The Chaotic Miss Crispino

“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!”

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