“Yonder driver should have been more careful.” The colonel did offer his arm, and Ann allowed herself to grasp it. “Let’s take the alley, shall we?”
He apparently knew where he was going, for by turns and shady backstreets, he brought her to the Coventry’s garden gate.
“Do you often navigate by the alleys?” Ann asked.
“Yes. I don’t often recount my French heritage, though it’s common knowledge.”
“Je dois beaucoup à la langue Française, Colonel.”
“And why do you owe much to the French language?”
The Coventry’s garden walls were high—better than six feet—so nobody at the club would see Ann tarrying with her escort. She was peculiarly unwilling to part from him, too, and not simply because he had the reflexes of a cat.
“I had excellent French teachers at school,” Ann said, “and when I sought a post as a cook’s apprentice, I was hired because the Englishwoman I worked for could not read French. She needed my French, and I needed her instruction. I taught her what I could, because you are correct: A facility with both languages is never a hindrance and often a help.”
Ann was fairly certain that smiling wasn’t in the colonel’s vocabulary, regardless of language, but his gaze did acquire a hint of humor.
“You are pragmatic,” he said. “A fine quality in any officer.”
“I am a cook, and if I want to read Carême’s menus or his articles and recipes, I must know my French. Then too, our chef at the Coventry frequently lapses into French, and one wants to understand his mutterings. Thank you for your escort, sir.”
The colonel flicked a glance at the closed garden gate. “This is your half day. Why come to your place of work?”
“I’ll pop in and make sure the kitchen starts its day on sound footing. Our chef arrives in the early evening and remains until past midnight.” Though Monsieur was arriving later and later and in an increasingly unreliable state of sobriety.
“That’s not the whole reason.” The colonel stepped a few paces away, pivoted, and returned. “Do you fear that if I know where you dwell, I’ll trespass on the knowledge? Dump Benny on your doorstep like a foundling?”
Ann patted his lapel. She would not normally be so forward, but she wanted to rattle him a little—to see if he could be rattled—and she liked touching him.
“The habit of suspicion has too firm a grip on you, Colonel. I use my afternoons to experiment in the kitchen. Only junior staff is on hand, and my time is my own.”
“Target practice and drills,” he said, scowling down at her. “Does Sycamore Dorning appreciate what a treasure he has in you?”
Oh, probably not. Ann was neither French nor male nor—she hoped—a martinet. “I am well compensated for my labors.”
“Not what I asked. My thanks for looking in on Benny, and I will have a word on her behalf with your employers.”
Ann anticipated a salute and a dismissive carry on, Pearson. Instead, the colonel bowed.
“Au revoir, mademoiselle.” He straightened and would have marched off to instruct his urchins on the art of the siege or something had Ann not put a hand on his sleeve.
She had to go up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Until next we meet, Colonel. I live in the boardinghouse beside the bakery around the corner. The door is blue.” If he took a good whiff of her cloak, he might divine where she lived. “Thank you for your escort and for preventing me from injury or worse.”
She lingered near enough to inhale the sunny essence of Provence one more time, then eased back.
The colonel’s expression gave away nothing. Not dismay at her forwardness, not pleasure at her friendliness. If he was pleased, offended, bemused, or annoyed, she’d never know that from his gaze.
He touched her cheek with a gentle brush of his fingers. “Dorning and his club don’t deserve you.”
Then he stalked away.
All manner of odd feelings did battle inside Ann as she watched Colonel Sir Orion Goddard march off to his next battle. The emotional melee followed her inside as she divested herself of cloak and bonnet and washed her hands.
The season had passed for blueberries, but the pear harvest had been good, so she set out the ingredients for a batch of crepes and sorted through her impressions of the colonel. His manners wanted polish, he lacked any semblance of good cheer, and his own commanding officer would apparently not receive him.
But the colonel saw clearly what Ann herself hadn’t wanted to admit: She was pulling more than her share of the load at the Coventry and getting far less than her share of the credit.
She admitted something else too: As a lover, Orion Goddard would be tender, tireless, and passionate. So very, very passionate.
Rye took himself around to the main thoroughfare and paused for a moment of reconnaissance. The Coventry enjoyed a fashionable address, and the street was thus busy. A crossing sweeper dodged between vehicles to retrieve steaming treasure from the cobbles, narrowly avoiding the wheels of a barouche. The lad was tired or drunk, gin being cheaper than bread and more readily available to such as he.
“Is Dorning home?” Rye asked, flipping the child a coin.
“Aye, Colonel. So’s his missus. The ’ousekeeper went to market at first light and came back midmorning. A pair of grooms is down the pub ’aving a pint.”
“And you’ve been here since dawn?”
The boy nodded. “Small pickin’s, Colonel. The ponies ain’t poopin’ on my watch. The Quality has gone off to the grouse moors and ’ouse parties.”
Rye passed him two more coins. “The ponies will trample you if you don’t get some rest.” Rye put his fingers to his lips and let out a sharp whistle. “Louis will spell you while I call on my in-laws. How are things at home?”
The boy, whose somewhat humorous nom de guerre was Vulture, sported more than the usual number of bruises beneath his grime.
“Pa got slapped into the sponging ’ouse. Ma took the weans to her brother’s, and Uncle don’t like me much. I’m on me own for a time.” This recitation was made with the perfect indifference of a scout who’d seen the entire French host approaching, arms at the ready.
The boy wasn’t twelve years old, if that.
“You leave your barrow and shovel in the Coventry’s stables of a night and come around to my house to bed down and take your meals. If you don’t want to come inside, you can take the night watch in my stable. Louis will tell you we’re a man down, though don’t press him for details.”
Vulture peered up at Rye with the combination of banked hope and bravado that betrayed a child on his last prayer.
“I don’t care for baths, Colonel.”
“Then take night watch in the stable,”—where the boy would find adequate warmth and safety and an abundance of blankets—“but you will wash your hands before eating, or Mrs. Murphy will report you for breach of manners.”
A fortnight around the other boys, another two weeks of increasingly cold nights, and Vulture would submit to regular bathing. With any luck, he’d soon join the boys at their afternoon lessons, and they’d feel Benny’s impending absence less keenly.