Page 1 of Miss Dignified
Chapter One
“That is a kitten.” The audacious little beast—a calico—batted at the toe of Captain Dylan Powell’s boot as if to herd him out of his own kitchen. “I do not recall giving permission to add another dependent to my household.”
If asked, he would have refused. Half of London’s disabled and unemployed soldiers already relied on Dylan’s hospitality, which was a sufficient challenge for any former officer.
“That,” Mrs. Lydia Lovelace retorted, “is a pantry mouser, and you, Captain Powell, are intruding belowstairs unannounced again. We have discussed this. If you’re peckish, you may ring for a tray, and I will happily oblige you.” In the dim light of the kitchen hearth, she gathered her shawl in a manner that conveyed vexation—with her employer.
Dylan’s sisters were equally skilled at wordless scolds, while he had learned to deal in orders, regulations, and precisely applied rules. Mrs. Lovelace dealt in menus, schedules, and clearly defined roles, and thus he and she rubbed along tolerably well.
Most of the time. That Dylan’s domestic aide-de-camp would introduce a kitten into the household without gaining Dylan’s prior approval was interesting. Insubordinate and presuming of her, but interesting.
“It’s nearly midnight,” he said, “I would not trouble you over bread and cheese.”
“Bread and cheese.” She swished past him to the window box. “You hare about London at all hours, on foot,in this weather, and think to subsist on bread and cheese.” Mrs. Lovelace tossed the longer tail of her shawl over one shoulder with all the panache of a Cossack preparing to gallop across the snowy steppes. “I should let you starve, but then I’d be in need of a post.”
While the kitten pounced on Dylan’s boots, then pronked away with its back arched, Mrs. Lovelace put together an omelet of ham, cheese, and bacon. At the same time, she had a rack of toast browning over the coals and a kettle on to boil.
For Dylan to sit, even on the hard chair before the kitchen table, was to fall prey to a staggering weight of fatigue. By a London gentleman’s standards, midnight was not late. By a soldier’s standards, midnight was hours past bedtime. Though he’d sold his commission years ago, Dylan’s body had never lost the habit of the soldier’s hours.
He rose to turn the toast—when had his hips acquired the aches of an eighty-year-old man?—and the kitten scampered after him. Rather than risk stepping on such a small pest, he scooped up the beast.
“Does it have a name?” he asked. The feline squeezed its eyes closed and commenced rumbling.More insubordination.
“She. Calicoes are always female in my experience, and no, she does not. Not yet.”
Dylan resumed his seat as the kitchen filled with the scents of good, simple food. “Because you think I’d turn her out?”
Mrs. Lovelace sent him an eloquently skeptical glance. “Even you would not turn away a kitten on such a foul night.”
No, he would not, but come morning…
“It’s merely raining.” Dylan had marched through worse and barely noticed the wet, but this rain was London rain, which could turn to sleet in any season of the year. Welsh rain was well behaved by comparison, usually more of a pattering mist and often bringing rainbows in its wake.
Thoughts of Wales were seldom cheering and never far from his mind.
“Rain with a bitter wind,” Mrs. Lovelace retorted, taking the toasting rack off the hearth. She opened the rack and began spreading butter over the warm slices. “River fog redolent of foul miasmas. Footpads on every hand. That you have not succumbed to a brain fever or fallen prey to violence surely qualifies as miraculous.”
“Would you miss me?” The question slipped out, not quite teasing. Perhaps Mrs. Lovelace was right—she was frequently right, also somewhat less than respectful of her employer. The late hour, an empty belly, and the dirty weather had taken a toll on Dylan’s wits.
“I would miss my post.” She cut the buttered toast into triangles and arranged it on a plate with the steaming omelet. “You should wash your hands, sir.”
Now she gave him orders, albeit couched as a suggestion served with a side of scowling disapproval. To wash his hands, Dylan would have to stand again, and now that he was finally home and parked on his arse, even crossing the kitchen loomed like a three-day forced march.
He nonetheless set the kitten on the warm bricks of the raised hearth and went to the wet sink to do as he’d been told. Junior officers in particular learned to do as they were told, though half the time the result had been death or disgrace—at least when the orders came from Lieutenant Colonel Aloysius Dunacre.
“Will you join me?” Dylan asked, returning to the table. Mrs. Lovelace had made a prodigious amount of food, more than he could comfortably eat at one sitting.
“I’ll see to the tea.”
The kitten curled up in a basket on the hearth, looking small and vulnerable all on its lonesome, also sweet, dammit.
Dylan stared at the hot food, an unexpected comfort on an otherwise frustrating night. “For what I am about to receive, I am abjectly grateful. Please do sit, Mrs. Lovelace.” He cast around for a means of inducing her to get off her feet. “To have you racketing about will ruin my digestion.”
She wore no cap at this late hour, and Mrs. Lovelace did set great store by her caps. She set great store by feather dusters, recipes for lifting stains, and medicinals for every occasion. Dylan had never met a woman so ferociously competent at domesticity, nor so ruthless in her warfare against dirt and disorder.
She brought the tea tray to the table and sat across from him, perched on the very edge of her chair. “The eggs might need salt.”
Dylan portioned off a third of the omelet and set it on a saucer. “See for yourself. I cannot possibly finish this, and good food ought not to go to waste.” He pushed the plate over to her, then added a triangle of toast. Challenging Mrs. Lovelace to bend a rule was always an intriguing exercise. She was not stupidly rigid, but rather, sensibly well organized.
