Page 11 of Lady Beast's Bridegroom
Peter was still talking. “I need to find somewhere for them to stay for the night. The hotel I am in, it does not permit—it is not suitable for females, especially gently-born schoolgirls.”
He grimaced. “You know my circumstances. I need not scruple to say I have little ready cash. Not enough to pay for suitable accommodation.” He made the same helpless gesture again.
“You would like me to invite your sisters to be my guests for the night,” Arial said, just to check that she understood him. The poor little girls. She could only imagine what they had been through. And poor Peter, too, swallowing his pride to make such a request of a lady he hardly knew.
“I have no right…” he began again, but she waved him to silence.
“Of course, bring them here. I shall give orders for bedrooms to be prepared. Will you stay with them? If they have been through a traumatic experience, they will need you close.”
He frowned again and she pre-empted his objection. “There can be no impropriety, since I have my companion and you have your sisters and their governess.”
His relieved smile was a reward in itself. “Thank you. They have already asked… Thank you.” He stood. “I will go and fetch them. I can never thank you enough.”
“Where must you pick them up? Is it far?”
“The Wyvern and Crow. In Clerkenwell. It is perhaps a thirty-minute walk, so we should be here in one hour, my lady.”
“Henry, order the carriage. As quickly as possible please. It will be faster, Lord Ransome, and much easier with baggage. While we wait, please join me and my companion. We are about to dine. Problems are always easier to solve when one is not hungry.”
He bowed again, standing as she did. “I regret, my lady, that I am not dressed for the evening. I have been chasing all over town…”
“We are old acquaintances, are we not? If I do not regard it, you need not.” Barlowe appeared at the door, and she strode through into the entrance hall again as she gave her orders for dinner to be served immediately, and an extra place laid. “Also, please have rooms made up for the two Misses Ransome, their governess, and Lord Ransome. Are the two girls accustomed to sharing, my lord?”
“They would prefer it, I think,” he said, as he once again offered his arm. She hesitated, then gathered her courage. Best to begin as she meant to go on. “May I take your other arm, my lord? I find it awkward to have you on my blind side.”
His eyes, which had been firmly fixed on her single eye, darted to the blank space on the half-mask that covered where the other had once been. He looked away again and immediately winged the right arm. “Of course. The fire?”
“Indeed.” She wondered how much to tell him. “A burning beam pinned me by the head for several minutes, I am told. I remember little about it, but the damage it left speaks for itself.” She sighed, thinking of the would-be suitor earlier today, who had fled her presence and made it no further than a plant stand in the entrance hall before losing his lunch.
Peter placed his right hand over hers and gave a comforting squeeze. “When I saw the mask, I assumed that the scars beneath must be worse than those otherwise visible. I am truly sorry that you lost the sight on your right side.”
Arial shrugged as they mounted the stairs. “I lived. For the most part, I consider that a blessing, particularly when I remember my father would have been all alone had I not done so. This way, Lord Ransome.” She indicated the door to the dining room.
As they came into the room, Clara entered from the drawing room.
“Clara, this is Lord Ransome. He is a friend from my childhood and will be coming to stay for a few days with his sisters and their governess.”
She turned to Peter. “Lord Ransome, Miss Tulloch is my companion and my dear friend.”
Peter took a couple of steps forward, hand outstretched. “Surely, I remember you. Were you not that marvelous governess who made nature come alive for me when I visited the Stancroft estate as a boy?”
Clara allowed him to mime a kiss to her hand. And was that a blush? “I am flattered you remember me, my lord.”
“How could I forget? I so envied Arial—Lady Arial—her fortune in having a teacher who made lessons interesting!”
*
Dinner comprised adozen or so dishes all served to the table at once. Peter attempted to serve the ladies. Arial told him he had no time for such ceremony and instructed him to feed himself. Even so, he was but halfway through the food on his plate when a footman arrived to announce that his transport was ready.
He half rose, then sat again, anxious to get back to his sisters but conscious it was the height of bad manners to leave the table halfway through the meal.
“Go,” Arial said. “Clara and I do not regard it, and you will want to reassure your sisters as quickly as possible.”
“One moment,” Miss Tulloch commanded. She took a bread roll from a basket of them, sliced it open and buttered it. “Here,” she said, passing it over. “Put your meat into that, my lord, and finish it in the carriage.”
In the carriage, feeling much more optimistic now he was no longer hungry, Peter considered his impressions of his childhood friend and her companion.
The former governess had changed little in fifteen years. She was still a slight woman with sharp blue eyes in a plain but pleasant face, straight brown hair drawn back in a simple knot, and a no-nonsense manner. She had seemed old to his thirteen years, but she must have been in her forties back then, for she could not yet have turned sixty.
