Page 6 of Miss Dignified
Dylan, being cousin to said colonel, was permitted the privilege of using the club’s staff entrance when he pleased to. He was not attired properly for the Coventry’s elegant public rooms, and he also had no use for the idle and titled.
The Coventry did business as a supper club, though the gambling tables earned the club most of its revenue.
Dylan passed Orion his greatcoat. “Somebody beat the hell out of Bowen Brook, and William Brook is still missing.”
“At least let me feed you.” Orion hung Dylan’s cloak on a peg and gestured to a table set against the kitchen’s long window. By day, that window looked out on a small garden. By night, the open clerestory windows allowed for some ventilation in the kitchen.
An apprentice, who could not have been more than fourteen, put a plate before Dylan. Whipped potatoes had been sculpted into the shape of two doves cuddled next to each other. Sprigs of parsley had been fashioned into wings and peppercorns used for the eyes.
Beside the potato doves, thin strips of beef had been wound and curled into something resembling a rose, and another rose had been created from an arrangement of thinly sliced, roasted vegetables dusted with what Dylan’s nose suggested wereherbes de Provence. The plate itself was garnished with more parsley and greenery, creating an impression of a rose arbor for the cooing doves.
Dylan waited to speak until the girl had withdrawn. “I would have been content with a sandwich.” Or an omelet served by a scolding housekeeper too softhearted to ignore bedraggled kittens.
“Ann says you need meat on your bones.” Goddard accepted a second plate from the same apprentice. “Thank you, Hannah, and the doves are exquisite.”
The girl beamed. “I’ve been working on ’em for weeks, Colonel. Missus Goddard says mine are almost too pretty for the club’s buffet. I’m to start on partridges next.”
She scampered off, apparently in transports over the prospect of potato partridges.
“One of your former urchins?” Dylan asked, taking up a fork and probing at the edges of his beef rose.
“Hannah is an apprentice to Ann now. Will Brook recover from the beating?” Goddard cut into his vegetable rose and speared a bite.
“He will, this time. He’s lost his lodgings because his brother disappeared, and this mischief will likely mean he misses work tomorrow.”
“And thus he loses his job. Can you send him to Wales?”
“Bowen claims Wales is too far. I’ve already sent everybody to Wales who was willing to go. Others have taken posts on MacKay’s holdings in Scotland, but the Brook boys…” They weren’t boys, and neither were they London born and bred, but Bowen and William were oddly reluctant to leave Town, despite the parlous existence it offered them.
Dylan wasn’t in the mood for vegetables—he was seldom in the mood for vegetables—but couldn’t quite fathom how to attack his beef.
“Are the brothers Brook your last two?” Goddard used his fork to unwind a strip of beef. For a big man, he had delicate manners. He also had a tender heart, which manifested in his determination that no orphan on London’s streets should perish for want of a meal or a safe place to sleep.
A hopeless objective, if noble. “William and Bowen are the last two who came to grief because of Dunacre’s stupidity, though I take an interest in any former soldier who needs aid. Bowen lost half a foot. William can barely use his right hand.”
“Burns?”
“In William’s case.” Dylan managed to peel free a strip of beef when he wanted to simply take his knife to the culinary art that somebody had obviously wasted a lot of time creating.
“You still can barely stand to say his name.” Goddard took a sip of claret. “Dunacre is dead, your men are all but situated, and the war is over. Go to Wales and marry some pretty lady with a fondness for skinny soldiers.”
Goddard, happily married to his lady chef and happily employed managing the Coventry for his in-laws, had become an enthusiastic proponent of matrimony as the great cure-all. Alasdhair MacKay, a cousin who’d also served on the Peninsula, was even more recently converted to the blandishments of wedded bliss.
“I promised those men,” Dylan said, trying for another bite of beef, “that if they survived Dunacre’s ineptitude, I would see them settled. They would not march, sweat, and suffer just to have to beg for their bread if they made it home.”
Many had not made it home. For them, Dylan could do nothing, though it was some comfort that Lieutenant Colonel Dunacre, the author of much misery, had been felled by a bullet at Waterloo.
“If you neglect your potatoes,” Goddard said, “Hannah’s feelings will be hurt. Ann says your sisters might march on London once the Season gets under way.”
Dylan used his knife to slice into the vegetable whatever-it-was. “The ladies will try to see me married off. I want your word you will not abet them, and you will not allow Ann to abet them.”
Goddard’s smile was particularly fatuous. “Your grasp of a husband’s authority lacks an acquaintance with reality, Powell. What is it about Bowen’s mishap that bothers you?”
Everything.“He limps. He’s scrawny. He’s nearly destitute. Nothing was stolen, not his boots, not his miserable infantry coat. He was simply beaten for the hell of it.”
“This is London.”
“Precisely why I have labored long and hard to see the men set up elsewhere. London is expensive, the air foul, the streets worse than foul. Why beat a man who is no threat to anybody? Why beat a man who served honorably and paid a high price for his patriotism? London is full of drunks, lordlings, and fools. Why single out Bowen Brook, steal nothing, and leave him just sound enough to crawl to my door?”
