You May Kiss the Bride(48)
Of course, he should have walked away, but instead Gabriel snatched the end of the whip in his gloved hand, pulled it free, contemptuously threw it into the street and proceeded to rip the driver’s character to shreds, in such icy, concise, articulate, and well-chosen language—much more effective than any obscenity, the admiring jarveys would later agree among themselves—that within a very few minutes the driver was stammering out abject apologies and on the verge of tears.
With a last look of withering scorn, Gabriel turned to the pavement where Livia still obediently perched on the crate and had, he saw, drawn a crowd that included at least three of his grandmother’s aged cronies who stood at a horrified remove, none of them making the least effort to offer assistance to his pale and trembling fiancée. Lovely: more fodder for the Bath tabbies. Still in a red haze of fury he bundled Livia—who was hanging on to her mysterious burden—into a hack, then remounted Primus and followed behind, leading Daisy by her reins, now all too aware of the spectacle they had collectively enacted on a public, highly trafficked street.
So much for his vaunted self-control, he thought bitterly. The last time he’d allowed himself to give way to such a violent maelstrom of emotions, he’d ended up kissing a saucy, tempting girl in a garden and within the hour been engaged to her. And here she’d done it once more.
Naturally it would have been too much to hope that Grandmama would have been elsewhere. What with paying off the jarvey, instructing Crenshaw and his footmen to look after the two horses, and helping Livia from the hack and escorting her up the front steps, the commotion was sufficient to bring his grandmother and Miss Cott down the stairs to meet them in the hall.
“Now what?” said Grandmama. “Another disastrous riding lesson?”
“That, ma’am, would be putting it mildly,” Gabriel answered, his tone matching hers in acerbity. “I begin to seriously question your wisdom in wishing Livia to become a horsewoman.”
His grandmother brushed this aside. “What’s that you’ve got?” she demanded of Livia. “Whatever it is, it has the most appalling odor. Crenshaw! Summon one of your footmen.”
Just then the smelly object in Livia’s arms wiggled and gave a small yelp, and she cuddled it more closely to her (almost as one would an infant! flashed the unwelcome thought in Gabriel’s brain).
“It’s a dog, ma’am,” she explained.
“A dog?” Grandmama echoed, with as much astonishment as if Livia had said she was holding an elephant.
A pair of black, button-shaped eyes peered fearfully out at them from behind dirty fringes of fur that might once have been white but were at present an unappealing shade of brown.
“You risked your life for that?” Gabriel snapped.
She looked up at him. “I had to. It was going to be killed otherwise.”
“Do you have any idea how close you came to that fate?”
“I’m sorry. I—I didn’t think.”
“That is painfully obvious.” He turned to Grandmama. “You may as well know the whole of it, as I’m quite sure it’s already making the rounds in the Pump Room. I’m sorry to say that I—”
His grandmother held up her hand. “Not here! Come up to the drawing-room. Ah! Here is—”
The young footman bowed. “James, ma’am.”
“James, take away that miserable creature to which Miss Livia is clinging and dispose of it.”
“Dispose of it?” Livia cried. “What does that mean, ma’am?”
“Just what you think. I detest conversing in the hall! Gabriel, give me your arm up these stairs. Evangeline, bring those new drops from Dr. Wendeburgen. Something tells me I’m going to need them when we are regaled with what Gabriel has to say.”
After the minutest of hesitations, Gabriel went to her and offered his arm; together they proceeded upstairs, Miss Cott stalwartly bringing up the rear, while Livia turned slowly to James the footman, feeling as though her heart would crack in two. Oh, the old lady was hard, hard. Life, perhaps, had made her so, but still . . .
She looked down at the little black eyes gazing back at her. A small pink tongue darted out and the dog lifted its filthy head, trying feebly to reach up to her. Livia bit her lip and finally, reluctantly, she held out the little dog, which whined and weakly struggled, as if resisting the transfer that spelled its inevitable doom.
Gently, James received it in his gloved hands, and under his breath he said, very low, “Don’t worry, Miss Livia. I’ll see it’s not harmed.”
He said no more, and went off toward the kitchen, but Livia was filled with sudden, hopeful happiness. Lightly she went up the stairs and into the drawing-room where she found Mrs. Penhallow accepting from Miss Cott a small, long-stemmed glass filled with a dark liquid that smelled strongly of decaying wood.