Wilde in Love(18)
“I believe!” Lavinia skipped forward. “I can’t wait to see what I find in the wagon.”
“What would you like from Mr. Calico?” Lady Knowe asked Willa.
“Actually, nothing,” she said, feeling somewhat apologetic, as if she were letting down the peddler. “I have all the ribbons I need.”
“Ribbons are the least of it,” Lady Knowe replied, grinning widely.
The peddler’s wagon was painted a lively green. Its lathwork sides were flipped out and up, so they rested against the yellow roof. The shelves exposed by the hinged sides were decked out in yellow, as were the gaily painted wheels.
Mr. Calico was a thin, white-haired fellow with a luxuriant mustache, wearing a weathered coat that glittered in the summer sun. He hopped down through the red door of the wagon as the group spread around its sides. “If it isn’t my favorite lady in all the north,” he cried, bowing. “The best of afternoons to you, Lady Knowe!”
In return, she dropped a deep curtsy, as if he were a courtier. “Please tell me that you’ve brought something wonderful from London!”
“Many things,” he said jovially. “I meant to make my way up to the castle later this afternoon, but here you are, come to find me. You have the pick of my goods, at least those which the good people of Mobberley have not already purchased for themselves.”
“Miss Ffynche and Miss Gray,” Alaric said, as seriously as if he were presenting the king himself, “may I introduce you to Mr. Calico, the proprietor of this fine wagon? As children, we would have been bereft without his visits.”
“I think Mr. Calico has a fair claim to have made you into the traveler you are,” Mr. Sterling said, joining them. “After all, Mr. Calico, you brought Alaric any number of things from foreign countries over the years, and now look at him, addicted to visiting strange places.”
“I was around eight when Mr. Calico offered me a curiosity box full of exotic objects,” Alaric acknowledged.
“Where did you find it?” Willa asked Mr. Calico.
“I travel about,” he said, with a smile that made his mustache seem bushier and more jolly. “People sell things to me in one place, and I sell them in another. As I recall, the curiosity box came from the attic at Rumpole House, in Sussex. I didn’t buy it; I traded it for …” His brow wrinkled. “I traded it for a pair of beautiful slippers that happened to be just the young lady’s size.”
“The curiosity box may have been a push toward your chosen occupation,” Mr. Sterling said to Alaric, “but the tiny, dried-up head was the key.”
“No!” Lavinia gasped, with a shiver.
“It was in reality a withered apple,” Lord Alaric said ruefully. “By the time Mr. Calico came back around this way and told me the truth, I’d made up any number of stories about an Amazonian chief who shrank the head of his greatest enemy.”
“The genesis of Lord Wilde,” Mr. Sterling said. “He terrified Horatius, North, and me out of our wits every night.”
“Mr. Calico,” Willa said, stepping forward. “Would you mind if I asked you a question about your shiny coat?”
“Pins, my dear. Pins of all shapes and sizes, with pearl heads, and diamond heads, and these new clever ones, all shiny, that come from Portugal. Pins made for all occasions: hair pins, hat pins, pins for a rip, or a tear, or a drooping chemise.”
Lavinia clapped her hands. “I should like a pin!” She circled him. “May I buy one of those sparkly blue ones?”
“These pins come to me, not the other way around,” Mr. Calico said, shaking his head. “These aren’t for sale. I have some lovely pins in the wagon, if you’d like to buy one.”
After Lavinia set off to find the basket of pins, Mr. Calico bent to greet the butcher’s fat cat, who was busy sniffing his boots. “You’re Peters, aren’t you? I know what you’re smelling.”
Willa crouched down and rubbed the cat’s head. Mr. Calico undoubtedly had nice things for sale, ranging from pretty inlaid combs to shiny pins, but she didn’t need anything. Or want anything.
Behind them, Lavinia was squealing over a book she’d found hidden under a stack of fashion plates.
“That’s my American sable you’re smelling,” Mr. Calico told the cat. “You’ll not have met her like, as her relatives live far from here, over an ocean and even further.”
Willa straightened. “What is a sable? I read a book about the American continent’s animals, but a sable wasn’t mentioned. Unless I’ve forgotten.”
“Somehow I doubt it,” Mr. Calico said, beaming at her.
“Perhaps not,” Willa allowed. She forgot very few things she read.
A hand touched her shoulder, and a shiver went down her spine. She went rigid with embarrassment, but Alaric seemed not to notice. His ungloved fingers spread on her shoulder blade in something perilously close to a caress.
When had she started thinking of him simply as Alaric, rather than Lord Alaric? She jerked her attention back to the conversation.
“ ‘American sable’!” he scoffed. “That’ll be a skunk, plain and simple, Mr. Calico. You know it as well as I do.”
The peddler shrugged, eyes twinkling, utterly unrepentant. “I bought it as an American sable, my lord, and that’s what it will remain.” His gaze moved to Willa. “Until I can find a good home for it.”
“I’m afraid I am unable to care for an animal,” Willa said politely. “I reside with Miss Gray’s mother, who doesn’t care for domestic animals, let alone exotic ones.”
“My sable’s no more than a baby,” Mr. Calico said. “Once she’s grown, she’ll make a fine tippet. Better than a fox, really. More exotic. Everyone will ask you where you found it.”
Willa flinched. She didn’t wear fur of any kind, and the idea of raising an animal solely to make it into a neck scarf was abhorrent to her.
“Mr. Calico, you haven’t changed a bit,” Alaric said. “Do you remember how you talked me into buying that withered apple?”
The peddler tilted his head to the side with a frown. His coat flashed in the sunlight. “No,” he admitted.
“You told me it wasn’t for sale because your next stop was the rectory, where the minister would bury it in the churchyard.”
“He would have,” Mr. Calico said promptly. “A nice apple tree would have grown in its place.”
Alaric grinned. “In short, Miss Ffynche is now as curious to meet the American sable as I was to own that dried-up apple.”
“No, I am not,” Willa stated. The very mention of a baby animal whose future was being a neck ornament made her feel slightly ill.
Alaric put a hand on her back again, as if he didn’t notice what he was doing. Nor how improper his touch was. “Better luck elsewhere,” he said to Mr. Calico.
“Everything finds its place in time,” the peddler said, clearly unperturbed. “No doubt I’ll stop by a house where the lady of the manor fancies the idea of a tippet the exact length of her neck.”
As he turned away, Willa focused on the absentminded caress of Alaric’s fingers on her back. “Stop that!” she whispered fiercely.
“What?”
He appeared honestly surprised. She cleared her throat and moved away. “You are touching me,” she said, walking over to the wagon. The shelf before her held two peacock feathers, a linen cloth embroidered with a prayer, an oddly shaped rock, and a silver bowl full of thimbles.
Alaric followed and touched her back with one finger. He looked down at her with a lazily innocent expression. “Like this? I was merely guiding you to the wagon.”
Willa noticed from the corner of her eye that Mr. Calico was opening the back door and helping Lavinia up the narrow wooden stairs.
Before she could come up with a response to Alaric, she saw Lavinia reel back, handkerchief clapped to her face, and throw herself off the wagon with a little shriek.
She might have landed on her own feet, but Mr. Sterling lunged forward with remarkable speed and caught her in his arms.
“Mr. Calico, I fear for your health!” Lavinia cried. “Your wagon is not a salubrious place.”
“My chambermate is rather fragrant,” Mr. Calico agreed. “I’ll admit to taking a room in an inn this evening. I was told that her scent glands had been removed, but I begin to suspect that was a falsehood.”
Willa found herself scowling, and never mind that a lady was supposed to be placid at all times. “Her scent glands were removed? So the poor creature is unable to smell anything?”
“The other way about,” Mr. Calico said. “She is now able to make us smell, although she would do so only if she felt threatened.”
“May I?” Alaric stepped forward, gesturing at the stairs.
“Please do, my lord! My house is your house,” Mr. Calico said.
With a bound Alaric disappeared into the wagon.
“Have you found anything you wish to buy, Lavinia?” Willa asked.
Mr. Sterling said mockingly, “She’s a young lady, isn’t she? Naturally she has.”
“I’m certain you didn’t mean that remark to be as impolite as it sounded,” Lavinia said, showing laudable restraint, to Willa’s mind.