And then Felicity looked into those large black eyes and curtsied before she even realized it. “Madame,” she greeted the old woman.
“Miss Winifred St. Clair,” Lord Flint intoned with his own courtly bow. “Allow me to present to you, Miss Felicity Chamber.”
“Hmmph.” The bright eyes swung over to take in Flint. “Your father sent me a message,” she barked.
Felicity had been right. The little woman did have a cane, a gold-topped hickory affair she slammed into the floor once again. And not onto the carpet. Onto the bare wood, so that thecrackechoed. “Is this the chit I'm to give countenance to?”
Flint smiled. “It is.”
“Hmmph.” She yanked a gold lorgnette from her lap and took a leisurely perusal. Having suffered her share of perusals over the years, Felicity stood still.
“Shall I turn about so you can see the aft end?” she asked. “Or open my mouth wide enough for you to check my teeth?”
The woman's scowl was magnificent. “Well, you're the saucy one, aren't you? What makes you think you can be so full of brass?”
Felicity shrugged. “I have undoubtedly already lost my teaching position. I have been told I am to marry a perfect stranger for no good reason I can see, and was foolish enough to agree to two weeks in which he might try to convince me. I have nowhere to go, no one to see. I imagine I have little to lose.”
“How tall are you?”
“Five-foot one inch.”
She snorted. “Well, there's that. Don't have to stand on a stool to talk to ya.”
“Indeed. I imagine that gets old when living in the same house as his lordship.”
The old lady waved the lorgnette. “What, him? The devil with it. I never see him. The only time he's here is with his disreputable friends, and he's too afraid to let me loose on them to introduce me.” Her face folded into a thousand wrinkles. “Even though I know most of them anyway.”
Felicity looked over to see that Flint was singularly undismayed by the statement.
“You terrify them,” he assured the old woman. “And if one is to throw a hunting party, you hope the only one terrified is the fox.”
The old woman maintained her glare. Flint grinned back.
“She won't do,” she snapped, swinging the cane so swiftly at Felicity, she had to stumble back rather than get rapped on the jaw. “Not at all.”
Flint shrugged. “Tell His Grace. It was his idea.”
“Why?”
“We have just been having that discussion,” Felicity said. “I assume this means that you don't know either?”
“I do not. And I refuse to countenance what I don't understand. What if one of my friends stops by and sees her? It is unconscionable.”
“She went to school with Pip,” Flint said, pulling out a snuff box and flipping the lid open.
“So did forty other gels. And all of them have surnames.”
Flint's one eyebrow headed north; his actions momentarily paused.
“I have a surname,” Felicity assured her. “I made it up myself.”
That really earned her a glare. “You have no idea who your people are?”
“Not a one. I was told I was left at a private home in the country for my first five years. The only thing I remember from that time was two other small children and a goat who was forever stealing my biscuits.”
“So then, you come from people with means.”
It was Felicity's turn to shrug. “So we have always assumed. I never wanted for anything.” Except affection, history, people to call her own.
