when he was no more than thirteen. He had been placed there by his father once the boy’s doting mother had died, as the man did not appreciate having “a bloody freak” cluttering up either his impeccable lineage or his Mayfair town house.
Ferdie stamped one small, fat foot. “Not Dulcinea, you ridiculous twit! Caroline! Caroline! Oh, never mind. You’re too addlepated to know chalk from cheese.”
“At least I can see over the top of the dinner table to find the cheese, you abbreviated little snot,” Miss Twittingdon responded, looking down her long nose at the dwarf.
“Who is asking for me, Ferdie?” Caroline inquired quickly as the dwarf stuck his small hands in his pockets and struck a belligerent pose, obviously ready to go into battle with the woman, a move that would do Caroline no good at all. “Do I know these persons?”
“Of course you don’t, Dulcinea,” Mrs. Twittingdon pointed out in her usual reasonable tone, a tone that had played accompaniment to many an outrageously splendiferous notion. “You are not yet Out, and so you know nobody. I wouldn’t allow it. Why, as your guardian, I haven’t as yet even given you leave to put up your hair!”
“Of course,” Caroline echoed meekly, refusing to snap at the woman. Besides, she had enough to do wondering whom she might have offended lately with her sometimes sharp tongue, or what sleight of hand she had indulged in while visiting the village—picking pockets was one of the skills her first mentor, Peaches, had taught her—that might now have some back to haunt her. “You will forgive me, I hope.”
But Miss Twittingdon was speaking again, and Caroline tamped down any niggling fears in order to listen. “Did these persons leave their cards, Ferdie? You know we receive only on Tuesday mornings from ten until two. There is nothing else for it—they shall have to leave calling cards, as civilized people know they ought, with the corner bent down to show we did not receive them. As you should have known, Ferdie, if you were civilized, which we all are aware you are not. Then, if we so choose, we will condescend to receive them next week. Do toddle off downstairs now and pass on this information, if you please, and don’t hesitate to remind these people, whoever they may be, that certain basic rules of civilization must be maintained, even here in this benighted countryside.”
“Heavens yes, Ferdie,” Caroline seconded, caught between apprehension and a real enjoyment of Miss Twittingdon’s strict rules for receiving visitors in a madhouse. “Do tell them that Miss Caroline Dulcinea Monday regrets that she is not receiving today. She receives only on Tuesdays, and this, after all”—she began to giggle—“is already Wednesday. Can you do that for me, Ferdie—with so many days to remember?”
“Levity is not called for at this dark hour, Caroline, even if that loony red crow over there can’t see it,” Ferdie told her portentously, slowly shaking his too-large head. “Your visitors are an odd pair—an Irish drab and a great, large gentleman dressed in London clothes. Has eyes black as pokers and talks like he’s used to being listened to. Maybe you didn’t steal another orange. Maybe you’ve broken a big law this time. Maybe he’s come to take you away and brought a keeper with him to tie you up. Maybe—”
“Maybe I’ll hang, Ferdie,” Caroline snapped, her usual good humor evaporating under the uncomfortable heat of the dwarf’s melancholy suppositions. “Well, Aunt Leticia,” she proposed airily, turning to look at the older woman, “shall I trip off downstairs and do my best to stare down this well-dressed hangman, or will you stand firm beside me here while I…Ferdie! Did you say an Irishwoman?”
Frederick Haswit nodded with some vigor, then puffed up his barrel chest, folded both his hands over his heart, and recited importantly:
“A winsome damsel she is not,
with scrawny breast and lackluster hair,
her teeth numbering little more than a pair.
I saw her there, and must tell you true;
She peered at me, and laughed—hoo, hoo!
The man, he silenced her mirth with a look,
showing she’s naught but this black king’s rook.
It is in him I see the menace, the danger,
deep in the eyes of this intimidating stranger.
So come now, sweet child, we’ll hie away to
the sea,
the ridiculous Miss Twittingdon, Caroline—
and me.”
“Your meter worsens with each new, excruciatingly uneven couplet, Ferdie, and I for one wouldn’t cross the street with you, let alone run off to sea in your company,” Miss Twittingdon told him flatly, reaching into the sleeve of her scarlet gown to extract a lace-edged handkerchief and lift it to her lips. “Red crow, indeed! It’s no wonder you’ve been locked up. I would have had you put in chains and fetters myself. But enough of this nonsense. There is nothing else for it—show the gentleman upstairs.”
“And the Irishwoman as well, Ferdie,” Caroline instructed, sure that the dwarf had described Peaches. She hadn’t seen her in over a year, since the day the woman had left her, weeping uncontrollably, behind the locked gates of Woodwere.
Caroline frowned. What could Peaches be about? Certainly she hadn’t found a protector for her, some London swell who would, according to Peaches, set her up in a discreet apartment on the fringes of Mayfair, then use her for his convenience until he tired of her. Peaches had always thought such an arrangement to be the pinnacle of success—especially if the woman was smart enough to ask for diamonds at regular intervals and talented enough to lift coins from the man’s purse each night after he’d taken his pleasure on her and fallen to snoring into his pillow.
“Come sit here, Dulcinea,” Miss Twittingdon commanded, indicating the best chair in the room which, as there were only two chairs in the room, both of them as hard as the bread served in the servants’ hall, was not much of a recommendation. “And don’t cross your legs, even at the ankle. It is a deplorable habit. And pull this brush through your hair. You look as if you’ve been tugged backward through a hedge. And—”
“I thought no woman of breeding began her sentences with ‘and,’ Aunt Leticia,” Caroline interrupted, hating the fuss the woman was making over her. She had no time to think of her ankles, her hair, or even her grammar. She had to rack her brain for a way to rid herself of this London gentleman and not injure her friendship with Peaches, who the good Lord knew probably only meant well.
“A woman of breeding is also never impertinent, Dulcinea,” Miss Twittingdon intoned solemnly, arranging her own skirts neatly after depositing her lean frame in the other chair. “Now hold your chin high—ah, just so—and fold your hands in your lap. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see how you’ve gnawed your nails to the quick. And don’t say a word, my dear. I, as chaperon, will be in charge of this interview. Do you think our London gentleman likes red? I do hope so. I’m considering dyeing my hair to match my turban. His reaction, the opinion of a man of the world, a man who moves in the first circles, will be most helpful, don’t you think?”
“Ferdie says he’s a hangman,” Caroline pointed out, curling her hands together so that her bitten nails were hidden against her palms. “He probably would like you to dye your hair black.”
“Oh, pooh!” Miss Twittingdon said, shaking her head so that the scarlet satin turban slid forward, to hang suspended
