Leo could stand it no more. Setting down the little dog, he lurched abruptly to his feet. Three feminine glances were directed at him, with varying expressions.
“Something bite you, nephew?” his aunt said caustically.
“My apologies, Aunt Olive, ladies. I’ve just recollected an urgent appointment and must hurry away.” Inclining his head toward the sisters, he added, “I shall leave you ladies to get settled in. Miss Studley, I will call on you in a day or two to discuss what to do about your come-out.”
“Ourcome-out,” Miss Studley corrected him sweetlyand slipped an arm around her half sister’s slender waist. The half sister smiled and batted her impossibly long eyelashes at him. Sheer, defiant mockery.
Gritting his teeth, Leo left. He marched across the garden, stepped through the open doorway of his house and stopped, appalled at the noise, dust and general chaos of dozens of workers.
Then recalling he no longer had any need to remain in the blasted house, he took himself off to the blissful peace and masculine sanity of his club.
***
Lady Scattergood’s home was as eccentric as the lady herself, Izzy decided. It was filled with all kinds of exotic items from all corners of the globe. Fascinating Indian statues, one with many arms, another with an elephant head on a human body. There were fat little gold Buddhas, richly carved screens, embroidered fabric drapes studded with tiny glittering mirrors, furniture with animal heads and feet, and carpets, thick, rich carpets of exquisite design, layered every which way across the floor. There were also dozens of dog statues and paintings, from Chinese temple dogs to ordinary English china figurines. And not a cat to be seen.
Everything was cluttered together in a vivid multicolored explosion that had no rhyme or reason that Izzy could discern. It was vibrant and whimsical and eccentric, and Izzy loved it.
Lady Scattergood herself sat like some outlandish queen in a large, elaborately carved chair with a spreading peacock-tail-shaped back. Both she and the chair were draped with a multitude of vibrantly colored shawls in silk and cashmere.
“Eat up, gels, eat up,” she urged. While they ate sandwiches—because Lord Salcott’s cream cakes might have been delicious, but they had not appeased theirhunger—she talked about her dogs and explained how she’d come across each. “It’s disgraceful how some people treat animals. Abandoning innocent and loving creatures to somehow survive as best they can.”
She fell silent for a moment, then leaned forward portentously. A silk shawl slithered unnoticed to the floor. “My nephew tells me he intends to find you gels husbands—is that true?”
Clarissa, caught with her mouth full of sandwich, simply nodded.
Lady Scattergood tsked loudly. “An appalling idea. I advise against it. The only reason for marriage is children, and you only need a man once for that, I believe. Having them hanging around afterward is just a nuisance.”
Izzy and Clarissa blinked and carefully did not look at each other.
“Scattergood and I had the perfect marriage. He sailed off to India a few weeks after the wedding, saying he would send for me when he was settled, but of course he forgot, which suited me perfectly. He traveled extensively in Foreign Parts and made an enormous fortune, and then, just when he was set to return to England, he died most conveniently of a fever.” She gestured to her cluttered surroundings. “All this came home in the ship bearing his ashes—that’s him in that green cloisonné urn on the mantelpiece.” She sighed reminiscently. “Ours was an ideal marriage. I was never so fond of him as when he left. Even fonder, of course, when he died and left me his fortune.”
Izzy did not dare to look at Clarissa for fear she would give way to unseemly laughter. “How long was he gone for?” she asked once she had mastered herself.
“Twenty years? Thirty? I can’t recall. A good long time, at any rate.” She adjusted one of the shawls that kept sliding off her bony shoulders, and smiled at the girls. “So if you insist on taking the plunge into marriage, I recommend you choose a man who is set on going to live in Foreign Parts.As long as he doesn’t expect you to go with him of course. That would never do.”
“But what about children?” Clarissa asked.
“Oh, dogs are just as good as children—better really. A good deal less trouble, too. The things some of my friends’ children have put them through. Dreadful. And they often seem to grow up so ungrateful. No, dear, give me dogs any day.”
She lifted her lorgnette and peered at the tea tray, which was now just a collection of crumbs. “Finished your sandwiches? Good. You can take the dogs out now. Not in the back garden, curse it—dogs are banned—blasted busybodies—nothing wrong with good honest dog poop, but no! My dogs are banned from my own backyard! Disgraceful. So you need to go to the other place—Jeremiah will show you. He’ll do the necessary as well. There are busybodies everywhere.”
“ ‘The necessary’?” Izzy asked.
“Yes,” Lady Scattergood said. “Jeremiah usually takes them out, but after being cooped up in that coach, it’ll do you gels good to stretch your legs. It’s all right, you’ll be perfectly safe with Jeremiah. He’s still a pup. Now, run along, gels, your bedchambers are on the second floor. And make sure you wear warm coats and rug up well—it’s chilly outside.”
The girls hurried away and ran upstairs to fetch their coats and hats, though it wasn’t the slightest bit cold. At the top of the stairs they stopped, looked at each other and burst into giggles.
“What an extraordinary old lady,” Clarissa said.
“She’s wonderful,” Izzy said. “I nearly burst trying to keep from laughing aloud. Her ‘perfect marriage’—”
“And dogs are better than children?” Still chuckling, they turned to find their bedchambers. Betty had already unpacked their things, and it was the work of a moment to don coats and hats to go out.
“I don’t mind walking her dogs,” Clarissa said as they headed downstairs again. “But who is this Jeremiah, who is still a pup? And what is he supposed to protect us from?”
“I don’t know but if ‘the necessary’ that he will take care of is what I think it is, I’m extremely grateful he’s coming with us. Ah, I’m guessing that this must be he,” Izzy added as a thin, spotty footman of about fourteen appeared in the hall below, leading the dogs on leashes. Thoughleadingwas a slight misnomer; the five little dogs were leaping excitedly about like fish on a line. The boy carried the sixth, the one with the injured leg. The one Lord Salcott had been so gentle with.
Such a difficult man to work out.
