A Perfect Gentleman by Bárbara Metzger

forgotten she was in mourning, but this was beyond proper grieving for a mere aunt. How the devil did Miss Kane expect to attract a gentleman while she looked like a crow—or a corpse? She bobbed a slight curtsy without looking up from her scrubbing. “I am sorry I cannot offer my hand.” She raised her right one. The handkerchief was stuck to it. Despite that, she gestured toward a spindly ladies’ desk in the corner. “I am trying to make some order out of things here.”
    He looked toward the desk and saw that she had been affixing small pieces of paper to a larger one. From where Stony stood, her project made no sense. He doubted it made sense at any distance.
    As he looked, he noticed another woman sitting in the other far corner. This one was definitely old, also black-clad, with a black scowl on her face. She had an embroidery frame in front of her and kept right on jabbing her needle into the fabric, pulling it out, jabbing it in. This must be the aunt who accompanied the heiress to Town.
    Stony looked back at Miss Kane, one blond eyebrow raised as he waited to be made known to the older woman.
    “Oh, of course. Please forgive my manners.”
    Stony was relieved to discover she had any.
    Miss Kane fluttered her hand, free now of the clinging linen. She rushed through the introduction. “My aunt Lally, that is, Mrs. Lavinia Goudge. Lord Wellstone.”
    Stony bowed and stepped closer, expecting the aunt to offer her fingers for him to salute. The needle went in. The needle came out.
    “My aunt, um, does not speak,” said Miss Kane, pouring water from a pitcher on the desk onto the handkerchief.
    “She is mute?”
    “Drat.” Now the handle of the pitcher seemed stuck to Miss Kane’s hand. “What’s that? Mute? Oh, no. She has, um, taken a vow of silence.”
    Good grief, they were Papists after all. That enveloping black must be some sort of habit, then. Miss Kane was taking herself, her fortune, and her sticky fingers to a nunnery. The fortune would be missed. “Which, ah, religious order does she follow?” Stony asked out of politeness.
    “Religion? That is Timmy’s new hobby. Aunt does needlework. She just, um, took her vow in memory of her beloved husband. She spoke unkindly to the dear captain before his ship sailed. He never returned.”
    Stony nodded in the widow’s direction. She appeared to be choking back tears. “My condolences, ma’am. But a sea captain. That would explain the parrot.”
    “The parrot?”
    Miss Kane was looking at Stony as if he were queer in the attic. Hah! That was the kettle calling the pot black if he ever heard it. “Your butler said the distasteful language I heard was from—”
    “You heard…? Oh, that parrot. We, um, put it away when guests call. In a closet. With a blanket over the cage. Polly is not fit for company, you see.”
    Mrs. Goudge was choking again, most likely at the reminder of her lost sailor. Stony wondered if he should offer his handkerchief to her, or to the heiress, whose own cloth was now hanging off the front of her skirt like a flag of surrender. No one had offered him a seat or refreshments, and he still held the bouquet. No one seemed liable to take charge, either, with the aunt not speaking and the niece’s fingers stuck together. “Won’t you sit down?” he asked finally, when Miss Kane stopped staring at her hand like Lady Macbeth.
    “Of course.” She did, on a comfortable-looking armchair, immediately tucking her offending fingers in her skirts, out of sight. That left him to choose between a low, pillow-strewn sofa and a hard-backed chair with claw-foot legs. He chose the sofa.
    Mrs. Goudge made gagging sounds and Miss Kane leaped to her feet. “Oh, no, not there!”
    Before Stony could react, a brown-and-white pillow detached itself from the sofa, yawned, stretched, and unfolded into the fattest, ugliest, smelliest bulldog Stony had ever encountered. He held out his fingers, in hope that at least someone in this household