My Dear Jenny Read Online Free PDF Page A

Very
overexxcciceitable. Don’t want to waken her. Beg your pardon, ma’am.” He
executed an over precise bow and turned on his heel, but Genia heard the
faintest of murmurs as he walked away: “Fubsy-faced, interfering female...” If
she had not cared particularly for the man before now, this last placed her
firmly on the side of Miss Pellering’s friends: lphegenia knew herself to be
plain, but she was by no means fubsy-faced, rabbit-toothed, or tallow-eyed.
Casting a look of dislike at his retreating form, she shook herself and started
down the stairs.
    Domenic Teverley sprang up eagerly at her arrival.
    “Is she all right? Miss Pellering? She’s not seriously ill,
is she?”
    “Hardly, only tired and overwrought. I left her sleeping.”
    “That blackguard Ratherscombe!” Dom began hotly, but:
    “Who?” Miss Prydd countered.
    “That queer nabs that’s trying to fob himself off as Miss
Emily’s—Miss Pellering’s—her brother!”
    “Oh,” said Miss Prydd slowly, trying to assimilate this
news. “Well, I left the gentleman” —a sniff indicated her opinion of Mr.
Ratherscombe’s gentility— “with strict instructions not to bother her. I
doubt he will, since he does have to keep our company until we can leave this
place.”
    “I take it, then, that Miss Pellering has not confided in
you?” Mr. Teverley’s voice, clear and unfogged by his recent sleep, startled
both his cousin and Miss Prydd. “We seem to have confounded quite a few of Mr.
Ratherscombe’s plans.”
    “Meaning that he had somehow persuaded Emily into an
elopement?”
    Peter Teverley regarded lphegenia with respect. “That is my
guess, ma’am.”
    “Oh, Lord, and now I suppose I ought to feel dreadfully
shocked. But really, I can only feel sorry for her, poor little thing. I
suppose that, if he exerted himself, Mr. Peller—No, that cannot be right.
What is his name?” Domenic supplied her with the villain’s name and began a
short treatise on his family, which Peter Teverley quelled with a look. “Well,
I suppose that Mr. Ratherscombe could cut a romantic figure if he exerted
himself. But now, what are we to do with them? If we try to tell Emily he’s—well,
all the things you so astutely suggested of him, Domenic—we shall fail as
sure as if we had never begun. To have come so far, Emily must be—er—blinded
to his more unpleasant characteristics.”
    “I suggest that we simply concentrate on foiling
Ratherscombe’s plans.” Teverley raised himself up from his chair to continue
the conversation. “Perhaps the emergence of his true colors under frustrating
circumstances will do more to disenchant Miss Pellering than we could hope to
do ourselves.”
    Iphegenia turned to him to agree readily and thought of
asking him if he had ever had cousins to deal with (a perfectly absurd thought)
but lost the thought in her startled discovery of how tall he was, at
least to one of her modest stature. More than that, he carried himself with a
military dignity and ease that made him seem to tower over everything and
everyone, and between his manner, that of a man of influence, and his skin,
which was not so much dark, she realized, as burned brown by the sun, the
notion of soldiery solidified in her mind.
    Under the pressure of his returned look, lphegenia realized
that she had been staring at Mr. Teverley. She felt the blush rise to her face,
but went on with the conversation. “I think I shall at least try to learn who
her people are, and where they are, to let them know that she is safe and
respectably attended—”
    “Good God, ma’am, you make yourself sound like the most
appalling antidote!” Teverley objected, plainly revolted.
    “Perhaps not yet an ape-leader, Mr. Teverley, but hardly a
green girl.” The memory of Ratherscombe’s mutterings still stung. “And I am respectable, I assure you.”
    There was something disquieting in his look, but she had too
little experience of men and the world to more than wonder