Norbert and Smedley
111: Bite Your Tongue
Jeeves was waiting with the Bentley when Smedley and Penelope reached the front drive. When he saw Smedley’s face, still red with embarrassment—and Smedley himself tongue-tied and gulping for air—he sprang from the vehicle and ran to Smedley’s assistance. “Mr. Smedley, er, I mean, Lord Nilpaster, sir, are you quite all right? Have you had a fright? Has the foghorn blasted you one? Let me help you.”
“Oh, Jeeves, heavens no. Smedley’s fine. We’ve just done a bit of kissing on the way,” said Penelope with a wink.
Smedley spluttered and hiccoughed at Penelope’s remark.
Jeeves caught the merry look in Penelope’s eye and nearly laughed out loud, but Norbert shouted behind him, startling him into biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood. “Whath, thir? I’m thorry, I dithn’t cath that,” said Jeeves.
“Jeeves!” said Norbert sternly. “You haven’t been hitting the sauce, have you? I can’t understand a bloody word.”
“No, no,” said Jeeves, shaking his head violently. “The tongue.” He pointed. “I bit it.”
“Oh, I see. Well, then, I expect you’ll be okay to drive. To Nilpaster Manor, shall we? And with haste. I should hate for that cow that Margaret calls a mother to change her mind and decide that she or Margaret should accompany us.”
“Right, thir,” said Jeeves.
Norbert turned to Smedley and Penelope. “Here’s my plan: Penelope, I need you to be thinking of the sexiest bombshell of a friend of yours that you can, one who will agree to play the part of the wronged woman on Friday night. She may even throw a drink in my face if she likes.”
“What?” said Smedley.
“Oh, golly. This will be fun,” said Penelope. “Calista had a romance go sour a few months ago—the cad up and left the country. Are you sure you want to stand in for him?”
“I’d rather take what Calista dishes out than spend a lifetime coping with Margaret’s mother,” said Norbert. “Who else have you got? I’ll need another for Saturday night, and another for the following weekend, and maybe for a fortnight after that. There’s no telling how much persistence Margaret—or her mother—will show now they know I’m their ticket to Nilpaster Manor. It turns out they’ve wanted to see what’s behind that garden wall for the last decade.”
“Garden wall?” said Penelope.
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Jeeves. “I do believe that’s the wall that was spoken of in the pub in town.”
Jeeves saw Norbert and Penelope turned expectant gazes on Smedley through his rearview mirror. Smedley, Jeeves noted, did not have a lot of color. In fact, he looked remarkably pale and his lips were clamped shut in the thinnest of lines.
112: The Secret Garden
Penelope took Smedley’s hand and held it tenderly in hers. “My prince, if you don’t wish to speak of the garden, then you shouldn’t; the manor is, after all, your private home.”
Smedley smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Snow White.” He leaned against her affectionately. “It’s an awkward subject, you see. I suppose all families have their skeletons in the closet. Wouldn’t you say that’s true, Norbert?”
Norbert eyed Smedley, eager to hear more. “Why certainly. Our family’s got one or two skeletons wandering about, maybe a few more when my father’s been in his cups.” He gave a wink. “But your family’s a good sort, well-respected and all that, so what’s the problem old chap? What have you to be concerned about? You can tell your friends here. It’s just me, your best buddy in the world, who wishes nothing but the best for you; your future bride, who will share in all your cares and concerns from now until eternity; and Jeeves, who is sworn to secrecy by the oath of all valets—and I think Jeeves already proved his honor, hasn’t he?”
Jeeves looked upon the group in the rearview mirror, and saw that Penelope was worried for Smedley. The way she’s got her lips pursed, she’s trying to keep Smedley’s shut for him, he thought.
“Well,” said Smedley, and he paused to draw in a deep breath. Norbert and Penelope drew in deep breaths with him, and Jeeves was certain the atmospheric pressure in the car dropped enough to make his ears pop. “Well, my family’s got enough for a bloody cemetery, and we keep them all in the bloody garden. To cut down on gossip, Lord Nilly has sealed it off from the world. No one’s to go in or out, including me. And that’s the long and the short of it!”
Penelope let out a sigh of relief, and with her, Jeeves did, too.
Norbert was not to be dissuaded, however, and his memory for gossip was far better than it had ever been for sums and figures. If he’d retained information this well at school, thought Jeeves, he’d have been at the top of his term. “But Jeeves and Jonesy overheard the townsfolk talking about turbaned Africans coming and going through the garden gate in the dead of night.”
“Impossible,” said Smedley. “I’ve never heard of such of thing, nor do I know of such a gate. The valets did hear about it in an inn, over pints. I suspect the reporter might have been in his cups at the time, and if allowed to continue, might next have said the people arrived on pink elephants.”
“Right,” said Norbert, unconvinced.
Jeeves didn’t blame Norbert. The stories he and Jonesy’d heard weren’t the tales of drunken revelers. Something was going on, something Smedley didn’t wish to share. He only hoped it wasn’t anything likely to get Smedley into trouble. Given the expense of running an estate these days, who knew what lengths Lord Nilpaster had gone to in order to make ends meet? It would pay to keep an eye out for the boy’s interests, of that he was certain, because the boy certainly couldn’t be trusted to look out for himself.
113: Where We Are
Catching up with our story:
We find Smedley, his beautiful (to him) Penelope and Norbert, driven by Jeeves in the Bentley on their way back to Nilpaster Manor. They have just (narrowly) escaped from Margaret's childhood home, where they met Margaret's domineering foghorn-voiced mother and incompetent henpecked father, and now Norbert has begged them to help him break off his engagement.
Smedley and Penelope are eager to help, because Margaret's mother wants to make it a double wedding (to ride on the coattails of the Smedley--Lord Nilpaster's--social standing) and they want to stay as far from the woman as possible.
Norbert has recalled gossip he heard about Nilpaster Manor and the former Lord Nilpaster (fondly known as Willy Nilly), but Smedley, if he knows anything, isn't willing to divulge the secrets.
Meanwhile, we've left Smedley's valet, Jonesy, back at Nilpaster Manor with Ms. Maple, whom the others think is the elderly housekeeper that has been in the family for years. Smedley refers to her as Sour Maple behind her back. Jonesy knows it is really Maple's beautiful daughter, Candace, and he is quite sweet on her--she hides behind a cloak, afraid she'll lose her position if the truth is discovered. Her mother is ill and confined to bed.
Right now, Smedley wants to know what's been going on around Nilpaster Manor, because he has a feeling that there are secrets he's not meant to discover--and he wants to find them out before Norbert does. He also wants to keep his bride-to-be happy, and get rid of Margaret (or at least make sure he doesn't have to share his wedding with her); and if his best friend, Norbert, is certain he doesn't want to marry the girl (and why shouldn't he be, he's only known her for 48 hours and proposed on a whim without good reason?) then Smedley will do his best to help him get out of the situation.
114: Moving House
When Smedley dismissed the townspeople’s claims of turbaned Africans coming and going through the garden gates in the dead of night as the talk of drunkards, saying he expected to hear they’d been riding pink elephants, Jeeves knew Smedley was trying to distract Norbert from the truth—whatever the truth might be. However, loyal valet that he was, he didn’t question Smedley’s motives. “No, sir. They made no mention of pink elephants. It was lions, sir. For the men, that was. The women rode tigers wearing collars made of emeralds. Sounded like quite the magnificent sight, if you ask me.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the color slowly return to Smedley’s face, and the worry lines around Penelope’s eyes relax. Norbert glared back at him. “I’d like to have seen that,” he added.
Well, so what, Jeeves thought. I may be Mr. Norbert’s valet, but my brother works for Mr. Smedley, and Mr. Smedley needs my help right now. Norbert crossed the line when he pressed him for information. ‘Tis not fitting of a gentleman, and he knows better.
“So what sort of trouble do you think Jonesy’s gotten himself into while we’ve been gone?” Smedley asked. “You think he’ll be begging to return to London, or can I get him to stay on at Nilpaster? I do hope he can learn to put up with old Maple.”
Jeeves coughed so hard he nearly ran the Bentley off the road. He pulled over for a minute until he recovered. “I expect Jonesy will manage,” he said. “Better him than me.”
“What are you thinking, Smedley?” asked Norbert.
“I thought perhaps I would leave Jonesy at Nilpaster to sort out a staff and such with Maple while I accompany Penelope back to London. I need to make arrangements for moving to the country.”
“Moving! You’re moving?” said Penelope.
“Of course, darling. There’s nothing to keep me in London, now. I’ll need to come to speed on Old Willy Nilly’s business interests, but I can oversee them just as easily from Nilpaster as I can in London, and the country life is ever so much nicer. You’ll see. We’ll keep a flat in London for when we need a bit of excitement.” He smiled to himself and nodded. “But I must have a dog. Walks aren’t much fun without one. Don’t suppose you’d part with Woofington, would you, Norbert? I think he’d fancy life at Nilpaster, and you’d be welcome to visit him as often as you like as long as you don’t bring Margaret’s mother.”
“Seeing as how I intend to show Margaret my “true” self so she breaks off our engagement, I can’t imagine that will be a problem. But I’ll have to think about the dog.”
115: White Flag
Jonesy wiped the sweat from his brow, then dried his hands on the front of his uniform. How glad he was Jeeves couldn’t see him at that moment, his trousers smeared with mud and his shirt a rumpled mess—he’d have leaves and twigs in his hair, too, if he had any hair to catch them in—and all because he’d been sent to see to the blasted garden gate. The secret garden gate. The gate he wasn’t to speak about, so he wouldn’t even have the pleasure of complaining about his ill-treatment at the hands of sour old Maple at the end of the day. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking, getting all gormy on the lass, when all she saw in him was a pair of hands to operate her bloody pruning shears.
He looked up at the sun, which steadfastly dodged the clouds that scudded across the sky, insisting instead on blazing down upon his back, a back that remained covered by the butler’s coat he didn’t dare remove for fear of further embarrassing those of his profession. Didn’t the clouds know it was June? In bloody England? The least they could do was let loose with a rain shower or two so he could break for a cup of tea.
“Jeeves?” Candice Maple’s voice called sweetly from the house.
He cringed. Every time he'd seen her, she’d added to his list. She'd been sweet about it, but behind the lilt in her voice and the twinkle in her eyes, and that sweet way she had of looking at him that made his heart go pittery-pat, was a taskmaster who made the principal at the boys' school pale in comparison. Even as his pulse quickened in a show of affection, his muscles threatened to go on the warpath, sending his heart plummeting to the depths of his stomach and his stomach belly-flopping to the ground in front of her.
“Jeeves? Oh, you poor man! What are you doing in that jacket? Come, sit down, and remove it at once. I’ve brought you afternoon tea. I thought I’d join you, out here where it’s private.” She put her arm around him, and to his alarm, his muscles surrendered and followed her docilely, with more strength and energy than he thought possible. He wanted to be angry with her, but his brain wouldn't cooperate, either. It had stumbled over a single word and kept repeating it, over and over. Private. She'd said the word private.
Before he knew it, his jacket was off, he was seated next to Candice Maple and his arm rested on the back of her chair. Then it slipped forward. He couldn’t quite explain how—perhaps he was weak from exertion—but it came to rest gently against her waist and he found himself leaning slightly toward her. And perhaps she thought he needed propping, because she leaned into him and placed her head against his chest. His started to pound so hard, he was afraid her head would bounce away from him, and so he put his hand tenderly across her cheek. She turned and wrapped her arms around him, and then…
The Bentley pulled into the drive and Jonesy heard Norbert's voice calling out.
“Woofington! Where are you?” called Norbert. “Get that Jonesy to let you out. I’ve missed you boy!”
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