12. Chapter 12
Kitty could not get away from the dinner table fast enough. Watching Mr Merry flirt with Laura was nauseating, but seeing her respond in kind was ten times worse. No wonder the man revelled in his success.
How could her friend have had such an abrupt turnaround in her attitude toward him? Had she fallen victim to Mr Merry’s charm the instant she entered the dining room, or had she put on a show to make Mr Jenkin jealous?
Neither interpretation reflected well on her. The former revealed an instability of character, whilst the latter showed a complete lack of consideration for either man’s feelings.
“How tedious! I thought dinner would never end,” said Laura, taking a seat on the sofa.
Kitty sat down beside her and crossed her arms over her chest. “You did not appear to find your conversation with Mr Merry tiresome. Quite the opposite.”
A faint blush suffused her friend’s cheeks. “I could not ignore the man, could I?”
“You’ve been succeeding well enough until now.”
Laura dropped her gaze to her hands, which lay clasped in her lap. “If you must know, Papa had words with me. He urged me to pay him more attention and told me I was a fool if I let him slip through my fingers.”
That explained the sudden change in her friend’s behaviour and confirmed what Kitty suspected. Hugh knew William did not have to paint for a living. “Then your flirting was all for show?”
Laura shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t decided. Papa is so keen on the match that, as a dutiful daughter, I owe it to him to find out if Mr Merry might suit me. He’s very handsome.”
Kitty was well aware. “But do you like him? I thought your interest lay in another direction.”
“What if it did? A girl is allowed to change her mind, isn’t she?”
Yes, but it was unfair to Mr Merry if she was not being sincere. Kitty had seen the tenderness in his gaze at the dinner table, and she knew what it meant. Her friend was in danger of making him fall in love with her.
It was also cruel to Mr Jenkin. His pained expression had pulled at Kitty’s heart. She had suspected Laura of having a preference for the riding officer, but tonight she had disregarded his feelings and carried on as if he were not there.
Kitty would not let her friend’s callous behaviour go unchallenged. “You were not kind to our other guest.”
Laura raised a hand to her mouth and chewed on the end of her glove. “Mr Jenkin is hardly a guest. Papa only invites him for dinner because they work together. I think he likes to ensure the man gets a good meal once or twice a week.”
“Then you weren’t trying to make him jealous?” Kitty asked, hoping the girl would confide in her.
Laura tossed back her head and laughed, but there was no humour in it.
“You imply Mr Jenkin is a potential suitor. You are mistaking concern for something more. He might admire my beauty, but he is always criticising my conduct. You remember how he took me to task for slipping out without my maid. Besides, he knows as well as I do my father would never countenance such a match. I wish he wouldn’t make his disapproval of my behaviour so obvious. It’s most unnerving.”
Kitty suspected there was some truth in what she said, but it was hard to tell how much. There was no doubt Hugh desired a superior partner for his daughter than a mere riding officer, but how did she really feel about him?
“Do you think the gentlemen will remain long over their wine?” Laura asked before Kitty could quiz her any more. “I daresay they’ll be a while longer if Mr Jenkin indulges in a cigar. A habit he picked up when he was fighting in the Peninsula. It is a thing Papa deplores about him.”
Hearing that the preventive officer had served in the war increased Kitty’s respect for the man, but discovering Hugh’s distaste for tobacco left her mind in a whirl. She’d seen him smoking in the garden at night on more than one occasion. At least, she had assumed it was him.
She needed to make sure. “Your father doesn’t smoke?”
“No. He doesn’t approve of it. He says it’s common and makes everything smell unpleasant. Why did you think he did?”
But if Hugh didn’t smoke, who else could it be? Unless… Oh no. Was Laura’s poor treatment of Mr Jenkin a ruse? Had her father’s disapproval forced them to meet in secret? Did that explain the nighttime smoker?
Her friend wouldn’t be so lost to propriety—would she? Kitty had the nasty feeling that she would. However uncomfortable the conversation proved to be, she could not let such behaviour go unchallenged.
“Because I saw somebody in the garden. At night. The first time, I opened my window and smelled tobacco. It’s a distinct aroma, and one I dislike, so I couldn’t be mistaken.
I assumed it was your father walking outside because he could not sleep.
” She fixed the younger woman with a steely stare.
“But if he doesn’t smoke, it has to be someone else who does. I wonder who it could be…”
Laura sucked in her lips, and Kitty prepared herself for a bundle of lies.
“It must be Cousin Silas.”
Whatever she had been expecting, it was not that. “And who, pray, is Cousin Silas?”
“Didn’t I tell you? He’s a distant cousin of Papa’s, who lives in the butler’s pantry in the basement.”
There was a relative living in the bottom of the house whom nobody had mentioned before? How gullible did Laura think she was? “No. It must have slipped your mind.”
Her friend twisted her hands together. “I know I warned you not to go down the steps to the cellars, but I may not have explained why. I do my best to forget he’s there. Papa took pity on Silas when he came back from the war.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “The man is not right in the head.”
Couldn’t Laura have invented a more believable story? The figure Kitty had seen smoking in the dark had not exhibited the random movements she would have expected from a madman.
“I pleaded with Papa to have him locked away in the Bethlem Hospital, where he wouldn’t be a danger to anyone, but he refused. He said we had a duty to care for our own family, which is why he lives in our basement. You must not go down there. He sometimes gets violent.”
Kitty tried not to laugh. “Should I be worried? Will we all be murdered in our beds?”
To give her credit for her acting, her friend maintained a straight face. “Oh no. The butler, Blake, looks after him. He was a prize-fighter before he came to work here, so he’s not afraid of anything.”
Laura clasped Kitty’s hands. “We don’t talk about Silas. Just think what it would do to our status in society if word got out that a madman lived in our basement. People would refuse to dine here. Please don’t mention what I’ve said to Papa. He doesn’t like it being discussed.”
Of course he didn’t. He would not be pleased to discover his daughter had concocted a wild story to cover her indiscretion.
“I will not repeat our conversation, but if I smell smoke in the garden at night again, I will go to your father. He would want to know if Cousin Silas was roaming freely around the grounds after dark. If the man is dangerous, someone could get hurt.”
Laura yanked her hands away. “You must do what you think is right—but please don’t cause unnecessary trouble. Papa wouldn’t like it.”
He would dislike it even more if he thought his daughter was compromising her reputation by meeting a man at night. Especially as that man was not Mr Merry.