee and say something low and endearing in a language much like German.
“Mrs. Steinman, how is it that everyone in this household knew my business before I did?” she asked finally, when the pastries were consumed.
“Simple, my dear. You never mentioned the bailiff once in your letter,” the woman replied. “Now, if you did not like him, we would have heard about it. Isn’t it reasonable to suppose that since you said nothing, it was because you didn’t want anyone tothink you were interested?”
I learn new things every day, Susan thought as she left the agency with the bailiff. Here I thought I was so clever. She tucked her arm through David’s and looked up at him. “Mr. Wiggins, if, in future, I ever get to thinking I am terribly smart, will you just remind me that everyone at the Steinman Employment Agency, and you, too, I think, knew my own mind before I did?”
“Mrs. Skerlong, as well,” he said, kissing her cheek quickly as they hurried through the after-work crowds. “She muttered something to me about quality not knowing their place anymore, and what did I think of that?”
“And what did you think of it?” she asked, her eyes merry.
He only smiled. “There I have the advantage of knowing something about women, Suzie. I just mumbled something around my oatmeal and kept eating. That usually satisfies women, I’ve discovered. Some want verification more than real answers.”
“I suppose that means that I won’t be able to get away with anything,” she said, softening her words by holding rather tighter to his arm as they hurried to cross Hyde Park.
“What it means is that you’ll be even more creative than most women in getting what you want, which you will get, I have no doubt.” He smiled down at her. “What I don’t have is any illusions about superiority.”
She was still smiling as they arrived at Aunt Louisa’s and the bailiff knocked on the door. The butler opened it, and she thought she saw just a glimmer of surprise and pleasure in his eyes. She couldn’t be sure, of course. This was, after all, a butler.
