A Gentleman Never Calls Empty-Handed
The drawing room was exploding. At least, that was how it appeared to Benjamin Priestley. There was, in his estimation, simply no other way to describe the sight of a space large enough to accommodate several dozen people packed so densely with flowers that one could scarcely find a place to set one's foot.
From the very heart of that floral detonation, the man presumed to be the culprit answered with a brilliant smile.
"I was given to understand that a gentleman never calls upon a lady without bringing a gift. It is considered a virtue, I believe."
"And that, I take it, is your justification for stripping an entire flower garden bare and cramming it into my drawing room?"
A familiar ache began to gather at the nape of his neck. Benjamin was just about to clutch his head when a grating cry split the air.
"Release!"
Benjamin's eyes flew wide.
"What in heaven's name—"
"Release! Release!"
It was a rather militant demand to be echoing through a ducal drawing room. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the perpetrator was not far away. With a trembling finger, Benjamin pointed toward a gilded birdcage that had been all but swallowed among the flowers.
"Your Highness, what on earth is that?"
"It is a parrot."
"I am perfectly aware of what a parrot is!"
"Release!"
As if in answer to Benjamin's half-screamed question, the parrot let out a thunderous squawk and began thrashing its brilliantly colored wings with such vigor that the entire cage shuddered.
"Why, precisely, is that deranged bird occupying the center of my drawing room—"
"Do calm yourself, my dear."
Fortunately, it was Angeline who appeared behind him. Rather less fortunately, she had brought with her Wilhelmina—who might reasonably be considered the architect of this entire disaster.
"Release! Release!"
Angeline regarded the enormous, flapping bird for a moment, then made a thoughtful sound.
"Wouldn't it be kinder to let the poor thing out?"
"Are you quite serious, Angie?"
Benjamin asked, very nearly in terror.
"I—ah—well, I rather think that would be a terrible—"
"Release!"
Whether the parrot's booming demands struck her as threatening or not, the Duchess—who wielded something approaching absolute authority over her husband—merely smiled and offered her suggestion.
"If we simply give it what it wants, it might at least settle down, don't you think?"
"I—ah—do you truly believe so...?"
Benjamin's agreement was, at best, halfhearted. Angeline paid it no mind and nodded to the butler.
"Freedom!"
The instant the cage door opened, the parrot burst free, beating its enormous wings as it soared up into the drawing-room air.
"Thank you! Thank you!"
After a leisurely circuit of the room, the parrot alighted gently at Angeline's side. Benjamin looked as though he might suffer a heart attack on the spot, but the outlaw bird merely nuzzled her shoulder with unexpected affection, as if to express its gratitude.
"Thank you, thank you."
"My goodness, what lovely manners."
"A-Angie, do be careful. I really think you ought to step behind me—"
"That's very kind, my dear, but I'm quite all right. See how gentle it is?"
"Thank you! Thank you!"
Surveying the entire scene, Wilhelmina found herself wondering: Could there exist, anywhere in the world, a more spectacular mess than this?
The answer she gave herself was no. First, however, she would need to have a word with the man principally responsible for this dizzying spectacle.
"Choosing a gift must have been terribly tedious for you, Your Highness. Had I known you intended to exercise quite this much purchasing power at the Winster flower market, I might have asked you to hire me a gardener instead."
"It was you yourself, Miss Priestley, who advised me that a dramatic and ostentatious gift—one certain to set the gossips talking—would be the wiser choice."
"Good heavens. To think you would honor a passing remark of mine as though it were the Magna Carta itself."
Wilhelmina gave a derisive little snort.
"I'm so moved I could weep."
"Gah—w-wait a moment!"
Cassian had been on the verge of pointing out Wilhelmina's conspicuously dry eyes when Benjamin's scream cut through the room.
"Oh, darling, no! My husband's hair is far too sparse to serve as nesting material!"
"I have never considered it particularly sparse—ugh, you damned bird!"
"Thank you, thank you!"
The sight of Benjamin with a thrashing parrot perched on his head, yanking out his hair by the fistful, was... well. How to put it? Wilhelmina knew at least this much: it was a spectacle that must never, under any circumstances, reach the public. She sighed and asked,
"What, exactly, is that outlaw?"
"It is a parrot."
"You appear to have missed the point of the question. I am asking why you brought a parrot in the first place."
"I was told that keeping rare pet birds has become quite the fashion among the ladies of Winster."
Cassian shrugged, the picture of unbothered composure.
"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest!"
As if on cue, the parrot—still gripping Benjamin's hair in a death clutch—shrieked at the top of its lungs.
"Yo-ho-ho! And a bottle of rum!"
Of course it did. Wilhelmina shook her head.
"Keeping pet birds may well be in fashion, but I rather doubt that keeping a parrot formerly belonging to a pirate has ever been fashionable—or ever will be."
"Perhaps not."
Wilhelmina eyed Cassian, who no longer even bothered to deny it, and added with a wry look,
"Quite. Especially given the rather high probability that the original owner had his skull caved in some time ago by the gentleman standing beside me."
"Haha. Surely not."
Cassian dismissed it lightly, but Wilhelmina paid him no mind.
"Blood diamonds, perhaps. A bloodstained parrot, I suspect, is a rather harder sell."
"Am I to take it, then, that Miss Priestley intends to refuse my gift?"
Wilhelmina did not answer. She merely grinned—the grin of a mischief-maker with a thousand schemes tucked up her sleeve.
"I said everyone else would decline. I never said I was included in that number."
She laughed, watching her elder brother, who had only just been freed from the parrot's clutches with the aid of his wife.
"When a gift promises a spectacle like that whenever I find myself bored, why on earth would I turn it down?"
"I rather thought that would be your answer, Miss Priestley."
"Besides, our Duchess seems even more taken with the creature than I am."
"Wilhelmina!"
The words had scarcely left her mouth before Angeline asked, eyes sparkling,
"Are you going to give this little one a name?"
"You're welcome to name it yourself, if you'd like."
"Oh my, then I shan't refuse. Chestnut! Come here, darling."
Angeline stroked the parrot as it waddled over to her. Wilhelmina suspected the bird was still clutching at least five strands of Benjamin's hair, but Angie did not appear to mind in the slightest.
"From now on, your name is Chestnut. Do you like it?"
"Angie, is there really any need to name a creature we shall be sending back shortly?"
Wilhelmina watched Angeline thoroughly pretend not to hear her husband's desperate plea, then shook her head. She turned to Cassian.
"Now that you're here, you will stay for tea, I presume?"
"I should not dream of refusing."
"Then perhaps you might start by clearing away some of those flower baskets? I'm afraid seating is rather scarce, owing to a somewhat tactless gift from a certain someone."
Even faced with a suggestion so plainly laced with hostility, Cassian did not so much as twitch an eyebrow. He merely smiled.
"It would be my pleasure."
That afternoon, as Cassian took tea amid the wreckage of his own making, the parrot seized every available opportunity to belt out pirate songs from somewhere in the drawing room. Whenever Benjamin, at the end of his patience, sent someone to catch it, the bird displayed the additional talent of fleeing to the chandelier.
Benjamin raged that the wretched creature would drag the family's dignity into the abyss, but his desperate appeals made not the slightest impression on Angeline or the two children, who had already fallen thoroughly under Chestnut's spell. Isabel and George were soon tearing down the corridors shrieking "Yo-ho-ho!" at the top of their lungs, and Benjamin, groaning, made an early retreat.
But who could have guessed that the day's chaos was merely the overture to everything that would follow... at least as far as Benjamin was concerned. For one thing, he would now have to look on, wide-eyed and powerless, as Cassian Windstor crossed the threshold of his house with exhausting daily regularity.