Mrs. McVinnie's London Season by Carla Kelly Read Free Book Online Page B

daughter?” he finished. “She might be.”
    “ But …” Jeannie followed him down the hall to Clare’s
room. She opened the door for him and turned back the covers while
he settled the child in bed and then kissed her good
night.
    The captain stood
looking down at Clare for several moments. He idly fingered the
Grand Cross of Bath on his chest, his thoughts miles removed from
Wendover Square.
    Jeannie knew he had
forgotten she was in the room, so she turned to go.
    He was at her side in a
moment. “It’s a long story, Mrs. McVinnie,” he said as he escorted
her back to her room again. “But look, I think the sun will be
coming up soon, and didn’t you say you had to be leaving?”
    “ Well,
I did,” she began.
    “ Then
do not let me disturb one more moment of your slumber,” he
continued affably. “Good night.”
    “ You
are aggravating beyond belief,” Jeannie said.
    “ I
have four lieutenants, a surgeon, and—oh, let me see—six midshipmen
and any number of rated seamen under my thumb who would agree with
you entirely,” he said. “I wonder why they have never told
me.”
    “ You
would probably flog them and make them walk the plank,” Jeannie
declared, stung to an angry retort that she knew was improper the
moment it left her lips.
    The captain reached
down and put his finger to her lips. “Hush now! By the good Lord,
you do remind me of the Jeannie McVinnie I knew.”
    She started to say
something, but he did not remove his finger.
    “ That’s better. You’ll wake my charming sister if you continue
railing at me, and that, you’ll agree, would be an ugly business.
Go to bed, Mrs. McVinnie. Hush now! And do try to overlook the fact
that although we will miss you greatly after tomorrow, we will
manage somehow.”
     
     

Chapter
4
    T he rain was long over by the time she woke in the
morning, and she felt unaccountably refreshed by the puny hours of
sleep granted her. Jeannie went to the window and pulled back the
draperies. Perching herself on the window seat that looked out onto
Wendover Square, she opened the window, rested her elbows on the
sill, and let the day happen.
    Up and down the street,
maids were sweeping the front walks, and pushcart men walked slowly
by, selling milk, pasties, and promises that their pans would never
need a tinker’s mending. She watched footmen striding purposefully
from their employers’ mansions, intent on early-morning errands and
full to bursting with self-importance. Grooms walked their horses
up and down in the square, waiting for their masters to fork a leg
over and take a pre-breakfast canter in one of the great royal
parks that made this part of London so much more pleasant than the
crowded, smoke-foggy rabbit warren that was the City.
    Jeannie rested her chin
on her hand. At home, after she had flung up the window sash, she
would have taken a deep, deep breath. Here there would be no smell
of the sea, no pleasant tang of heather or Scotch broom to delight
the eye. But she had to own that while the air was scarcely as
promising, London held a vast potential for interest that
Kirkcudbright could never command.
    She reminded herself
that she was leaving. She would spend a few moments with the
captain, apologize to him one more time for good measure, pack her
bags again, and hitch them onto the next mail coach venturing up
the Great North Road. Somehow, the thought was less appealing than
it had been last night, when she had quaked in her boots and sewed
on the captain’s button.
    “ It is
merely that you do not relish the thought of another trip on the
mail,” she told herself. She knew she had enough funds to hire a
post chaise, but Jeannie McVinnie wasn’t a Scot for
nothing.
    The air that breezed in
through the open window was still tinged with a hint of winter. She
closed it and jumped back in bed, grateful for the warmth. It would
be so easy to close her eyes and drift off into sleep again, if
there weren’t the nagging matter of making a