Chapter Six
“She’s going to be Dandelion, or Princess,” Rebecca said, holding the large brush in her small hands and running it down the red-brown mane of the new chestnut pony standing beside her in its stall.
“I like those.” Edmund, in the next stall over, watched as Lord Hentrose’s head groom demonstrated brushing down his gray pony’s withers. “With the direction of the hair,” he muttered, taking the brush from Mr. Parsley and mimicking the groom’s actions.
“You’re a natural, lad,” the groom said, grinning. “Well done.”
“Is yours going to stay Storm Cloud?” Rebecca asked, going up on her toes to peer over the dividing wall.
“That name’s silly. I might call him Cloud. I almost said I might call him Rain, but that would be confusing.” He laughed.
“There are enough Raineses here already,” Rebecca agreed, giggling. “It would be a pretty name for a pony, though.”
“What about Mist? Or Fog?” he suggested, grimacing.
Iris, silently marveling at the change in her son since he’d found the Raines family, straightened from where she leaned against the stable wall.
He hadn’t been so joyous in four years, and she’d begun to think he’d simply grown up too quickly and was finished with being young.
She’d never been happier to be wrong. “When you were younger, you wanted a horse named Flintlock. As I recall, though, he was to be a raging black stallion who only obeyed you.”
“Mama.” Edmund’s cheeks turned pink. “I was a baby when I said that.”
“Ooh! I love Flintlock, though,” Rebecca put in, instead of teasing him. “It’s a good name for a gray horse.”
“Do you think so?”
“Oh, yes.”
Edmund turned to Lord Hentrose, seated on an upturned bucket. “What do you think, my lord?”
Yes, her son clearly worshiped the marquis, and even if Iris felt a bit jealous of the shining green eyes and respectful tone Beckett Raines had earned even before paying fifteen pounds for a pair of ponies, she had to concede that the marquis had delivered a gift so out of her reach that Edmund had stopped even asking for a horse three years ago.
“I like Flintlock,” Hentrose said, nodding. “But he’s your pony. And clearly I cannot be trusted to name a horse.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of his own mount, a large chestnut gelding that dwarfed the ones the children had acquired.
“Why?” Iris asked. “What’s your horse’s name?”
“Charles Llewelyn Biscuits,” Edmund supplied, snorting. “Can mine be Flintlock Biscuits?”
“Oh! And Dandelion Biscuits!”
Beckett stood, brushing off his backside. “Why the devil not?”
The butler, Butler, walked into the stable, lifting his feet as if he feared the entire floor was made of manure. “My lord, the Dowager Lady Hentrose and Lady Pauline Grenedy have arrived.”
The marquis lifted an eyebrow. “They have?”
“Yes, my lord. You received a note several hours ago, which I presume was from the dowager marchioness.”
“I wasn’t home.”
“No, my lord.”
He said something beneath his breath that might have been a curse. “Well, then. Evidently we’re dining with your grandmother and Lady Pauline, Cricket. We’d best go change clothes.”
“But I want to stay with Dandelion. Might I eat out here this evening?”
“No. You will not live in the stable, and Dandelion will not live in your bedchamber. Off with you.”
Making a face, Rebecca handed her brush back to Mr. Parsley and hurried out of the stable.
“Stay as long as you like, Edmund,” Beckett said, nodding at Iris. “And come visit Flintlock whenever you like—as long as you have your mother’s permission.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Beckett.”
“We haven’t kept you away too long, I hope,” he continued. “I hadn’t expected the ponies to go up for auction so late in the day.”
“We had a lovely picnic luncheon and lemon ices. I will never have a complaint when ices are involved.”
“I’ll remember that.” With a grin he inclined his head, meeting her gaze for just a moment, then headed for the stable door.
Iris shook herself out of her warm, happy thoughts and took a breath. “We’d best return to Grove House, Edmund. Aunt Margaret and Uncle Harold prefer to dine early.”
With a sigh Edmund handed his own tack back to the groom. “This has been a good day,” he declared, skipping a little. “I don’t like staying at Grove House, but at least I’m close to Flintlock, and Becks is just next door.”
“Yes, we seem to have found some luck.” Iris ruffled his blond hair. “No galloping until you’ve had some lessons.”
“I won’t. I’m going to be a smashing rider. Do you think Flintlock can jump fences? Jumping would be sterling.”
“One thing at a time, Pickle.”
Tollins pulled open the front door as they reached it. “Mrs. Silbern,” he said crisply. “You are requested to dress for dinner and repair to the drawing room immediately. Master Edmund, you are to take dinner in your room with Mr. Fredericks.”
“Blast it all,” Edmund muttered.
“The drawing room? Do Lord and Lady Harold have guests?”
“Yes, Mrs. Silbern. I’m to say no more than you are to use all possible haste.”
That sounded ominous. If her former brother-in-law had decided she must give up her clothes and hatpins now, he was going to find his nose bloodied.
Damn Reginald Silbern, Lord Bellamy, anyway.
Assuming a smile, she sent Edmund off to his bedchamber and then found Polly already waiting in hers.
“Who’s here?” she asked, turning around so the maid could unbutton the back of her dress.
“I have no idea. Tollins says he’s been told to keep his mouth shut. I did hear Lady Margaret yelling at the upstairs maid, Jenny, and telling her she had hands more fit to be a tanner.”
As Iris had been helping her aunt dress since Suzette’s retreat to Cornwall, it made sense that she wouldn’t have been terribly pleased to have only Jenny assisting her.
Iris sighed. No doubt she’d hear about that later.
A bit of complaining in exchange for a day spent watching Edmund be the happiest she’d ever seen him, a day where she could breathe and laugh and not worry about the cost of the ices or how they would afford a pony, though, was well worth it.
“No, not that one,” she said, as Polly pulled her fanciest gown, the violet silk with lace sleeves, from the wardrobe. “I wore it last night. Aside from that, it’s possibly a dinner with someone I have no wish to see. I don’t want to wear a ball gown to a fight.”
“I would hate to have to sew the beading back on if there were fisticuffs,” Polly said with a quick grin, returning the gown to its shelf and removing a simpler dark blue dress from its hiding place among her plainer gowns fit for walking, church, or a quiet evening at home.
“Yes, that one will do.”
“If you’re going to be accompanying Lady Margaret to parties this Season, you’re going to have to go shopping,” the lady’s maid commented as she brought the dress over to where Iris waited.
Keeping her maid—who also served as occasional cook, housekeeper, and watcher over Edmund when Iris absolutely had to be elsewhere—had been Iris’s one luxury.
Not even a luxury, really, since Thomas had become even less reliable and more often absent when luck turned against him.
Luck had deserted him entirely by the time he drank himself face down into the ditch running alongside the path to their cottage and drowned.
She shook herself. For the next few weeks, food, bed, and safety for Edmund were seen to.
It gave her time to figure out how she meant to ask for a loan of money from her uncle, and how long it would take her to repay that loan once she had the deed to a boardinghouse or a renting cottage or whatever she chose to call it.
“I have three gowns suited for evenings amid the ton,” she said. “That is plenty. I’m not attempting to capture anyone’s attention. I’m doing my aunt a favor in exchange for a few weeks in London. And I will not expend all my funds on silk gowns I’ll never have occasion to wear again.”
The maid nodded. “I know, Mrs. Silbern. And I admire everything you’ve managed to accomplish. It’s only…” She trailed off.
“Only what?” Iris prompted.
“I wish you had time for a bit of fun for yourself,” Polly grumbled.
“I remember you laughing before Mr. Silbern, bless his soul, had his troubles. You used to laugh a great deal.” The maid took a breath.
“I apologize if I’ve spoken out of turn, but you’re a good, kind lady, ma’am. You deserve to be happy.”
“The idea of relying on no one but myself to see to our future makes me happy. It terrifies me, as well, but I’d rather have me seeing to it than not have any say at all.
” And if her cheeks ached from an unfamiliar amount of laughing today and she still felt …
rosy, but on the inside, she wasn’t going to admit that aloud.
“As you say, Mrs. Silbern.” The maid fixed Iris’s hair, putting the unruly light-colored mass into an acceptable and stylish bun with strategic wisps escaping. “There. You’ll do.”
“I do look nice. That’ll surprise whomever I end up punching. Thank you, Polly.”
The maid laughed. “Always pleased to lend a hand, Mrs. Silbern. Or a fist, if need be.”
Iris left Polly to turn down the bed, and she headed up the hallway.
She did still laugh, but even she had realized that she’d become sharper and more cynical and sarcastic.
Less worried about what anyone else thought of her, and more determined not to be ignored.
When she reached Edmund’s bedchamber she paused, listening at the half-open door as her son told his tutor about his new pony. “And his name is Flintlock Biscuits.”
“I approve Flintlock,” Mr. Fredericks said in his slightly nasal voice. “A name as solid as a rock.”
“But what about Biscuits? That’s his last name.”
“Biscuits is fine, though it makes me wish on sweets to dine.”
“Oh, that’s cheating. You were meant to rhyme ‘Biscuits.’ Not ‘fine.’”