Page 7 of Cupid Comes to Little Valentine

“The good bit?” Beau repeated, incensed. “The good bit? What’s the bad bit, pray tell? It reeks like rotten eggs.”

“When did you ever take medicine that tasted of strawberries and sugar? If it’s good for you, it’s bound to be rank. Now stop bleating and carrying on and drink the stuff before I make you.”

Beau fumed but was too weak to put up a proper fight. Kirby was not the sort of fellow one wished to argue with, but Beau was his employer and that probably meant he wouldn’t actually lay hands on him. Probably. There again, he had scared the poor bastard half to death by almost dying on him. He’d been quite anxious himself come to that. Considering his own mortality had forced him to ask himself some rather uncomfortable questions about his life. Not that he had discovered any sensible answers.

Beau gazed down at the cup of water and contemplated swallowing the foul stuff. His stomach, having suffered enough, churned. A sudden knock at the door seemed like the answer to his prayers, and rather than tell whoever it was to go to the devil, as he certainly would have done two minutes earlier, he called for them to come in.

Kirby straightened, aghast at the idea of anyone seeing the exquisite Beau Beaumarsh looking anything less that his immaculate best, but it was too late. The door opened and the owner of the hotel, Mrs Adamson, a splendidly curvaceous woman with the most riotous red curls Beau had ever seen, strode in.

“My lord,” she said, her voice apologetic though her expression was cool and businesslike. “It appears you have visitors. Now, this is a respectable establishment, and I do not allow unmarried female guests to visit gentlemen. However, as the circumstances are somewhat unusual, I have agreed to chaperone. Might I introduce your callers?”

Beau reclined, aware he ought to stand in the presence of ladies, but equally alive to the possibility that he might fall over if he made the attempt. Retreating behind the façade of the indolent nobleman—one he played to perfection—he waved a negligent hand in acceptance and looked bored.

His gaze, however, was drawn to the two young women who stood behind Mrs Adamson, remaining just out of his line of sight. Well, this was interesting, at least. Whatever did they want of him? If they had come to invite him to attend a god-awful assembly where the yokels could gape at him like some exotic species they’d never seen before, they were out of luck.

“My Lord Beaumarsh, may I present Miss Clementine Honeywell and her sister, Miss Isabelle Honeywell? Ladies, the Earl of Beaumarsh.”

Beau watched as the two young women drew a little closer, regarding him exactly as if he were some strange and exotic species they had never seen before. The younger of the two looked fascinated, her blue eyes startled behind her spectacles. A quick appraisal of her form led him to suspect a splendid figure lay beneath her modest gown, which was certainly five years out of style, but she was far too young for his taste. Eighteen if she was a day, he thought, before turning his attention to her sister. He admitted himself disappointed, for though the younger sister wore glasses, she was certainly the prettier of the two. The elder girl was handsome enough, but nothing out of the ordinary. Well, if one discounted the contempt that glittered in her eyes. That, at least, was remarkable.

“Miss Honeywell, Miss Isabelle, a pleasure to meet you,” he drawled, wondering if he ought to have just drunk the blasted water. No doubt Kirby would get on at him to do so the moment the door closed behind the ladies, and now he had guests to endure too. Damned fool idea.

“We’ve met,” the elder Miss Honeywell said, holding his gaze.

Beau quirked an eyebrow, an expression that would have most people of his acquaintance scurrying away before he eviscerated them with some stinging comment. Miss Honeywell did not blink. “We have?” he asked sceptically.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “You fell out of your carriage after your coachman almost ran me down and then vomited on my boots.”

There were few occasions in Beau’s life where he had felt truly embarrassed, experiencing the kind of toe-curling horror that woke one up in the middle of the night feeling just as excruciatingly mortified as the moment it had happened. The worst of those events had occurred when he was little more than a boy. His vile cousin was usually responsible for them.

Yet it was because of those events, and because he had sworn never to feel that way ever again, that The Beau existed at all. Still, brazen as he was these days, an unsettling sensation roiled in his guts that had nothing to do with poison, and a creeping sensation of heat that was as surprising as it was unwelcome burned the back of his neck. After a journey that had felt like a voyage to Dante’s lesser known tenth circle of hell, where dwelt all indolent layabouts poisoned by jealous cousins, he had been exhausted and out of his head. A long sleep had given him hopes that he had climbed his way back to limbo, a place where he was not quite dead, but the jury was still out. The events of the hellish journey and the early morning had been erased from his memory, however.

Compelled to verify the woman’s information, though sadly he doubted very much she had made it up, Beau glanced at Kirby, who nodded.

“You did, my lord.”

“And did you offer the lady no compensation for the unpleasant occurrence?” Beau demanded, furious that Kirby had not dealt with the situation at once and saved him from this disagreeable interview.

“Seeing as how I was carrying you into the hotel and fearing you was about to turn up your toes from arsenic poisoning at any moment, I did not,” Kirby said with dignity.

“I see,” Beau replied with a heavy sigh. “Then pray do so at once,”

“I have brought them with me,” Miss Honeywell said, unwrapping a parcel that seemed to have been packaged in a potato sack. “As you can see, they were a very fine pair of half-boots made of kid leather. They were a present from my aunt, who has since passed away, and I shall be unable to replace them easily.”

Though he did not much relish the idea of looking at the mess, curiosity compelled Beau to glance at the boots she held up for his inspection. The young woman was very far from fashionable and, if the boots were so fine, he assumed they must have been a cherished possession. And from a dead aunt at that… he’d excelled himself this time. At a glance, his expert eye could see that though the half boots were sodden and stained, they had once been fine and had been made by a skilled craftsman.

Kirby, having made the same calculation, hurried to the bedroom and returned to place the sum of three pounds in the lady’s hand. She looked startled by his prompt acquiescence, and Beau wondered if she had expected him to quibble, or to be less than generous.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, inclining her head.

Beau did likewise and hoped she would leave now. She looked to be on the verge of doing so, turning away from him, when she stopped, glancing back with an expression of curiosity.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, addressing Kirby. “But did you say Lord Beaumarsh had been poisoned?”

“Damn you, Kirby!” Beau glared at his indiscreet valet.

“You were not simply inebriated?” she pressed, speaking to Beau directly now. Her eyes seemed alight with interest, though whether or not it was the thought of someone doing him a mischief that delighted her, he could not say.

“I was not,” he replied crisply. “But I will thank you to keep that information to yourself.”