Page 9 of Not Quite a Lady
‘Go out of the back door and through the mews. And hurry!’ she called as Blake bowed his way out.
The youngest footman staggered in. His elaborately frogged livery was dishevelled. ‘Miss France, ma’am, there are three midwives and a surgeon and two dentists.’
‘Tell them to go away, for goodness sake, Percy. Does it look as though anyone here is about to give birth or needs their teeth pulling?’
‘No, Miss France.’ He ducked out again only to reappear moments later. ‘Miss France, there’s a clerical gentleman come from the Bishop of London…’
‘That is the outside of enough!’ Lily marched to the front door, beaded trimming jingling around her hems. Poor Fakenham could not be expected to deal with this.
‘Madam.’ The clergyman stopped his involved explanations to the butler and bowed politely, his broad-brimmed hat clutched in both hands.
Her appearance seemed to have an effect on the crowd and the noise level dropped markedly as all heads turned to stare at her.
‘Sir, I very much regret that you have been put to inconvenience and that my Lord Bishop has been so imposed upon, but as you can see, I appear to be the victim of some outrageous practical joke.’
It had to be that, she realised with a sense of relief at finding a reason. There was no other explanation for it.
As the flustered cleric plunged back into the mob Lily scanned the crowd from her vantage point on the top step, ignoring Fakenham’s agitated attempts to make her go back inside.
It felt hideously exposed, and the noise was building againas the people who filled the street came to the realisation that here was the person who had, apparently, commanded their appearance. They began to push forward again. The crowd was packed out even more by figures who seemed to be nothing more than curious onlookers, drawn by the free entertainment.
‘Come inside, ma’am,please. It will be all over the newspapers by tomorrow.’
‘Oh, where are the constables?’ Lily stood on tiptoe to try and see the street entrance.
One tall man, dark and hatless, was making his way through the press. Not an officer, but somehow her gaze was drawn. He did not seem to be pushing or shoving, but people made way for him like a shoal of fish parting before a predator. She could not take her eyes from him.
Jack Lovell.
Chapter Three
‘Look here, miss, did you, or did you not, order these chickens?’ The heated demand from the foot of the steps jerked Lily’s attention back, but her heart was thudding.
‘No I didnot. Now please, go away and stop waving that poor bird at me!’ She flapped her hands at the cloud of feathers that the struggling chicken was shedding.
This was hopeless, but they could not leave the front door undefended and she could not abandon her staff to face the chaos either. And Jack Lovell was coming.
The slender, red-headed woman on the top step was, indeed, Miss France. He had not been surprised at the formal tone of her letter referring to his advertisement in the newspaper, she would not wish to refer to their first meeting, not in writing.
What this bear garden in the street was about he could not imagine, nor why she was exposing herself to it. It was bizarre, even by the standards of everyday life in London.
And why, at ten in the morning, Miss France was dressed in a manner which suggested that, not only was she going to pay a morning call on the Prince Regent, but had donned most of the contents of her jewel box, he could not fathom.
She seemed to have a lavish taste in dress, the only thing he had found about her so far that he did not admire. Other, of course, than her taste in men.
A snarl and a blast of foul breath to his left had him turn and change his course slightly away from the shaggy brown beast. This truly was a bear garden it seemed.
Dodging round the back of the coffin brake he found himself at the foot of the steps. ‘Miss France?’
‘Yes?’ She turned and he stopped abruptly, one foot on thenext step. Close-to he could ignore the ornate hairstyle, the dangling earrings, the frills and furbelows.
The young woman who was staring back was the one who had stumbled into the coffee shop and his heart performed the same futile dance it had then.
She looked at him with her wide green eyes. Such long lashes. In daylight he realised just how lush her mouth was. Her skin was like peaches and she had the look of a deer at bay. He corrected himself: an angry deer.
‘Mr Lovell – I do not know how you come to be here, but if you believe I have written to you, I can assure you it is all a mistake. Some malicious jest.’
What the devil was her household about, letting her expose herself to this mob? Two footmen, magnificently attired and well over the desirable six feet in height, flanked her butler, but none of them appeared to be able to control matters. It was doubtful that anything, short of a platoon of infantry, could.
