Free Barbara Metzger by Cupboard Kisses Page A

more. Before the major could ask any more questions, Cristabel requested that tea he’d mentioned earlier. “The lemonade seems to have given me a chill.”
    MacDermott hastily glanced at his watch, then gave her a closer look. “Forgive me for saying so, Miss Swann, but I think you’d do better to find your bed, rather than the tea. Colds have a way of settling into one’s chest if not cared for, you know. Or the ague.”
    “I’m afraid you are correct, and I have kept you over-long, besides. You were on your way out when I arrived, weren’t you? If you could just direct me…?”
    “Of course, my dear Miss Swann. I’ll fetch you a hackney directly,” he said on his way out. “Which hotel are you putting up at?”
    “Hotel? I’m staying here, of course.”
    The major did an about-face that would have made a drill sergeant weep. “
Here?
I mean here?”
    “Naturally. Why ever would you think otherwise?”
    MacDermott gasped. “Why ever? Um, ah, because this is no place for a lady? That’s it, not suitable at all for one of your refinement and grace.”
    “Thank you, Major, but I assure you I am not too proud to live in hired rooms. I’ve been in much worse. Hotels do not treat single ladies very well either, you know.”
    “No, no, you don’t understand,” he sputtered. “The other, ah, boarders. They’re not at all what you’re accustomed to.”
    Cristabel pictured the quarrelsome chits at Miss Meadow’s academy and was thankful. “Really, Major, your concern is touching, but—”
    “Working girls—Oh Lord. Shop girls, that’s it. And their clients, uh, callers…not the type a lady like you should rub shoulders with. Not at all the thing, ma’am, for a real lady.”
    “Major,” she said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to learn to be something less than a lady.” Cristabel was wadding the handkerchief in her lap so she didn’t see how MacDermott’s whole face brightened at her softly spoken words, or how his hopes dimmed with her next: “In the eyes of the world, of course. I shall always be a lady in my own estimation.”
    “And…and in mine, Miss Swann,” he solemnly vowed.
    “Thank you. Now I must trouble you to show me a room. Any clean bed will do. We’ll make other arrangements tomorrow, but for now I just want to rest my head.”
    “No. Impossible. There are no rooms. None at all.”
    “But I saw the sign…”
    “Old Blass never takes it down. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
    “I’ll have a deal to say to Mr. Blass in the morning myself. In the meantime I suppose I can sleep on the sofa here. At least there are a lot of pillows.”
    * * *
    “’Oly ’ell, Mac, what are we gonna do?”
    “Lord, Nick, I have no idea. We’ve got Lord Farmington’s bachelor party on for tonight and a dying nun on the couch. This’ll be a rare evening all around.”
    “I say we kill ’er.”
    There was a pause. Either Major MacDermott was too shocked at the idea to express his horror, or he needed time to consider it. “No, the solicitors would only pass ownership of the place on to the next in line to inherit,” he finally decided. So much for tender sensibilities. “Let me think.”
    Not being keen on the practice himself, Nick watched the major’s brain in action. It seemed to involve trying to tear great clumps of artfully arranged blond curls out of his head while pacing. Nick shrugged and gummed his cigar, but the method was working.
    “I know, we’ll stick her up on the top floor in one of the attic rooms. She’ll be out of the way for tonight, won’t hear a thing up there, and she’ll have such a disgust for the place she’ll be gone tomorrow.”
    “What makes you think she’ll go for it? Miss ’igh-’n-mighty who wants me to wear a uniform? Fah! The day Nick Blass puts on a monkey suit for the gentry! Anyway, she ain’t gonna take no attic room.”
    “When I turn her up sweet she will. Did you ever know the MacDermott charm to fail? Talk about uniforms,