Miss Delectable: Mischief in Mayfair Book One Read online

  Miss Delectable

  Mischief in Mayfair Book One

  Grace Burrowes

  Grace Burrowes Publishing

  Copyright © 2021 by Grace Burrowes

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  If you uploaded this book to, or downloaded it from, any free file “sharing,” torrent, or other pirate site, you did so in violation of the copyright laws and against the author’s expressed wishes.

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  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  To my dear readers

  Miss Delightful—Excerpt

  Dedication

  To those who have kept us fed

  Chapter One

  “Benny’s piked off again.” Otter’s tone suggested complete indifference to this development, but Colonel Sir Orion Goddard—Rye, to his few remaining friends—saw worry in the boy’s eyes.

  “How long has he been gone?” Rye asked, with equally studied casualness.

  “Nobody’s seen ’im since last night. Missed ’is supper.”

  Hence, Otter’s worry. No child in Rye’s household willingly missed a meal or passed the night anywhere but in the safety of the dormitory.

  “You’ve looked in the usual places?”

  A terse nod. Otter—Theodoric William Goddard—was constitutionally incapable of fashioning an actual request for aid, but he had come to Rye’s office asking for help nonetheless. In all likelihood, Otter and the other boys had been searching for Benny for most of the day. Sunset approached, and with it the unavoidable necessity of enlisting adult assistance.

  A child alone on the London streets at night, even a lad as canny as Benny, was a child in danger. “Any idea why he’d wander away now?”

  Otter’s gaze slid around the room, which managed a credible impersonation of a gentleman’s study. The ceiling bore a fresco of scantily clad goddesses, muscular gods, and snorting horses, and more than once, Rye had caught Otter lying on the couch, gawking at the artwork.

  The rest of the room was nondescript. Grandpapa Goddard’s portrait added a note of stern benevolence from a bygone era. Correspondence sat in neat stacks on the desk, and newspapers in French and English adorned the sideboard. The carpet bore a slightly faded design of roses and greenery, and the furniture hovered between comfortable and worn.

  The only remarkable object in the room was Rye’s cavalry sword, hung above the mantel and below Grandpapa’s portrait. Rye kept it there, immediately across from his desk, as a reminder and a reproach.

  “Benny disappeared for a few days last month,” Otter said. “Away on business, according to him.”

  Rye mentally berated himself for not noticing that previous absence, but he did not eat with the boys. Enlisted men needed privacy from officers, and conversely.

  “Did the magistrate take him up?”

  “Mayhap. They’d hang a boy like that for sport,” Otter said, “or sell him to a molly house and claim he’d been transported.”

  Some of the magistrates would. Of the six boys who called Rye’s dwelling home, Benny was the tallest and the least robust. He had a lanky sort of grace, delicate features, and the quiet air of the scholar, even though he hated soap and water. Benny could read—read well, a quirk he didn’t advertise to the others—and had a fondness for cats.

  Otter, by contrast, was terrified of cats, a secret Rye would take to his grave. If the other boys knew, they exercised the curious diplomacy of the stews and ignored this gap in Otter’s otherwise impregnable defenses.

  “Did Benny intimate what sort of business had called him away?”

  Otter pushed unruly dark hair from his eyes. “Hint, ya mean? Nah. Benny keeps mum on a good day.”

  One of Benny’s many fine qualities. “I’ll ask a few questions down at the pub and have a look around.” Rye would search every alley and coal hole. “He won’t be gone long. Tell the others I’ve been alerted, and they are not to worry.”

  Otter snorted and left the office on silent feet. The boy never offered greetings or partings, though he was learning to knock before entering when a door was closed. With the lads, Rye had found patience to be not merely a virtue, but a nonnegotiable necessity.

  As was an ability to take each boy on his own merits. John was their songbird, with a tune for any occasion, most of his ditties too filthy and hilarious to have been learned anywhere but at the lowest taverns. Louis knew the streets, alleys, wynds, and sewers. Entire rivers flowed beneath London, and Louis carried a map of the whole city in his head.

  Bertie knew the rooftops and could get onto them and traverse them with more agility than a squirrel. He frequently served as lookout for the others, a skill usually acquired in the housebreaker’s trade.

  And shy, fastidious Drew had a facility for math and memorization. He’d spout Bible verses at odd moments in odd contexts, and how he’d come by his store of proverbs, aphorisms, and quotes, nobody knew. He, too, abhorred soap and water, though somebody had put the table manners on him.

  That the boys had already done their best to find their friend, with no results, was cause for panic. Most pickets who failed to come in from a night watch hadn’t deserted.

  Rye left the house by way of the back garden, stopping only to grab his top hat, riding crop, and gloves. He could look the part of a gentleman when necessary, not that it did him any good. Still, the uniform mattered, in business as in war, and thus he had dressed today in the finery of a prosperous merchant.

  The boys were likely watching him, so he made straight for the stables, as if his plan was to trot from one watering hole to the next. Like a cat, Benny sought the warmth and safety of the mews when he wanted privacy, another secret Rye carried. He’d once found Benny poring over a primer in the hayloft and had spotted the boy sniggling out to the mews on many occasions thereafter, a book in hand.

  Rye gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the stable’s gloom. He kept two horses, an extravagance he excused as more vanity expected of a successful purveyor of fine wines. The truth was, old Agricola was getting on, though he still cut a dash under saddle, while Scipio was still prone to moments of youthful stupidity. They managed well enough together in harness, but a matched pair, they were not.

  The horses looked up from their hay when Rye entered their domain. He paused to scratch Scipio’s hairy ear and spared a pat for Agricola’s velvety nose. Both geldings were calm of eye, and their stalls had recently been set fair, a routine Rye insisted on.

  “Seen any wandering boys?” Rye asked softly.

  Agricola craned his neck over the half door to nudge at Rye’s pocket. He rewarded the horse with a bit of carrot left over from their morning hack.

  Where were the cats? The stable had its share, and they were a lazy, arrogant lot. The swallows made sport of them, and if the felines had ever caught a mouse, they’d done so under a vow of secrecy.

  Benny loved the worthless lot of them, though. Rye climbe
d the ladder to the hayloft silently, his riding crop between his teeth. A fat tabby watched his progress from a beam over the barn aisle. An equally grand marmalade specimen lay curled in a pile of hay, yawning as Rye stepped off the ladder. Benny’s honor guard was keeping watch.

  Threats welled, admonitions about boys who played silly games merely to get attention, foolish lads who set a whole household to needlessly worrying.

  Except that Rye Goddard had once been a foolish lad unable to gain his papa’s notice, and on a few memorable occasions, he’d been a very foolish man. He poked gently at the hay with his riding crop.

  “I know you’re in there,” he said pleasantly. “Grabbing a nap when there’s work to be done. Otter is worried about you, and if he’s worried about you enough to bother me, then you’ve made your point.” Not with fists, but with a more subtle weapon—absence.

  The riding crop brushed against something solid.

  “Go away.” This directive was muttered from the middle of the pile of hay, and never had two words given Rye greater relief.

  “I’d like to,” he replied. “I’d like to get back to tallying up my revenues and expenses, like to create my income projections for the next quarter—a cheerful, hopeful exercise—but no. I am instead required to nanny a wayward lad who has probably fallen in love with a goose girl who rejects his tender sentiments. This happens, my boy. We all get our hearts broken, and it’s the stuff of some of John’s best melodies.” Also the stuff of a commanding officer’s worst nightmares.

  “Go away.” For Benny, that tone of voice qualified as a snarl. “I ain’t talking to you.”

  “Did Otter threaten to make you take a bath?” Benny didn’t stink, but neither did he regularly wash his face.

  “Fetch the lady wot cooks at the Coventry. I’ll talk to ’er.”

  Rye planted his arse on an overturned half barrel and considered the puzzle before him. Benny was not by nature a difficult or complicated fellow, but now he was talking in riddles.

  “What lady who cooks for the Coventry?” The Coventry Club was a gaming hell doing business as a fancy supper club. Rye’s sister Jeanette had, for reasons known only to her, married one of the club’s co-owners several months ago. Multiple reconnaissance missions suggested the union was happy and the club thriving, which was ever so fortunate for the groom’s continued welfare.

  And no, Rye was not in the least jealous. Jeanette deserved every joy life had to offer, and if Sycamore Dorning counted among her joys, Rye would find a way to be cordial to the man—when Jeanette was on hand.

  “Fetch the lady with the kind eyes,” Benny said as the hay rustled. “I won’t talk to you.”

  “Miss Pearson?” She was an assistant cook in the vast kitchens at the Coventry. Rye had met her once under less than ideal circumstances, but like Benny, he recalled the compassion in her green eyes.

  “Aye, Miss Ann. She’ll come.”

  Benny’s tone rekindled Rye’s worry. The boy wasn’t having a mere pout, he was miserable. Rye nudged the hay aside with his hand.

  “Benny, are you well?” More nudging and swiping at the hay revealed the boy lying on his side curled in a blanket. Not well, was the obvious answer, not well at all.

  “Go away.” Benny pulled the blanket up over his head. “Fetch Miss Ann. I ain’t tellin’ ye again.”

  Ann Pearson knew her herbs, of that much Rye was certain. She had been a calm, sensible presence when Jeanette’s health had been imperiled.

  “Benny, what’s amiss?” Rye asked, trying for a jocular tone. How long had the boy been in this condition, and what the hell was wrong with him?

  “Fetch Miss Ann, please.” The lad was begging now. “I’m dying, Colonel. You have to fetch Miss Ann.”

  Rye had half reached for the boy, prepared to extract him from his cocoon of wool and distress, but something stopped him. He’d been through many a battle, and yet, it still took him a moment to realize why he hesitated.

  Benny’s unwillingness to move, his desperate rudeness to the person who provided him food and shelter, his decision to hide in the place that signified safety to him, all converged to support one conclusion. Benny wasn’t having a sulk or enduring a case of too much winter ale. He exuded the same quality of hopeless suffering common to soldiers wounded in battle, half fearing death and half comforted by the possibility. Rye had seen enough battles and their aftermaths to recognize the condition.

  Benny was injured.

  Seriously injured.

  “I’ll send for Miss Ann. Don’t move, boy. Stay right where you are.”

  Rye half slid down the ladder, spooked both horses, and bellowed for Louis to attend him immediately.

  * * *

  “The lad says he’s come from Colonel Orion Goddard,” Henry announced. “Says he needs to talk to you, Miss Ann. Won’t talk to nobody else.”

  Henry was cheerful and energetic and subscribed to the universal understanding at the Coventry that footmen were entitled to flirt with maids, customers, char girls, and other footmen. He’d learned—as they all learned—not to waste his time flirting with Ann.

  Colonel Goddard’s emissary, by contrast, was a spare, lean lad of ten or twelve years. With the poor, guessing an age was chancy. Generations of inadequate nutrition resulted in delayed development and less height.

  “Are you hungry, young man?” Ann asked.

  The boy shook his head, but peered past her into the vast, bustling kitchen.

  “Henry, please have Nancy put together some bread and butter for the lad. What is your name, child?”

  “M’name’s Louis. The colonel gimme this for ya.” A surprisingly clean paw held a folded and sealed note.

  Ann knew two things about Colonel Sir Orion Goddard. First, he had come to his sister’s side when called. He’d sat with Jeanette, Lady Tavistock, now Jeanette Dorning, for more than an hour while Sycamore Dorning had been unable to guard his lady. The colonel hadn’t taken so much as a sip of tea or a crust of bread while on duty at his sister’s bedside.

  Nor had he lingered when it had become apparent that the lady was on the mend. He’d asked Ann to send word if he was needed again and slipped away without bidding his sibling farewell.

  That had been several months ago, and Ann hadn’t seen the colonel at the club since.

  The other fact she recalled about Colonel Sir Orion Goddard was that he favored good old lavender soap, and plenty of it. He did not merely douse himself with lavender water and pretend that passed for washing. He scrubbed himself thoroughly, the scent emanating from his hair and his clothing, as well as his person.

  The soap he used was French rather than English, based on the aroma of the lavender, and hard-milled French soap came dear. Ann did favor a man who took cleanliness seriously enough to pay for good soap.

  She slit the seal on the note. In the kitchen, Monsieur Delacourt began yelling about the impossibility of finding fresh leeks—fresh, not three days old!—in the foul blight upon the face of civilization known as London. The sun had barely set, and Monsieur was already in fine form.

  Sir Orion had an elegant hand for a soldier: Young Benny has been hurt and is asking for you. I fear serious injury. Please come with all possible haste, Your Obed Serv, Colonel Orion Goddard.

  Only a very upset man would neglect to refer to his knighthood in his correspondence. Ann untied her apron and slipped it over her head.

  “What do you know of this?” she asked the boy.

  “Benny went missing yesterday—went missing again. He were out of pocket a few weeks ago too. Tendin’ to business, like the colonel says. Colonel says please come double-quick-forced-march-enemy-in-pursuit.”

  Monsieur would have three apoplexies if Ann abandoned her post this early in the evening. Henry returned and passed the child a sandwich of cheese, butter, and bread with the crusts still on.

  “Best get back to the kitchen, miss. Monsieur’s in rare form.”

  Monsieur’s rare form made a nigh nightly app
earance. The man was incapable of subtle emotion, and every evening’s buffet was a performance. Jules Delacourt could be funny, but he could also be savagely critical, and needlessly so.

  “Wait for me,” Ann told the child.

  She gathered up her cloak and waded into the pandemonium of Monsieur’s kitchen. He was still ranting about wilted leeks, so she waited patiently until he’d cursed Haymarket, English roads, English farmers, and the English sky, which felt compelled to produce English rain at least every seventy-two hours.

  “You are holding your cloak,” Monsieur said. “I do not pay you to hold your cloak, Pearson. Somebody must oversee the sauces, and that somebody is you. Do not try my temper this evening, or I shall chop you up and add you to the curry, though there is barely enough of you to make a proper curry.”

  Monsieur was handsome in the dark-eyed, dark-haired Gallic tradition, and he would age splendidly, for all he’d become tiresome within a week of taking employment at the Coventry. He was a competent chef, and thus his foibles were tolerated.

  Were he female, he’d be making one-tenth of his current salary, and he would have been sacked before the first tantrum concluded.

  Ann passed him the note. “A child has been injured, and Mrs. Dorning’s brother has summoned me.”

  Monsieur read the missive and handed it back. “Are you a surgeon now, tending to clumsy children?”

  Ann merely stared at him. Monsieur well knew Mrs. Dorning’s feelings regarding family, and more to the point, he knew Mr. Dorning’s devotion to that same family.

  “Don’t tarry on this errand,” Monsieur said with a sigh. “The leeks are atrocious, Pearson. English leeks are a tribulation invented strictly for penitential purposes, and this lot is truly disgraceful.”