The Chaotic Miss Crispino

When Gideon didn’t expire as expected, Agnes, through guilt over her lie or natural motherly devotion only she knew, threw her entire energies into coddling and protecting the child well past the point of necessity or even common sense.

Gideon’s sniffles were a sure sign of a lung inflammation, his cough no less than threatening consumption, his sighs a dire portent of some crippling, disabling condition that must be averted at all costs. Isobel was conceived and born almost without Agnes’s notice and shuffled off to a separate nursery so that she could not contaminate her brother’s air.

When Mister Kittredge had the misfortune to break his neck in a hunting accident, Agnes had little time for grieving, for she was too busy thanking her lucky stars that the man hadn’t instead decided to succumb to some lingering illness that might either be passed on to Gideon or take her away overlong from her main project in life, that of taking care of her son.

That Gideon had grown from a whining, totally unlovable child into a self-indulgent adult concerned only with his own wants and desires could not be surprising. Even less of a revelation was that he thoroughly disliked his mother, the woman having earned his disgust because of his easy ability to manipulate her.

Moving closer to her now, Gideon laid his dark head on Agnes’s shoulder and gazed up into her watery blue eyes. “You appear distressed, dearest Mama. Is there anything I can do to help? I promise I shall not let this crushing headache stay me from performing whatever deed you should ask of me. After all, I owe my life to you, as well I know.”

Agnes blinked twice, masterfully holding back loving tears. “I shouldn’t think to bother your aching head, my darling,” she declared passionately, daring to touch a hand to his smooth cheek. “It’s just your uncle Denny again. I fear he is becoming worse with each passing day.”

Gideon turned his head slightly and stifled a yawn. “Really? In what way?”

“Why, this morning he is insisting on coming downstairs, even though his foot is still wrapped up like some heathen mummy, and his valet has told me your uncle actually intends to see his tailor this afternoon to order an entire new suit of clothes. Now why would he need new clothes? It isn’t as if he doesn’t have a closet full of them.”

“All displaying his love of food, for the dear man seems to find it necessary to wear what he eats,” Gideon supplied helpfully.

“Precisely so, my dear,” Agnes concurred feelingly. “I should think he’d be more concerned with the fact that you have been seen in the same evening dress at least three times this year. If anyone is in dire need of a new wardrobe, dearest, it is you, who shows his tailor to such advantage.”

There was a slight movement at the doorway, followed by a decidedly unladylike snort from Miss Isobel Kittredge, who had just entered the room.

“Toadeating Mama again, Gideon?” the young lady asked, taking up a seat across from the settee. “I’m surprised you haven’t hopped into her lap to ask her to tell you a story. Or would you rather tell her a story, possibly the one about your latest venture into the land of the sharpers?”

Agnes wrinkled her forehead, at least as much as the tightly done-up bun perched atop her head allowed her to do. “Sharpers? What are sharpers, Gideon? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the term.”

Gideon, sitting up smartly once more, shot his sister a fulminating look. “Pernicious little brat,” he gritted from between his even white teeth as Isobel, obviously well pleased with herself, made a great business out of straightening a lace doily on the table beside her.

“Pernicious, am I?” she countered, lifting hazel eyes as depressingly watery as her mother’s to her brother’s face. “Since you have roused the energy necessary to be insulting, I can only imagine that I am right and you are scorched again.”

“Gideon?” Agnes prompted, fighting the feeling that yet another score of gray hairs were about to sprout overnight on her already nearly white head. “Is your sister correct? Have you been gambling again?”

Sparing a moment to send his sister another fulminating, I’ll-see-to-you-later look, Gideon picked up his mother’s left hand and held it firmly between both of his. “I must admit to a shocking run of bad luck, Mama, but it is nothing to fret about, I promise. The devil was in it last night, that’s all, but I’ll come about as soon as you can get Uncle Denny to advance you a small pittance on the household allowance.”

Agnes’s thin face took on a pinched expression. “How much, Gideon? I cannot fob your uncle off with another story about the price of candles. He has his wits about him again, you know, at least in the area of his finances. Tell me quickly, before I conjure up some horrendous sum.”

“A mere monkey, Mama,” Gideon mumbled into his cravat. “Five hundred pounds. Four hundred, actually, but I also placed a small wager with a certain party about the outcome of a race. Dratted horse stumbled going round the turn.”

“Five hundred pounds! I will never be able to extract so much from your uncle as that!”

“Of course you will, Mama—for me.” He brought his mother’s hand to his mouth, firmly pressing his lips against the papery skin. “And I promise, Mama, I shall eschew racing from this moment on. I don’t know how I got involved in such a harebrained thing, for you know I can’t abide horses. It was all George Watson’s idea—he goaded me into the wager when my spirits were at a low ebb!”

“Of course he did,” Agnes agreed immediately, pressing her cheek against her son’s hands. “I never did like that George—and his grandfather smells entirely too much of the shop to suit me, as I recall. You would be wise to eschew George in the future as well, my darling.”

“George tied him up and forced him to make a wager against his will,” Isobel spat mockingly, shaking her head. “Honestly, Mama, he takes you in like a green goose, over and over again. Gideon is a dedicated gamester. When are you going to get that fact into your head? Why, he probably has a wager with George right now on how long it will take you to come up with the blunt to settle his latest debt.”

“Isobel!” Agnes exclaimed, stung. “You will apologize at once! I vow, your overweening jealousy of your brother makes me wonder if I have nurtured a viper at my bosom.”

Gideon took that moment to cough delicately into his fist.

“Now look what you’ve done!” Agnes exclaimed, immediately pressing a hand to her son’s forehead to check for fever. “You’ve brought on one of Gideon’s spasms. Such an unnatural child!”

“It wasn’t—a-ahumph, a-ahumph—my dearest sister’s viperish tongue—a-aumph—that upset me, Mama,” Gideon corrected quickly, his strong voice giving the lie to his continuing bout of coughing. “It is the money that worries me. George can be so demanding—and it is, after all, a debt of honor. If only I should be assured that Uncle Denny won’t cut up stiff—”

“No, no, of course he won’t. I shan’t even mention your name,” Agnes assured her son even as she shot her smirking daughter a quelling look. “I shall approach your uncle this afternoon.”

“Without fail?” Gideon asked, somehow managing to produce a slight sheen of feverish perspiration on his smooth upper lip.

“Without fail, my darling,” Agnes vowed, then gave a quick silencing wave of her hand as she heard her brother’s limping gait approaching outside in the hallway.

“La, yes,” she exclaimed quickly in an overly hearty voice that was sure to carry as far as the foyer. “I have just come from prayers in my room, yet again thanking the good Lord on my knees for your uncle’s miraculous recovery. I should think the fine air of Brighton has had much to do with his renewed good health, but the good Lord must be thanked for that good air as well, mustn’t He, children?”

“Spouting gibberish again, Aggie?” Lord Dugdale asked from the doorway, where he stood leaning heavily on the bulbous head of his cane. “If you wish to thank anyone, thank Valerian Fitzhugh—for it’s he who saved me, sure as check. Great faith I have in that boy, and it’s sure to be rewarded any day now with the most wonderful surprise a man could push himself up from the brink of the grave to accept.”

He took two more steps into the room before Isobel rose to take his arm, helping him to the chair she had just vacated. “You mustn’t push yourself, Uncle, not on your first day downstairs. There you go,” she complimented as the Baron lowered himself heavily into the chair. “Now if you’ll just let me place this footstool here for you to rest that leg on—there! Mama, Gideon—doesn’t Uncle Denny look much more the thing?”

Lord Dugdale looked from sister to niece to nephew, his squat, heavy body all but wedged into the chair as he presented himself for their scrutiny. What his relatives saw, other than the truly magnificent cocoon of snowy white bandages stuck to the lower half of his right leg and foot, was a no-longer-young man with a sparse, partial circlet of gray hair banding his head directly above his ears, leaving his shiny bald pate to cast a glare in the afternoon sunlight coming through a nearby window.

His eyes, the same watery blue of his sister’s but with a multitude of cunning if not intelligence lurking in their depths, returned their piercing looks, yet his round-as-a-pie plate face was carefully expressionless. Yes, it was the same old Baron Dugdale they had known forever—complete to the food stains on his loosely tied cravat and too-tight waistcoat.

“Well, this is something new, Uncle Denny,” Isobel piped up at last, perching her thin frame on a corner of the footstool as she looked up at the Baron. “You’ve been hinting about this surprise for weeks, but I’ve never heard Mister Fitzhugh’s name mentioned before this moment. Why, it must be three years or more since he’s been home to Brighton. Ever since Waterloo, I imagine. Is that the surprise? That Valerian—I mean, Mister Fitzhugh—is returning home?”

Gideon rose to stand behind the settee. “Don’t drool, Isobel; it doesn’t become you. Why, you were scarcely out of swaddling clothes when Valerian Fitzhugh took off for the Continent. Don’t tell me you still fancy yourself in love with the man. Lord, that’s pathetic!”

Isobel’s normally sallow complexion visibly paled and a small white line tightened about her thin lips. “Gideon Kittredge—you take that back!” she gritted, pointing a shaking finger in his direction. “Mama! Make him take that back!”