His reply seemed to slide off her back like water off a duck. “If you’re so concerned about her background, I suppose you can pump her for information during dinner.”
“Dinner? We are to dine with this woman?”
“We’re all sitting at the captain’s table. I’ve already accepted the invitation.”
Jonathan studied her face, appreciating that with a chaperone to accompany her, an evening gown to wear that made her look like a Parisian fashion plate, and an invitation to the captain’s table in the offing, his plan to persuade her to stay in her room was now about as likely as flying pigs. “How did we merit an invitation to sit with the captain?” he demanded, and his eyes narrowed as he watched her tug guiltily at one ear. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” she insisted, but when he continued to look at her in disbelief, she capitulated. “Now that you mention it, I did happen to run across the purser a short while ago.”
“What an astonishing coincidence.”
“Wasn’t it?” she agreed, ignoring the sarcasm. “He was happy to tell me all about the amusements available for ladies on board—quoits, piquet, shuffleboard, and such. He even offered to give me a tour of the ship and show me all the hidden, secret places where the passengers aren’t allowed to go.”
“I’ll just bet he did,” Jonathan muttered.
Marjorie gave a dreamy sigh, her gloved palm pressed to her bosom. “Sailors are wonderful, aren’t they? So nice to women.”
He felt a lurch of fear. “Marjorie,” he began.
“But,” she went on as she reached for a white velvet wrap from the bed and slung it around her shoulders, “he became even nicer when he found out a duchess was my guardian’s sister. Why, he was tripping over himself after that to assure me anything on board was at my disposal.”
“You told the purser about my sister?”
“I did happen to mention her.” Marjorie looked at him, her eyes wide. “Just in passing.”
Staring into his ward’s deceptively innocent brown eyes, Jonathan realized he might have been laboring under a misapprehension. He had taken it for granted that the so-called baroness had tricked Marjorie into becoming acquaintances, but now, listening to how his ward had manipulated the purser, he began to wonder if perhaps Baroness Vasiliev had been the true victim in the ladies’ reading room a few hours ago. “And it was after you dropped my sister’s title into your conversation with the purser, I suppose, that an invitation to the captain’s table appeared at your door?”
“It did.” She gave him a bright, beaming smile. “Wasn’t that nice? The invitation includes you, by the way, and I accepted on your behalf. The baroness will be joining us, too, of course.”
“How did the captain know the baroness was your chaperone?”
“Oh, but he didn’t,” she informed him with triumph. “She had already been invited to sit with him. So, you see? Your concerns are groundless. If she’s good enough to merit an invitation to the captain’s table, I think she’s good enough to chaperone me. And speaking of dinner,” she went on before he could respond, glancing at the clock on her wall and picking up a beaded black evening bag from the table, “they are serving cordials at half past seven and dinner is at eight. We’d best go down.”
“I suppose we must, since you’ve already accepted the invitation,” he gave in with a sigh as he followed her to the door, consoling himself with the thought that a shady, faux baroness was better than no chaperone at all. “But I still can’t believe you used my sister’s position to curry favor aboard ship.”
“You know...” She paused to frown at him over one shoulder. “Given that you were my father’s best friend, I’d have thought you an adventurous, carefree sort of man.”
“I used to be,” Jonathan countered with a pointed stare. “Then I met you.”
“You’re more like a parson, so old-fashioned and stuffy.” Shaking her head, she turned away to open the door into the corridor. “Such a shame.”
Jonathan scowled at her description, for it made him sound as if he had a foot in the grave. “I am not stuffy,” he corrected. “I simply have a much better appreciation of the proprieties than you seem to possess.”
Even as he spoke, Jonathan realized in dismay that stuffy was just how he sounded. Stuffy, snobbish, and dry as a stick. That, he appreciated, studying Marjorie’s shapely, velvet-sheathed hips as he followed her out the door, was what being guardian to a madcap ginger with a body like a goddess did to a fellow.
Chapter 6
As a student and as a teacher, Marjorie had hovered on the periphery of Knickerbocker New York, given teasing glimpses of high society but never allowed to be part of it. Now, however, she was no longer just an observer, and as she sipped champagne with the other first-class passengers waiting to go in to dinner, she felt more strongly than ever that this world was where she belonged.
“Ach, there is Lady Stansbury,” the baroness murmured beside her, interrupting Marjorie’s thoughts. “She is a cow, that one.”
Marjorie turned her head to where a gray-haired woman in a severe, high-necked gown of matte black stood about a dozen feet away. Though elderly and frail, leaning on a jeweled cane, she nonetheless gave the impression of an indomitable will.
“What makes you say that?” Marjorie asked, returning her attention to her companion. “Do you know her?”
The baroness downed her champagne, set her glass on the tray of a footman standing nearby, and picked up another before answering. “I have friends—Russian nobility like myself—who wish to raise funds for émigrés fleeing the Volga famine. Many had already starved to death. Many who do not die come to England, but they have no money, no food, nowhere to live, so my friends decide to have the charity ball to raise funds. One sells rich patrons thebillets... tickets... ach, what is the word I think of?”
“Vouchers,” Marjorie supplied, aware of the procedures involved in giving a charity ball.
