Fair Fatality

Fair Fatality Maggie MacKeever

AN [e-reads]BOOK N e w Yo r k , N Y

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the Author. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 1980 by Maggie MacKeever First e-reads publication 2002 www.e-reads.com ISBN 0-7592-4148-1

Table of Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty One Chapter Twenty Two Chapter Twenty Three Chapter Twenty Four Chapter Twenty Five

1 10 16 23 29 36 43 49 58 66 74 82 89 96 104 113 121 128 135 142 151 160 168 176 184

One “Poppycock!” Lady Easterling said bluntly. “You needn’t try and pull the wool over my eyes. Georgiana is an old griffin! A gorgon! A Tartar! There is no use thinking to bamboozle me into believing you rub on tolerably well.” The target of these frank remarks, seated across from Lady Easterling in the elegant berlin coach, merely smiled. “You refine too much upon it, Jaisy, I promise you. Your aunt is very civil to me.” To this patent clanker, Lady Easterling responded with incredulity. “My aunt Georgiana ain’t been civil to anyone in her entire life.” Her huge blue eyes filled with easy tears. “My poor Sara! To have come down so far in the world that you must hire out as companion to an old dragon like Georgiana — oh! It is very sad.” “Jaisy!” Rather helplessly, Sara Valentine extracted a handkerchief from her reticule and offered it to her friend. “It is not so bad as all that! I was very fortunate, you know, that the dowager duchess took me in, else I might have had to go as a governess. You know that would not have suited me. Now dry your eyes like a good girl and let’s have no more of these megrims!” Thus abjured, Lady Easterling complied. It was not that she was convinced her beloved Sara was not misused; Sara might say what she chose, she would not persuade Lady Easterling that an existence as companion to the shrewish Dowager Duchess of Blackwood could be anything but a cat-and-dog-life. But Lady Easterling was a volatile creature, and not in the habit of sustaining any emotion for more than moments. “Isn’t it fortunate,” she inquired, “that things have fallen out this way? At last I am to have my Season, and you are to see that I go on 1

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properly, because you know perfectly how to conduct yourself in society. We shall be merry as crickets! But how is it, Sara, that you are left on the shelf? You must be seven-and-twenty now because you are four years older than myself. Yet here I am a widow and you are at your last prayers! Life is an extraordinary affair! You are a well-behaved female, with your pretty profile — what was it Jevon used to say of you? A face like one might find on a Greek statue? Which I never thought particularly flattering, because who wants to look like a tedious old statue, but you know what Jevon is! I daresay he meant well! And your quiet ladylike manner. I wonder you failed to attract!” To this spate of words, Miss Valentine responded with a laugh. “Your brother talks a lot of flummery, as do you. You will see a great deal of Jevon in London, Jaisy; he is quite your aunt’s pet.” “More to the point,” Lady Easterling said shrewdly, “he’s her heir. Trust Jevon to feather his nest!” Her blue eyes moved speculatively over her friend. “Have you still a tendre for my brother, Sara?” On Miss Valentine’s classical features — nicely embellished by a generous Nature with clear gray eyes and abundant black hair — bloomed a rosy flush. “Good gracious, Jaisy! What fustian you talk! Your brother has very great expectations, he is very much á la mode—” “Flim-flam!” interrupted Lady Easterling rudely. “Next you will say you are a penniless companion and there is a great disparity in stations and you cannot look so far above yourself. It ain’t at all like you to be talking such nonsense! Now you’re looking at me in that disapproving manner and I wish that you would not, because it don’t do the least good. I remember very well that you were used to follow Jevon everywhere. I also remember that he let you!” “We were only children, Jaisy!” Miss Valentine’s cheeks had grown redder yet. “Don’t make a piece of work of it.” “Have I put you in a tweak?” inquired Lady Easterling, with bright interest. She received no response. “I suppose I should not have been so busy about your affairs. Lud, Sara! It ain’t like you to fly into the boughs over trifles. But since you seem to wish it, I cry your pardon. There! Wasn’t that prettily done of me?” “I am not in a tweak!” Miss Valentine responded indignantly. Since Sara, despite her protestations, was definitely in a miff, a brief silence fell upon the berlin. This elegant equipage was the property of the Dowager Duchess of Blackwood, a très grande dame who claimed 2

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the privilege of employing Sara Valentine, and the much more dubious honor of being aunt to the volatile Lady Easterling. Drawn by four properly highbred and perfectly matched bays, upon which Lady Easterling had bestowed the accolade of “prime bits of blood,” the ribbons tooled expertly by the many-caped coachman on his copper box, the vehicle made a sight as pretty as any that clattered along the London turnpike. On its exterior, which was laden down with trunks and bandboxes and portmanteaux, the berlin sported a coat of arms. Its interior — equipped with every conceivable convenience from secret compartments for valuables to a table with drawers, a crystal chandelier that hung from the ceiling, and an ormolu clock, and the roof, doors and seats upholstered with white and sky-blue Pekinese silk — was correspondingly magnificent. Disposed very comfortably on one sky-blue silk-lined seat was Lady Easterling. Across from her, Miss Valentine was surrounded by additional bandboxes, a large cosmetic case, a picnic basket and other feminine miscellania. Despite the luxuriousness of their equipage, designed expressly to alleviate the myriad discomforts of long-distance travel — in this instance a trek from London into the country and back again, so that Miss Valentine might fetch her employer’s niece to town — the journey had not been without hardship. For this incommodation, the berlin must not be held at fault. Lady Easterling was not a good traveler, was inspired by the ennui attendant upon forced inactivity to issue continual complaint. Her aunt’s berlin did not please her; the pace at which they traveled was either too slow or too fast; the coachman was determined to overturn them in a ditch — which comments had done nothing to ingratiate her ladyship with that superior individual, who fancied himself a first-rate hand. It was Sara who had to soothe his ruffled feathers, as it had been her lot to placate the landlord of the inn where they’d broken their journey, a man Lady Easterling had accused of being in league with highwaymen for no good reason save that she disliked his looks. Initially, Miss Valentine had looked forward to Jaisy’s sojourn in London as a happy interruption in her dreary routine. Now she had begun to wonder if there might not be some virtue in uninterrupted dreariness. “I don’t know why you should be so devilish out of humor, Sara!” said Lady Easterling irritably. “I’m the one who’ll have to endure 3

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Georgiana’s incessant crotchets. She always rips up at me, even when I try and please her — or when I did try and please her, because I’ve given it up! It is the queerest thing that she should be so high in the instep, because none other of the family is so devilish starched-up!” Lady Easterling’s marriage to an elderly gentleman of sporting inclination had left her not only a wealthy widow but the possessor of a most colorful vocabulary. Miss Valentine, whose duty it was to enlighten Lady Easterling as regarded the proprieties, so that the ton might be persuaded to accept her as the well-brought-up young woman that she so unfortunately was not, quailed at the prospect. Yet she was fond of Jaisy, who — for all her lack of delicate principles; her possession of such undesirable traits as selfishness, stubbornness and an appalling determination to have her own way — was as goodhearted a creature as Sara had ever known. Perhaps that good heart might be moved on behalf of Lady Easterling’s despised — and, Sara privately admitted, despicable — aunt. “It was very kind of Lady Blackwood,” she offered, toward that end, “to invite you to stay with her for the Season, so that you might be presented to polite society.” Lady Easterling bounced several inches into the air as the carriage jolted over a particularly large pothole. “That wretched man means to overturn us, and you shan’t convince me otherwise. It’s just like Georgiana to hire a cow-handed coachman; I’ll warrant she’d be pleased as punch if he did land us in a ditch because she don’t like me above half.” “Jaisy, you mustn’t say such things!” Miss Valentine, laden down as she was with bandboxes and picnic basket and cosmetic case, could not have risen from her seat even in case of dire emergency. “Just the other day your aunt spoke of you very kindly.” “Shame, Sara!” retorted her ladyship, grinning. “Such whoppers! Georgiana ain’t in the habit of saying kind things. Moreover, it would have been much better of Georgiana to have given me a Season when I first wanted, because then I wouldn’t have married Easterling right out of the schoolroom, and I wouldn’t have had to spend a whole year in mourning. You are looking at me in a very speaking manner. You can’t think I loved him — he was old enough to be my grandfather! Still, he did leave me well-heeled, so I shouldn’t grumble.” “No, you should not.” Without a great deal of enthusiasm, Miss Valentine embarked upon her task. “Jaisy, I hope you will not take it 4

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amiss when I say that you are going on in a very bad way. You should not speak in such a manner about Easterling, or use vulgar expressions, or do anything that will lead persons of the first consideration to adjudge you guilty of shockingly irregular conduct. All of your aunt’s influence will avail you nothing if you go beyond the line of being pleasing, my pet.” Lady Easterling eyed her friend with frank astonishment. “The deuce you say!” She giggled at Sara’s dismay. “Don’t fly into alt! I’m only bamming you! Of course I am wishful of acquiring town-bronze — but you needn’t put yourself out! I expect that I shall make an enviable match as quick as winking.” Miss Valentine, in turn, gaped at Lady Easterling. Not without some justification did her ladyship profess herself complete to a shade. Possessed of a fortune so large that she might without hesitation bedeck herself in the very highest kick of fashion. Lady Easterling on this occasion wore a wine-colored pelisse trimmed with ermine, black gloves and kid half boots, an ermine shako with orange beads and tassels, and held in her lap an ermine muff. “Just like that?” Sara inquired faintly. “Jaisy, eligible gentlemen do not grow on trees!” “Perhaps not in your experience,” Lady Easterling replied bluntly, “but that is because you act as if you don’t have a ha ‘porth of spirit, which I happen to know you do! And I expect that you make no effort to be conciliating, which the gentlemen seem to like. Anyway, everyone knows you’re a bluestocking!” Having explained her friend’s lamentable spinster status to her own satisfaction, she abandoned the topic. “I have thought about it very much, and I have decided that my best course of action is to immediately re-wed. I liked marriage very well, even with Easterling; certainly I liked it better than I shall like living with my aunt Georgiana, who is always cross as crabs! I’ll wager we shan’t be in the house above two minutes before she starts ringing a peal over me. One thing I’ll say for Easterling: he never gave me the rough edge of his tongue!” Miss Valentine, as a result of these airy confidences, was left without appropriate comment. While trying to assemble her thoughts, she moved the picnic basket, which had with the jolting of the carriage achieved an uncomfortable position against her ribs. “You ought to try it yourself,” Lady Easterling offered. “Marriage, that is!” Again, a flush stained Miss Valentine’s cheeks. “I do not think of it,” she said repressively, and with a profound disregard for the truth. “Since you do, who is to be the lucky bridegroom?” 5

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“You ask such silly questions, Sara! How can I say when I haven’t met him yet?” Lady Easterling stroked her muff. “At all events, only the best will do. He must be a particularly elegant, handsome man, most exemplary in politeness and manner; he must be très sympathique. And he must dote on me à la folie, and be quite willing to expire at my feet!” In one thing, Miss Valentine reflected, her friend had not changed: In moments of exuberance Jaisy still tended toward French, a language of which she fondly, if mistakenly, believed she had a sound grasp. “What would that accomplish, pray? You can hardly marry a suitor who has expired at your feet.” “I didn’t mean that he should, you goose, only that he should be willing to!” Lady Easterling gurgled with laughter. “I see what it is, you’re roasting me again! Oh, Sara, to be at last in London — I shall like it of all things! The Italian Opera and Covent Garden and Drury Lane, routs and fêtes and soirées, Hyde Park and Almack’s and Oxford Street!” She lapsed into roseate visions of the metropolis. Miss Valentine’s ruminations were, alas, a great deal less blissful, dealing as they did with curbing the excesses of a young lady who had been greeted with adulation in her cradle and thereafter never deprived of it, who had been petted and pampered and cosseted until she considered such treatment her just due. Were Jaisy to come to grief in London, to commit any one of the countless solecisms which would result in social disgrace, Sara would be held to blame — as Sara’s employer had bluntly informed her, with the added promise that in such event she would have Sara’s head on a platter and henceforth carved to mincemeat. Nor was there anything in the dowager duchess’s character to lead Sara to doubt the sincerity of this threat. Yet how to go about it? How to fashion a well-behaved young lady out of a highly capricious damsel whose past career had amply demonstrated a tendency to run counter to conventional behavior at every opportunity? Sara was in the highly unenviable position of being obliged to fashion a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Of this assessment of her character, Lady Easterling was blissfully unaware — though had she been made privy to it, she would have cheerfully agreed. Jaisy nurtured few delusions concerning herself; she knew she was reckless and extravagant and wild to a fault. However, at this given moment, Jaisy was not contemplating her var6

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ious little quirks. Instead she was plotting her brilliant entry into the haut ton. She would be the cynosure of all eyes, anticipated Lady Easterling; a much-courted lady accustomed to moving in the highest circles of society, tormented on all sides for an approving glance. At least half the gentlemen in London would dangle at her slipper-strings; she would find it amusing to keep them dangling until she decided in which direction she would toss her handkerchief. Having once sampled freedom from the shackles that hampered a single lady, Jaisy was not enthused at assuming those shackles again. It would not be for long, she consoled herself, and this time she would not throw herself away on an elderly gentleman. Actually, Easterling had doted on her, had made it his ambition to gratify her every whim, but all the same — and in the interim, she would make a stir in the world. It was not without foundation that Lady Easterling cherished so high an opinion of herself. If she fondly believed that every gentleman who had ever looked on her had done so with the eye of love, she wasn’t far wrong; if she expected to beat to flinders every other beauty present in London this Season, she had no reason to expect that she would not. Lady Easterling was an incomparably lovely damsel, with golden curls cropped in the current mode and clustering around her face, which was comprised of features so perfectly beautiful that they defied analysis. Various of Lady Easterling’s admirers had tried to describe those features, impossible as was the task: lips so delightfully lush and rosy that they put the most glorious bloom to shame; skin so fair as to seem almost translucent, through which could be seen a faint and fascinating tracery of veins; a nose simultaneously adorable and sublime; huge blue eyes that teased and tormented — the list went on. The lady’s dimples were roguish, her smile divine; her person was perfection, and her little ankles (though the admirers were not so rag-mannered as to say so to her ladyship, not that Jaisy would have minded one bit) were very neat. In short, all of Lady Easterling’s countless assets dwelt together in the utmost felicity. Nonetheless, though such excesses of adulation were most gratifying to their inspiration, they failed to explain how so young a lady had already set so many hearts afire. This was more a result of expression than of inherent beauty, although of beauty Jaisy possessed a surfeit: she was a bewitching madcap, an arrant minx; and jaded indeed was 7

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the gentleman who could gaze upon that mischievous countenance, observe the merry twinkle in those huge blue eyes, and not realize first that her ladyship was a shocking flirt, and secondly that he wished nothing more in the world than to embark immediately upon a flirtation with her ladyship. “And then,” announced her ladyship, “I shall set myself up in the very latest mode, and you shall come and be my companion, Sara, and you may have as many bonnets as you please!” Ruefully, Miss Valentine glanced at the bonnet on the seat beside her, a confection of large ribbon bows and ruchings and ostrich feathers perched atop the bandboxes and cosmetic case and picnic basket. In all else she had schooled herself to be the ideal servant, meek and uncomplaining, decorous and affable; bonnets were her one remaining frivolity and she indulged herself shamelessly. Were she to continue to indulge that frivolity, via the generous wage paid her by her employer, she had best make an effort to reform the harum-scarum manners of her employer’s scapegrace niece. “That would be very nice,” Sara said diplomatically, “but first we must bring you up to snuff, my pet. Jaisy, I do not know precisely how to phrase this, but—” “Give me the word with no bark on it!” invited Jaisy. “I shan’t take snuff!” Miss Valentine availed herself of a deep breath. “Though you were a belle in the country, you must not expect to have a similarly dazzling career as an acknowledged beauty in London. Things, my dear, are different in the metropolis.” Came a brief silence. Lady Easterling pondered her companion’s remarks, and doubted very much if gentlemen anywhere were so different as all that, which is not an unreasonable viewpoint for a damsel who had all her short life had innumerable admirers in tow. She thought that perhaps her beloved Sara had grown a trifle baconbrained as result of prolonged exposure to the Tartarish dowager duchess. Or perhaps Sara was remembering that she, too, had been an accredited beauty in the country, but in London had failed to attract. “You are in a very teasing mood!” Jaisy responded generously. “I don’t regard it! If bosom bows cannot speak without roundaboutation, I don’t know who may. But you are all about in the head, Sara, if you fear I shan’t take; I’ll wager anything you wish that I’ll be top-of-the8

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trees. How Friday-faced you look! Are you wishing me to the devil? Silly widgeon! On my solemn word of honor, we shall rub along together very well!” The carriage hit yet another pothole. Lady Easterling neatly fielded Sara’s silly hat, then added in a burst of candor: “So long, that is, as you don’t take the addle-pated notion that you may prevent me from cutting a dash!”

9

Two Dusk had fallen upon the metropolis when Lady Blackwood’s travelingcarriage drew to a halt before a freestanding stone-fronted house located in a fashionable section of the metropolis. Built as were the majority of London townhouses. Blackwood House dominated a long strip of land running back from Queen Anne Street. On the foremost portion of the lot presided the residence itself; behind the house lay a brick-enclosed garden; in the very rear, fronting on Duchess Street and reached by a subsidiary road, stood a coach house and stables which could accommodate twelve horses and four coaches. Toward these accommodations the coachman proceeded, having disgorged his passengers in front of Blackwood House. As had the stables, the residence had benefited from the abilities of the brothers Adam, and was noted for its admirable portico and proud display of ornamental ironwork, its Venetian windows, the pedimented door set within a shallow arch. Beyond that pedimented doorway lay an entrance hall japanned in soft shades of slate and green with gilt decoration, embellished with Ionic columns. Beyond the entrance hall lay an abundance of polished wood adorned by the occasional carpet, and an enviable stone staircase. The door was opened to the ladies by no less august a personage than Lady Blackwood’s butler Thomas. His expression, as he gazed upon Miss Valentine, was indicative of great relief. “Lady Blackwood has been inquiring, miss,” Thomas offered in hushed tones, as he ushered the newcomers into the entrance hall, “as to whether you had yet returned. She is in the morning room. If I was to venture an opinion, miss, it would be that you attend her straightaway.” 10

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“On the fidgets, is she?” inquired Lady Easterling with bright interest, while Miss Valentine sighed and untied her frivolous bonnet strings. “I told you we wouldn’t be in the house above two minutes before Georgiana started cutting up stiff! We might as well go and confront the old gorgon in her den and get the worst over with. The morning room you said? Good God, man, what the devil have you done to your hand?” “Thomas, your hand!” echoed Sara. “You have hurt yourself! Oh, dear! You must have displeased Confucious. I am so sorry, Thomas — because if I had been here it would have never come about.” “Confucious?” queried Lady Easterling, as Thomas struggled with a most unprofessional impulse to state a frank and extremely unflattering opinion of his employer’s ill-tempered lap dog. “Is that horrid creature still alive? Jupiter! The brute must be in his dotage. I’ve always held he should have been drowned at birth, but Georgiana took a fancy to him, which just goes to show! Moreover, Sara, I see no reason for you to feel guilty because the beast bit someone — as I recall, Confucious always is biting someone! — because Georgiana herself sent you to fetch me. And if you had been here, it would’ve been you who was bitten, so obviously you have had a very narrow escape!” Having delivered herself of these eminently reasonable sentiments, Jaisy beamed upon her audience. That audience did not appear especially taken with her ladyship’s reasoning. Instead they exchanged glances that smacked very strongly of anticipated fellow-suffering. “Confucious does not snap at me,” Sara said, without overt gratification. “It is one of my tasks to feed the little brute.” Then Thomas suggested diffidently that the Dowager Duchess might have all their heads for washing, were she any longer left twiddling her thumbs. Thus abjured, the ladies passed through the green and slate entrance hall, up the grand stone staircase, to the first-floor morning room, pausing only long enough to shed bonnets and wraps. Blackwood House, as always, was blanketed by a profound hush. In return for the generous wage she paid, Lady Blackwood expected her domestic staff to court exhaustion on her behalf, and was prone to assign any idle-looking servant some highly distasteful task. Thomas himself had on more than one occasion been reduced to such ignominious chores as polishing the furniture with a combination of trea11

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cle, oil, small beer, sulphuric acid and ivory black. Consequently, the entire domestic hierarchy, from superior Thomas down to and including the least significant kitchen maid, dreaded to attract their mistress’s attention as much as they feared to excite her acidulous tongue. Lady Blackwood was enthroned, according to her custom, in her morning room, a chamber most notable for an entablature with a striking frieze of ox skulls married to walls decorated with beautiful relief panels of nymphs dancing. The furnishings included a gilt suite upholstered in Beauvais tapestry, very light frames on straight turned legs. Rare plants grew out of lacquered boxes. A candelabrum of four lights in pale blue-green and white was supported by porcelain elephants’ heads. Seated in a massive chair ornately carved and gilded with scrolled arms that terminated in eagles’ heads with sharp savage beaks, the dowager duchess clasped upon her lap a bundle of multicolored fur through which protruded a damp black nose and the scant remnants of what had once been an exceptionally fine set of viciously sharp teeth. Though time may have diminished Confucious’s ability to wreak mass mayhem among his foes, it had not similarly dulled his less amiable instincts. He pointed his nose at the doorway and snarled. In this manner interrupted in her self-appointed task of hand-feeding her beloved pet a repellant-looking mixture from a china bowl, Lady Blackwood also directed her attention to the interlopers. A thin, elegant lady in her mid-sixties, Lady Blackwood was every inch the aristocrat, from the top of her exquisitely coifed white head to the tip of her nimble toes. She was not beautiful, nor had she ever been; and like her ill-tempered pet, the dowager duchess had suffered the ravages of time. Eyes narrowed, Lady Blackwood glared in a distinctly inhospitable manner at her niece. That keen regard, Jaisy cheerfully returned. “Well, miss?” snapped the dowager duchess. “Have you nothing to say to me?” “Certainly I do!” said Jaisy promptly, and seated herself without further ado — and without her aunt’s permission — in a delicate armchair, “though I can’t think how you knew! First I must thank you for having me with you in London, even though I do think you might have invited me before. But never mind that! Had you given me my Season when I came of age, I would not have married Easterling; and say what you will about Easterling, he was a great gun!” 12

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Unaccustomed to young ladies who dared address her disrespectfully, the dowager duchess scowled so severely that her eyebrows almost met atop her nose. Very well acquainted with the dowager’s methods of dealing with those hapless creatures who roused her displeasure, Sara caught her breath. “Don’t hover, you silly twit!” snapped Lady Blackwood, thus reminded of the presence of a hireling upon whom she might without reservation vent her wrath. Cowed, Sara withdrew to a far corner of the chamber. The dowager returned her attention to her niece. “As for you, my girl, I have no desire whatsoever to discuss Easterling.” “No, and I don’t know why you should!” retorted Jaisy, with unabated good cheer. “He didn’t like you above half, either! Said you was a — but never mind that! The fact is that I was in the devil of a pucker until your invite came. I was set on coming to London, but I wasn’t sure how the thing could be arranged — which brings to mind something that I particularly wished to say to you, aunt!” “Oh?” said the duchess, but in so ominous a tone that Sara, in her corner, shuddered. “Indeed!” responded Lady Easterling, archly. “I must tell you that the arrangements made for our journey here were not at all what I am accustomed to. The inn where we paused for refreshment was a very shabby place, and no matter what Sara may say to the contrary, I’ll wager the landlord was in league with highwaymen. We would probably have been waylaid en route had I not made known my suspicions — because the landlord knew we were on our guard, and therefore his accomplices dared not waylay us!” A colossal ruin indeed was the dowager duchess’s face, and on those raddled features now was an expression of the utmost disfavor. “Poppycock!” she said. Promptly, Lady Easterling demonstrated not only her sublime disregard of divergent viewpoints, but the remarkably one-track quality of her thoughts. “And it is a very good thing,” she added severely, “that I did warn off the scoundrel, because your coachman would doubtless have delivered us right up! You are pulling a long face, aunt; I assure you the man is quite cowhanded! At times I truly thought he was wishful of overturning us in a ditch — but now I see that was a cork-brained notion, because much as you may disapprove of me, it would avail you nothing if I broke my neck!” Having absolved her 13

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aunt of malice aforethought, Jaisy smiled. “I am not complaining, mind!” The dowager duchess — who had sat so motionless during these artless confidences that her lap dog had taken umbrage, as result of which he had been abruptly deposited on the floor — at length stirred. “I am truly sorry to have discommodated you, Jaisy,” she uttered scathingly. To sarcasm, also, Lady Easterling was indifferent. “Are you, by Jove?” she inquired, blue eyes opened wide. “If that don’t beat all! I don’t mind admitting I didn’t expect you would be so agreeable; as I remember you was in the habit of delivering sharp set-downs! Which just goes to show that one shouldn’t count one’s eggs before they’re hatched! Now you will understand why I have decided to set up my own stables. I daresay if I ask him Jevon will put me in the way of something slap.” “Something slap?” echoed the dowager duchess blankly. “A bit of blood, an elegant tit!” Jaisy helpfully supplied. “You know, sweet goers! Easterling taught me to tool the ribbons in prime style, so you needn’t fret!” “Tool the ribbons?” the dowager repeated, in tones indicating an opinion that only in the very nick of time had Lord Easterling succumbed to a putrid sore throat. “Not another word, I beg!” “No?” Lady Easterling cocked her lovely head. “Why not?” “I believe, Jaisy,” Sara cautiously offered, “that your aunt does not think it would be appropriate for you to set up your own stable.” “Hah!” Lady Blackwood irritably shifted position in her chair. “Was that what the chit was nattering on about? ‘Something slap,’ indeed! How dare you bring the stable into my morning room, miss? I am very displeased with you — and with you as well, Sara, because I expressly charged you to check my niece’s starts, and you have disobeyed. This is how you repay my kindness! I suppose you think it was to enjoy a holiday that I sent you to fetch Jaisy! Well, you shall have a holiday when I decide you deserve one, and not a moment before!” “Yes, ma’am,” said Sara meekly, and bent to pick up Confucious, who was worrying her skirts. “Nor need you think your brother will go behind my back,” the dowager continued rather spitefully. “Jevon will not disoblige me so long as I hold the purse strings. He is to attend the soirée that I have 14

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arranged in your honor some days hence. Quite frankly, Jaisy, it must be your object to speedily re-wed.” “Oh, yes!” Jaisy agreed serenely. “I have resolved to wed London’s most eligible bachelor.” “Carlin?” The dowager duchess elevated her brows. “How came you to hear of Carlin, pray? That rascal Jevon will have mentioned him. It has always puzzled me how those two came to be friends, so disparate are they in nature — but that friendship will avail you nothing, miss! Take my advice and put Carlin out of your mind, for he is the highest of sticklers and very much above your touch.” She paused, as if inviting comment. When none was forthcoming, she rose. “Sara will tell you, Jaisy,” the dowager added, almost cordially, “that it is never the least use disputing with me, for I always have the best of it! Just remember that we shall deal well enough together so long as you do not try my civility too high.” On this excellent piece of good advice, she strode majestically from the room. Briefly, silence reigned. Then Jaisy stirred. “By Jove!” she uttered, exhibiting excellent good spirits for a young lady whose aspirations had been squelched so recently by the dowager’s heavy hand, “that was the hardest wheedle I’ve ever had to cut! Dashed if I know why you allow Georgiana to treat you so shabby, when you was once a regular out-and-outer, up to all the rigs — but that’s neither here nor there! I knew that if I was to fly into a pelter, Georgiana would blame you, and so I took all she said in good part, even though I wished to make a great piece of work of it.” Confucious, roused from sleep by Lady Easterling’s indignant voice, raised his head and growled. Hastily, Miss Valentine restrained the dog. Quickly, she squelched the unchristian impulse to allow the beast to savage the newest addition to her already bursting budget of woes. Having ceased to snarl, Confucious commenced panting, to the detriment of Sara’s dove-gray dress. “Thank you, Jaisy, for your sacrifice!” she said, a trifle sardonically. “Pooh! ‘Twas nothing!” On Jaisy’s incomparable features appeared an expression which inspired Sara with foreboding. Nor did Jaisy dispel the misgivings suffered by the lady whose reluctant task it was to make of her a silk purse. “So my aunt Georgiana thinks I may not cast my net so high as Carlin?” she inquired. “I think my aunt Georgiana must have windmills in her head!” 15

Three Unlike his sister Jaisy, Jevon Rutherford appreciated the viper-tongued Dowager Duchess of Blackwood, although he suspected he might feel differently were he obliged to dwell under the hen’s — or harpy’s — foot. As it was, as Georgiana’s heir, Jevon was obliged to make obeisance. Fortunately, Jevon had a large sense of the ridiculous. This enviable attribute, coupled as it was in Jevon’s nature with unflagging good humor and a very thick skin, equipped him admirably to deal with his overbearing relative. Too, Jevon Rutherford was as handsome as Lady Easterling was beautiful, and long accustomed to wheedling ladies of all ages and descriptions into allowing him his head. Despite all his amorous vagaries, and his habit of doing what he pleased, Jevon was neither petulant nor spoiled. Wed to his bedazzling physical appearance — gleaming golden curls and twinkling blue eyes set within indescribably beguiling features that were rendered further fascinating by a disarming smile; a physique that though of only medium height was nicely fashioned withal, with no need of padding to flesh out shoulders or calf — was a tolerant turn of mind and a rather surprising practicality. Though as heir to the Dowager Duchess of Blackwood, Jevon could have borrowed against very great expectations, he instead chose to live within his means, which required the exercise of various economies, for Jevon’s papa had been rather less sharp-sighted, and consequently had bequeathed his son a mere competence. With good humor unabated by even this tragic blow, Jevon staked no more at play than he could afford, and refrained from engaging in the absurd wagers so beloved of his cronies, and in general contrived to be beforehand with the world. Furthermore, such was Jevon’s charm that his friends did not take 16

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umbrage at his rueful tightfistedness. And if Jevon Rutherford was a great deal less circumspect as regarded the ladies, having had under his careless protection an awesome procession of fair barques of frailty, he was only human, after all. As a matter of record, the ladies who favored Jevon Rutherford wreaked no havoc with his slender resources, for when he frankly admitted he could not afford to lavish expensive baubles upon his incognitas, the ladies immediately nobly resolved to give their all for love. Such, then, was the quality of Jevon Rutherford’s existence on a certain April evening in the year 1816. He had that day engaged in the pursuits customary to a gentleman of ample leisure, if slender resource: He had enjoyed colloquies with his tailor and bootmaker, during which he had perfected the creases in his pristine cravat; he had sauntered up St. James’s Street, exhibited himself in White’s bay window, Gentleman Jackson’s Bond Street boxing saloon and at Hyde Park Corner in Tattersall’s. After examining the latest acquisitions at Tatt’s, and engaging with his cronies in desultorily witty conversation on a great many diverse topics — the recent arrival of the Elgin Marbles from Greece; the lamentable condition of the economy as a result of the recently concluded war; the shocking conduct of the exiled Princess of Wales, who on last report had, whilst in Greece, posed for her portrait as the repentant Magdalen, during which sittings she had exhibited a great deal of her person, and not the least remorse — Jevon returned to his lodgings, and a light repast of cold chicken and champagne, before donning evening attire and setting out for Queen Anne Street. Not with any great enthusiasm did Jevon embark upon the brief journey to his aunt’s abode; Jevon was no great fan of the fashionable soirée, where beplumed and bejeweled ladies and gentlemen were crammed together in spaces designed to contain half their number, and conversation was invariably flat. A tête-à-tête with a certain little opera dancer who was currently exhibiting her shapely ankles onstage at Drury Lane would have been much more amusing, he thought. However, it would be monstrous shabby to fail to put in an appearance at a soirée held in his own sister’s honor. Jevon would do his duty, as he did all else, with his customary good grace. At all events, the little opera dancer would still be flashing her pretty ankles onstage at Drury Lane on some future day. 17

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Blackwood House was as overcrowded as he had anticipated; the newspapers would on the following day deem it a shocking squeeze, the highest of accolades. Jevon exchanged pleasantries with his triumphant sister, paid his compliments to his aunt, engaged in a brief conversation concerning the price of wheat, which early that year had fallen to 52s. 6d., then went in search of the member of the household whose company he enjoyed best. Even as Jevon Rutherford decided that in lieu of a certain little opera dancer he would enjoy with his favorite member of the Blackwood household an amiable prose à deux, Sara Valentine was pondering her long acquaintance with the Rutherfords, and the worsening other own situation with the passage of the years. Even though she couldn’t hold a candle to Jaisy’s looks, once Sara’s prospects had been almost as good. Now she had nothing more wonderful to anticipate than an unending endurance of the dowager duchess’s petty domestic tyrannies. This evening was a fine example of Georgiana’s less endearing little ways. The Dowager had refused to heed Sara’s pleas that she be excused from the festivities, had decreed that Sara’s attendance was to be a special treat. A treat! thought Sara gloomily; Georgiana must think her positively cork-brained. The dowager duchess knew very well that Sara hated having come down in the world, and consequently reminded her of it at every opportunity. For no other reason had she demanded Sara’s presence at a social function where she must be reminded constantly of her current lowly status, and constantly mortified. As becomes apparent, Miss Valentine was sadly out of curl. She was weary of trying to please her employer, who had yet on any topic to profess herself satisfied; she detested her own meek and self-effacing servility. Moreover, she suffered the unhappy consequence of having inadvertently espied her reflection beside Jaisy in a looking glass. Lady Easterling had been absolutely stunning in an evening gown that could hardly have been more revealing, with traces of Ionic influence in the sleeves and palmette border at her hemline. Beside her, Miss Valentine — dark hair drawn back in an unfashionable coil at the nape of her neck; the pleasing proportions of her slender person very adequately camouflaged by her simple muslin gown — had looked a dowd. As might have been expected, the dowager duchess required that her hired companion display no presumption, such as costume à 18

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la mode, even while enjoying a treat. Sara sighed. Now she supposed she would be chastised by her employer for escaping at the first opportunity into the garden, where Confucious had been banished, due to an annoyance exhibited by the Pekinese at the mass invasion of his domain. “Aren’t we a sorry pair?” inquired Miss Valentine of her companion in solitude. Possessing no more compassion than good nature, Confucious snarled. At that moment, the garden — a small area walled in with old red brick, in which daylight would reveal a circular pool bordered by annuals, and a single noble tree — was invaded by a third refugee from the revelries. “Well met, my precious!” said Jevon, as he disposed himself beside Sara on an oak bench in the shape of a seashell. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. A wretched crush inside, is it not? How wise of you to seek out fresh air and privacy — and how wise of me to seek you out, because now I may benefit also.” He paused; on his handsome features appeared a faint frown. “If you wish to be alone, my Sara, you need only say so; it is not at all necessary to growl!” “Not I, you wretch!” Sara laughed, as with considerable expenditure of energy she prevented Confucious from leaping at the newcomer’s throat. “No?” Jevon quirked a golden brow. “Do my ears play me false? I distinctly heard — in point of fact, I still do hear—” Parodying perplexity, he peered around Sara. On the far side of her slender, muslinclad person, Confucious bared his remaining teeth. “Good girl!” said Jevon, with frank sincerity, as he hastily drew back. “I beg you will continue to restrain that misbegotten cur. I beg also that you will tell me what has driven you into the garden at this inappropriate hour.” Sara turned her head to study her companion, who had settled himself quite comfortably on his side of the bench. Perhaps better than any other of his vast acquaintance, including those ladies of a certain description with whom he had long enjoyed such heady success, Sara understood Jevon Rutherford. He was a cynic, albeit charming, indolent and disenchanted, lazy though well-bred. Accustomed to having females hurl themselves at him, it was to Jevon’s credit that he had not grown callous, merely blasé. Sara neither censured her old friend for his countless peccadilloes, nor the fair barques of frailty who encouraged his profligate way of life. Sara herself was not immune to Jevon’s 19

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charm, and supposed it a tribute to the quality of their friendship that he had never seriously tried to lead her into an affair of gallantry. But Jevon was waiting patiently for her response. “Inappropriate?” she echoed. “Why is that?” Jevon was not unaware that his friend was in the mopes; therefore he set himself to elevate her spirits. “Rather, I should have said,” he responded provocatively, “that trysts in moonlight gardens are not in your style.” “You should know, I imagine!” Miss Valentine retorted irritably. “Being an expert on the subject.” Certainly Jevon Rutherford possessed a good heart; he did not take objection to this slur. “Were you in the habit of moonlight trysts, I would know of it,” he continued serenely, “since I have been inviting you to tryst with me these past many years! And you have been sending me unwaveringly to the rightabout. Therefore, I can only conclude that you have taken a dislike to my person, or that you have an inexplicable aversion to trysts.” “And it would not occur to you, I’ll warrant, that any female might hold your person in distaste?” inquired Miss Valentine, who despite herself was beginning to be amused. Jevon gave this novel notion his full attention, then awarded Sara his enchanting grin. “Odd as it may sound in me, no. You do not hold me in dislike, Sara, and I am very curious as to why you should wish me to think it.” Miss Valentine herself had no idea of why so bizarre an impulse had taken possession of her mind, and hastily changed the subject. Diffidently, she pointed out that she was indeed engaged in a moonlight tryst. “So we are!” responded Jevon and raised her hand to his lips, an act of gallantry that roused Confucious to a vicious outburst. Hastily, Jevon restored Sara’s hand to her lap. “If you should not object, my precious, I still would like to know what has cast you into the dumps.” Upon this untimely reminder, Sara’s spirits once more sank. “Georgiana,” she said glumly. “Ungrateful as it is in me, I am tired to death of dancing to her tune. I should not say so, I know! But she has made Jaisy my responsibility, and Jaisy has warned me against trying to prevent her cutting a dash. I am prey to the most horrid misgivings, even if Jaisy is being amazingly good.” 20

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“And so you might be!” responded Jevon promptly, an unfilial attitude explained by his prior acquaintance with the foibles of his younger sister. “There’s no need to put yourself in a pucker, nonetheless. Georgiana will see the little baggage doesn’t go beyond the line — or you will on her behalf. Jaisy isn’t a bad sort of girl, just a little strong-willed!” For such easy panaceas, Sara had no time. “Jaisy,” she said bitterly, “means to set herself up in the latest mode. She expects to make an eligible connection, she informs me, as quick as winking, and offered to wager that in no time whatsoever she’ll be quite top-of-the-trees. She even wanted to set up her own stables, but Georgiana squelched that idea by refusing your assistance.” Sanguine as Jevon was, the notion that his harum-scarum sister might have involved him in her kick-ups filled him with a great relief that her attempt had failed. “Good!” he said. “I might as well have gone for a governess! Now I am expected to play bearleader to Jaisy, as well as cater to Georgiana’s whims!” mourned Sara, on a sigh. “Oh, well! I daresay I shan’t have to do so much longer, because Georgiana has threatened to turn me off without a reference should Jaisy deport herself unbecomingly — in which case I am resolved to go upon the boards, because if nothing else, employment with Georgiana has taught me to play a part very well!” Jevon was not surprised to learn that his aunt Georgiana had behaved so shabbily; Jevon’s fondness for the dowager duchess did not blind him to her myriad defects of character. All the same, Sara’s speech did startle Jevon no little bit. He drew back, the better to regard her, stricken forcibly by her declared intention to tread the boards. Sara, who had no notion that Jevon had taken her nonsense seriously, stared back at him. Perhaps because of her startling avowal, perhaps because her avowal had recalled to his mind a certain little opera dancer with whom he anticipated an amusing interview, Jevon found himself reassessing his old friend. He had always found her pleasant to look upon, had enjoyed engaging with her in a comfortable prose; now he realized that Sara Valentine was a deucedly pretty woman, and discovered in himself a temptation to forgo the opera dancer and engage instead with Sara in a flirtatious tête-à-tête. Not accustomed to employing reticence so far as the ladies were concerned, Jevon secured his companion’s attention by slipping an arm around her shoulders and 21

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encouraging her to rest her head against his chest. So startled was Miss Valentine by this gallant invitation that she complied, and found her position remarkably comfortable. Fortunately for Sara’s strength of character — so very blue-deviled was Sara that she might well have encouraged her old friend to pay her court, disgraceful as such behavior would have been in both of them — fate, in the guise of Confucious, intervened at that point. Released by Sara when Jevon had drawn her so improperly close, Confucious took prompt advantage of the opportunity to sink his remaining teeth in that gentleman’s hand. “The devil!” exclaimed Jevon. “Oh, dear!” wailed Sara, and wrested Confucious away from his victim. Frustrated, the dog snapped at her. Equally frustrated, and feeling foolish to boot, Sara cuffed him, then, remorse-stricken, cradled the beast. Upon this touching tableau, Jevon gazed with a great deal less tolerance than was his habit. Jevon was not accustomed to being balked in the pursuit of flirtation. Certainly he was not accustomed to seeing the embraces which he craved bestowed on a misbegotten cur instead. Privately condemning Confucious to perdition, he drew a deep breath. “Darling Sara—” “Pitching it too rum!” Miss Valentine interrupted, in rather stifled tones. Miss Valentine was suffering a positive mortification of spirit, due to a suspicion that her friend’s unprecedented overtures resulted from her own heedless comments, which could all too easily be construed as an invitation to a tryst. She dared not look at him, lest she read pity on those incomparably handsome features — for if not from pity, why should so great a connoisseur of feminine loveliness as Jevon Rutherford embrace a poor specimen like herself? And now what must the wretch do but lay gentle fingers on her cheek? “I wish,” said Sara crossly, as she struggled to restrain Confucious, who was struggling so violently in her arms that she feared heart attack, “that you would go away!” Jevon Rutherford was far too wise in the ways of women to believe Miss Valentine wished any such thing, and equally too sagacious to accuse her of uttering outright clankers; but no gentleman alive knew better than Jevon Rutherford that the better part of valor was sometimes a strategic retreat. Accordingly he departed the garden, leaving Miss Valentine to further reflection upon her sorry lot, while Confucious settled down to renewed slumber, during which he snored and twitched and drooled profusely upon her muslin skirts. 22

Four Having left Miss Valentine and Confucious to their various somber reflections, Jevon Rutherford returned to Lady Blackwood’s drawing room, there to engage in some meditation of his own, centering upon his sudden impulse to pay his addresses to a lady whom he’d known for twenty-seven of his two-and-thirty years. In retrospect, the impulse seemed a very good idea — one of the best ideas, in fact, to ever take possession of Jevon’s handsome head. He wondered why he had never realized that his dear Sara was a deucedly attractive female. Doubtless he had been distracted by the countless women who had put themselves in his way. Well, here was a pretty kettle of fish. Having discovered in himself the vague stirrings of what Jevon recognized from long acquaintance as a distinguishing preference, he had immediately begun to pay his court, only to be interrupted by his fair one with a most decided and peremptory indication that he was fatiguing her to death. That Jevon Rutherford was in a state of profound abstraction did not fail to penetrate the consciousness of the other occupants of Lady Blackwood’s drawing room, a chamber done up in the Egyptian style, with an abundance of lotus columns and turning lilies and papyrus stems. Lady Blackwood was enthroned on a couch in the shape of a crocodile, and espying her preoccupied nephew, she glared. During the many years of his association with the dowager duchess, Jevon had developed an almost superhuman awareness of her moods, which ranged from mild irritability to vindictive virulence. Temporarily he must abandon his speculation upon the quixotic conduct so recently exhibited by Miss Valentine. Jevon was not so puffed up that he believed every female who looked upon him must do so with the eye of love, but 23

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the fact remained that until this very evening, every female had. From the lips of his friend Sara, Jevon had received his first rebuff. It was a novel sensation, and Jevon was very curious about Sara’s demonstrable wrong-headedness. That Sara might simply be indifferent to him never crossed Jevon’s mind; quite frankly, no woman ever was. He wished to shake some good sense into Sara, but at the same time derived from her obtuseness an amusement directed primarily at himself. However, this was not the time, as evidenced by Georgiana’s basilisk stare, to ponder how best to induce his woolly-headed darling to look more favorably upon his suit. With a queer reluctance, for such things signified little to him in the ordinary way, Jevon withdrew his attention from affairs of the heart. Quite another manner of affair occupied the conversation of Lady Blackwood’s guests: the party given recently by Lady Jersey at Almack’s in a last attempt to reconcile high society to the scandalous Lord Byron, virtually ostracized following the breakup of his marriage, and the resultant gossip. Rumor linked the poet amorously with his half-sister, a page, a Harrow schoolmate and the larger portion of the population of Turkey; in addition to being guilty of all manner of abominations, he was said to be so frightened of the dark that he slept always in a lighted room, a brace of loaded pistols close at hand, and he was portrayed most unflatteringly in a series of popular prints. The attempt of Byron’s friends to reinstate him as society’s spoilt darling had failed, as Jevon could have predicted; the poet and his half-sister Augusta had arrived at Almack’s, the latter only to be altogether ignored, the former to be greeted by an abrupt emptying of the room. Even Caro Lamb no longer pursued the poet, but instead deftly fed the malice of his estranged wife. Society’s darling was now hissed in the streets, and his chestnut curls were turning gray. Though Jevon Rutherford possessed no foibles of the magnitude attributed to Byron, he understood and sympathized with the poet’s plight. Again Jevon mused upon the havoc wreaked upon a comfortable existence by imprudence. It then occurred to Jevon that a gentleman so successful in the petticoat-line as himself could hardly be considered prudent. Perhaps it was as result of the champagne he’d consumed with his supper, combined more recently with Lady Blackwood’s excellent punch, or perhaps it was derivative from the appalling account presented him of the poet Byron’s woes; but on that 24

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certain April evening, whilst passing indolently among the guests in his aunt’s overcrowded drawing room, Jevon Rutherford first conceived the startling notion that his way of life might stand in need of reform. So alien a germ did not immediately take root and flourish; indeed, its host’s initial reaction was a sudden crack of laughter that made him an object of no small curiosity. Still, the notion would not be banished, and returned to tease Jevon as he strolled around his aunt’s drawing room, even as he engaged in amiable conversation with Prince Paul Esterhazy and Lady Holland, the Austrian ambassador and the great Whig hostess; Henry Luttrell, the wit; the proud and ambitious Countess Lieven. His progress led him into further conversation with Beau Brummel and Lord Alvanley, two of his intimates, who professed themselves delighted with his sister, the Beau predicting that the incurable levity of Lady Easterling’s disposition would prompt her to give the usual observances of civility short shift, and Lord Alvanley protesting that her ladyship more than atoned for an essential vulgarity by her frankly mischievous manner and pretty, caressing ways. To these gentle criticisms, Jevon offered no argument; in all good faith, he could not. Instead, he continued on his perambulations. At length he arrived at the sofa perched atop a sphinx, where a dimpling, giggling Lady Easterling was holding court. Deftly he extricated his sister from her admirers and led her away. “I hear, puss,” he informed her, “that you are bent on making a stir in the world.” “And why should I not be all the crack?” Jaisy pursed her rosy lips in an enchanting pout. “You’re as Friday-faced as Georgiana, who’s forever trying to tell me I ain’t top-of-the-trees! The old gorgon! But as luck would have it, Easterling was always used to swear I was fine as fivepence, so Georgiana may prose on till doomsday, because a man don’t need to throw the hatchet at his wife!” Jevon contemplated his sister’s exquisite person, precious little of which was left to the imagination by her revealing gown, and his sister’s lovely face, and simultaneously arrived at two conclusions. The first — that Jaisy was every bit as light-minded as Brummel adjudged her; and additionally, alas, as shameless as intimated by Alvanley — he was not inclined to share. The second conclusion, however, could not but gratify its object. “Fine as fivepence it is, sis! This season’s crop of beauties are destined to have their noses put out of joint.” 25

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“Palaverer!” Jaisy retorted, with a giggle. Despite this modest disclaimer, it had obviously never occurred to Lady Easterling that she might do other than leave all her rivals at the post. “Which reminds me, Jevon, that there is something I particularly want to say to you.” Jevon recalled the warning issued him by Miss Valentine that Jaisy wished to set up her own stables, and remembered also his own determination to remain uninvolved in his sister’s fits and starts. “Don’t expect me to put you in the way of some proper highbred ‘uns!” he said hastily. “Georgiana is quite correct in saying it wouldn’t be the thing.” The dowager duchess had been correct as regarded another matter, decided Jaisy, as she studied her indolent brother’s handsome face: Jevon would not risk the Blackwood fortune in the gratification of any female’s casual whim. It was a pity, she thought, that Jevon’s competence did not enable him to be independent of Georgiana. Already her brief sojourn in Blackwood House had given Jaisy a very fair notion of how unpalatable was an existence passed beneath the dowager’s heavy thumb. There was only one solution to Jevon’s uncomfortable position that his sister could see: She must marry a gentleman so très sympathique, and so very well-heeled, that he would not only permit her to keep Sara in bonnets, but also make Jevon a generous allowance. Having arranged Jevon’s future to her satisfaction, Jaisy awarded him her dimpled grin. “I have given up that notion,” she said with good cheer. “As Sara pointed out, once I am established I can have as many elegant tits as I please. Then I may be a thorough out-and-outer — and no one will scold me for being fond of a bit of blood, or wishing to have something that can go!” Almost overwhelmed by these visions of future felicity, she clasped her hands to her breast. “But that isn’t what I wished to discuss with you!” “Ah!” responded Jevon cordially. “Sis, you relieve me.” “I thought I might.” Lady Easterling was as well acquainted with her brother’s foibles as he was with hers. “Lazy creature! Do try and be serious — because it ain’t at all like Georgiana to do the pretty, and the longer I think on it, the more it seems that her invite to me was devilish queer!” Startled by this abrupt turn of conversation Jevon frowned, then prudently led his sister out into the hallway, where he politely requested that she enlighten him concerning the most recent maggot taken 26

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into her lovely and lamentably empty head. Georgiana might not be the most genial of relatives, he admitted, but she had a strong sense of family. Having outlived her own generation, it was not surprising the Dowager Duchess should turn her attention to the next. “Jupiter!” Lady Easterling interrupted with unconcealed scorn. “I’d forgot your habit of refusing to recognize what’s right under your nose — and a very paltry habit it is, I can tell you! Have it your own way, then! Georgiana is a pattern-card of benevolence! She don’t rip up at Sara, or make her servants’ life a misery, or keep you dangling at her apron strings.” With this assessment neither could Jevon argue, though he deplored his sister’s lack of tact. Utilizing his own personal brand of diplomacy, Jevon pinched her cheek. “Poor sis! Has it been so bad as all that? Shall I intervene with Georgiana on your behalf? Were you to tell me plainly what it is you wish me to do — and I am very well aware you wish something, my girl! — I might oblige. Providing it is nothing exceptionable!” So lukewarm an offer of assistance did not disconcert her ladyship, who chose to interpret her brother’s words as a desire to make amends for his previous uncooperativeness. Her ladyship was too experienced a rider to cram her fences, nonetheless, and therefore led her thirsty horse to water via a circuitous route. She wished to make an eligible connection, she intimated to her brother; in point of fact, nothing less would do for her than a brilliant match. The gentleman must be quite top-of-the-trees as well as très sympathique; he must adore her and be willing to expire at her feet; with everything prime about him, he must be a bachelor of the first stare. Additionally, her ladyship’s prospective bridegroom must be rich as Croesus, and agree to the removal of Miss Valentine from the dowager’s household and her subsequent installation in much more congenial surroundings, where she might indulge in a veritable orgy of frivolity. With this latter ambition Jevon was in complete harmony, it being the stuff of his own aspiration, although the frivolous orgy as envisioned by Jevon had nothing in it of bonnets. Far too sagacious to apprise his volatile sister of his intentions as regarded Miss Valentine, he inquired the identity of her prospective bridegroom. “You are as bad as Sara!” protested Jaisy. “She actually dared intimate that I might not have anyone I pleased. I’ll tell you what it is, Jevon: 27

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Georgiana has so browbeaten my poor Sara that she’s become a muttonhead! By the bye, where is Sara? I ain’t seen her this past hour. Georgiana will be in the devil of a taking because she insisted Sara attend her party, even though Sara clearly wished to do no such thing. But talking won’t pay toll! Jevon, I have a very particular favor to ask of you.” Jevon saw no reason why his lovely sister might not marry where she pleased; ladies as beautiful as Jaisy were easily forgiven their little vagaries. Too, so long as it did not cause him any great exertion, Jevon made it his habit to oblige. “Open your budget, sis!” This was the fateful moment. Jaisy clasped her brother’s sleeve all the tighter, widened her blue eyes, bestowed upon him her most beguiling look. “Jevon — dear, dear Jevon — I wish you perform an introduction.” An introduction? Easy enough to arrange, certainly. Amused by the full battery of tricks with which his sister had accompanied her simple request, Jevon once more pinched her cheek. “I am at your service, brat; merely point the fellow out. It is a fellow? I thought so. Although it has me in a puzzle why you didn’t just ask Georgiana instead of playing off your wiles on me.” “Oh, Jevon, it is not so simple!” Jaisy’s blue eyes filled with tears. “I did ask Georgiana, but she told me not to talk like a nodcock — and anyway you can’t make me known to him just now because he ain’t here!” “You wish me to make the presentation after having arranged a ‘chance’ meeting?” ventured Jevon, who was not without experience with the wiles employed by young ladies resolved on romance. “I have already told you, minx, that you may not involve me in your fits and starts.” The tears that filled the big blue eyes overflowed, trickled down Lady Easterling’s porcelain cheeks. “I did not think that you would be so cruel!” sobbed Jaisy. “Next you will say, like Georgiana did, that London’s most eligible bachelor is a great deal above my touch!” Verging on boredom as a result of these all-too-familiar ploys — Jevon had during the course of his career endured many such scenes — his attention was suddenly caught. London’s most eligible bachelor? Could his hoyden of a sister mean to set her cap at the most starched-up of his many friends? “Not Carlin!” he protested. “Yes, Carlin!” retorted Lady Easterling, with woeful stubbornness. “You promised! And I must tell you, Jevon, that if you refuse to oblige me, I may never speak to you again!” 28

Five Whether Jevon Rutherford had taken to heart his younger sister’s threat to never more speak to him if she was not allowed to have her way, or whether Jevon’s lively sense of the ridiculous would not permit him to forgo the spectacle of the starched-up Lord Carlin fending off the determined advances of the volatile Lady Easterling, Miss Valentine did not feel qualified to guess. Had she ventured to speculate, Sara would have wagered on the latter explanation for the presence of Jevon Rutherford and Lady Easterling in Hyde Park at this fashionable afternoon hour, with herself in reluctant attendance. Not Jaisy’s insistence had secured Sara’s compliance, nor even the dowager’s decrees; simply, Sara feared that the indolent Jevon would fail to keep his sister in line. Specters other than disgrace haunted Sara. Miss Valentine was aware, as Lady Easterling was apparently not, that wealthy young widows attracted unscrupulous gentlemen. Impossible to convince Jaisy that there existed scoundrels so lacking in aesthetic judgment as to covet her fortune more than her lovely self. Impossible, too, to convince her volatile ladyship that the gentleman existed who could gaze upon her and still retain possession of his heart, or that it might avail her nothing to set her cap at one of the highest-bred men in England. Perhaps, thought Sara without much conviction, Jaisy might upon his presentation take the haughty Lord Carlin in dislike. Or perhaps his lordship would oblige by falling fathoms deep in love, as Jaisy so confidently anticipated. Certainly Jaisy was a bedazzling figure in her habit of sapphire blue, embroidered à la militaire, and atop her shining curls, a modish riding hat trimmed with gold cordon and tassels. Yet, though Lady Easterling was, in her own phraseology, ‘quite top-of-the-trees,’ 29

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Sara suffered an unhappy conviction that her friend was beneath Lord Carlin’s notice. Meantime, as Miss Valentine pondered in this manner, Jevon Rutherford attempted to engage her in conversation. Any number of topics did he put forth for the exercise of his companion’s excellent intellect: the repressive policy followed by the Liverpool ministry; the falling off of the annual revenue to a mere £58 million after the abolishment of the wartime income tax; the fluctuating value of paper bank notes. Embarrassed as she was to recall her seemingly brazen behavior on the eve of Lady Blackwood’s soirée, Sara could not fail to appreciate Jevon’s effort to put her at her ease. Miss Valentine was among the constituency who believed in Jevon’s good heart, and thought his current selfless conduct further proof of that quality. Appreciate his efforts as she might, Sara’s embarrassment was not eased. The mere sight of her old friend — dressed in riding costume of plain blue coat and brass buttons, deep stiff cravat, leather breeches and top boots — inspired her with chagrin. She, a well-brought-up young woman, had as much as invited the most charming of philanderers to cast upon her a look of love. Fortunately, he had been too much the gentleman to take advantage. Or perhaps she was simply not in his style. If Sara’s features were reminiscent of certain Grecian ladies captured forevermore in stone, Jevon Rutherford’s preference had long been for females less cold. This was arrant folly! Sara scolded herself. Doubtless, so many handkerchiefs had been dropped in Jevon’s pathway during the course of his career that he thought nothing of yet another conquest. Mayhap, like his sister, Jevon took for granted his effect upon the opposite sex. But it was unfair to thus malign him. As a result of her folly, Sara’s mind had grown overheated. Best to bring the matter out into the open. “The other evening,” she said abruptly, “I trust I need not tell you that I spoke in jest.” Jevon, who had been carrying on an amiable soliloquy about the fluctuating value of paper bank notes, looked briefly disconcerted, then quirked a golden brow. “You need not tell me anything, my precious, if that is not your wish! Am I to conclude that you have decided not to go upon the stage?” “The stage?” It was Sara’s turn to look blank. “Oh! Gracious! You could not think me serious! I was merely feeling sorry for myself.” 30

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“Not without cause, I’ll warrant,” Jevon retorted, in quiet tones that his sister could not overhear. “I hope you know I will render you any assistance in my power, my dear.” “I meant,” she continued in a grim little voice, “that nonsense about a tryst.” “Nonsense?” Now both golden brows were elevated. “What’s this? As I recall, you expressed a disinterest in such endeavors. Can it be you have changed your mind? Because if you have, and are in this roundabout manner seeking to intimate to me a desire for further moonlight encounters, I must admit to a very large degree of surprise.” Obviously, thought Sara sadly, she had grown a dowd, else Jevon would not so doggedly hint her away from romance. “I did not mean to intimate any such thing. I do not yearn after moonlight encounters, thank you!” “I rather thought you did not, my Sara.” Ruefully, Jevon smiled. “You are looking sadly worn down, and I hope this business may not be at the bottom of it. Take my advice and put it from your mind.” If only she could have, Miss Valentine would have been happy to oblige. For several days she had sought to forget what must have seemed her shameless invitation to a tryst, with the result that trysting had quite taken possession of her thoughts. Patently the suggestion had found no favor with Jevon, who made so steadfast an effort to dissuade her from further such improprieties. All the same, he had embraced her. Apparently the act had been prompted by his innate kindness. As Miss Valentine pursued these melancholy thoughts, and Jevon Rutherford sought to distract her with an account of the latest scandalous story fabricated in the bay window at White’s, and Lady Easterling gently upbraided the pair of them for failing to award her their combined attention, the small party passed through the park. All the rank and fashion of London displayed themselves within those leafy glades and promenaded upon those bridle paths, mounted on steeds that were designated by the knowledgeable Lady Easterling as “elegant bits of blood and bone,” “gingers,” “niceish hacks,” or borne along in smart carriages. Since the sight of elegant ladies driving out in superbly appointed equipages, attended by powdered footmen and bewigged coachmen, recalled to Lady Easterling her own desire to pos31

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sess a spanking turnout, conversation lagged somewhat as Miss Valentine set herself to soothe her ladyship’s ruffled sensibilities. Upon receipt of a speaking gray-eyed look, Jevon Rutherford put forth his own effort to restore the peace. The park had once been part of the ancient manor of Hyde, after which it had belonged to the Abbey of Westminster, from which it had been stolen by Henry VIII, be explained. And if the history of their surroundings did not interest his sister, she might conceivably be more intrigued by the background of London’s most eligible bachelor, who was currently approaching them by way of Rotten Bow — or, as it had once been called, when utilized by kings en route from Westminister to their hunting fields, route de roi. Her brother’s attempts to improve the tone other mind, Lady Easterling very properly ignored. Her first glimpse of Lord Carlin merited a great deal more interest. Christopher Carruthers, Viscount Carlin, was extremely prepossessing in figure and appearance, a very personable young man of thirty with brown hair and eyes, assets amounting to twelve million sterling, and a great deal of countenance. The perfect gentleman, Lord Carlin — or Kit, as he was known among his friends — could be faulted only on the grounds that he was a trifle high in the instep, a trait not surprising in one who from a very early age had been continually toad-eaten. Still, if he was proud, he was also courtly and cultured, and known for the kindness he exhibited toward those less fortunate. On this particular afternoon, Lord Carlin’s generous nature was not in evidence, due to a recent interview between his lordship and his papa, during which the main topic of conversation was the heir his lordship did not possess. Marriage was the ticket, decreed the elder Carruthers, and much as he disliked the notion, Kit had to agree. The Carruthers fortune, of which he at present commanded only a small portion, could not be allowed to pass to the cadet branch of the family. Leg-shackled Kit must be, doubtless to some silly chit who would bore him to distraction within a sennight; females always did bore him, perhaps because in their efforts to please him they invariably hung upon his lips, and agreed with his most inane utterances, until he wished to gnash his teeth. Lord Carlin was already conversant with his own opinions. If he wished to hear those opinions echoed, he need only buy a parrot. A pity the problem of an heir was not so simply solved, reflected his lordship. Instead he must saddle himself with 32

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some empty-headed chit who would cut up his peace, spend all his money and doubtless insist he escort her everywhere. Nonetheless, the thing must be done, and without further shillyshallying. As his parent had irritably pointed out, young peers in the flower of their manhood were stricken down every day. Kit must take a wife. All that remained was to determine which among the hopeful misses who habitually dogged his footsteps was to be honored. Alas, a review of the candidates for his hand reminded Lord Carlin that he didn’t care three straws for any one of them. Just then, his lordship espied his particular crony, Jevon Rutherford, and recalled that Jevon was a great favorite among the demireps of Rotten Row. Surely so confirmed an admirer of the fairer sex could offer sound advice. Kit touched his heel to his horse and moved forward. Not until too late did he realize that his hoped-for source of inspiration was hemmed in by two females. The wretched creatures were everywhere! he thought irritably. A man might as well resign himself to his bitter fate. Since he could not retreat without exciting comment, Lord Carlin allowed his steed to advance unchecked, and endured a presentation to the two females. Somehow he must speak privately with Jevon, must seek his advice. To this end, he embarked upon a discussion of a hunter he contemplated purchasing. In Lord Carlin’s experience, the gentler sex quickly lost interest in any conversation that did not revolve around feminine folderols and fripperies. Lord Carlin’s experience, however, included in it no such members of the gentler sex as Lady Easterling. No sooner did he make mention of the hunting field than Jaisy edged her own mount forward, neatly cutting out her brother, and beamed upon him. “I, too, am a great deal addicted to sport!” she confided, with an air of what his lordship considered very excessive bonhomie. “That is a devilish good-looking screw you have there, sir! Splendid shoulders! Forelegs nicely before him! Great hocks and rump! You look startled, sir. I’ll warrant you are wondering how I come to know so much about horseflesh.” In point of fact, Lord Carlin was wondering nothing of the sort, having been stricken nigh senseless by so bold a display of shockingly irregular conduct. “Indeed,” he murmured vaguely. “‘Twas my husband taught me about proper highbred ‘uns!” Lady Easterling cheerfully confessed. “Easterling was a regular out-and33

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outer, may he rest in peace! You will have gathered, sir, that Easterling is deceased.” This outspoken baggage was his friend Jevon’s sister, Lord Carlin sternly reminded himself. Only that relationship saved her from the sharp set-down that each additional word further convinced him was her just desert. “I am sorry to hear it,” he responded politely. “I don’t see why you should be,” Lady Easterling replied frankly, “unless you was acquainted? I thought not! Easterling didn’t move in the first circles, though I’m sure he might have, had he wished. He was very old, you see. But not so old that his faculties were affected! He was used to give me very nacky advice, such as it is never wise to bet against a dark horse, and that one should always try to get over heavy ground as light as one can.” In an effort to be fair to his friend’s younger sister — surely Lady Easterling must have some redeeming qualities! — Lord Carlin subjected that outspoken damsel to a keen scrutiny. That Jaisy was a beauty signified little to his lordship; Kit was very well accustomed to damsels of that stamp, and accustomed also to being admired by them, and the target of their lures. One of the earliest lessons taught Kit at his papa’s knee was that the Carruthers fortune exercised a powerful fascination. Jaisy, meantime, rattled on, under the highly erroneous impression that Lord Carlin was very much impressed with her good humor and her conversational expertise. She enlivened her account of a Derby Day that she’d attended in company with her husband with a full battery of arch looks and inviting glances, as befitted a lady well trained in the arts of coquetry. A regular country fair it had seemed, she professed, with fortune-telling gypsies, and booths where one could witness a melodrama, or dance, or try one’s luck at the roulette wheel or the thimblerig. Upon an exclamation of horror as voiced by Miss Valentine, Lady Easterling quickly explained that she had not ventured within the booths where the menfolk engaged in sparring and hard drink, because Easterling had very solemnly warned her that it was not at all the thing. By Jove, they had been very merry, she concluded with a chuckle, even if the prodigious dust raised by carriage wheels and equine as well as human feet had given everyone the appearance of chimney sweeps! With the conclusion of this most enlightening dissertation, a brief silence descended upon the group. Lord Carlin struggled with a strong inclination to beat a hasty retreat from the presence of this vulgar chit 34

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who obviously sought to entangle him in her snares, while Lady Easterling congratulated herself that the dazed look in his lordship’s eye was a very hopeful sign; Jevon Rutherford wondered if perhaps, in indulging his own love of the ridiculous, he had done his friend Kit a grave disservice; Miss Valentine despaired of ever fashioning a silken purse out of this particular sow’s ear. Definitely, Lord Carlin was the highest of sticklers, as the dowager duchess had warned. He was also a man of no little influence. Unless Sara made a push to prevent it, Jaisy might be made to pay dearly for her outrageous conduct. “You will understand that Jaisy is accustomed to country ways, my lord, I hope,” she offered quietly, “and not hold it against her if she goes on in a way that appears unseemly. No offense was intended, I promise you.” As has hitherto been reported, one of Lord Carlin’s virtues was an unflagging kindness to his social inferiors; and this kindness he now displayed. Not only did he pity Miss Valentine the exigencies of her position as gooseberry, he was grateful to her for offering an unexceptionable avenue of exit. “No offense has been taken, Miss Valentine; and I beg you will accept my excuses, for I have a previous engagement and have already tarried too long. Your servant, Lady Easterling, Jevon!” With cordial haste, his lordship took his leave. Their voices followed him. “Deuce take it!” ejaculated her ladyship. “I must say I think very poorly of this interference! Just when things were going so well, too!” “Well?” echoed Miss Valentine, with a stupefaction shared by Kit. The remainder of the exchange he was not privileged to hear. With a haste his lordship applauded, Jevon ushered the ladies out of earshot. Perhaps, had his lordship been alloted sufficient time in which to recover from his annoyance at the volatile Lady Easterling, the matter might there have rested. But his lordship was not granted that respite. No sooner had he removed from the vicinity of Jevon Rutherford and party that Lord Carlin fell into company with several of his cronies, who quizzed him mercilessly about his prolonged conversation with the Heaven-Sent. This provocation numbered one more than even a perfect gentleman could bear. “The breath of life, is it?” inquired Lord Carlin, with a practiced sneer. “Clearly you have not had converse with the lady. Rather, I do assure you, she is better called Fair Fatality!” 35

Six “Fair Fatality!” uttered the dowager duchess, with an expression so disdainful that her aristocratic nostrils flared. “My patience is exhausted, Jaisy. I warned you against providing food for scandal. Now you must reap the consequence.” “Jupiter!” said Lady Easterling. “You are as bad as Sara, aunt. She tries to tell me Carlin was put off by my sporting talk, which is a great deal of nonsense! It was clear as noonday that Carlin was amazed to find me so knowledgeable. For my part, I found him a regular Trojan, bang-up to the nines!” Slender fingers clenched upon the scrolled arm of her massive chair, Georgiana observed — without the least evidence of any degree of approbation — her niece. The dowager duchess’s raddled face was every bit as savage as the sharp-beaked eagles’ heads carved on her chair arms. Lady Easterling might not have been the most perspicacious of beings, but she could not help but recognize the revulsion directed at herself. Why should Georgiana dislike her? Jaisy wondered, as she studied that mirrored hostile face. And, disliking her, why had Georgiana issued her an invitation to London and provided her a Season? Not so many years before, the dowager had bluntly refused to stand the nonsense. Yet here was Jaisy, pampered guest in Blackwood House. Perhaps Jaisy’s unconciliating manner had raised her aunt’s spleen. Generously, Jaisy set herself to make amends. To that end, she embarked upon an unexceptionable monologue upon the sights of London as revealed to her by Miss Valentine: the British Museum and its diverse treasures, ranging from stuffed giraffes and stag’s antlers to a bust of Hippocrates and the celebrated Portland vase; Mrs. Salmon’s 36

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Waxwork house in Fleet Street, and opposite it, the moving giants of St. Dunstan’s clock who struck the passing hours on a bell. Still the dowager duchess appeared to be on the fidgets. “I know what it is!” said Lady Easterling, abruptly abandoning all attempts at tact. “You’re miffed because I proved you wrong. Carlin ain’t above my touch, like you claimed. I don’t understand you, aunt! I’d think you’d be pleased your own niece had attracted the attention of one of the highest-bred men in town.” Although the Dowager Duchess displayed a unique civility toward her scapegrace niece — a civility observed and remarked upon by every member of the Queen Anne Street household, all of whom considered this unprecedented forebearance an awful portent — this illjudged utterance almost caused her composure to crack. With keen interest, Jaisy watched the Dowager struggle for self-control. “I would be pleased,” Lady Blackwood responded bitterly, “had you done so, miss! Explain to me how it is that you consider it a matter of some encouragement that a gentleman should brand you Fair Fatality.” She shuddered. “To think that a member of my family should be an object of vulgar tittle-tattle — it is not at all what I am accustomed to, my girl!” The magnitude of this understatement Lady Easterling failed to grasp; Jaisy minded not the least if she provided grist for the common mill, and would always prefer scandal to obscurity. Not that Lady Easterling intended to involve herself in outright scandal, for she realized that arrant misconduct could not add to her consequence. Toward a little notoriety, however, Jaisy had no objection. It pleased her to be so very famous that her name was on every tongue. Even if he wished to, Lady Easterling smugly mused, Lord Carlin would not long be able to banish her from mind. “There!” Triumphantly, Lady Blackwood broke into her niece’s thoughts. “You cannot answer me. Well, you have been very foolish, and exhibited a monstrous lack of address, but all is not yet lost. Put these air-dreams about Carlin out of your head and I fancy we may yet see you established creditably.” Did Georgiana dare infer that Jaisy could not marry where she wished, must settle for less than the most eligible? Such blatant lack of appreciation could only set up the back of a damsel accustomed to deem herself a nonpareil. Only consideration for Jevon and Miss 37

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Valentine, dependent upon Georgiana’s begrudging good will, enabled Lady Easterling to curb her tongue. “By Jove!” she uttered, nettled, depositing herself gracelessly in a straight-legged gilt chair, and on the floor her chocolate cup. “You are determined that I may not have Carlin. But I am equally determined that I shall! He is a bachelor of the first stare with everything prime about him — precisely the sort of gentleman I have hankered after — and I have decided that no one else will do!” Beneath her aunt’s acerbic gaze, Jaisy propped her elbow on the arm of her chair and dropped her chin into her hand. “Moreover, I’ll wager he’s a prime goer after hounds.” The dowager unclenched her slender fingers from her chair and pressed them to her brow. “You misunderstand,” she said in surprisingly calm tones. “I see nothing objectionable in the connection, providing you may bring it off, of which I have my doubts! Recall that I have known Carlin since he was in short pants. You aren’t the first chit who’s tried to bring him up to scratch. But mayhap you will succeed where the others failed. I wish you might. Now be about your business! I wish to discuss some trifling matters with Sir Phineas.” That gentleman did not look especially delighted with the prospect, decided Jaisy, as she obediently took her leave. Though startled by her aunt’s abrupt capitulation and even more abrupt dismissal, Jaisy did not consider either circumstance noteworthy. She was not an especially curious girl, her attention being primarily taken up with her own concerns. The matter of most concern to Lady Easterling, as she made her way up the stone staircase and along the hushed corridor to her bedroom, was not surprisingly a certain viscount. Despite the blithe rejoinders with which she turned aside adverse comments, Jaisy was not altogether certain that Lord Carlin had been struck by Cupid’s dart. It was unthinkable that he should not have been — and for what other reason than as way of subtle compliment could he have dubbed her Fair Fatality? Too, one could not expect a starched-up gentleman like Carlin to wear his heart upon his sleeve. Still, even the most proper of gentlemen should by this time have made some overture, at the very least have gratified his beloved with a morning-call. Instead, Carlin remained studiously aloof. A less-assured lady might have wondered if she was the object of deliberate avoidance. Lady Easterling, who was not accustomed to doubting her mortal effect upon every gentleman privileged to receive her dimpled, rogu38

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ish grin, wondered no such thing. Handsomely, she conceded that Sara might have been partially correct in asserting that Carlin had been put off by Jaisy’s outspokenness — not that Jaisy believed for an instant that her conversation might have caused the viscount to take her in dislike. Long obeisance to the dowager duchess had warped Sara’s judgment. Or perhaps she was merely jealous. At all events, Jaisy was willing to concede that Lord Carlin might be shy. Perhaps he considered her above his touch, in which case she might find opportunity to intimate to him the opposite. Frowning, Lady Easterling entered her bedchamber, flopped down on the carved four-poster bedstead — an elegant piece of furniture swathed in silk and damask and lavishly embellished with carved Roman urns — and pondered alternate means by which to grant Cupid further occasion to loose his fatal dart. At that same moment, in Lady Blackwood’s morning room, Sir Phineas Fairfax experienced a sinking sensation in his midriff. No dart from an invisible arrow inspired this malaise, but the brooding attitude of the dowager duchess. Lady Easterling was not alone in noting Georgiana’s resemblance to the savage eagles carved on her chair. Sir Phineas, Georgiana’s man of business, knew that contemplative expression, which indicated that he would soon be called upon to make certain efforts in Lady Blackwood’s behalf. As always, anticipation of those efforts turned him liverish. With regret for its loss, Sir Phineas recalled his ebullient mood of a scant few hours past, when he had intended perambulating from his lodgings to his club, there to play a rubber or two of piquet, after which he might indulge in a light repast of pickled salmon and iced champagne. Then fate, in the guise of a summons from the dowager duchess, had intervened. How Georgiana invariably knew his whereabouts, Sir Phineas no longer wondered. The devious Lady Blackwood always knew those things which one would have preferred she did not. What task would she assign him? Did she mean to once more threaten to disinherit the charmingly scapegrace Jevon Rutherford, currently rumored to be dangling after a pretty little opera dancer? Or, as seemed more likely, would Sir Phineas be obliged to exert himself in regard to Jevon’s sister, who from all appearances was equally scapegrace? He had no enthusiasm for either prospect. Perhaps the dowager might be distracted from whatever nasty schemes she hatched. Sir Phineas held out bait, in the form of the 39

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most recent on-dits concerning the Prince Regent, whom Georgiana professed to detest. There was talk that the Prince would engage upon his most extravagant architectural project to date, restructuring the west end of his capital to include a fashionable new park and a sweeping avenue designed by Nash — this even though remodeling of the Marine Pavilion at Brighton had not progressed beyond the enlargement of the Chinese corridor. In addition, rumor claimed the Regent had been advised by his doctors, as a result of his recent illness, that he should leave off his stays and let his massive belly drop. Looking increasingly rancorous, the dowager heard out this account, all the while drumming her fingers on her knee. “Oh, do cease nattering, Phineas!” she snapped, when he paused to draw breath. “Now that you have met my niece, what do you think?” “Lady Easterling is a very lovely young woman. A trifle high-spirited, perhaps.” Sir Phineas strove for patient tact. “High-spirited? Hah!” Rather dreadfully, Lady Blackwood grimaced. “She’s as bold as a brass-faced monkey. Pushing! Impertinent! A thorough rag-mannered chit.” The dowager’s patent disapproval of a niece in residence beneath her roof did not startle Sir Phineas. It was his opinion that the dowager approved of no one, save possibly himself, and that because he made it his policy never to cross her will. Reminded by this reflection of the lady upon whose slender person Georgiana’s will was most often wreaked, he ventured a polite inquiry regarding Miss Valentine’s well-being and current whereabouts. Though mention of the Prince Regent had failed to divert the dowager duchess from her baleful thoughts, the introduction of Miss Valentine into the discussion earned Sir Phineas a sharp glance. “You are mighty interested in my companion,” she uttered spitefully. “Who, not that it’s any of your business, is at the moment exercising Confucious! I am not at all pleased with Sara, Phineas. She is not exercising the control over my niece that I should like. Moreover, the silly twit’s taken it into her head that she deserves a holiday!” In Sir Phineas’s opinion anyone who passed an hour in company with Lady Blackwood was deserving of a rest, but he was not so imprudent as to so remark. He had a great deal of fellow-feeling for the plight of Miss Valentine, and also a degree of guilt: Sir Phineas had 40

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been the instrument by which the orphaned Sara had been brought into Georgiana’s employ. Her existence in Blackwood House was not happy, he knew. He wished there was some manner in which he might make redress. “Oho!” The dowager’s keen eyes missed little. “Sits the wind in that quarter? There’s no fool like an old one! I will tell you what I told my niece: put those air-dreams out of your mind.” Georgiana thought he nourished warm sentiments toward Miss Valentine. Sir Phineas flushed. Certainly he liked Sara, appreciated her quiet and ladylike manner and the excellent tone of her mind; but the dowager maligned him by viewing his fondness for Miss Valentine in so mundane a light. “Fustian!” Sir Phineas retorted gruffly. “Is it?” As always when she’d caused discomfort, the dowager was in good cheer. “Do not despair, Phineas! Do but execute my commission and I might be so grateful that I change my mind.” This ray of hope Sir Phineas very wisely ignored. Lady Blackwood was of far too selfish a disposition to so easily give up the meek and self-effacing companion who never uttered a rebellious word. “Twenty-seven makes a poor match for sixty,” he pointed out, hoping to close the subject. “Balderdash!” retorted the dowager, incensed. At rather more than sixty, she did not care for intimations of advanced age. “A chit as unfortunately situated as Sara should be grateful for any offer she receives.” Unfortunate indeed was Miss Valentine’s situation, as Sir Phineas refrained from pointing out. He need only endure Georgiana’s unpleasantness at occasional short intervals, after which he could repair to his club and regain his composure over a bottle of claret; but Sara must tolerate her employer’s beastliness twenty-four hours a day. Again Sir Phineas wished he might do something to better Sara’s lot. At least he might temporarily temper the dowager’s spitefulness, and at the same time glean some inkling of what distasteful chore she meant to assign. “Apropos of preferences, mention was made of Carlin?” he prodded gently. “So it was!” In a very chilling manner, Lady Blackwood smiled. “You may have gathered that my bird-witted niece thinks she’s made a conquest.” “Yes.” Resigning himself to his fate, Sir Phineas laced his fingers together across his plump little belly. “I take it that you do not agree.” 41

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“No, nor would anyone who was not positively paper-skulled. No matter!” Again, that chilling grin. “Let the chit try and attach Carlin; it will only give him a disgust. Once Mistress Fair Fatality comes to realize she’s frittered away her chances and become a laughingstock, she will be more amenable, and making a cake of herself over Carlin will keep her out of more serious mischief.” Many years’ service as Lady Blackwood’s man of business had enabled Sir Phineas to cut straight to the heart of her malice. “Amenable to what?” he inquired cautiously. The dowager elevated her gaze to the ox-skull frieze. “Amenable to the plans I formulated before ever the baggage came to town! Which brings me to that little errand which I mentioned to you previously.” With his clasped fingers, Sir Phineas rubbed his belly, which again had begun to ache. “And that plan is what?” said he. Lady Blackwood continued to contemplate the ox-skull frieze, as if from that macabre source she derived inspiration. “The baggage is highly capricious,” she mused aloud. “Rag-mannered, outspoken to a fault — and very wealthy, Phineas. Very wealthy, indeed! The money was left so that she cannot dip into her capital, and must live off the proceeds; but when she remarries, which of course she must, her husband will be under no such obligation. In short, my niece is possessed of a dowry so handsome as to induce her bridegroom to overlook any minor character defects.” From what Sir Phineas had observed of the young lady, her defects of character were neither minor nor easily overlooked. All the same, he found it within himself to briefly pity the girl. “Am I to conclude that you have already selected this bridegroom? My errand will concern him? Have you considered that your niece may not approve your choice, Georgiana?” “Lud! What difference does that make?” Lady Blackwood lowered her gaze from the ox-skull frieze and glowered upon Sir Phineas. “I flatter myself that I am more than a match for any green girl, even one so mule-headed as my niece. In short, Phineas, I have no intention of allowing Jaisy’s fortune to pass out of the family.”

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Seven Miss Valentine also wished that her pathway might be eased, though not in the manner suggested to Sir Phineas by Lady Blackwood. Miss Valentine’s aspirations were much more vague, consisting primarily of a nebulous hankering after some manner of heavenly intervention, perhaps a divine lightning bolt of sufficient potency to strike the volatile Lady Easterling suddenly submissive, and render Georgiana either speechless or benign. To her list of longed-for miracles, Sara then added Confucious, and a most unkindly longing for his abrupt demise. For this unseemly reflection, Miss Valentine must not be held wholly at fault; many were the responsibilities that pressed upon poor Sara, and Confucious was at present the most troublesome of the lot. In fine fettle this day, the Pekinese had thus far upon their expedition made attempts to savage a watercress-seller and a cat’s-meat man, had interfered disastrously with a potman carrying beer from a nearby public house, and put an abrupt end to a Punch-and-Judy performance. Scarlet with embarrassment, Sara made to these poor unfortunates financial redress — past encounters of a like nature had taught her never to depart Blackwood House unprepared — and hastily quit the scene. Sara tucked the snarling dog under one arm and set off down the cobbled street. Confucious snapped and snarled. Irritably, Miss Valentine warned him that she was within aim’s-ace of following the recommendations so recently given her, and drowning him in the Thames. Having delivered herself of this announcement she paused to take stock of her surroundings. They were near Hyde Park Corner, on the south side of the road, practically in the shadow of St. George’s Hospital, where the western 43

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entrance to the metropolis was marked by an ascent from Knightsbridge to the turnpike. Wistfully, Sara gazed into the distance. It would be very nice to proceed along that thoroughfare, she thought — in an opposite direction. To dream of escape from her servitude, alas, was to bay at the moon. Miss Valentine, mooning at the distant prospect, failed to note that her arrival at Hyde Park Corner had coincided with that of a circus menagerie. Venerable as Confucious was, his senses remained acute. He squirmed out of Sara’s grasp, tumbled to the cobblestones, set off in pursuit of the lumbering wagons, while the startled Sara wondered if he’d broken his wretched little neck, or some less important bones. Events soon proved the futility of this hope. To here describe Confucious’s encounter with the circus menagerie and the havoc he wrought, especially in reference to the dancing bear, would in no way advance this tale. Suffice it to say that great confusion reigned, and considerable ill-feeling. Indeed, Miss Valentine was in the novel position of having a violin brandished beneath her nose by the bear’s irate owner when she spotted a familiar vehicle barreling along the roadway. Abandoning all dignity, Sara jerked away from the bear’s angry owner and ran out into the street, waving her arms. “Jevon!” she wailed. Though Mr. Rutherford was long accustomed to being accosted by females, this particular episode caused his brows to climb. Nonetheless, he dealt with the situation admirably. In less time than it would take to properly relate, he had installed Miss Valentine and a resentful Confucious in his eye-catching sprung whiskey — vermilion chassis, blue ironwork and violet base. “Thank God for your arrival!” Miss Valentine sighed, and tried to set her disheveled self to rights. “I do not hesitate to confess that I had no notion what I should do next. I am very grateful to you for providing rescue.” “Then you may repay me by keeping that misbegotten cur at a distance!” reponded Mr. Rutherford, with an unfriendly glance at Confucious. “What the deuce does Georgiana mean, sending you out without an escort?” “An escort?” Sara wrinkled her classic nose. “You forget that I am a mere servant. Beside, Confucious would not permit anyone to bother me.” 44

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With that assertion, there was no quarreling; a steady growling from the Pekinese provided a background to their conversation. “No,” Jevon replied ironically. “He will merely make you pay the price of his vindictiveness. My poor Sara! Shall we manage to lose the beast?” Tempting as was this notion, Miss Valentine, after the briefest struggle, nobly set it aside. “I wish you would be more serious!” she scolded. “A few days past you said that you would do anything within your power to assist Jaisy. Did you mean it, Jevon? Because if you did I wish that you might tell me what to do!” Jevon recalled saying nothing of the sort, at least not in regard to his volatile sister; and he did recall his determination to avoid becoming entangled in that damsel’s kick-ups. “What’s this?” he equivocated. “You at point nonplus, my Sara? I cannot credit it.” “You could, had you not been taken up wholly with your own pursuits!” snapped Sara, then flushed as she recalled the rumor that her companion’s pursuits currently centered around a pretty opera dancer. “Forgive me; I should not have said that.” Jevon, guessing the cause of Miss Valentine’s reddened cheeks, grinned. “No, you should not! First of all, you should not listen to vulgar gossip; secondly, that I am the subject of gossip is altogether your fault.” Even in her present disheveled and bewildered condition, his Sara was a deuced pretty female, he observed. “I would not be making other females the object of gallantry, had you not sent me off with a flea in my ear!” Did he think she held him in aversion? Miss Valentine had opened her mouth to earnestly disabuse her companion of this erroneous assumption before she realized that he sought with his flummeries to elevate her spirits. “I suppose now you mean to persuade me that I should like to embark upon a tryst,” she observed irritably. In point of fact, Jevon would have better preferred no other topic of discourse. No stranger to the addle-pated notions that flourished in the fertile minds of the opposite sex, however, he realized that for a conversational gambit of a flirtatious nature, the moment was not propitious. Would the moment ever be? he wondered, as he said: “Oh, no, my Sara! I will not seek to persuade you. I think that you would like it very well, but you must make up your own mind.” How cleverly he managed to tease her and yet at the same time hold himself aloof, thought Sara, frowning at her friend. “I wish you 45

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would not mock me!” she retorted, more frankly than she had intended. “I am well aware that I am grown a dowd.” Jevon frankly stared. “A dowd? The devil!” said he. “You need not be kind about it.” Sara interpreted her companion’s startled expression as further proof of his good heart. “I have learned to accept that I am left upon the shelf. It is not what I had anticipated for myself, but there is no use crying over spilt milk. Oh, dear! I did not mean to be so plain-spoken! When you talk to me of trysts, it recalls to mind the days before I was obliged to earn my living, when I truly could have engaged in such.” “Did you?” he inquired curiously. “Did I what?” Sara echoed, then again blushed. “Wretch! Naturally I did not! And I beg you will talk to me no more of trysts!” “Certainly not, if you wish it.” Jevon reflected that he was fast learning to deal with rebuff. “The subject shall be henceforth taboo — until you introduce it yourself.” Pigs would fly sooner, decided Sara, further sunk in gloom. Jevon’s deft extrication of the pair of them from a potentially embarrassing situation had put her, most unreasonably, out of charity with him. More aware than was his fair one of the source of her resentment, Jevon longed to invite her to weep out her woes upon his manly chest, following which he would introduce her to rather more pleasurable pursuits. Lest he receive another, even harsher set-down from the object of his affections, he dared not be so bold. Instead he must bide his time until she had grown a trifle more receptive. Perhaps, were the matters plaguing her resolved, she might prove more amenable to romance. Chief among those plaguesome matters, decided Jevon, must be his own harum-scarum sibling. Though he was sworn to uninvolvement in Jaisy’s fits and starts, it grew increasingly obvious that the pursuit of romance required self-sacrifice. Though this too was an unprecedented conclusion — any sacrifice previously involved in his romances not being required of Jevon — he did not even momentarily hesitate. “You were telling me about Jaisy,” he reminded his silent companion. Sara took firmer hold of Confucious, who had been reminded by Jevon’s voice of the keen dislike which he harbored for that source. “I’m sure it’s no wonder I am cross as a cat! Your sister has convinced 46

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herself that she has taken Carlin’s fancy to an alarming degree, and that his indifference is assumed. Yes, I know it’s moonshine, but she vows he seeks to whet her interest. As if it needed whetting! Jaisy is practically stalking the poor man.” “The deuce you say!” ejaculated Jevon, dismayed by the result of his mischievous impulse. “I should never have indulged the minx by presenting him.” “No, you should not have.” Sara was not in the habit of mollycoddling her old friend. “But I daresay if you had not, she would have wheedled someone else into making the introduction! I have tried very hard to keep her from going beyond the line of being pleasing, but it is a very wearing task, and sometimes I think I must reach my wits’ end! Well you may look sympathetic, Jevon! I have taken Jaisy to linen-drapers and milliners and modistes, to bookshops and music stores and picture galleries; I have sat through equestrian displays at Astley’s Amphitheater; I even took her to Sadler’s Wells to see Grimaldi perform! And while I am quite willing to concede that Grimaldi must be the king of clowns, I do not derive any particular enjoyment from seeing a grown man sit between a codfish and a huge oyster that opens and closes its shell in time with the music, and sings!” “Zounds!” Jevon looked intrigued. “Did it?” “It did!” Sara replied bitterly. “This is one of Grimaldi’s most famous songs, I gather: ‘An Oyster Crossed in Love.’ Quite half the audience was in tears.” “My poor Sara!” responded Mr. Rutherford, much moved. “So you may say!” agreed Miss Valentine. “If all those excursions were not wearying enough, I must constantly be on my guard lest Jaisy decide that she must visit Hoby’s, where Carlin procures his boots, or Lock’s or Weston’s, his hatter and his tailor, or even Berry Brothers so she may weigh herself on the same scale! And then there was the day she announced to me that we should stroll down St. James’s, on the chance that we might encounter Carlin exiting one of his clubs.” “Definitely, my poor Sara!” Somewhat belatedly, Jevon realized that his sister’s misbehavior, if she did succeed in escaping Sara’s vigilance, would rebound to the good credit of none involved. “What is it you wish me to do?” 47

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“Scolding her accomplishes nothing; she merely assures me that when approaching an apparently insurmountable hurdle one need only throw one’s heart over and one’s horse will invariably follow — though whether she considers Carlin as horse or hurdle I have not dared ask! Even if I did, she would probably only assure me once again that she is pluck to the backbone!” A trifle tardily, Sara received the impact of his words. “Oh, Jevon! You will help me? I will be forever in your debt!” To receive from Miss Valentine that melting look, to reanimate her classic features and soft gray eyes, Mr. Rutherford would have undertaken tasks far more arduous than hinting away his sister from an unsuitable parti. Only in the very nick of time did Jevon prevent himself from explaining to Miss Valentine that fact. Not until Jaisy was fired off could the matter of trysts be subtly reintroduced into his companion’s thoughts. Doubtless it would improve his character to experience impatience curbed. Doubtless, also, that self-improvement would be devilish hardearned, decided Mr. Rutherford, as in an excess of gratitude Miss Valentine pressed his hand. Abruptly, Jevon halted the whiskey and descended into the street, where before Sara’s bewildered gaze, he spun the coin with a pieman, and won. He then resumed his seat in the whiskey and shared the profits of his enterprise with her, in celebration of their newly formed partnership. Prevented by the condition of his teeth from joining in this congenial repast, Confucious snarled.

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Eight Never one to shilly-shally, especially when to do so was to delay the achievement of a highly desired object, Mr. Rutherford sought to set his scapegrace sister’s affairs to rights at the earliest opportunity. Occasion to hold converse with Lord Carlin presented itself to Jevon that very evening, at the King’s Theater in the Haymarket. The attendance of both Mr. Rutherford and Lord Carlin at this function was no special coincidence. The King’s Theater was London’s most popular center of entertainment, ablaze with bejeweled ladies, and gentlemen with orders strewn across their chests. Boxes cost as much as £2500 for the season, despite the blinding chandeliers which hung before them, casting the actors into the shade; admission to the pit cost 10s. 6d. Not for Mr. Rutherford nor Lord Carlin was the pit, of course; Mr. Rutherford was a member of Lady Blackwood’s party, and Lord Carlin had his own box. Currently both gentlemen were absent from their allotted spots. Nor could either be discovered among those congenial souls who strolled about during the performance, exhibiting to the world at large an elegance of person and a total lack of consideration for the long suffering performers. In point of fact, at this particular moment, neither gentleman was present in the great horseshoe auditorium with its five rows of boxes, galley and pit, each having discovered within himself a sudden yearning for respite from the sorrows of Cleopatra as enacted onstage. Mr. Rutherford was first to arrive in the circular vestibule, furnished with sofas and almost entirely lined with looking glass. Since none of his particular cronies had similarly withdrawn from the arena, Jevon amused himself by eavesdropping upon the conversations of those discerning admirers of the opera who had. Beau Brummell, it 49

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was rumored, had amassed a larger number of commitments than could be met out of available capital, and had consequently engaged with friends in an annuity scheme. On-dit had it that the so-powerful Beau, supreme arbiter of fashion, master of ironic irreverence, was on his way out — an unfortunate position in which he might well have been condoled by Lord Byron, had not the poet fled England recently, and barely soon enough to avoid Lady Devonshire’s bailiffs, who seized everything in sight. Shocking developments, were these not? One could regret the Beau’s hard luck. One could not feel similarly about Byron, however. Any man who used a fireplace poker to break the heads off bottles of soda water — to say nothing of his further sins — deserved to be brought low. Soda water? queried Jevon silently. Deuced odd, he thought, that a hardened reprobate like Byron should quaff so innocuous a substance. Port wine or claret, sherry or Madeira, rum from the West Indies or brandy from France, a bowl of punch or Biship, even Blue Ruin — indulgence in one or any combination of the preceding would not have prompted a single flutter of Jevon’s eyelid. Soda water, on the other hand, convinced him even further that only complete and abysmal debasement awaited those rash young bloods who did not mend their profligate ways. Lest he be reduced to such ignoble straits, it behooved him to reform, and with all possible haste. As Jevon pondered his own personal salvation and the sole means by which it might be achieved, to wit through the tender ministrations of Miss Sara Valentine, ministrations which Mr. Rutherford had not the least solid reason to suppose he would ever experience, his somewhat somber gaze alit upon a familiar figure. From the opposite side of the vestibule, Lord Carlin approached. Jevon recalled his decision that his sister’s affaires must be tidied up before he embarked upon his own, and there was no time like the present. “You are looking devilish Friday-faced, Kit!” he remarked. So might Mr. Rutherford have looked, had he fallen under decree to in the near future wed, and this Lord Carlin tried to explain. Due to his position in the world, he must choose a wife from among a bevy of young ladies for whom he didn’t care three straws. It was the most damnable of dilemmas, and one with which Jevon must sympathize, himself being a gentleman devoted to flitting unattached from flower to flower. 50

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“You must not think I presume to comment upon your way of life!” Lord Carlin added hastily, as Mr. Rutherford quirked a sardonic golden brow. “Nothing of the sort! But I could hardly do better than seek the advice of a gentleman after whom all the ladies run mad — oh, dash it, Jevon! You know what I’m trying to say.” On that topic, Mr. Rutherford was a great deal less clear than his lordship thought. Unaccustomed to frank discussion of personal matters, too proud to easily admit himself at point nonplus, Lord Carlin had quite frankly made a rare muddle of the thing. So obscure had been his language, so harried was his manner, that Jevon was led to highly erroneous conclusions concerning the manner of female that his friend sought. “The devil!” he said cheerfully. “I never thought I’d see the day when Kit Carruthers started chasing the petticoats! Still, you need only crook your finger to earn a place in every heart. You are Carlin, remember? There’s no need to make a piece of work of it.” An odd way to describe a man’s search for a bride, surely? Admittedly, Lord Carlin had little prior experience with such things. Though he could not quibble with Jevon’s greater knowledge, he thought his friend might have evidenced a little more compassion for his plight. “I don’t know what you expect me to do for you!” Mr. Rutherford responded, when acquainted with this viewpoint. “I have my own difficulties. Self-improvement, I must tell you, Kit, is deuced uncomfortable. If you take my advice, you’ll have nothing to do with it!” Self-improvement? Lord Carlin fairly goggled, not at the notion his own character might be bettered, a notion which never crossed his mind, but at the suggestion that the indolent Jevon was embarked upon so bizarre a pursuit. “Why?” he asked. “Byron,” Mr. Rutherford responded simply, obviously considering this sufficient reply. For the informed reader it will serve as such; the reader is already aware that Mr. Rutherford had derived from the poet’s débâcle a very salutory lesson indeed. Lord Carlin, alas, was not similarly privileged. Therefore, he stared. Jevon was only vaguely aware of his friend’s bewilderment. He was not thinking of Lord Carlin but of Miss Valentine, relegated by her lowly status as paid companion to missing this and many another evening’s entertainment. Doubtless she was at that very moment engaged in some odiously menial pursuit, such as brushing the mis51

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begotten Confucious, or ruining her gray eyes mending lace, both tasks which Jevon had countless times seen Sara perform. That would change, Jevon vowed grimly, once these plaguesome matters were cleared away and the topic of trysts subtly reintroduced. But he must apply his thoughts to the plaguesome matters at hand if ever they were to be cleared away, and not waste time with roseate visions of leading his Sara up the garden path. “The surest way to attract a young lady’s interest,” he offered generously to his puzzled friend, “is to display interest in another young lady. They no sooner see they can’t have something that they want it, you know.” It occurred to Jevon that this good advice might work with his Sara, and he fell silent as he contemplated how best to rouse jealousy in the breast of a lady long acquainted with his progress amid ladybirds of every imaginable description and degree. Jevon, decided Lord Carlin, was acting dashed queer. “I don’t want to attract anyone’s attention!” he responded irritably. “That’s not what you said just moments past.” Jevon decided that the tactics he had utilized in the past to such good advantage could not in all conscience be applied to Miss Valentine. She must surrender herself up to him wholly of her own volition, and then — “As I recollect, you asked me to drop a hint or two regarding the exact opposite! It isn’t like you to be vacillating like this, Kit! If it was anyone else, I’d say you had a tendresse.” “No, no!” Clearly, decided Lord Carlin, his friend was preoccupied. He would have to express himself more simply. “I must get married, Jevon!” “Married?” A bemused smile spread across Mr. Rutherford’s handsome face. “The deuce! Georgiana would probably go off in an apoplexy.” Lord Carlin could not imagine what the Dowager Duchess of Blackwood had to say about his marriage, nor why his marriage should inspire the dowager with an apoplexy. Unless Jevon thought he wished to marry the outrageous Easterling? “I don’t wish to become leg-shackled to your sister!” the viscount protested, anxious to nip misapprehension in the bud. “Jaisy! I should think not. ‘Twould be most unsuitable!” In an exuberance of good feeling, Jevon grasped and shook his friend’s hand. “Marriage, the very ticket! You shall dance at my wedding, I swear it — if ever I bring the thing off! Meanwhile it will be our secret!” 52

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Lord Carlin could imagine no circumstances under which he would be tempted to divulge a secret the nature of which he could not even guess. Perhaps his friend had overindulged in the grape? Jevon’s sudden enthusiasm for parson’s mousetrap struck Kit as only marginally less queer than Jevon’s uncertainty as to whether his mysterious ladylove would have him. What female alive would say no to Jevon Rutherford? Jevon must of a certainty have overindulged, decided Lord Carlin, as he watched his friend depart the vestibule. Even so, some of his advice had made excellent good sense, especially that bit about whetting a lady’s interest. Kit had scant need for such advice, being the target of a great deal of feminine interest already, all of which he could have done without; but he accepted the advice in the spirit it had been meant. If only Jevon had not been so abstracted! And what could that abstraction portend? Abruptly, Lord Carlin thought he understood. Jevon could not fail to know that Kit had bestowed upon Lady Easterling the sobriquet “Fair Fatality” by which she had speedily become known, and could not help but experience a degree of resentment on her behalf. Kit had not meant to make a byword of Lady Easterling, and suspected that even without his efforts she would have achieved the same end; yet the fact remained that if he had not so aptly dubbed her, the greater portion of the population of London would not be aware of the lady’s existence. Yet he had so dubbed her and the nickname had not only stuck, but also had caught the imagination of Fleet Street and the readers of the more sensational variety of news sheet. No wonder Jevon was a trifle out of charity with him. Were the viscount to secure that expert’s advice on the most pressing of his problems — which, it may be recalled, was the selection of the future Countess Carlin from amid a bevy of beauties for whom he didn’t care three straws — Kit must somehow atone. How to do so? How to bestow the accolade of his approval upon Lady Easterling without encouraging her to dangle after him even more outrageously? As already amply demonstrated, the chit was oblivious to set-downs. Try as he might to put her off, she pursued him relentlessly. It had galled Lord Carlin no little bit to discover that bets were being laid on the outcome of her efforts, the odds generally considered to be in the lady’s favor. It was a dashed embarrassing situation. Jevon would have known how to deal with it; since the lady involved was his own sister, one hesitated to ask. 53

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Well, then, in lieu of direct advice, perhaps one might guess what that advice might have been. Pondering, Lord Carlin strolled from the vestibule. If one did wish to attract the attention of one young lady, one paid one’s addresses to another, so that the first young lady would be bitten by the green-eyed monster, jealousy. The ladies, according to Jevon Rutherford, acknowledged authority on the subject, always wanted what they could not have, and having something, held it cheap. It seemed reasonable to conclude that a young lady need only receive marked attentions from a gentleman to lose interest in him. If there was a flaw in this excellent reasoning, Lord Carlin could not discover it, perhaps because with it he had given himself a raging headache. Anxious to put his theory to the test, as well as to reinstate himself in good standing with the knowledgeable Jevon, Lord Carlin made his way to the dowager duchess’s box. Jevon was not present, but Lady Blackwood made Lord Carlin very welcome, deigning to discourse with him upon the tempermental Catalini who — until she grew so expensive that the King’s Theater could no longer afford to bid for her — had enlivened the premises stage. The Marquis of Buckingham had once had Mme. Catalini to dinner, the dowager recalled, after which she had regaled her fellow guests with a great many songs, entertainment for which the marquis was delivered a bill of £1700 on the following day. Other visitors entered the box, then, and the dowager abandoned Lord Carlin to speak with them. With great reluctance, the viscount turned his head and met the triumphant glance of Lady Easterling. Perfect gentleman that he was, Kit could not take abruptly to his heels, and certainly not under the interested gaze of such boxholders as the Duchesses of Richmond and Argyle, Ladies Jersey and Melbourne, the royal Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland, the Prince Regent. Screwing up his courage and masking his repugnance, Lord Carlin approached Lady Easterling. She looked very lovely in an evening dress of white gauze stripe4d with blue, a satin Austrian cap perched atop her golden curls; but in the viscount’s opinion her ornate sapphires were more suited to a lady of the dowager’s years, and her attitude was much too complacent. As for the manner in which she looked him over, took in every detail of his appearance from silken stockings to high shirt points, for all the world as if she were a prospective buyer and he a horse — well! 54

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That Lord Carlin embarked upon conversation with Lady Easterling in a spirit of great reluctance was obvious to none of the interested spectators. The dowager duchess may have had some inkling, having an excellent vantage point from which to observe his lordship’s clenched jaw, but she made no effort at interference. Lady Easterling herself appeared unaware of his discomfort, and chattered away to him in her cheerful, friendly way. The lady’s self-assurance raised her no higher in Lord Carlin’s estimation; though he wished to delude her into thinking she had made a conquest, and thereby to lose interest, at the same time he thought her very selfish to have failed to suspect he paid her his devoirs only under duress. Never had Kit known a lady who affected him so adversely. Though his lordship failed to realize it, never either had he known a lady so little affected by his own opinions, or one so little inclined to submerge her own personality in response to his innate autocracy, or one who simultaneously cast him melting glances while voicing utterances that were distinctly commonplace. For example: “There! We are getting on quite famously, are we not?” inquired Lady Easterling ingenuously. “Easterling was right in saying one should always try to get over heavy ground as light as one can, because the next thing you know the pace is too good to inquire!” Already Lord Carlin had begun to doubt the wisdom of his course. “If you do not mind, we will not embark upon a further discussion of horseflesh.” “By Jove!” Unaccustomed to being told what she might and might not discuss, Lady Easterling narrowed her fine eyes. Having decided that further conversation with London’s most eligible bachelor was worthy of some small sacrifice, she looked at him in a very speaking way. “Do you think it is improper in me? Georgiana says so, but I don’t care for that. Georgiana never has approved of me. But I daresay she’ll change her mind when I have acquired enough town-bronze that I am properly up to snuff!” Again the blue eyes narrowed. “You look as if something is paining you, sir!” Dared he frankly inform her ladyship of the futility of making at him a dead-set? Announce that it would accomplish her nothing to treat him to her caressing ways, and a fine display of sheep’s eyes? Proclaim that she was impertinent, forward, regrettably commonplace? If only she were not sister to the one man in the world qualified 55

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to offer the viscount some sorely needed advice. In rather harsh tones, Kit admitted to a headache. “Jupiter!” Lady Easterling was rather surprised that London’s most eligible bachelor should fall prey to so mundane an affliction. His lordship’s expression, she now noted, was pained. Perhaps he thought his admission had lowered him in her opinion. In a kindly manner, she added: “You must not feel badly about it; I daresay the entertainment is at fault, and that that female with the high and piercing voice has in effect napped you a rum ‘un. That is very often the case, have you noticed? Just when one is expecting it the least, Fate comes along and plants one a facer. You look startled, Lord Carlin. I suppose ladies shouldn’t know about wisty cantors, either.” Lord Carlin supposed he should not be surprised to learn that the abominable Lady Easterling, so well versed in racetrack and stable, was also a follower of the Fancy. She dared ask him if it were improper for a gentlewoman to exhibit knowledge of the manly art of fisticuffs. “Exactly so!” said he. “If that don’t beat all!” marveled Lady Easterling. “Still, I reckoned it would be, because it’s all of a piece! I begin to think I didn’t appreciate Easterling half well enough: not only was he a proper man with his fists, he did not at all mind talking about it! He told me how he once cleared a lane of men with his morleys, though they all wished to mill him down — a bit of cross-and-jostle work it took, with a muzzler to finish it! And he told me too of contests between milling coves that he’d witnessed — because being a female I was prohibited from attending.” A stifled exclamation from her companion caused her to regard him curiously, her pretty head tilted to one side. “Perhaps I should not mention it, but your mouth has fallen open. Is there something you wish to say?” Any number of harsh rejoinders struggled to escape Lord Carlin’s lips, none of them tempered by the fact that his lordship was among those devotees of the noble art of self-defense. Indeed, so many censurious remarks did his lordship wish to utter that he could not decide which merited first place. “Lady Easterling,” he managed, “you astonish me!” “Capital!” responded Jaisy, no adherent of false modesty. “I knew we should get along famously! I daresay my manner ain’t what you’re accustomed to — Easterling was used to say I ain’t in the common 56

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way — but you’ll get used to it. And,” she added, in a discreetly lowered tone, “I shall truly enjoy seeing Georgiana forced to admit she was wrong, because she said you was deuced high in the instep!” High in the instep, was he? By leaps and bounds, Lord Carlin’s sense of grievance grew. “Upon my word!” he said indignantly. “Oh, you mustn’t mind Georgiana!” Lady Easterling made haste to reassure him, clutching his arm for emphasis. “She don’t do the civil, that’s all. And she was trying to persuade me you was above my touch.” Lord Carlin was treated to a mischievous grin. “Which was a great piece of nonsense, if I may say so as shouldn’t!” In the planning out of strategy, Lord Carlin decided, he had somewhere erred. “You shouldn’t, and it wasn’t!” he gasped, then wrenched his arm away from the lady’s clutching fingers, and fled.

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Nine “It is entirely the fault of those wretched Tories!” the dowager duchess announced. “Look at the Corn Laws!” Obediently, Miss Valentine reviewed her knowledge of that subject. In the previous year, the Corn Laws — long used by landlords as a weapon against foreign competition — had been revived to prevent the importation of grain from abroad until the price on the domestic market rose to ten shillings the bushel. “As if that were not folly enough,” the dowager continued, “what must Weston do but introduce further resolutions? He would like to exclude foreign rapeseed, linseed, tallow and cheese, thank you! I am not the least surprised that the Luddites have again taken to smashing machinery in the Midlands! Next we shall have the mob rioting in London and wearing the tricolor — and you know what that led to in France!” Silently, Sara folded away the news sheet that had inspired the dowager’s tirade, as the wretched condition of the country must inspire contempt for the ruling Tories in the relict of any staunch Whig. “As well as the stupid weather!” added the dowager, glaring in a belligerent manner at the window. “If we are not plagued by mists and fogs, we must endure snow and hail!” Miss Valentine also observed the window, and through it a day that was dark and overcast. Wistfully, she recalled the relatively clement weather of the previous week. Sara loathed snow and hail and fog, which kept her prisoner in Blackwood House and prevented her venturing even briefly away from Georgiana’s ill-tempered presence. The dowager duchess, antagonistic enough on the sunniest of days, was rendered utterly virulent by damp and chilly weather. Truly hers was 58

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a cat-and-dog existence, reflected Sara, as without enthusiasm she brushed Confucious, who was sprawled across her lap. It was in the drawing room of Blackwood House that the ladies enacted this portrayal of domestic tranquility. Lady Blackwood was regally disposed upon the crocodile-shaped couch, drawn up close to the hearth. Sara, as befit her lowly status, had been assigned a simple chair at some distance from the fireside. She did not mind, especially; chilly as was Sara’s corner of the chamber, a close proximity to the hearthside, and consequently to the dowager, was no guarantee of comfort. She paused in her labors to draw a shawl — woven from the fleece of wild goats in Kashmir, one of the few mementos remaining from a more prosperous heyday — closer around her slender shoulders. Confucious growled. “Aha!” snapped the dowager. Sara started guiltily and wondered if her employer had taken offense at her possession of the shawl. Lady Blackwood was not tolerant of servants who indulged themselves with fripperies and folderols. “There you are, miss! You are to be felicitated; never in all my life have I been so put out of countenance!” That the action of a mere servant should put the dowager duchess to the blush was unthinkable, and Sara relaxed and cast the current source of Georgiana’s displeasure a compassionate glance. Lady Easterling was in fine fettle, and looked in no need of sympathy. The skirts of her gown, white poplin with a deep blonde flounce, rustled as she crossed the room. “There’s no need to be kicking up a dust over trifles!” she informed her aunt, taking up a position by the fire. “You’re just out of sorts because Carlin sat coquetting with me.” “Coquetting!” Lady Blackwood looked incensed. “Fiddlesticks! Carlin is one of the highest-bred men in England — and, as I warned you, infernal starched-up. He could not help but dislike your impertinent manners, miss!” “Oh, pooh!” Lady Easterling turned her attention to the wide-eyed Miss Valentine. “This is all fudge! Carlin came to me at the Opera, Sara, and stood talking with me for quite twenty minutes, which has put my aunt out of frame!” “Out of frame, am I?” The dowager altered her position so as to give Sara the full impact other glare. Hastily, Miss Valentine lowered her gaze and resumed brushing the somnolent Confucious. “To give you the word with no bark on it, Carlin can only look upon my niece 59

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as a female not fit for association with respectable people! As I told you in the past, my girl: put Carlin from your mind.” “By Jove!” Lady Easterling had very much the aspect of a damsel about to fly off the hooks. “That’s an outright taradiddle, Georgiana, even if I shouldn’t tell you so! Carlin was as civil as a nun’s hen.” Upon receipt of this graphic assertion, Lady Blackwood winced. “Tiresome creature!” she responded, with what Sara thought a startling degree of patience. But, then, Jaisy was a wealthy damsel, and must be handled differently from penniless companions who could be turned peremptorily out into the streets. “Carlin is all that is honorable,” the dowager continued. “Much as he disliked your conversation, he was obliged to swallow it with good grace until such time as he could gracefully escape. Now let me hear no more of this farrago of nonsense! You have done some truly reprehensible things in that quarter, but no real harm has been done.” Miss Valentine, as a result of her childhood acquaintance with Lady Easterling, might, if consulted, have informed her employer that logical conclusions would avail her nothing with Jaisy. Before she could open her mouth, Jaisy had erupted into angry speech. “Jupiter!” she cried, eyes aflash, fists on her hips. “You make it sound as if I am expected to wear the willow for Carlin, as if we should not suit! And it is nothing of the sort! Believe me, Sara, Carlin suits me to a cow’s thumb!” “So he may,” interrupted the dowager, in equally determined tones. “But if you think Carlin will be suited by a little baggage who talks to him — and everyone else! — of ‘wisty cantors’ and ‘cross-and-jostle work,’ you are all about in your head!” Not only Lady Easterling suffered that affliction; upon discovery of the extent of her charge’s folly, Miss Valentine touched her fingers to her brow. Since in so doing she failed to consider that she still held Confucious’s brush, she very narrowly avoided putting out an eye. “Sara,” inquired Jaisy curiously, “what the blazes are you doing with that nasty brush? You ain’t crying, are you? Because there’s no need! No matter what Georgiana may try and tell you, Carlin ain’t a penny the worst of it!” If tears trembled in Sara’s eyes, they were inspired wholly by her painful encounter with the dog brush. Miss Valentine had no other cause for woe, neither the demonstrable failure of her efforts to fashion a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, failure which she been promised 60

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would lose her a place, nor a certain item glimpsed in that morning’s news sheet. If a certain Mr. R — was reputedly dangling after a pretty little opera dancer who could be glimpsed most evenings onstage at Drury Lane, it had naught to do with Sara, except perhaps in explanation of why Mr. R — had failed to fulfill their pact. Perhaps the lazy Jevon had never meant to try and warn his sister away from an ineligible parti. Perhaps he had merely held out that offer to divert Sara from her tedious megrims. “I do not comprehend why I should try and tell anything to Sara,” remarked Lady Blackwood. “She is paid to do what I require of her; and I am not required to provide explanations to my servants! I do have something to tell you, miss, so you may come here and sit down.” Though her lower lip protruded in an alarming manner, and her huge blue eyes sparkled angrily, Lady Easterling obeyed. Sulkily, she seated herself beside Georgiana on the crocodile-shaped couch. The dowager duchess reached out and caught her niece’s arm in a viselike grip. “I have been,” she announced, “remarkably patient. I thought you would soon come to realize that life in the metropolis is quite different from what you are accustomed to, and would allow yourself to be guided by Sara and myself. Instead, you have earned yourself a distasteful notoriety. Do not interrupt! I know you think it a splendid thing to have your name on every tongue, but I do not feel similarly. In short, my girl, if you do not immediately mend your ways, I will wash my hands of you!” Well did Miss Valentine remember the lightning speed with which her friend’s sunny disposition shifted to impending thunderstorm; and well did she recall the heavy-handed manner with which the dowager greeted such outbursts. “Jaisy—” she ventured. “Silence!” decreed Georgiana, with an unappreciative glance. “Not only will I dispatch you back into the country, Jaisy, I will insure that no other member of the family lends you countenance. Easterling’s people won’t oblige you; they never approved his marriage to so young and volatile a miss, and that Easterling left you everything that wasn’t entailed put their noses further out of joint. I daresay that eventually you’ll find some respectable female to lend you countenance — you dare not return to London without such a female lest you put yourself altogether beyond the pale — providing, that is, that you don’t first dwindle into an old maid!” 61

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There was in the dowager’s statement just enough truth to cause Jaisy’s lovely lips to thin: Though it was inconceivable that Lady Easterling would dwindle into an old maid, it was fact that without the dowager’s sponsorship she would find it difficult to marry as high as she pleased. A certain sort of gentleman would always be attracted to wealth and beauty, and never mind being tarred with the common brush; but Jaisy’s birth was unexceptionable and she would not wish to wed beneath herself. Watching the expressions that played across Lady Easterling’s face as she made the acquaintance of these unpalatable facts, Sara’s heart ached for her friend. Well did she know the frustration attendant upon Lady Blackwood’s tyranny. Even better, Sara knew there was no comfort she could offer. “And what am I to do about Carlin?” inquired Jaisy, still stiff-lipped. Pleased that her words of warning bad not fallen on deaf ears, the dowager released her niece. “Nothing, I fancy. Mark my words, Carlin will avoid you like the plague, so great a disgust must he hold you in. The cream of the jest is that I have it on good authority that he means to take a wife, so as to secure the succession. Doubtless he will choose from among the bevy of beauties that have been dangling after him this age, all of them good obedient girls.” Though Lady Blackwood might consider Lord Carlin’s prospective marriage a very good jest, her niece did not feel similarly. In rather strangled tones, Jaisy begged permission to withdraw to her bedchamber. Rendered almost benign by victory, the dowager graciously granted her niece’s request. Spine rigid, Jaisy walked out of the drawing room. Once safely in the hallway, her unnatural composure deserted her, and she kicked viciously at the wainscoting, and drummed her fists against the wall, and sought relief for her rage in calling the dowager duchess a great many unflattering names, among which “old gorgon” was by far the most innocuous. “I beg your pardon?” came a voice behind her, and Jaisy spun around to discover that she shared the hallway with her aunt’s portly butler and a freckled young man with sandy hair. It was the latter who had spoken. “May I be of assistance?” he inquired. No more than anyone did Jaisy relish being caught out looking foolish. “Oh, the devil fly away with you!” she cried, and ran away down the hallway, leaving the young man to stare after her with no little perplexity. 62

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In point of fact, Arthur Kingscote had during recent days found many things at which to gape, in a manner he suspected irrevocably branded him a rustic; and of those wonders, distraught females ranked lowest on the scale. Arthur had never before, in all his eight-and-twenty years, been so far from his country home as London, and certainly he had never traveled on a mail coach, twice as dear as the common stage. Splendid beyond comparison were the coaches of the Royal Mail, painted mauve and scarlet and black, with the royal arms emblazoned on the doors, and the royal cipher in gold upon the fire-boot, and the panels at each side window embellished with various devices, such as the badge of the Garter, the shamrock, the thistle and the rose. And fortunate indeed was the individual privileged to ride upon the box seat by the coachman, which was usually charged extra, except during inclement weather when outside passengers were prone to freeze to death. Arthur had not minded the cold weather, nor the snow; he had dreaded his journey’s end. From the moment his shabby portmanteau had been stowed with that of the other passengers — fifteen of these there were, four inside and eleven out — he had felt as if embarked upon a grand adventure. Nor had he found cause to alter that opinion en route. He thrilled to potential disasters — were a wheel to catch on a bridge corner or a stone post at some sharp turning, the unlucky outside passengers could be sent hurling through the air, to land up against whatever hard surface first interfered with their flight; he delighted in the half-thoroughbred horses which, during their eightmile stages, were wrung of every ounce of endurance they were worth. The steadier wheelers were theoretically supposed to act as checks on their leaders, which Arthur supposed was a wise and prudent precaution — but there was never excitement like when the driver gave the wheelers their heads and the whole team dashed along at a full gallop! Then came the changing of the horses at the next stage, when hostlers and stable-boys rushed to take out the winded horses and harness up the fresh in the scant minute they were allowed. Even that undertaking was not without excitement, for instance the occasion when a recalcitrant wheeler had insisted on lying down, and had been roused only by straw set afire beneath his nose. But the adventure was now ended, and Arthur was brought back to the present by the butler’s discreet cough. Time now to meet the Dowager Duchess of Blackwood, long conceived by Arthur as some 63

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semi-Olympian deity, alternately malicious and sublime, to be regarded with awe. This impression he had gleaned from comments made by his family, who eked out small incomes with the dowager’s charity, and consequently dared not cause offense. When the summons had come, there had been no question but that he would comply with it. What did Lady Blackwood want of him? Arthur wondered. Perhaps the dowager duchess had singled him out from among her numerous kinfolk as the object of some special benevolence. Perhaps he was to be presented some means by which his future might be made secure. Arthur’s future was a matter which had concerned him for some time. As the eldest of a large number of siblings, it was his responsibility to devise some means by which he might make his own way in the world. A harsh voice, bidding him enter the drawing room, broke into Arthur’s thoughts. With no little trepidation, he stepped across the threshold. So awesome was the drawing room — never before had Arthur been present in a chamber strewn about with lotus columns and lilies and papyrus stems, hieroglyphics and odalisks and pyramids, to say nothing of lions and vultures and crocodiles — that he was briefly aware only of these marvels. As the initial impact waned, he next realized that within that hitherto unglimpsed splendor dwelt two females. The first of these, who looked to be near Arthur’s own age, was clutching a vicious-looking dog to her breast. The second, seated on a crocodile-shaped sofa near the fireplace, was observing him narrowly. Surely this could not be the dowager duchess? thought Arthur, stunned. He had envisioned some great Amazon of a woman, who breathed brimstone and flame. What was it the tearful beauty encountered in the hallway had called her? An old gorgon? Perhaps his parents had been overly pessimistic in warning Arthur against potential missteps. “I do hope,” observed the dowager duchess, reinstating Arthur’s faith in his parents’ perspicacity, “that you’re not a mooncalf! Come here, young man!” On leaden feet, Arthur obeyed. The dowager rose to her full height, grasped his chin and turned his head this way and that as she continued her inspection. At length released, Arthur stumbled over his own feet in an effort to put a safe distance between himself and his benefactress. Lady Blackwood might be no Amazon, but he could not doubt her ability to breathe brimstone and fire. In thus attempting to 64

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remove himself from within the dowager’s reach, he noticed that the plainly dressed female was regarding him in a sympathetic manner. Tentatively, he smiled. “Ho!” said the dowager duchess. “Sara, say hello to Arthur Kingscote, and then be off! I do not know where you learned the addle-pated notion that I pay you to take your ease at my fireside. There is lace to be mended, and Jaisy to be attended, and Confucious to be exercised!” Georgiana meant to ensure that Arthur Kingscote was aware of Sara’s lowly status, it appeared, perhaps fearing that so unfortunately situated a female would grasp at any straw to escape; but Sara took no offense. Pleasant as was the young man’s guileless, freckled countenance, quite a different set of features intruded themselves all too often in Sara’s mind. What a contrary-natured female she was, mused Sara, as she passed out of the drawing room. Before Jevon had made it clear that he didn’t wish to tryst with her, trysting with Jevon had never — or at least not very often — crossed her thoughts. “Sara,” persisted the dowager, in case young Arthur truly was a mooncalf, and slow to take the point, “is penniless, though of respectable enough birth. If she ever marries, it must be to someone plump enough in the pocket that her own lack of fortune will not signify. Not that I expect her to climb down off the shelf! I trust you take my meaning, young man?” Lest he displease the dowager duchess — and he was beginning to think “old gorgon” might be much too mild a term — Arthur dared not voice his confusion. He agreed, then hastily sought to introduce a new topic of conversation. But Lady Blackwood was not interested in Arthur’s journey, which had terminated at the Saracen’s Head, atop Snow Hill, even though it was a journey for which she had paid. “A wise young man,” she interrupted, as with regal measured pace she closed the distance Arthur had placed between them, “would not hesitate an instant when given the opportunity to take a wealthy female to wife!” The dowager duchess halted in front of him. “Wife?” Arthur echoed faintly, noting how the flickering firelight case demonic shadows on the dowager’s raddled face. “You are a very fortunate young man, Arthur Kingscote!” Even more diabolically, Lady Blackwood smiled. “A very fortunate young man indeed.” 65

Ten Though Lady Easterling had not been privileged to view the celebrated Catalini at the King’s Theater in the Haymarket, she was among the guests at a private musical party when the temperamental prima donna performed selections from various of Mozart’s operas, thus displaying a voice of extreme richness and powerful flexibility. Accompanying Jaisy to this concert were the Dowager Duchess of Blackwood and Arthur Kingscote. And though Jaisy might profess herself well satisfied with the entertainment, and the dowager bestow upon Catalini a flatteringly benign inclination of the head, Arthur’s frame of mind was a great deal less appreciative. It was not the evening’s fare that dissatisfied him. Arthur was no ardent admirer of musical concerns, but he could not help being fascinated by this first glimpse of life among the Upper Ten Thousand. The elegant rooms were so crowded that several young man lay on the carpet with their heads resting in a positively Oriental fashion — or did he mean Roman? — against the cushions of the sofas on which their ladies sat. Their conversation, when the prima donna paused between arias to refresh herself, was no less engrossing. Princess Charlotte, only offspring of the Prince Regent, had just married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Arthur learned. The bride had worn a wreath of diamond roses and a shimmering silver gown; hundreds of people had spent the afternoon in the park outside Clarence House, cheering and clapping and calling for the bridegroom to show himself on the balcony. The ceremony, during which the bride and groom had knelt on crimson velvet cushions beneath candlesticks six feet high, had taken place at Carlton House. Crowds of notables thronged into the Queen’s House facing St. James’s Park to congratu66

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late Her Majesty on the marriage; they came in such vast numbers that it had taken over two hours to progress from the entrance lodge through the colonnade at the grand staircase. Ladies had their dresses torn, gentlemen lost their hats. Meanwhile, the bride’s exiled mother had shocked all of Athens by dressing almost naked and dancing at a ball with her servants. This, then, was life among the haut ton? Crowded rooms where one could neither find place to stand comfortably nor breathe, where one was pushed about and shoved and kept in hothouse temperatures? Even one’s marriage, it appeared, would be conducted similarly, amid a crowd of curious people, under eyes quick to note faux pas and gauchery. To Arthur it all sounded very grim. He was a shy young man, and currently, marriage was not a topic which sat well with him. Nor were Arthur’s spirits elevated by the other on-dits which he overheard. Beau Brummell, having been denounced in White’s as a swindler by one Mr. Meyler, had fled to Calais on the same day that notables had thronged into the Queen’s House; and all the town was abuzz over a novel called Glenavron, a libel published anonymously by Lady Caro Lamb against her family and friends. Though Arthur had no inkling of who these people were, of one thing he was certain: Such goings-on wouldn’t be tolerated for one moment in the country. The entertainment having ended, the guests thronged into an adjacent chamber where a long table heavily laden with choice refreshments had been set up. Behind the table uniformed maidservants presented each guest with his or her request. Arthur had no appetite. He fetched a plate for Lady Easterling, but confined himself to a noble concoction of steaming port and roasted lemon. Even the punch, despite its excellence, failed to soothe. Arthur was destined to be immolated on the altar of filial duty, and he did not relish the prospective sacrifice. In the gloomiest of manner, he regarded Jaisy, who wore an evening dress of rose-pink crepe vandyked around the petticoat. It occurred to Arthur that Lady Easterling would meet with the approval of his father, a bluff and outspoken country squire whose existence was devoted to country pursuits and heavy drinking. It occurred to Arthur also that his own untenable position might be blamed directly upon his father’s voracious appetite for life. All the same, Arthur could not resent his father, of whom he was fond, despite the squire’s myriad character flaws; and no matter how 67

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he tried he could not enter into his sire’s undoubted sentiments on the subject of Lady Easterling. Fortunate, the dowager duchess had called him. Fortunate! Never had any young man been so lamentably out of favor with Dame Fortune. If Arthur failed to do his duty, his whole family would be made to pay the price of his negligence. He must gird his loins and screw up his courage and do the duty required of him by Lady Blackwood. Resolutely, Arthur ground his teeth. Deplorably frivolous as she was, rag-mannered and of a common turn of speech, Lady Easterling was also kind. No sooner did she become aware that Arthur’s lugubrious aspect was casting a damper on her own enjoyment than she determined to smooth the wrinkles from his brow. Jaisy had nothing against Arthur; it was not his fault he lacked town-bronze; she supposed Georgiana threw them so often into each other’s company so that Jaisy might impart to Arthur some of her own polish. There was no accounting for Georgiana’s whims, decided Lady Easterling, and pinched her companion’s arm. The dowager duchess no sooner finished scolding Jaisy for contumacious behavior than she indicated that Jaisy should show Arthur how to go on. In this matter, at least, Jaisy deemed it prudent to oblige. “What’s put you in a tweak?” she inquired of Arthur brightly. “I know; this sort of thing ain’t to your taste. I’ll tell you a secret: nor is it to mine! But it don’t do to say so to Georgiana, lest she get upon her high ropes. I daresay you wouldn’t like to see her take a distempered freak.” Certainly Arthur would not enjoy such a spectacle, which was one cause of his current distress; Georgiana would doubtless do that very thing, did he fail to comply with her devilish stratagems. He wondered if he dared inform Lady Easterling that the dowager duchess was nourishing a very evil design toward her. “Come, come!” Jaisy chided, blissfully unaware of the tenor of her companion’s melancholy thoughts, and unaware also of the dowager’s stratagems, acquaintance with which had rendered Arthur more dead than alive. “You must not look so Friday-faced or people will think you do not wish to be here, and that will never do! Later, when you are better established, you may look as bored as you please; but for now it is disastrous to display so great a degree of ennui.” Having dispensed this good advice, Lady Easterling beamed. “I know! You shall tell me about cockfights, like you promised. Easterling would 68

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never let me attend one — no, nor a bull-baiting, either! — which I thought very shabby behavior in him.” If the behavior of any Easterling was shabby, thought Arthur, it was not that of Jaisy’s deceased spouse. Arthur pondered Lady Easterling’s probable reaction to his revelation of the dowager duchess’s grand plan, and at the same time studied Jaisy’s lovely, willful little face. She would not like it, he decided. Probably she would rip up at him, her partner in misfortune, and the bearer of bad news. There must be some other solution to his dilemma, decided Arthur, in a manner that he freely admitted smacked of cowardice. He would pretend to go along with Lady Blackwood’s schemes, would evidence every indication of compliance, and meantime pray devoutly for heavenly intervention, and rescue from a fate the mere contemplation of which made his flesh crawl on his bones. As he pondered his fate, from all current appearances destined to be grim, Arthur obliged his companion as requested with a description of a cockfight. Gory as this pastime was — and for the sake of the thinskinned reader, there will be no description included herein of the gruesome havoc wrought on one bird by another with sharp spur and claw and beak — its precedents were long-established. Cockfighting had been practiced in England even before the Romans arrived. Because Lady Easterling appeared so very interested in the subject, Arthur went on to explain the care and feeding of the fighting birds, whose diet included wheat flour, eggs and butter worked into a stiff paste and baked, and hot wine. Daily massage was highly recommended, he concluded sagely, and a salve of fresh butter mixed with leaves of rue and hyssop and rosemary was thought to be most efficacious. “It is a pity this isn’t the last century!” he added, in response to Jaisy’s expressions of envy. “Because it was nothing for fine ladies to attend cockfights then.” “Oh, yes!” Lady Easterling turned upon her escort a glance of such marked approval as to place them both temporarily in the good graces of the sharp-sighted dowager duchess, who from a discreet distance kept close watch on their progress. “And I should also like to make the acquaintance of Gentleman Jackson, who has a boxing academy in Bond Street, because I am a great follower of the Fancy, and John Jackson is known as the emperor of pugilism, even though he has fought only three battles in his life!” Arthur made a strangled noise 69

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and she giggled. “Silly gudgeon! I did not say I would do it, merely that I wished to. But I hear music! The dancing has begun.” With no little relief did Arthur learn that Lady Easterling sought no closer knowledge of a sport that had almost as adverse an effect on its exponents as cockfighting had on birds. Tactfully, he refrained from informing Jaisy that he considered her sporting predilections not only most unsuitable for a female of her station in life, but also quite frankly absurd. Simply put, Lady Easterling was very much of an oddity. Unaware also of this opinion — which, anyway, would merely confirm Lord Easterling’s profession that his wife was not cast in any ordinary mold — Jaisy chattered gaily to her companion. The reasons for this conviviality were threefold: Jaisy was very much in charity with Arthur, due to his graphic description of the cockfight; she thought the sight of herself enjoying the company of another gentleman might strike jealousy in Carlin’s breast; she had indulged somewhat more than was prudent in the noble punch. This latter indulgence — another less-than-ladylike preference learned from her late spouse — had inspired in her an urge for confidence. Arthur had been so kind as to explain to her a cockfight. In turn, she would drop a hint or two about the ways of the world. What better person to explain the universe than the lady around whom it revolved? Jaisy did not think of the matter in those precise terms, though had the viewpoint been presented to her, she would doubtless have agreed. “It only wants a bit of resolution,” she said sternly, “to take the field. Throw your heart over and your horse is bound to follow! Why, look at me!” Jaisy preened. “I told Georgiana — or maybe it was Sara! — that I would make an eligible match quick as winking! And so I shall, no matter what Georgiana says!” Here was a topic near Arthur’s own heart. “What does Lady Blackwood say?” “Nothing civil, that’s for certain!” Enchantingly, Lady Easterling pouted. “Kind words from Georgiana are scarce as hen’s teeth. She’s forever boring on about my conduct, and threatening to send me back to the country — and so she would, I’ll warrant, did she but think I’d go! But she fears I wouldn’t, and would instead set up housekeeping on my own, which would be very awkward for her, and which is why she don’t wash her hands of me! Take a lesson from my book, Arthur, if 70

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you don’t want Georgiana to make a cat’s-paw of you! How pulledabout you look! I did not mean to put you on the fidgets! I daresay Georgiana only wants to see you comfortably bestowed!” The dowager’s notion of comfort, alas, did not accord with Arthur’s own; and Lady Easterling’s attempts to lighten his spirits had only deepened his gloom. In addition to her other numerous failings, Jaisy was also horridly headstrong, he realized. Wondering if increased acquaintance with the lady would reveal further defects of character, and fearing very greatly that it would, he regarded her. Lady Easterling did not note her companion’s drear expression; she was craning her lovely neck to see into a room that had been set up for dancing. “Arthur!” She pinched his arm. “Look, there is Carlin! Walk with me a way, so that he may see us, and invite me to stand up with him.” Relieved that he would not be immediately called upon to perform this duty, for he disliked to dance, Arthur gave Lady Easterling his arm. “Who is Carlin?” he inquired. “Do you not seen him? Over there, the superior-looking gentleman with brown eyes and hair. Oh, you mean who is he! Carlin is London’s most eligible bachelor, and rich as Croesus to boot — not that I care for that because my own pockets are very plump!” Lady Easterling was épris in that direction? Arthur, among whose plentiful siblings were several younger sisters, recognized the signs. Immediately his heavy spirits soared. He would strive his utmost to lend assistance to romance, a decision that would have greatly startled his own sisters, who had tried on several occasions to persuade Arthur to emulate Cupid, but in vain. “At home to a peg, is he not?” sighed Jaisy, as their steps brought them closer to the viscount. “Prime and bang up to the mark! A regular Trojan! You must promise not to mention Carlin to Georgiana, Arthur; she’s taken it into her head that my bold manners have given him a disgust, and doesn’t believe he can be brought to pop the question. Which is all a great piece of poppycock!” Was it? Once more Arthur’s spirits plummeted. “As close as oysters!” He promised, all the same. “Oh, look!” In a positively disgraceful manner, Jaisy clutched at his arm. “Carlin must not have seen us; he is taking his leave. I must speak with him, Arthur! Can we not walk a little more quickly?” 71

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But Carlin had seen them; Arthur had observed his start of recognition, and the abrupt beeline he had made in another direction. Clearly, the gentleman did not wish to encounter Lady Easterling. It would appear that, as regarded Carlin, the dowager duchess’s conclusions had been correct. “Flimflam!” retorted Lady Easterling, with a flashing eye, when thus informed. “Of all the unjust things to say! I’ll warrant you are merely jealous because I do not fancy you! Well, I do not meant to stand here and argue while Carlin gets away.” “Hang it!” uttered Arthur, and then abruptly closed his mouth. Well did he know the aspect of a young lady on the verge of a temper tantrum, and Lady Easterling had very much that look. Too, presentation to Lady Easterling of his frank assessment of her character, person and habits of speech would not advance fulfillment of the mandate laid upon him by the dowager duchess. Furthermore, while he sought to control his temper, Lady Easterling had abandoned him to make her way through the crowd. She was headed straight for the doorway where Carlin stood in conversation with his host. Silently cursing all strong-minded females, Arthur followed. He caught up with her soon enough; Jaisy had stopped dead in her tracks, on her beautiful features a look of stunned disbelief. That expression struck Arthur as very queer. Then he, too, came within earshot of the two gentlemen in the doorway, and Lady Easterling’s shock was easily explained. “I would not say so to anyone but you,” murmured Carlin, whose back was to them, “but the chit is a young woman of very singular character, capricious and eccentric, eternally exhibiting the most boundless effrontery!” His companion made an unintelligible comment. “You may be amused by her vulgarity and pretentious airs,” retorted Carlin, “but you aren’t in imminent danger of finding yourself leg-shackled to the chit. I would not put it past her to carry me off by force! Did I not name her well? Fair Fatality! Because I vow she will either drive me to take my life or her own!” So much for his brief vision of reprieve, thought Arthur, then winced as Jaisy’s fingernails dug into his wrist. It was not so very loud, the noise he made, but it was sufficient to make the gentlemen aware that their private conversation had drawn an audience. 72

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First to espy and recognize the white-faced Lady Easterling was their host. Upon receipt of that murmured explanation, Lord Carlin swung around. He looked no less furious than did Jaisy herself, thought Arthur, and wondered if he were about to find himself in the middle of a truly appalling scene. He did not; Lord Carlin was too much the perfect gentleman to grasp Lady Easterling by her lovely shoulders and shake her till her perfect teeth rattled in her head, as was his inclination at that moment. Instead, without a single word, he quit the scene.

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Eleven Because there was only one reasonable means by which to relieve his exacerbated sensibilities, the next day found Lord Carlin in Jevon Rutherford’s lodgings, delivering himself of a veritable diatribe. This was couched in the least offensive terms due to Carlin’s gentlemanly habit; and consequently went rather wide of its target. Jevon supposed, had he asked, he might discover what the viscount was prosing on about; but Jevon had more serious matters to contemplate. Beyond noting that his friend seemed a trifle restive, Jevon paid him little heed. Mr. Rutherford had promised himself a visit to Blackwood House that afternoon, and therefore was very much occupied with thoughts of strategy. How would he approach his precious Sara, and how would she respond? An age had passed since their last meeting! Dared he hope she had begun to realize in the interim that the regard in which he held her was rather more than friendship? That only the most harrowing degree of self-control enabled him to suppress the impulse to sweep her off her feet and into his arms? Upon due reflection, Jevon ruefully decided that only a ninnyhammer could nurture such unfounded hopes. His Sara would be thinking no such thing, would be wholly occupied with his harum-scarum hoyden of a sister. Thought of Lady Easterling and Sara Valentine in, as it were, one breath, recalled to Jevon his pact. He had promised to intervene in the matter of Lord Carlin. Well, and had he not offered very good advice? That very advice Lord Carlin was discussing, and in tones that were far from appreciative. Just what maggot had the viscount taken into his head? Jevon frowned and put down the silver-backed brush with which he had been toying, and set himself to find out. But enlightenment was not so easily achieved. In one breath Kit denounced Lady 74

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Easterling — as bold and brass-faced a baggage as his lordship had ever seen — and in the next lamented that he must marry a chit for whom he didn’t care three straws. “The devil!” interjected Jevon, so startled that he knocked the silver-backed brush off the table where he had set it. “Who said anything about marriage?” “My father!” Lord Carlin picked up the brush. “It is not a subject which I am eager to discuss! I hope I know my duty, and there’s an end to it! No Carlin has ever been less than honorable. I had hoped you might offer some advice along those lines, but I perfectly understand why you might be a trifle out of patience!” “You do?” Mr. Rutherford was not similarly blessed. “I beg you, explain!” Lord Carlin cast his friend a withering look, and made a very pungent reference to rubbing salt in open wounds, then added: “That accursed nickname!” “Ah!” Jevon was pleased to achieve even so small a degree of progress. “Fair Fatality! I don’t mind, why should I? In point of fact, I doubt that Jaisy herself took exception to it.” “Oh, no!” Lord Carlin replied bitterly. “I can tell you on the best authority that she did not! If she were not your sister, Jevon — but that’s neither her nor there. I wish you would tell me how the blazes one goes about developing a preference!” Upon receipt of this bizarre conception of romance — Lord Carlin appeared to think of Cupid as a habit to be cultivated — Mr. Rutherford quirked a golden brow. He was always ready to oblige a friend, however, particularly in those cases where to do so brought no perspiration to his own handsome brow. Jevon was a kindly soul, and genial, for all his innate laziness; and there was no gentleman alive better qualified to expound upon romance. “One either discovers a preference or one does not,” he explained gently. “If you find yourself thinking of a young lady at queer times of day, and without the slightest cause; if the time that you are apart from her seems an eternity, and the time you spend together a mere instant; if a day that passes without a glimpse of her is a day uninspired — then, Kit, you may fairly conclude that you have discovered a preference.” It was obvious from Lord Carlin’s expression that so mawkish a condition did not meet with approval. “Egad!” he said, revolted. “Are 75

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you certain?” On this absurdity, Mr. Rutherford’s other eyebrow rose. “I mean, of course you must be certain, because if anyone you should know — but must it apply in every case? If I think frequently of a young lady — any young lady — even a vulgar little chit who has made a dead-set at me — am I of necessity on the way to stepping into parson’s mousetrap?” Perhaps fortunately, Jevon did not pause to ponder the identity of his lordship’s “vulgar little chit.” Instead, he hastened to clear away a misapprehension under which his lordship labored. “The two don’t necessarily follow!” he reproved. “Love and marriage, that is! A man doesn’t go around making a habit of marrying his ladybirds!” Briefly distracted from his own dreadful dilemma, Lord Carlin regarded his friend. Had Jevon not hinted that he, too, thought of marriage? Lord Carlin wondered with which lady Mr. Rutherford meant to enter that state. The only female who came to mind as currently enjoying Jevon’s favor was a pretty little opera dancer who trod the boards at Drury Lane. An opera dancer? Surely not! “Hopefully one’s preference,” Kit ventured tactfully, “will fall upon a lady of one’s own station in life.” Mr. Rutherford was not a man to tolerate any slur upon his beloved who, though of eminently respectable birth, was currently embarked upon an existence of the utmost ignominy. “Balderdash!” said he. His wild guess had been correct, concluded Lord Carlin: Jevon did mean to marry his fancy-piece. Kit could only think that Jevon had suddenly gone quite queer in the attic. This was the great sage whose wisdom he had sought? With laudable self-restraint, Lord Carlin set down the silver-backed brush on a table, uttered a scathing denunciation of the quality of his friend’s advice, and departed the premises. In a ruminative manner, Jevon gazed after his lordship. Kit’s unappreciative comments regarding his own good sense, Jevon sensibly ignored; he was certain he hadn’t grown so addle-pated as to profess that the ladies not only wanted what they couldn’t have, but also didn’t want what they could, a piece of very shabby reasoning that failed to take into consideration the innate capriciousness of its subject. But Kit had been most adamantly concerned with matters matrimonial. With the intention of frankly warning his scapegrace sister to leave off plaguing Lord Carlin, Jevon donned his many-caped greatcoat and his curlybrimmed beaver hat. Exiting his lodgings, he pulled on his gloves. 76

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Even Lord Carlin’s odd behavior had not power to perplex him long, and Jevon’s thoughts soon returned to the subject which had occupied him before his lordship’s appearance: a way of life that, with the assistance of a certain Miss Valentine, must speedily be reformed. Bad enough that Byron had been forced to flee the country in disgrace; but Byron had been a queer bird, with his club foot and his carefully disheveled curls, his dining habits that centered around eating vinegar and potatoes and drinking from a skull, his highly publicized affaire with the spoilt and selfish Caro Lamb. Brummel was an altogether different kettle of fish, and Jevon would sincerely miss the Beau’s outrageous impertinence. No more would he be glimpsed riding in Bond Street, reins grasped between forefinger and thumb as if he held a pinch of snuff; no more send his linen to be washed and dried on Hampstead Heath; no more exchange snubs with his one-time friend, the Prince Regent. It was a very great pity, felt Jevon, whose unflagging good humor and large sense of the ridiculous rendered him immune to the quips of gentlemen whose habit it was to be unspeakably rude in the politest possible way. Jevon did not anticipate that he would suffer so great a lapse of his usual good sense that, like Brummell, he would amass debts he could not pay, or, like Byron, indulge in several too many affairs of the heart; but rather viewed these débâcles from a broader viewpoint. One could only maintain a position at the summit for a finite period of time before the props were knocked out from beneath one. Downfall was inevitable. Jevon Rutherford had for a long time dwelt upon the heights. Before unspecified disaster tumbled him from his perch, Jevon would descend of his own volition. As he pondered the manner of his withdrawal from the lists, and the lady whom he hoped would make the retirement worthwhile, Jevon executed the brief journey between his lodgings and Lady Blackwood’s home in Queen Anne Street. At last the stone-fronted house of fine proportions loomed up before him. The butler Thomas opened the door and informed Jevon that the family was gathered in the drawing room. “Never mind escorting me!” said Jevon, shrugging out of his greatcoat. “I know the way!” Blithely he mounted the stair. That all was not rosy in the dowager duchess’s drawing room became clear as soon as he arrived in the upper hallway. 77

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“The weather has been so dreadful,” said a young gentleman, whose rather desperate voice Jevon did not know. “These stupid fogs and mists! The cold! My mother writes that several of the sheep have expired in the snow.” “Oh, do stop boring on about your wretched sheep!” came another voice. Very easily did Jevon recognize the venomous tones of the dowager duchess. “Do you but oblige me regarding our little secret and you may buy an entire flock! As for you, young woman, put down that horrid book. Caro Lamb is mad as a Bedlamite. I have thought so for some time.” “You are just out of frame because you are in these pages!” responded Jaisy, in mulish tones that halted her fond brother’s progress down the hallway. “Lady Mandeville is actually Lady Oxford, Buchanan is Sir Godfrey Webster, and of course Glenavron is Lord Byron.” “Byron!” Georgiana sounded scandalized. “Don’t let me hear you mention his name again, miss. Better you should take a lesson from Caro Lamb, who has with that accursed volume capped a most reprehensible progress, and finally ruined herself! Why, she used to dress up as a page and steal into, er, that man’s lodgings! To say nothing of throwing things at her servants and slashing her wrists. You see what happens to ladies who blot their copybooks!” “By Jove!” responded Lady Easterling, very irate. “If that don’t beat all! It is Carlin who should be condemned for his conduct not me, because to be talking in so very loose a way is not gentlemanly! Not that I am wholly convinced that he did not say those things about me just to further whet my interest, no matter what you and Sara think! And furthermore, Georgiana, it is very hypocritical of you to talk about Caro Lamb being unkind to her servants when you have just sent poor Sara out into the cold — if you will forgive me for being so presumptuous as to point it out!” Jevon anticipated that within seconds the ladies would be at daggers drawn, and sympathized with the young gentleman who could not follow Jevon’s excellent example of effecting a quick escape. It was not the dowager or his sister with whom Jevon wished to converse, especially not when in one of their relative takings, but his own true love, callously rendered prey to the inclement elements. He found her walking up and down the little garden in obvious agitation, Confucious snapping at her heels. Some few silent seconds 78

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passed as Jevon paused to conquer the revulsion roused in him by the sight. It was not his ladylove who inspired disgust, naturally; but Confucious, bundled up in some knitted garment, and wearing similarly fashioned mittens on his paws. “Good God!” ejaculated Jevon, disgusted. Further moments elapsed while he fought off the dog, roused to animated fury by the sound of Jevon’s voice. At length Miss Valentine succeeded in scooping the dog up into her arms, but not before Confucious had set his few remaining teeth firmly in Jevon’s gleaming boot. “My valet will have a spasm,” said Jevon, ruefully surveying the abused article. “You should have let me set that misbegotten cur loose in the streets when we had the chance.” “I wish I had!” Only in the nick of time did Miss Valentine avoid being nipped. Hastily she set down Confucious on the shell-shaped bench, too high off the ground for an arthritic gentleman to escape. Frustrated and snarling, Confucious settled back to await release. “But much as I dislike the little brute, I cannot connive at his murder. Too, were Confucious no longer with us, I would probably find myself out of a place, because Georgiana would blame me for the loss. And then I truly would be at point nonplus!” “No, you wouldn’t!” promptly responded Jevon, not one to miss a cue. “My darling, trust me!” “Your what?” Miss Valentine stared, then blinked and blushed. “Jevon, I thought we had agreed you would talk no more flummery to me.” “Did we?” The combination of wide gray eyes and rosy cheeks, Mr. Rutherford discovered, left a fellow feeling a trifle bemused. “Do you dislike it so much?” “Dislike it? Good gracious, no! I do not wish you to feel I expect you to throw the hatchet at me, Jevon, because you must get tired of such things!” Sara sighed. “I will confess that I find it very pleasant to laugh, what with Jaisy in a pucker, and Georgiana in a bustle, and both of them ringing peals over me!” “My poor Sara!” Jevon clapsed her hands. “If it becomes too much to bear, you may come away to me.” “I thank you!” snapped Miss Valentine, and jerked her hands away. “Or I would thank you not to say such things! You may flirt with me, Jevon, but you may not make mock!” 79

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Happy it was for Mr. Rutherford that he was supremely self-possessed, else he might have taken to heart the rejections that Miss Valentine steadfastly dealt. “My darling Sara, pray forgive me. I did not mean to tease you, but sought to indicate my eagerness to be of assistance.” “Eagerness? You, you lazy creature? I have not forgot your promise to help me persuade Jaisy that she must not dangle after Carlin!” Sara pressed gloved fingers to her hot cheeks. “Now I must apologize for ripping up at you.” “You need not.” Once more, Jevon took possession of her hands. “We shall consider one another forgiven. Now you must tell me what inspired the contretemps I overheard abovestairs, and I will relate to you the very strange conversation that I had with Carlin earlier this day, and we will decide what is best done.” Miss Valentine obliged with an accounting of Carlin’s unflattering comments overheard by Lady Easterling. “She cannot seem to make up her mind,” Sara concluded, “whether Carlin is the greatest blackguard alive or a gazetted fortune hunter, whether he spoke with all seriousness or in jest; and consequently cannot decide whether she should fly into a passion or sink into a decline, as befitting a lady who’s received a crushing blow. First she professes he has played fast and loose with her, offering her false coin; then she proclaims that she is broken-hearted that the object of her affections should hold her so unwarrantedly low!” During these revelations, Mr. Rutherford had with practiced ease placed an arm around Miss Valentine’s slender shoulders and drawn her against his side. “My poor darling!” he responded comfortably. “Indeed!” said Sara. “Your sister applied to me regarding the truth of Carlin’s remarks and I was obliged to admit they were not wholly without basis, which piqued her vanity. She was very much chagrined and disappointed in me, Lady Easterling announced; and then, if you please, she turned me off!” “She did what?” echoed Mr. Rutherford, swinging Miss Valentine around so that he might look into her face. “Not that she can!” Sara was quick to reassure him. “Although I should have liked to leave Georgiana’s employ and have as many bonnets as I wish, I daresay Jaisy would have been no easier to please!” She frowned. “Jevon, you are shivering! Why did you come out without a coat?” 80

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“Because,” responded Mr. Rutherford, who had indeed ventured out-of-doors without benefit of gloves or curly-brimmed beaver hat or greatcoat, “I was so anxious to speak with you, my precious!” “Oh,” responded Sara doubtfully. “Well, it is very good of you to be so concerned about your sister, but I do not understand why we could not have spoken as easily inside.” “No?” As has been made apparent, Mr. Rutherford intended to pursue this courtship with all due respect to his beloved’s various birdwitted opinions; but even the most rigidly imposed self-control may snap. In the case of Mr. Rutherford, moreover, self-control was both newly acquired and rudimentary. “I’ll show you!” As concerns embraces undertaken in chilly gardens, when one participant is in his shirtsleeves and the other in a state of shock, this example was more satisfactory than most. Mr. Rutherford ceased to shiver, perhaps because of the proximity of another human body, and very nicely fashioned it was; Miss Valentine seemed happy enough to perform this humanitarian service for her old friend, because he no sooner released her than she voiced an incoherent murmur that prompted him to do it all over again. But romance was not destined to flourish that day in the little garden behind Blackwood House. Confucious had gone too long unnoticed by Mr. Rutherford and Miss Valentine, who were so engrossed in one another that they did not even notice when he began to bark. Stricken deaf as were Miss Valentine and Mr. Rutherford — a notunheard-of side effect of Cupid’s dart — this affliction did not similarly smite the other occupants of Blackwood House. Some moments later, when Jevon reluctantly ceased to kiss his Sara, a respite intended to be temporary and undertaken only so that his beloved might draw breath, he became aware of a disapproving presence behind him. “Lady Blackwood wishes a word with you, sir,” announced Thomas, in tones no more friendly than the damp and chilly air.

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Twelve Feeling very much as the aristocracy of revolutionary France must have whilst awaiting the guillotine, Miss Valentine went about her chores. The greater portion of the following morning she spent in the nether regions of Blackwood House — the kitchens with huge elm worktables and charcoal-burning ranges, countless copper pots and pans upon the wall, coconut matting spread upon the stone-flagged floors; the cool larder with its brick floor and slate shelves. Lady Blackwood suspected that her cook sold more than grease and dripping and old tea leaves, as was her perquisite, to the buyer of kitchen stuff who appeared regularly upon the scullery step. Therefore, Sara had to count the silver spoons, and insure that miscellaneous pieces of old brass, or damask cloths, or even loaves of bread and hunks of good meat, were not making their stealthy way out the back door, thereby enriching the cook’s pocketbook. A very plump purse that was, Sara shrewdly reckoned. The cook was a petty tyrant in her own right, every month receiving a commission from the tradesmen with whom she dealt. Any tradesman who failed to cooperate in this example of mutual back-scratching found that the cook’s complaints about the quality of his merchandise had lost him the custom of Lady Blackwood. Enterprising as was the cook, Sara found no real cause for complaint in the busy kitchens, unless one counted the knowing glances that were cast at her, or the whispers and giggles passing behind her back. Georgiana had meant for her to be put to the blush, Sara thought, as she wearily climbed the stair. The dowager duchess had not expected that Sara would discover skullduggery afoot in the nether regions of Blackwood House. Probably she would next be scolded for having interfered with the creation of that evening’s entrées. 82

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Perhaps she was starting at shadows, Sara told herself, perhaps imagining those sly glances and whispered comments. Perhaps Thomas had told no one that he had caught Jevon Rutherford embracing his aunt’s hired companion; perhaps he had realized that the incident was of no real significance. Jevon was in the habit of embracing every woman who crossed his path. Moreover, he had been so cold that he was shivering. Miss Valentine’s compliance with his odd methods of resuscitation had been undertaken wholly to insure that he did not freeze to death, and so she would inform anyone who dared broach the subject to her, which thus far no one had, a state of affairs which she dared not hope would last. Sara’s bedchamber, as befit her lowly status, was located in the attics of Blackwood House, which were bitterly cold in the winter and boiling hot in summertime. It was a mean little chamber, with offwhite walls and bare floorboards, furnished with oddments. Sara sank down on the iron bedstead and took stock of her domain. In one corner stood a washstand and basin; in another sat a simple wooden chair, and beside it an old dressing table with a looking glass. If the furniture did not match, at least it provided her a modicum of comfort. Most important, this little chamber afforded a degree of privacy. As she was thinking ungratefully of her employer, Sara’s door swung abruptly open, and Sara started so violently that her forehead encountered the iron bedstead. “Sara! I wish to talk to you!” Lady Easterling announced, somewhat unnecessarily, from the doorway. “You are doing so, are you not?” retorted Sara, rubbing her abused head. “What is it, Jaisy?” Undeterred by this ungracious attitude — indeed, oblivious to it — Lady Easterling tucked herself up quite comfortably at the other end of the bed. “It’s about Carlin,” she said. “Oh?” Miss Valentine murmured ironically. “Do you know, I rather thought it might be!” Irony had imperceptible effect on the self-centered Jaisy. Enchantingly, she frowned. “I have decided that Carlin could not have been serious.” Sara was possessed of a very unkind impulse to immediately throttle her childhood friend. As if it were not bad enough that Sara must dread the dowager duchess’s reaction to the garden incident, and flush to contemplate the opinion other held by her partner in that mis83

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behavior, she must now contend with a positively mule-headed chit. “Jaisy—” “You need not explain!” Lady Easterling looked wise. “I have thought very hard about it, and I do not hold it against you that you said Carlin was serious when I know he could not have been! Nor do I mean to scold you for speaking out of pique, even though it was a very shabby thing! Why, had I not realized you was bamming me, I might have gone off Carlin altogether, and just think how wretched he would have been. But all’s well that ends well, I always say, and you must get up very early in the morning to beat me at the post! Oh, do not look so horrified, Sara! I have said I do not hold it against you, and neither will Carlin when I have explained it all to him. In fact, I daresay he will agree with me that you shall have as many bonnets as you please!” “You are mistaken, Jaisy,” said Sara, quietly and without enthusiasm. “I should be very happy to learn that Carlin has made you a declaration, but I am very much afraid that it is not to be.” “Afraid, my Sara? Moonshine, my dear!” On the rare occasions when awareness of someone else’s problems penetrated her rather shallow mind, Lady Easterling could be remarkably kind. “When one throws one’s heart over, one’s horse must of necessity follow! I think you must be dicked in the nob, or you would not say Carlin may fail to make me an offer. Anyone will tell you his affections have become fixed!” Had she not again been struggling with an impulse toward physical violence, Sara almost might have pitied Lady Easterling, who had never before been crossed in love, and who was destined for a rude awakening. Regretting that she must be the means by which that awakening was achieved, Sara resolutely continued: “No, Jaisy, anyone will not! You have been casting out lures in the most appalling manner, and Carlin has not picked up the handkerchief. He has paid you no attention beyond the barely civil, and sometimes not even that; he has never given you the slightest reason to think he has a partiality. Frankly, Jaisy, you have been bold as a brass-faced monkey! Carlin is the highest of sticklers. That he spoke unflatteringly of you is a thing no one can blame in him. You must console yourself with the reflection that he was not overheard.” Lady Easterling’s lovely face had undergone several changes of expression during Miss Valentine’s outburst, and upon it currently 84

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was a thoroughly bewitching look of rage. The delicate cheeks were suffused with blood, the huge blue eyes sparked fire; the lush lips, pouted, parted: “The devil fly away with you, Sara Valentine! Who are you to tell me what Carlin thinks? A female who never took, who retired after several seasons and now is left upon the shelf! Not that I understand why you should be an ape-leader, because if you was to put forth a little effort you could be a nonpareil, but that’s fair and far off. It is clearly midsummer moon with Carlin, and to that I shall hold fast!” Wounded by Jaisy’s unkind words about herself, Sara snapped back, “You seem to have a fixed and unalterable determination to hound that poor man into his grave! I tell you frankly, Jaisy, that nothing can appear more revolting to propriety.” “By Jove!” Lady Easterling leaned forward, her aspect so irate that Miss Valentine shrank back against the iron bed-frame. “And you set yourself up as a pattern-card of respectability? Well, I may be capricious and rag-mannered and eccentric, but I haven’t been caught out trysting with my brother in the garden! Not that I would tryst with Jevon, no matter what example that horrid Byron set! One’s own sister, just imagine! Don’t poker up, Sara — you know what I mean.” “I’m afraid I do.” Cheeks aflame, Sara studied her hands. “Thomas could not keep so tantalizing a piece of gossip to himself. I suppose the whole household knows.” “Not a bit of it!” Once more Lady Easterling rose to the occasion with a generous effort to dispel her friend’s embarrassment. “He told me because he had to tell someone, and I’m in the habit of gossiping with the servants, for which you must be thankful, no matter how many times you have told me I should not! Georgiana don’t know about you and Jevon. But if you want to keep her from reading you a terrible scold, Sara, you’ll find somewhere else to keep your assignations.” “Assignations!” Miss Valentine pressed cold fingers to her burning cheeks. “How dreadful you make it sound! It was nothing of the sort!” “You had a cinder in your eye, I’ll warrant,” Lady Easterling interrupted scathingly, “and Jevon was getting it out! Tell me another! In point of fact, you have been telling a great many taradiddles lately, Sara! I distinctly remember you saying you no longer had a tendre for Jevon!” 85

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Grimly, Sara reflected upon the perversity of a fate which, just when one thought one’s situation nigh surpassed human bearing, stepped in and made matters worse. The volatile and outspoken Lady Easterling was the last person with whom Sara would have chosen to share secrets. “I don’t,” she said. “You don’t!” Jaisy’s blue eyes widened. “And yet you kept an assignation with him? Sara, I am shocked!” “It wasn’t an assignation!” wailed Miss Valentine. “No, it was a cinder!” Lady Easterling retorted, with an acerbity reminiscent of her aunt. “Gammon! Still, it is not for me to point out that no respectable female would go about keeping clandestine engagements, even if it was with my own brother, which might be thought to fairly bring me close to the business! I am not a person to thrust down another person’s throat my opinion of what has chanced — even when that other person has behaved toward me in a manner that is cruel in the greatest degree!” “Oh, do cut line, Jaisy!” Sara interrupted irritably. “If I have offended you, I apologize for it. Remember, Georgiana has warned you off Carlin. I would not care to see you rouse her displeasure by overt disobedience. Your aunt can make life very uncomfortable.” “My poor Sara!” Lady Easterling bestowed a series of condoling pats upon Miss Valentine’s knee. “Obliged to knuckle under to an old gorgon like Georgiana! Never mind! All that will soon change.” “You have not heard a word I said,” sighed Sara, prey to the frenzied frustration rampant among individuals who hold conversation with brick walls. “Oh, pooh! Of course I have, and now I understand that you do not deliberately seek to mislead me, but are simply wrong.” Having achieved this conclusion, which permitted her to be in charity with her friend, Jaisy beamed. “You are not to worry, Sara! I promise you that everything is on the road to being settled up all right and tight!” All right and tight, was it? Sara wished to scream. If only Thomas had not come into the garden at so untimely a moment, preventing Jevon’s relation of his conversation with Carlin, and their subsequent decision concerning what steps were best taken; if only Jevon had sought her out in the meantime to continue their interrupted conversation. Sara could only conclude that Jevon had other, more pressing 86

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business. Such as, perhaps, a pretty little opera dancer. Upon the unexpected intrusion of this suspicion, Sara bit her lip. “It’s just as well you don’t have a tendre for Jevon,” said Jaisy very aptly. “Although you shouldn’t admit it, Sara, because to tryst with gentlemen for whom one doesn’t care a button must seem a trifle loose! But I know how it is with Jevon: he was there and so were you—” Airily she snapped her fingers. “And voilà! No one but Thomas would make a piece of work of it. It is rather a pity he saw you, Sara, because he is not of a mentality that understands how amusing it can be to while away one’s leisure hours with a little flirtation! Not that one usually goes so far as out into the garden. Perhaps you were not aware that you were misbehaving, although I don’t think a lady should forget that she’s a lady, no matter how long she’s been left on the shelf! At least Jevon should have known better, unless he wasn’t thinking of you as a lady—” She frowned. “Now that I think on it, it was very shabby of Jevon to offer you a slip on the shoulder! How horrified you look, Sara! But what else could he have meant?” “Nothing!” interrupted Miss Valentine, then quickly amended the statement. “I mean, he meant nothing of the sort! This is a tempest in a teapot, Jaisy. Your brother and I are merely friends.” “You go about kissing all your friends in the garden?” inquired Lady Easterling. “That sort of thing may be all right for Jevon — not that there’s an ounce of harm in my brother, but he has been just a little spoiled by his countless successes with the opposite sex — but it won’t do for you!” Mention of Mr. Rutherford’s many conquests roused a sensation very much like heartburn in Miss Valentine’s breast. “Set your mind at ease!” she advised roughly. “I am not likely to number among Jevon’s conquests.” The absurd notion that Miss Valentine should join the ranks of Jevon’s ladybirds — high-flyers one and all, and diamonds of the first water — sent Lady Easterling into a fit of the giggles. “Silly Sara! You ain’t the sort of female that Jevon would take under his protection, even if you was wishful of setting up as a gentleman’s companion, which I can’t imagine that you are! It would be different if you still had money of your own, because then Jevon could marry you; but since you don’t, he couldn’t, and then there’s Georgiana to consider and she’d probably disinherit him again.” She paused for breath, rose and 87

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shook out her skirts. “All told, Sara, it’s a very good thing that you don’t still have a tendre for Jevon!” Miss Valentine regarded her own skirts, soiled from her sojourn into the nether regions of Blackwood House, and depressingly plain. “Yes, isn’t it!” she responded. That Miss Valentine’s confirmation of her heart-whole condition had lacked conviction, Lady Easterling failed to notice, as she failed to notice that Miss Valentine resolutely refused to meet her eye. Good humor restored by this amiable encounter with her friend, Jaisy crossed the mean little room and grasped the doorknob. If Sara’s brain grew occasionally overheated — witness, for example, her muttonheaded conviction that Carlin wouldn’t be brought up to scratch — it was the fault of the dowager duchess. Many, many bonnets would Sara have when Jaisy was wed. Lady Easterling looked forward to performing her rescue. Sara could provide her with feminine companionship, Jaisy thought, and see that the household ran smoothly, and in all due time oversee the nursery, all of which tasks she would perform admirably, providing she didn’t continue to indulge this new-found weakness for romance. Trysts? Sara? The imagination boggled. “It all just goes to show,” announced Jaisy, “that Easterling was right about dark horses! It is never wise to bet against one!” And on this excellent piece of advice, she blithely took her leave.

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Thirteen Lady Easterling, completely unaware of having destroyed Miss Valentine’s mood, then proceeded to the morning room, where she found Arthur Kingscote surveying his image in a Venetian mirror. Very eye-catching Arthur’s person was, draped about in a light brown coat and pale salmon waistcoat, nankeen pantaloons fastened at the knee with two gold buttons, pink stockings, Hussar boots, an intricately fashioned cravat and astonishingly high shirt points. “Don’t you look a quiz!” said Jaisy. Arthur flushed and started, as if caught in some rude act, then turned from his reflection to regard the intruder. “Lady Blackwood requested that I turn myself out in a style more befitting the future — ah? Said she’d stand the expense! To refuse would have been churlish!” Self-centered as she was, Lady Easterling occasionally achieved a flash of intuition. That somewhat erratic sixth sense now led her to question the cause of Arthur’s embarrassment. “A style more befitting to what?” she inquired. “I don’t mind telling you that Georgiana ain’t likely to approve you turning yourself into a deuced man-milliner!” “Hang it!” responded Arthur, with another anxious glance into the mirror. “My tailor assures me that this is all the crack. What would you know about the niceties of masculine apparel, anyway? I say, Jaisy, have you ever seen anything so splendid as Oxford Street? To pass from one end to the other must take quite half an hour. I saw the most curious advertisement, three immense pyramids rolling down the street, their outsides painted all over with hieroglyphics and queer portraits, and in the midst of it, English letters a yard long announcing that there is a superb panorama of Egypt now on view. May we go see it, do you think?” 89

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“No, I don’t,” retorted Lady Easterling, who had viewed all she wished of Egypt in her aunt’s drawing room. “Why has Georgiana decided you must turn yourself into a Tulip of fashion? And don’t bother trying to tell me she was being kind, because Georgiana ain’t done a voluntary kindness in all her life!” Arthur looked as if his intricate cravat had suddenly conspired with his high shirt points to bring him to the edge of strangulation. “Er!” he said. “Er?” mocked Lady Easterling. Lest Arthur flee her presence, an act that from his frantic expression appeared imminent, she clamped her fingers round his arm. Arthur winced. “Leave off mishandling me!” he begged. “Dash it, you’re creasing my sleeve!” “Arthur,” Jaisy drew him inexorably to the gilted confidante and forced him to sit down, “if I were you I would worry much more about whether or not I crease your head! I have been thinking, and what I’m thinking is that you’re behaving very queer, and that Georgiana must be behind it.” This clever piece of reasoning won from Arthur no plaudits. He gazed in a frantic manner around the drawing room. The entablature caught his attention, the striking frieze of ox skulls, the walls with their beautiful relief panels of dancing nymphs. Lady Easterling’s sunny humor was rapidly evaporating. She secured her companion’s attention with a sharp pinch. “Just why has Georgiana brought you to London?” she inquired. “And given you leave to run up bills at her expense? Georgiana don’t stand the reckoning for Jevon, and he’s her heir! Though he may not be much longer if he gets into the way of keeping assignations in her garden — but enough of that. You needn’t think to be stepping into my brother’s shoes, Arthur Kingscote, because I won’t stand for it! Nor will I stand for you stepping into mine!” With this sternly delivered denunciation, Jaisy succeeded in drawing her companion’s attention away from the rare plants growing out of lacquered boxes that were tastefully spaced about the morning room, and directing it to her little feet, clad today in satin slippers tied with ribbon-bows. “I beg your pardon!” said he. “And so you may,” retorted Jaisy, “if what I’m thinking is correct! I give you fair warning, Arthur, that I will not be outjockeyed by Georgiana or anyone else! Georgiana brought you to town to marry 90

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me, did she not? You haven’t a feather to fly with, and she means my fortune to feather your nest. I shan’t stand for it! I won’t be bartered off to some gazetted fortune hunter who must dangle after a rich heiress because he is impoverished.” To this passionate declaration, delivered with heaving breast and wildly flashing eye, Arthur responded as would any young man of retiring disposition and great sensibility: he shook like a blancmange. “Uh!” he protested. “Oh, capital!” Lady Easterling uttered scathingly. “You lack conversation as well! What can Georgiana be thinking of, to try and tie me up with a cawker like yourself? Easterling’s blunt, I’ll warrant! Well, young Arthur, I’ll allow myself to be nibbled to death by ducks before I agree to marry you!” Even retiring young gentlemen of acute sensibility have a stickingpoint, however, and Arthur had reached his. “Cawker!” he repeated indignantly. “Cawker!” affirmed Lady Easterling, and for emphasis added: “basket-scrambler, toad-eater, jackanapes! Clodpole! Gapeseed! I cannot imagine why Georgiana thinks I may be persuaded to take you instead of Carlin. She must have bats in her cockloft!” In the opinion of Arthur, who it must be remembered had also overheard Lord Carlin’s forcibly presented sentiments on the subject of Lady Easterling, it was not the dowager duchess who was afflicted with bats, but Jaisy herself. Bitterly, he voiced this viewpoint. For good measure he added his own sentiments on the topic, to wit that he had no desire whatsoever to marry a pea-goose. “I should think not!” responded Jaisy, upon whom subtlety had as little effect as water on a duck. “Don’t try and change the subject! Try and appreciate the delicacy of my position, if you will! Here I am, on the verge of forming the most gratifying of connections to a gentleman très sympathique! — who will adore me à la folie and be willing to expire at my feet! — and Georgiana takes it into her head to pair me off with a nodcock! And I’m sure she can make life very unpleasant, as Sara says! If anyone, Sara should know! Oh, there is nothing else for it but that I shall have to elope. Not that I should mind an elopement, because it sounds very exciting, but I doubt Carlin would think it quite the thing.” In that respect, at least, Lady Easterling displayed laudable perspicacity. So Arthur intimated, then said: “But there’s no need to puzzle 91

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your head over it, because it’s my belief Carlin wouldn’t have you if you was presented to him on a silver platter, with your infernal fortune piled around your feet. Stands to reason: I wouldn’t have you either, had I any choice in the matter. No one wants to be married to a female who’s so cursed contrariwise. Oh, you are top-of-the-trees, I don’t deny that — but you’re as pigheaded as you are pretty, and spoiled and selfish, flying into a passion the instant you don’t have your own way, all of which is a dead bore!” These unflattering comments, Jaisy realized, were strangely similar to those voiced by another gentleman — not, of course, that Carlin would ever express himself with such appalling rudeness. Was the whole world gone mad? she wondered. First Carlin had denounced her, then Sara had agreed with him, and now Arthur flew off the hooks. Carlin’s conduct was easily enough understood; Carlin was clever enough to realize that the usual methods of courtship would advance him little in the good graces of so long-sought-after a lady as Jaisy; and Sara, lacking experience in such matters, could not be expected to comprehend so devious an approach. But why should Arthur join his voice to this general disapproval? He certainly did not wish to elevate himself in Jaisy’s opinion; if anything, the opposite. That, too, was queer, she realized. The large majority of the world’s male population would have flown straight into cloud-cuckoo-land at the mere thought of marriage with Lady Easterling. Arthur, on the contrary, appeared to be in the dumps, almost as if he truly found the notion very much to his dislike. Dislike? Incredible! He was merely putting a good face on it, attempting to prevent her knowing he had been struck a mortal blow. “Poor boy!” said Jaisy kindly. “No wonder you are sulky as a bear.” “Jaisy,” responded Arthur, who from his younger sisters had learned to recognize the various types of feminine megrims, and who therefore understood that Lady Easterling was fast on the way to convincing herself of his preference, “it’s you who’s queer in the attic! I’ll do my duty because I must, but it’s only fair to tell you that I would rather be nibbled to death by ducks than marry a selfish, rag-mannered madcap!” The sincerity of this passionate avowal even Jaisy could not doubt, nor the revulsion with which Arthur pried her fingers from his sleeve. “I shall spare you that fate!” she cried dramatically. “You may be too 92

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poor-spirited to do anything but what Georgiana tells you, but I am no milksop! And I very solemnly and seriously assure you that I do not intend to be the plaything of fortune!” Had Arthur at this point exercised diplomacy, as Jaisy expected that he would, the peace between them might have been restored, and they might have joined forces to try and avoid a dénouement abhorrent to them both. But Arthur had for several days been feeling the strain of his own uncomfortable position in Blackwood House, and the frustration attendant upon falling in with plans which he abhorred, and was in no mood to be conciliating. “Tongue-valiant!” he sneered. The reader will not be especially surprised to learn that Lady Easterling thereupon boxed his ears. The next scene in this day’s drama took place in the garden behind Blackwood House, where Mr. Kingscote retreated after the assault performed upon his person by Lady Easterling. It was not the first time Arthur had been abused in such a manner, although on all previous occasions one or another of his sisters had been the cause of his discomfort. On those previous occasions there had been some slight justification for the action; from his lofty position as eldest of the family, Arthur occasionally condescended to tease his siblings. That Arthur’s sisters should occasionally box his ears, Arthur didn’t consider especially unfair. That Lady Easterling dared do so, however, was very much beyond the outside of enough. Yet he could not refuse the dowager duchess’s demands without wreaking hardship upon his entire family, who were depending upon him to accomplish a mission of rescue from perennially dire straits. The air in the garden — nay, in all of London — was unseasonably chill and damp. Perhaps, if he were to remain long enough exposed to the elements, he might take a quinsy and expire. Death, decided Arthur, with the utmost seriousness, would be preferable to marriage with Lady Easterling. He contemplated the reaction of the dowager duchess were he to put an abrupt end to his existence. Would she compensate his grieving family for his loss? Or lop them off altogether from the family tree as punishment for having nurtured so weak a twig? Arthur was interrupted in his gloomy cogitations by a vicious snarling, and teeth fastened in his elegant Hussar boot. “Oh, I say! Hang it!” he cried, attempting to shake Confucious loose. “Unhand me, you wretched little brute!” 93

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In response to these exhortations, yet another figure stirred. Miss Valentine rose from the shell-shaped bench where she had been brooding over the inequities of fate, and swooped down upon Confucious. Then Sara and Arthur eyed each other warily. Arthur hoped it was the excellence of his apparel that caused Miss Valentine to stare, and not because he looked a quiz, as had been unhandsomely intimated by Lady Easterling, whose judgment demonstrably liked nicety. For his own part, Arthur was fascinated by Miss Valentine’s bonnet, lilac with a helmet crown and a small front, trimmed with two white feathers and a wreath of laurel, and a ribbon that tied under the chin. It was a very fetching, very frivolous bonnet, wholly unsuited to a female of Miss Valentine’s station and current occupation; and Arthur wondered what had possessed Sara to rig herself out in all her finery simply to walk alone in Lady Blackwood’s garden. As Arthur thus pondered the giddy confection perched atop Miss Valentine’s dark head, Miss Valentine regarded him with burgeoning amusement. “You are staring at my bonnet,” she gently pointed out. Arthur flushed and wrenched away his gaze. “It is a lovely bonnet! You are complete to a shade!” “Fiddlesticks!” responded Miss Valentine. “It is you who are turned out in prime style! You will be wondering at my extravagance, I’ll warrant. I have never been able to overcome my passion for bonnets. Lady Blackwood pays me a very generous wage, and I am afraid I squander every shilling on my one remaining luxury, which is very reprehensible of me!” “Nonsense!” His brief sojourn at Blackwood House had already acquainted Arthur with the temptation to kick over the traces and take the reins between his teeth, a temptation which in Miss Valentine found expression in indulgence of her passion for bonnets and airdreams of indulging a passion of quite a different kind. Of those airdreams, which would have cast him into an agony of embarrassment, Arthur happily knew nothing. “Nothing of the sort! I don’t see why you shouldn’t spend your wages exactly as you please.” “That’s because you have not stopped to think what would become of me were the dowager duchess to turn me off.” Sara’s good humor had all fled. “As she threatens periodically, and as I have no doubt she will eventually do. A wise female would take precautions so as not to be caught unprepared. I, on the other hand, go out and buy yet anoth94

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er bonnet, because to do so gives me pleasure; and then am guiltstricken as result of my own fecklessness. But you are shivering! Come, let us stroll about the garden before you take your death.” Briefly, Arthur toyed with the notion of inquiring further into Miss Valentine’s conviction that she was to be turned off, then decided against it. No doubt Miss Valentine was merely indulging in the crotchets to which females were prey. A young gentleman with as many problems as Arthur could not be expected to burden himself with the additional problems of every chance acquaintance. Through the little garden Mr. Kingscote and Miss Valentine strolled, to the accompaniment of Confucious’s protests. Unbeknownst to one another, their thoughts followed similar lines. As Arthur pondered Lady Easterling’s fortune — appropriation of which would make the existence of his large family so much more serene, removing them from the dowager duchess’s list of dependents and from beneath her heavy thumb — Sara regretted Jevon Rutherford’s lack of the same commodity; and the term “fortune hunter” was uppermost in each mind. As Miss Valentine was attempting to console herself with the intelligence that a gentleman on the dangle for a fortune was as unlikely to marry a pretty little opera dancer as his aunt’s hired companion, a cinder from one of London’s many fires — smoke from which mingled with the fog to hang over the city like a dark, ominous cloud — flew straight into her eye. “Oh!” she cried. “What is it? A cinder? Here, allow me to be of assistance!” Arthur withdrew from his pocket a huge speckled handkerchief. “Thank you!” gasped Sara, turning up her face to receive his ministrations, and tucking the snarling dog beneath her arm, facing the other way. As a result of this undignified position, Confucious alone witnessed the intrusion of a third person into this scene, and so angry already were his barks that his announcement of this new arrival gained no attention. Nor did the intruder linger to further gaze upon what appeared a very tender encounter. Whatever was to be done? wondered Lady Easterling, distressed beyond measure that her childhood friend and confidante had fallen so determinedly into licentious ways.

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Fourteen When last glimpsed, Lord Carlin had been wishing very strongly that he might shake the aggravating Lady Easterling until the teeth rattled in her head. In the interval elapsed between that day and this, he had not changed his mind. Nonetheless, this day found him in Queen Anne Street, gazing without approbation upon the stone-fronted residence of the Dowager Duchess of Blackwood, and regretting that Jevon Rutherford had persuaded him to call. This rather surprising development was the outcome of a wager placed between Lord Carlin and his friend across the board of green baize cloth, a wager which Jevon Rutherford had won. Lord Carlin suspected that he had been very cleverly manipulated. All the same, underhanded as were Jevon’s methods, the only honorable course was to discharge his obligation promptly and with good will. The promptness Kit could manage, but he was less confident about the good will. Why the blazes had Jevon insisted he pay his respects to the dowager duchess, anyway? There was no sense to be made of it. In point of fact, there was no sense to be made of Jevon himself, as borne out by their encounter the preceding evening. This meeting had taken place behind the Corinthian pilasters and well-proportioned facade of White’s, most illustrious of the exclusive gentlemen’s clubs, where wealthy aristocrats plunged day and night at hazard and faro. A man could enter White’s with a few coins in his pocket and emerge a couple of hours later with enough coins to buy an abbey, or so it was claimed. Lord Carlin did not care to play for such high stakes. Nor did Jevon Rutherford, whom he found lingering over his dinner of boiled fowl and oyster sauce, and whose aspect had been decidedly lugubrious. Interrogation had revealed that the absence of Beau Brummell 96

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from White’s famed bow window was the source of this gloom. Jevon had a great deal to say upon the subject of the Beau’s disgrace. Certainly it was a very desponding reflection, thought Lord Carlin, that Brummell’s quaint absurdities would be heard no more at White’s or Brook’s Gambling Club in St. James’s or any other haunts of the ton. Still, the Beau’s débâcle did not seem sufficient cause for the bizarre conduct which Mr. Rutherford had recently begun to display. Perhaps it was the head cold acquired under what could only be considered mysterious circumstances that led Mr. Rutherford to act like a gentleman laboring under a fever of the brain. Just how had Jevon come down with that affliction? wondered Lord Carlin yet again, as he slowly mounted the steps of Blackwood House. Quizzing Jevon on the source of his sniffles and sneezes had led to no enlightenment; Jevon had replied merely that his affliction had been brought down upon him in the most delightful way imaginable, which prompted visions of torrid trysts with pretty little opera dancers in chill outdoor settings to seethe in Lord Carlin’s brain. Though he was man of the world enough not to begrudge his friend a single one of the little opera dancers who invariably put themselves in his way, Kit was much too high a stickler to stand by mute and unprotesting while his friend contracted a ruinous mésalliance. He might as well allow Jevon to blithely embark en route to the devil in a handcart — yet how to stay his course? It was a dreadful puzzle, and further attempts to discuss the matter with Jevon accomplished nothing but additional rebuff. Then there were Kit’s own problems, for he still had not brought himself to choose a wife from among the bevy of hopeful beauties who were dangling after him, and no longer could he turn to Jevon for advice about how to discover a female for whom he could care three straws. Meantime, Lord Carlin mounted the stone steps, arrived at the recessed and pedimented door, gained admittance into the entrance hall and was escorted up the stairway and into the first-floor drawing room. Kit was not unfamiliar with this chamber; it was not his first visit to Blackwood House. With a pained expression, he gazed upon the lotus columns and turning lilies and papyrus stems, the frieze painted with figures representing pharaohs and Egyptian deities, then crossed the room to absently inspect the contents of the sphinx-headed bookcase. Once more he wondered why Jevon had insisted that he call upon 97

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Lady Blackwood. Though Lord Carlin had been acquainted with the dowager duchess for many years, and was as unfailingly polite to her as propriety required, he privately didn’t like her above half. Perhaps the dowager duchess thought he had been remiss in his social obligations of late. True, he had paid her less attention since the installation of the aggravating Lady Easterling in Blackwood House. Very well, he would reinstate himself in Georgiana’s good graces, not because he cared tuppence for her malice, but because to behave uncivilly to a lady other years was not the act of a gentleman. He would amuse her with the current on-dits, and then, duty satisfied, he would take his leave — hopefully without encountering the rag-mannered Lady Easterling, whom he trusted would be employed elsewhere at this time of day. Thought of Lady Easterling — he fully expected that she would be currently engaged in frittering away her fortune in the countless London shops designed specifically to attract the patronage of ladies with more wealth than wit — caused Lord Carlin to realize he had been left to kick his heels in the drawing room for an unconscionably long time. Was he to be left in this atrociously furnished chamber until some breathless servant tracked down her ladyship and bade her hasten home from her shopping expedition? Lord Carlin would not have put it past Lady Easterling to arrange precisely such a thing, even though she lacked the slightest reason to think that he might call. And where the deuce was Lady Blackwood? Frowning, Kit turned toward the door. As he did so, perfectly on cue, Lady Easterling stepped into the room and closed the door. She had not hastened home from a shopping expedition, decided Lord Carlin, studying her with a censorious eye; Lady Easterling was neither breathless nor dressed for the out-of-doors. Indeed, as opposed to being rosy-cheeked from exertion, she looked unusually pale. “How kind of you to call on us!” said Lady Easterling, very politely indicating that he should be seated. “Georgiana will be sorry that she has missed you, but she has gone on some errand or another; I am not precisely sure what. Pray, do sit down, Lord Carlin. And may I offer you some refreshment?” Kit was not to be deluded by any tardy display of unexceptionable manners into thinking his hostess anything but a rag-mannered minx. “Thank you, no! I can stay but a moment! A prior engagement, you 98

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understand. Perhaps, since Lady Blackwood is not in, I should return some other time!” “No!” Before Lord Carlin realized what she was about, Lady Easterling had grasped his sleeve. “I daresay it is improper in me to ask, but I wish to know if you meant what you said the other day.” Improper in her? Never before had Lord Carlin known a female so shockingly forward as to lay hands upon his person without first being given leave. So stunned was he by this presumption that he failed to grant proper attention to her query. “I am not in the habit of saying things I do not mean,” he responded stiffly. “Perhaps if you were to explain to me more precisely just what you are referring to?” He broke off in consternation. Her huge blue eyes had filled with tears. “As if you didn’t know!” cried Lady Easterling, stamping her dainty little foot, unfortunately in painful proximity with Lord Carlin’s shin. “Oh, the devil! Now you will say that I make it my habit to kick people, in addition to all those other dreadful things!” “What other dreadful things?” inquired Lord Carlin, with a sinking sensation. “Do not play the innocent!” Lady Easterling’s delicate fingers clenched, to the eternal detriment of his lordship’s sleeve. “I am capricious and eccentric! Vulgar and pretentious! I exhibit the most boundless effrontery!” With great and praiseworthy effort, Kit refrained from pointing out that young ladies free of those failings did not kick gentlemen in the shins or put ruinous creases in their sleeves. His own conduct, as regarded Lady Easterling, was not above reproach. The fact that her outrageous behavior had given rise to his remarks did not excuse him for voicing ungentlemanly comments. True, he had not meant her to overhear those comments, and was utterly appalled to learn that she had been witness to his lapse from mannerliness — and wasn’t it just like the baggage to have done so? She obviously could be trusted to do nothing that might reasonably be expected of her, and to do everything she should not! And how dared she gaze upon him with that stricken expression? Next Kit supposed she would try and hang round his neck in tears. Once more Lady Easterling demonstrated to his lordship her unpredictability. “Jupiter! You did mean it!” said she. “Well, sir, I’m not one 99

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to kick up a dust over trifles, but I am very much surprised that you would lower your character with such improprieties. It’s well enough for me to do so; I ain’t so odiously starched-up!” “Lady Easterling!” Lord Carlin interrupted, rather desperately. He foresaw that within a trice he would be smack in the midst of a scene such as he most abhorred. “I most earnestly urge you to cease doing violence to your feelings. I spoke in the heat of the moment, and not for your ear. Pray do not regard it!” “Oh?” Lady Easterling’s intuition once more reared its head. “And can you tell me that you did not mean what you said? I thought not! It is a very lowering reflection, because though I may have in my time taken a rattling toss or two, I never expected that I should be run aground! It just goes to show what I have said before: Fate has a devilish handy bunch of fives!” These confidences led Lord Carlin to question whether Jevon Rutherford was the sole member of that family prone to fevers of the brain. “You refine too much upon it!” he protested. “Hah!” retorted Lady Easterling. “Refine too much upon it, do I? You would not say so were you in my shoes, and had been informed not only that you are vulgar and pushing, but also that you are pigheaded and queer in the attic! And that being nibbled to death by ducks was a fate preferable to marriage with you!” “You are mistaken, Lady Easterling!” Wearying of these histrionics, his lordship tried to extricate his sleeve from Jaisy’s grasp. “I never said those things!” “No, but you would have if you’d thought of them!” snapped Lady Easterling, clutching him all the tighter. “It is no wonder I am in a perfectly morbid state. I do not scruple to tell you, sir, that I am very tired of being scolded and rebuked and gifted with unflattering opinions of myself — to say nothing of being sermonized and catechized for hours on your behalf.” “On my behalf?” echoed Lord Carlin, in whose entire history there was nothing that qualified him to be the subject of sermons so obviously adverse. “What are you talking about?” “Boring on about, you mean!” Lady Easterling responded bitterly. “Let us have the word with no bark upon it, pray! You think my conduct is shockingly irregular. No doubt you also think I am not fit for association with respectable people, like Georgiana said! Because she 100

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warned me that you were deuced high in the instep and above my touch. But I didn’t believe her! I thought we should deal delightfully! And Georgiana is such an old gorgon that she will never let me hear the end of it.” What had given Lady Easterling the notion that she was in his style. Lord Carlin had not the most distant guess. He opened his mouth to voice that query, rather more tactfully phrased. Lady Easterling forestalled him by stamping her dainty foot once more. “Don’t interrupt!” she cried. “Everyone has been ripping up at me in the most monstrous way, and this time I mean to have my say. To own the truth, I suppose I have behaved a little badly — but I am what I am, and I don’t want to be anything else, though were someone to ask me nicely, I might make a push. However, no one has asked me nicely, excepting Sara, and she can’t care a button for my behavior when she’s on the downward path to perdition herself! Poor thing! Not that you are interested in my poor Sara, Lord Carlin, because you will think her also beneath your regard. By Jove, I am very disappointed to discover that one of the highest-bred men in England is at heart nothing but a coxcomb!” A coxcomb? So stunned was Lord Carlin by this accusation that he offered no defense. “And I had thought you at home to a peg!” Lady Easterling continued morosely. “Which only proves one cannot trust impressions founded on mere appearance! Because you ain’t the least bit très sympathique, and you are much too starched-up to do anything à la folie! Only the most biddable of females will do for you, one who walks in too much awe of you ever to offer an opposing viewpoint, and one who is too prim and proper ever to cause you a moment’s disquiet. Well, I hope you may discover the most reserved, demure, decorous creature in existence, because nothing less will do for you — and I’ll lay a monkey she’ll bore you to death!” Nor had this far-from-peaceful interlude banished Lord Carlin’s impulse to wreak physical mayhem upon the fair person of his personal albatross. “Depend upon it, I shall be forced to marry Arthur!” that damsel mourned, raising the hand that did not clutch Kit languidly to her brow. “He can’t marry poor Sara any more than Jevon could, because she don’t have a dowry. Oh, was there ever such a horrid coil?” 101

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Lord Carlin thought there must not have been. He had no knowledge of the mysterious Arthur, but concluded this unknown gentleman was also smitten with Jevon’s opera dancer, Sara by name. That Lady Easterling spoke of so common a female with such familiarity, that she could even for an instant condone an alliance between her brother and a woman who trod the boards, confirmed his opinion of her essential bird-wittedness. Happily, this bothersome chit was not his responsibility. Frantically, he cast about in his mind for means by which he might remove himself posthaste from her presence. As if she had access to his very thoughts, Lady Easterling cast herself weeping upon his chest. Lord Carlin was no pigeon for any lady’s plucking, and had no intention of being surprised in a compromising position, and therefore grasped Lady Easterling by her shoulders and did in fact shake her until the teeth rattled in her head. “Jupiter!” gasped Jaisy. “Oh, the deuce!” Lord Carlin released his victim with the alacrity more usually accorded to hot bricks. “I beg your pardon, Lady Easterling.” “To blazes with my pardon!” responded her ladyship furiously. “Aye, and to you yourself! I hope I may never again set eyes on you, sir! Because to do so must remind me that he who I thought a regular out-and-outer was in truth a curst loose-screw!” Once more Lord Carlin offered no defense; he dared not, lest further exposure to her ladyship drive him to additional assault. Without another word, he turned and stalked toward the door. Halfway across the room, a noise caught his attention. Had Lady Easterling caught up some sharp item, did she prepare even then to hurl some lethal missile at his unprotected back? Cautiously, he peered over his shoulder. Lady Easterling had flung herself face down on the crocodile-shaped couch, head buried in her arms, with every appearance of a damsel prepared to sob out her heart. Only the most callous of gentlemen could have departed at that point, cruelly abandoning a lady on the verge of expiring of love on his account. Lord Carlin retraced his steps, dropped down on one knee by the couch, touched Jaisy’s shoulder. “I beg you, do not take on in this manner!” he soothed. “It is not the end of the world, you know, just because I have intimated that we should not suit. You are a wellenough young woman. Doubtless there will be other gentlemen who like you very well.” 102

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In defense of what Lady Easterling did next, it must be pointed out that she was a damsel very much accustomed to being admired, and one who had recently suffered a very great disillusionment, and had encountered not one but two gentlemen who had been sent into the doldrums by the notion of marriage with herself. As Lord Carlin spoke, she raised herself up on an elbow, then into a sitting position, meanwhile staring into his face. “Upon my word as a gentleman!” Lord Carlin added kindly. “The devil fly away with you!” responded Lady Easterling, and promptly boxed his ears.

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Fifteen Mr. Rutherford, soon thereafter, embarked upon a shopping expedition of his own, and ventured forth to the shop of the most famous of all the London bootmakers, Hoby, located on the corner of Piccadilly and St. James’s. Hoby himself greeted Mr. Rutherford, and very amiably, which was not the case with every customer who entered the shop. Several of Jevon’s contemporaries had been given cause to complain about Hoby’s high opinion of himself. He was affable enough this morning, and asked Mr. Rutherford’s opinion of the smart black tilbury and frisky black horse which customarily conveyed him about the metropolis, and confided that he intended to employ his leisure time preaching in a Methodist church in Islington. These amenities concluded, Hoby himself assisted Mr. Rutherford in selecting a pair of boots to replace those ravaged by his aunt’s ill-tempered Pekinese. This errand completed, Mr. Rutherford next repaired to Lock the hatter’s at No. 6 St. James’s, on a similar mission. All hats were made to measure at Lock’s, and of the finest materials, from curly-brimmed beavers to glossy black top hats to the chapeau bras worn by gentlemen in the evening or, alternately, carried folded up under their arms. Lord Nelson’s last cocked hat, complete with a green shade to cover his blind eye, had come from Lock’s, as did the plumed gold-laced shakos worn by officers of the Hussars and Dragoons. Having arranged to replace the item of headware to which Confucious had taken exception, Mr. Rutherford then stepped once more out into the street and paused, undecided as to what next he should do with his day. Normally, he would have remedied this unusual indecision with a visit to his clubs, there to watch contemporaries going down heavily 104

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at hazard, or exchange new gossip, or inspect the latest calling cards left by dashers of the pavé on the board in the lobby. But this was no normal day, and Mr. Rutherford had no desire whatsoever to while away the time in company with a particular contemporary who doubtless even then lay in wait for him at White’s. All was fair in love and war, Mr. Rutherford consoled himself, tucking his handsome chin into his impeccable cravat in reaction to the cold outside air. Sacrifices must be made in either endeavor. To ease his Sara’s stony pathway, Jevon was prepared to offer up — nay, had offered up — Lord Carlin like a sacrificial lamb. The result of that endeavor, Jevon did not yet know, but he imagined Jaisy must be in alt, imagining that Lord Carlin’s visit indicated a distinguishing preference. And why should Jaisy not have Carlin? Jevon asked himself. The notion, at first startling, had grown on him. Lord Carlin kept prosing on about how he must take a wife, did he not? Then let him take Jaisy! Immensely pleased with this resolution, and not at all disturbed by the minor problem that the two parties most concerned were, on the face of things, highly incompatible, Mr. Rutherford began to whistle a naughty little tune that had been taught him by a pretty little opera dancer employed at Drury Lane. Here, perhaps, a few words concerning opera dancers might be timely, lest the reader nourish an undeservedly — at least in this instance — unseemly opinion of Mr. Rutherford’s character. Jevon understood the workings of the female mind excellently well, as has elsewhere been stated. Among the minds best understood by him were those of Lady Blackwood and Miss Valentine. With quite diabolical cunning he had introduced the opera dancer into the situation to throw them both off the scent. Georgiana would be deluded by this shapely red herring into concluding that his sentiments regarding Miss Valentine were no warmer than casual friendship. As for Miss Valentine herself, for whom Jevon’s sentiments were positively torrid — well, why Jevon should wish his beloved to think he hankered after someone else is a peace of typically masculine wrong-headedness, which it must be left to Jevon to explain, because the author cannot. At all events, as he contemplated his harum-scarum sister’s alliance with a gentleman legendarily high in the instep, Mr. Rutherford strolled along St. James’s. It was a fairly pleasant morning, at least in comparison with other recent mornings; feeble sunshine broke spo105

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radically through the city’s miasma of smoky soothy mist. The air remained cold. The streets were crowded, despite the chilly temperatures, with the ubiquitous street-sellers found everywhere in London. Had he been so inclined, Mr. Rutherford could have purchased rat-traps, baskets, brick dust for cleaning knives; he might have had a chair mended or read a newssheet; he might have munched upon hot apples and crumpets and watercress. None of these pastimes having tempted him, Jevon instead passed some few moments in observation of a large cage on a barrow, which contained two dogs and a couple of cats and some mice, a monkey and three birds, all of which consorted together congenially and performed several tricks, and which was advertised in a stentorian fashion by its keeper as “The Happy Family.” Thought of families recalled to Jevon his own, and the much less congenial atmosphere in Queen Anne Street. He had deliberately avoided Blackwood House since his last encounter with his beloved Sara in the gardens there, lest he embarrass her by his presence. For Jevon, stolen kisses were no cause for loss of countenance; but his ladylove was a great deal less blasé. And so she should be! Not that his own little peccadilloes had ever signified a straw. With that viewpoint, of course, Jevon would not acquaint his Sara, any more than he would make her a candid confession of his sentiments, receipt of which would doubtless result in her thinking he was cutting a wheedle with herself his dupe. Deuced ticklish, decided Jevon, was this pursuit of romance, a quality which had played scant part in his previous affaires. But his Sara obviously wanted to be courted in the proper manner, and Jevon would oblige her as best he was able, even if it was a pastime no less difficult than walking on eggs. All the same, he thought he might now safely return to Blackwood House without anyone getting the wind up, and he had the perfect excuse to seek out Miss Valentine. She would be delighted with his solution, he felt certain; and he would subtly reintroduce the subject of trysts once his baggage of a sister was safely disposed. In point of fact, Sara might experience not only delight but also gratitude as a result of his enterprise. It was as Mr. Rutherford pondered the potential ways in which his ladylove might express her delighted gratitude — reflections which brought a blissful expression to his handsome face — that he espied the very source of his imaginings. He stared, 106

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then blinked, then stared again. But she looked horrified; why was that? And then he became aware of the carriage bearing down upon him, and hastily jumped back. “Gracious God, Jevon!” exclaimed Miss Valentine, reaching his side and assisting him to rise. “Whatever were you thinking of? You might have been killed!” So he might, and the object of his affections sounded a great deal less anguished than amused. Feeling a trifle out of sorts, Jevon brushed damp dirt from his clothing. He could hardly inform Sara that she had been the object of his rather improper fantasies. Besides, a lady who would giggle at his discomfort didn’t deserve to be paid compliments. All the same, he must say something. Jevon opened his mouth and sneezed. “Goodness!” Miss Valentine fished in her reticule for a handkerchief. “You seem to be in a very bad way, Jevon! I do hope it isn’t result of — that is, the garden was — and you did not wear your jacket — How dare you laugh at me, you wretched man? I am sure if you go out clad in just your shirtsleeves in this weather, you deserve to catch your death of cold!” “If I went out in just my shirtsleeves, Sara, I should deserve to catch a great deal more!” retorted Mr. Rutherford, who had recovered his customary sang-froid, and was deriving infinite enjoyment from his companion’s blushes. “It is hardly kind of you to wish for my demise, especially when I have gone to such lengths to place myself in your good graces — especially when I have been so ill!” “I do not wish anything of the sort!” Miss Valentine responded, with an attempt at careless camaraderie that was woefully inept. “And I am very sorry that you have not been feeling quite the thing.” “So you should be!” Jevon offered her his arm. “It was entirely your fault.” “Oh!” Sara’s cheeks blushed rosier still. “How very ungallant of you to say so!” For a gentleman determined to proceed with caution, Mr. Rutherford was extremely rash, in demonstration of which folly he bent his head closer to his companion’s and fondly said: “My darling Sara, you are a widgeon! If you had not gone into the garden I would not have followed you there; and if I had not followed you, I would not have found so excellent a reason to tarry; and if I had not thusly 107

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tarried, I would not have taken this accursed head cold, which makes it impossible to pursue those matters which I would most prefer without looking an absolute Bedlamite!” In proof of which, he sneezed. Reluctantly, Miss Valentine smiled. His carefully-laid-out plans of attack and retreat flew straight out of Jevon’s head. “Sara!” he murmured huskily. “I say! Miss Valentine!” came another voice, and Sara turned away from Jevon with what he could only think an expression of relief. Approaching them, trying unsuccessfully to look languid, was a young man rigged out in very remarkable attire, most unexceptionable among which items were a greatcoat with so many capes it made him look like an ambulating evergreen, and yellow stockings with violet clocks. “Have you been previously presented?” inquired Miss Valentine, flustered. “I think you must be distant connections of some sort. Mr. Rutherford is Lady Easterling’s brother, Arthur.” Arthur, was it? At this indication of how friendly his beloved had grown with a young man also residing under Lady Blackwood’s roof, Mr. Rutherford almost snarled. He was not alone in this sentiment: Confucious, bundled up in that abominable coat and mittens, had all this time been growling at Jevon from his position at Sara’s feet. Nor did Arthur appear any more kindly disposed toward his new found relative. “Lady Easterling!” he echoed bitterly. “If she is your sister, sir, I must take leave to tell you that you should have turned her over your knee a long time ago!” Irritably, Jevon eyed this country bumpkin who stood on such easy terms with his Sara, and informed him that he was not in the habit of turning ladies over his knee. Hastily, before Jevon could inform them just what it was his habit to do with ladies, a matter about which she herself possessed no little curiosity, Miss Valentine intervened. “Carlin called at Blackwood House yesterday,” she said, “and Jaisy managed to speak with him privately.” “Did she, the clever minx?” inquired Jevon, into Miss Valentine’s handkerchief. “I anticipated something of the sort, when I persuaded him to call.” “You arranged it?” Sara looked startled. “How?” Jevon shrugged. “A small matter of a wager. It doesn’t signify. But I’ll tell you what does: Carlin keeps saying he must marry, but 108

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can’t settle on a wife. Why shouldn’t he take Jaisy since her heart’s set on him?” So many objections reared their heads in response to his question that brief silence — save for Confucious’s continuous growling, aimed impartially at both of Miss Valentine’s companions — reigned. “I wish she would have him!” Arthur stated bluntly. “Or that he’d have her! Because the more I see of Lady Easterling the less I want to be legshackled to her!” This country bumpkin married to his sister? Jevon frowned. Then it occurred to him that did Jaisy indeed marry Arthur Kingscote, he would be obliged to see a great deal of a young man to whom he’d taken an instant dislike. For all that, marriage with Jaisy was preferable to having the young cawker dangling after Sara, as his inclination seemed. Jevon’s golden brows twisted with perplexity. As did Miss Valentine’s heartstrings twist in sympathy. Scant wonder if Jevon found so convoluted a situation difficult to comprehend. “Georgiana means Jaisy for Arthur,” she explained. “And you know that Georgiana always has her way. As for Carlin, Jaisy bade him go to the devil and for good measure boxed his ears. I gather he had accused her of boldness or something of that nature, and she worked herself up into a dreadful frenzy and said a great many uncharitable things. Georgiana is absolutely livid — not that Jaisy sent Carlin off with a flea in his ear, which suits Georgiana very well; but that Jaisy should have been so heedless of convention as to engage in a tête-à-tête.” Recalling her own similar misbehavior, she winced. It was left to Arthur to complete the explanation, and this he did with a great many references to harebrained females who at the slightest provocations flew up into the boughs. This explanation Miss Valentine for the large part ignored, as with much less success she attempted to ignore Mr. Rutherford’s brooding expression. He would be experiencing keen frustration, she imagined, would wish to interfere with a match obviously destined for unhappiness, yet would not dare defy his aunt. A pity Jevon was so mercenary, thought Sara, then wondered why she had not earlier recognized that grasping aspect of his nature. Even Jaisy had said her brother might be trusted to feather his own nest. With all her might, Miss Valentine strove to convince herself that Mr. Rutherford’s avarice was strong indication of a nature that was base. She failed. Were Jevon Rutherford 109

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the most mercenary creature in existence, the vilest and most base, Sara Valentine would not care. He must naturally be kept unaware of the depth of her sentiments regarding him. With what she hoped was a blank expression, Sara gazed down the street. It was a damnable predicament, decided Sara, and she could have wept with vexation at her own foolishness. She, a penniless spinster, had fallen fathoms deep in love with a gentleman entirely too well versed in the game of hearts, and one, moreover, who was on the dangle for a fortune and consequently could only offer her false coin. If he would offer that, Sara reflected gloomily. She had not failed to notice that, after her shocking conduct in Lady Blackwood’s garden, Jevon had ceased to make his regular visits to his aunt. He did not want to encourage her to harbor hopes that could never be fulfilled, Sara concluded. Mercenary Jevon might be, but his failure to take advantage of her appalling greenness was further proof of his good heart. On the other hand, she supposed her conduct could be interpreted as the utmost callousness; for what assurance had Jevon that Thomas would not spread the story of their interrupted embrace all around the neighborhood, with the result that Sara was turned out with empty pockets and a large number of frivolous bonnets into the streets? Sara did not know what to think, other than that to henceforth avoid Jevon Rutherford like the very plague would be her only prudent course. As Miss Valentine silently maligned his character — Jevon Rutherford knew perfectly well that Thomas would keep a still tongue in his head, having paid the butler a very generous stipend to do that very thing and threatened him within an inch of his life if he did not — Jevon heard out Arthur’s account. His sister had followed up her outrageous conduct with alternate hysterics and vaporing, and was currently locked in her bedchamber, with vials of nervous medicines and laudanum. She was at her last prayers, on the shelf, had frittered away her chances, Lady Easterling was prone to announce. It was no use to load her with reproaches; before she apologized to Carlin she would allow herself to be broken on the rack. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Lady Blackwood had such a thing hidden away somewhere!” Arthur concluded. “I don’t mind admitting that the old — er — the dowager duchess gives me quite a nasty turn! But Lady Easterling swears Carlin is a cruelly unfeeling coxcomb 110

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who has played fast and loose with her, and claims her life is ruined, and therefore Lady Blackwood may do with her as she pleases, even to marrying her off to me!” “Ah.” Mr. Rutherford had paid this explanation only half the attention it warranted, the other half of his concentration being occupied with why his ladylove was looking like a tragedy queen. “Have you considered presenting your case to my aunt?” “No!” Arthur glanced nervously over his shoulder, as if expecting to find that the dowager duchess hovered there to enact retribution for his unwise blasphemies. “I’ll be hanged if I give her my head for washing, thank you!” “It sounds as if you may as well be hanged if you do not!” Jevon responded ironically. “Still, I daresay a kind word from Carlin would make my sister heart-whole in an instant, and equally quick to refuse to marry you.” “Certainly!” Arthur responded irritably. “And pigs will fly quicker than Carlin will speak to Jaisy! Hang it! It’s all well and good for you to be rainbow-chasing, sir, because you have nothing at stake. Oh, I beg pardon, I’m sure! But your sister is abominably provoking!” Once more silence descended, broken only by Confucious’s bitter comments, as Arthur wondered miserably if his impertinence would result in Jevon Rutherford’s bidding him to the field of honor, from which he would be summarily dispatched, which was not a solution to his dilemma that Arthur relished overmuch; and Jevon reflected that this young cawker would be free to pursue his Sara, did he persuade Carlin to bestow upon Jaisy the aforementioned kind word. The situation obviously called for prolonged cogitation, no easy undertaking for a gentleman suffering from a severe head cold. Because he had reached no decision as to his wisest course of action, Jevon voiced no comment. Nor did Arthur, due to belated consideration for the intact condition of his own skin. At length Miss Valentine roused from her own abstraction sufficiently to realize that the silence had taken on a strained quality. “I have been showing Arthur around London,” she offered brightly. “We have been having a splendid time, Arthur, have we not? Yesterday we explored the Strand.” “Yes, and went into Ackerman’s Fine Art Repository, which I believe is one of the first shops in London to have been lit with gas!” Arthur was inspired by Mr. Rutherford’s unappreciative expression to 111

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add quickly: “We have driven ‘round the City! Seen the Tower, the Treasury! The Mansion House! The Bank of England and the Royal Exchange!” Upon this indication of how very much time his Sara was spending with this dandified country bumpkin, Jevon almost fulfilled Arthur’s apprehension and called him out. Satisfying as it would be to engage with Arthur in pistols at dawn, and to summarily dispatch him to make the reacquaintance of his maker, to do so, however, would in no way advance his own romance. Never had it occurred to Mr. Rutherford that the object of his affections might not fancy him; after all, Jevon perfectly understood the workings of her mind. What be did not know was whether she realized the nature of her sentiments. With a notion of finding out, he raised careless fingers to her cheek. “Sara—” he began. What next Mr. Rutherford might have said is destined to remain unrecorded; so startled was Miss Valentine by his unexpected caress that she dropped Confucious’s leash. Immediately the dog sprang. The exertions of eluding those wicked if sparse teeth caused Mr. Rutherford to succumb to a sneezing fit. With very much the air of a man brandishing a flag of truce, Arthur proffered his own handkerchief. Miss Valentine recaptured Confucious, sternly advised Mr. Rutherford to retire henceforth out of the cold, and upon that piece of impersonal wisdom proceeded with her entourage down the street. A handkerchief clutched in each hand, Mr. Rutherford watched their progress. His was the woebegone aspect of a man mortally wounded, not by Confucious’s sharp sparse teeth, but by the green-eyed monster, jealousy.

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Sixteen Dismaying as was the offhand manner in which it had been delivered, Mr. Rutherford did take Miss Valentine’s advice, and spent the next twenty-four hours barricaded within his lodgings at the Albany, that exclusive hotel sacred to bachelors and widowers, where prior to his disastrous marriage the poet Byron had dwelt. First Melborne and then York House before its incarnation as a hotel, the Albany was now converted into sets of double and single freehold apartments. Gateways, walls and porter’s lodge had been demolished and four houses erected in their place, and very fine those structures were, reflecting the French influence in the stone eagles which perched atop the lower-story windows and appeared to support the balconies above on their wings and heads. The buildings around the courtyard had been converted into chambers, and the house divided into apartments. Between the two long blocks of cream-colored stucco buildings — three stories high with large paned windows and first-floor balconies with wrought-iron balustrades — which ran the full length of the garden was a paved and covered walk. At the far end of the garden stood two large brick buildings, which contained larger apartments than those off the covered way. Jevon Rutherford resided off the east side of the garden, in an elegant suite that included an anteroom with fireplace, a drawing room which opened via fine double doors into a bedroom and dressing room behind with water closet and hip-bath, as well as cellar and garret and kitchens in the attic. Both bedroom and drawing room looked out onto the covered way. The furnishings were primarily of mahogany and rosewood, and set about were some excellent knickknacks and bric-a-brac, such as a wonderfully embossed and chased 113

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silver teakettle, and an ormolu greyhound, and two green oval vases of Sèvres china, decorated with flowers and fruit and moldings of burnished gold. It was upon those Sèvres vases that Mr. Rutherford currently gazed, and he did so with a glassy-eyed expression that was due partially to the rigors of his head cold, which he had chosen to combat with a combination of Battley’s Sedative and Morris’s Drops, and partially to the exigencies of romance. Those vases had once belonged to Beau Brummell, who had taken refuge across the Channel — to be precise, in the celebrated Dessein’s, the only hotel in all Calais suitable for a gentleman of fashion — as had many English debtors before him, a time-hallowed custom grievously interrupted by the antagonistic Napoleon. Jevon had attended the auction conducted by order of the sheriff of Middlesex on the premises of 13 Chapel Street, and there had procured the Sèvres vases, as well as a letter-scale on a black plinth with Cupid weighing an ormolu heart. These relics would remind him of the fate of gentlemen who tarried too long upon the heights. Yet how to, with dignity, descend? Jevon sighed and availed himself of a cup of egg hot, which stood on the table near his bedside. This potion — a warm drink composed of beer, eggs, sugar and nutmeg — had been prepared for Jevon by his valet, who subscribed to the theory that hot toddies must cure colds, and therefore with great gusto whipped up concoctions for his master’s delectation. Thus far this day Mr. Rutherford had sampled, in addition to the egg hot, a combination of warm porter and moist sugar, gin and nutmeg, fondly known to its creator as a dog’s nose, and a cup of hot brown brandy with a lump of sugar in it. If these nostrums, combined with Morris’s Drops (emetic tartar and spirits of wine mixed with brightly colored vegetable dye) and Battley’s Sedative (composed largely of opium), had done little to cure Mr. Rutherford’s illness, they at least had wiped the frown from his careworn brow. As his plain-spoken sister might very well have put it, Mr. Rutherford had shot the cat and was drunk as an owl. In this deplorable condition, Mr. Rutherford was discovered by Lord Carlin, who had grown so frustrated by Jevon’s avoidance of his customary haunts that he invaded Jevon’s apartments in the Albany, refusing even to allow Jevon’s manservant to announce him, and strode unheralded into the sickroom. No sooner did he cross the threshold than he stopped dead in his tracks. At first he thought, with 114

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utter horror, that his friend had expired, in so very boneless a fashion was Jevon sprawled upon his bed, and so lackluster was his eye. One could not decently ring a peal over a corpse, no matter how great one’s frustration. On tiptoe, Kit ventured closer to the bed. Those fine blue eyes — so reminiscent of the provoking Lady Easterling and therefore reminiscent of Lord Carlin’s serious indignation at their owner’s interference in his business — were not only unfocused but also shot through with red. All the same, Jevon appeared to be breathing still. “Zounds!” exclaimed Lord Carlin, thunderstruck at seeing his friend brought so low. Upon this exclamation, uttered very near his ear, for Lord Carlin had bent over to better inspect his face, Jevon winced and blinked feebly. “There is no need to shout!” he retorted irritably. “I can hear you very well. Furthermore, I have the very devil of a head.” Reassured that his companion was not in danger of momentarily passing through death’s door, Lord Carlin drew up a rosewood chair near the bed and seated himself in it. Even the most perfect of gentlemen may have a nodding acquaintance with that condition so aptly known as being “cast away,” or alternately “foxed,” and with the subsequent desire that one had been a great deal more sparing of one’s libations to Bacchus. “I have,” he announced, “something to say to you!” “Then say it in softer tones, I beg!” protested Jevon, placing a hand to his aching brow. “Which reminds me, what have you done to my sister? If I wasn’t laid up with this wretched cold, I swear I’d call you out.” This observation, presented as it was in the garbled tones of one who is suffering a severe congestion of the nasal passages, gave Lord Carlin pause to think. By the time he had deduced Mr. Rutherford’s meaning, and had decided that he was perfectly justified in feeling even more indignant, Mr. Rutherford had taken the notion that the only remedy for his discomfort was a bowl of steaming punch. Having requested this concoction from his obliging manservant, Jevon returned his attention to Kit. “Have you nothing to say?” A great many responses presented themselves to Kit, in particular a pungent comment regarding the tendency of the Rutherfords to succumb to a fever of the brain, further proof of which was the delicate lady’s handkerchief that Mr. Rutherford clutched. “I have done nothing to your sister,” he responded icily. “Rather, you should ask what 115

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she has done to me!” Conversation then faltered, as Jevon’s manservant reappeared, a mammoth bowl of steaming bishop held triumphantly aloft. The gentlemen sampled this concoction and announced it just the ticket. The manservant retired, gratified. “What could she do that was so terrible?” inquired Jevon, who was already on his second cup of punch, as result of which he was acting very much revived. “I grant you she is a trifle mulish, and a wee bit hot-at-hand—” “Hah!” interrupted Lord Carlin. “Your sister bade me to the devil and then for good measure boxed my ears.” “So I have been told.” Mr. Rutherford emptied his second cup and embarked upon a third. “I can only think you provoked her into it, Kit, because she doesn’t usually get to dagger-drawing with her beaux.” “I am not one other beaux!” So perturbed was Lord Carlin by this unhappy suggestion that he emptied his third cup of punch at a single gulp. The author assumes that it is unnecessary to further illuminate the hasty inroads made by the gentlemen on the steaming bishop, save to explain that both of them were already more than a little bosky, and would rapidly grow more so, as result of which Mr. Rutherford would conceive a veritable brainstorm. At this point in the action, he was already on the verge of revelation, and abruptly sat up in bed. Though Lord Carlin was not of a nature to appreciate such things, the reader may be interested to learn that Mr. Rutherford remained breathtakingly handsome even when swathed about with flannel and hot bricks, and clad in a voluminous nightshirt. “I don’t know why you wish to keep me in perfect ignorance of what is going on!” said he. “It is very difficult to pull the wool over a wolf’s eyes.” Not surprisingly, Lord Carlin found these remarks a trifle difficult to follow. “Oh?” he parried. “I promise you!” By now, Jevon’s nacky notion was fully conceived. It was a notion that would have greatly astonished his beloved, so convinced was she of his avarice, and therefore convinced also that he would make no attempt to thwart his aunt, because thwarting Georgiana was precisely what Jevon had decided he must do. “There’s precious little I don’t know about the frail and the fair, I can tell you!” Lord Carlin’s thought processes were by this time no clearer than his host’s, and he frowned in an effort to understand. The frail and the fair? Did Jevon seek to introduce his little opera dancer into the con116

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versation? Better the conversation than the ton! “I say, you really cannot marry her, old man!” “I marry her?” Now Jevon frowned. “You must think me a veritable roué! Not I, but you! Do try and concentrate your mind.” “The deuce!” Had his friend grown wholly deranged — or had Kit caught his fever of the brain? “I don’t want to marry your—” What had Lady Easterling called her? “Your Sara!” “Sara?” echoed Mr. Rutherford. “I should think not! She wouldn’t do for you at all! Though you might very well wish to marry her if you knew her as well as I do. Not that I would stand for it. So put the notion straight out of your mind.” It was not difficult for a gentleman, even a gentleman in Lord Carlin’s by now very inebriated condition, to banish a notion he had never possessed. Lunatic as Jevon might have grown, he at least retained sufficient intelligence to realize that a man of Kit’s position could never even consider allying himself with a woman of low condition. A pity Jevon did not realize that he too was ineligible for alliance with so unfortunate a creature as this Sara must be. Engrossed with his delusion that Jevon’s fair one was in fact a fair unfortunate, Lord Carlin failed to note that Jevon was regarding him very much like a hungry cat might regard a plump bird. “Let us be frank with one another!” Jevon suggested, so abruptly that Kit almost spilled his punch. “I know all!” “You do?” inquired Lord Carlin, a great deal taken aback. “I do!” insisted Mr. Rutherford dramatically. “There is no longer need to try and pull the wool over my eyes — though why you ever thought there was, I fail to understand. It’s not as if you could have thought I wouldn’t give you my blessing!” “Your blessings?” These ominous words inspired in Lord Carlin a queasiness for which the only recourse was immediate further application to the punch bowl. “It is only polite to ask leave of a brother before soliciting his sister’s hand in honorable wedlock,” Mr. Rutherford reproved. “I trust your intentions are honorable, Kit. Else I would feel it my duty to amend the slight done to her reputation by your heartlessness.” “My heartlessness!” echoed Lord Carlin indignantly. “Honorable wedlock! I’ll tell you what it is, Jevon: You’ve got windmills in your head.” 117

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“Oh, no! Not I!” Mr. Rutherford leaned back among his pillows and smiled seraphically. “It is only natural to be a trifle nervous as the fateful moment draws near — but set your mind at rest. I promise she will have you.” Never had poor Kit felt so misunderstood. “But I don’t want her!” said he. “Poppycock. Of course you do. Good God!” And Mr. Rutherford leaned forward, an expression of dawning comprehension and compassion upon his handsome face. “Can it be — that’s it! You don’t know!” “What I know,” retorted Lord Carlin, feeling like the solitary enactor of a last-ditch defense against an entire regiment of bloodthirsty Cossacks, “is that I never can or will look at your sister without a shudder! Pray forgive my plain-speaking! But she is a vulgar, ragmannered chit!” “Oh, yes.” Mr. Rutherford’s manner was positively pitying. “But game to the backbone. Not at all the sort of female I would have thought you’d take a marked fancy to.” “And so I have not!” persisted his lordship. “Dashed if I know how you came to take such a hubble-bubble notion! You must have windmills in your head.” Still Mr. Rutherford wore that gentle smile. “No, no!” said he. “And apropos of windmills, it is you who have tossed your hat over one. It is unfair to expect you to be aware of the nuances of such things, not being in the petticoat-line; but I assure you this is the way it often falls out. And to think I admired your self-possession and the way you refrained from wearing your heart upon your sleeve! To do so would have been a blunder, for my sister is accustomed to bringing her beaux to a standstill — in fact, nothing would quicker have given her a disgust!” “So you said before!” interrupted Lord Carlin, with clenched jaw. “It was the only reason I was ever civil to the chit! And I must say I don’t care much for the quality of your advice, because if I hadn’t been civil to her, then she wouldn’t have subjected me to a rowdy-do!” “Oh, I wouldn’t count on that, Jaisy is a great one for pulling caps! I couldn’t tell you how many times she’s read me a terrible scold, but it doesn’t signify a button, because the next day she’s forgotten about it.” Having rendered this endearing explanation of his sister’s temper tantrums, Mr. Rutherford rested his elbows on his ribs and touched 118

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the tips of his fingers together. “As for the other, I do not recall offering you any advice.” “All the same, you did! You said ladies always fancied what they didn’t have, and didn’t fancy what they did! And that the surest way to not be the object of a lady’s affections was to act as if you wished to be.” “I said that?” Mr. Rutherford looked amazed. “Never! It’s something you’ve made up yourself, Kit! Quite frankly, no one with any experience at all in the petticoat-line would spout such nonsense.” “You did say ladies fancied what they didn’t have!” Lord Carlin persevered. “I remember it! And just moments ago you said that Lady Easterling would have taken me in dislike had I worn my heart upon my sleeve.” “Jaisy is an exceptional female,” Jevon responded blandly, and without the least embarrassment at this proof of the contradictory nature of his advice. “I never thought you would have used her in this dreadful manner, Kit! It makes me very sad to think of my sister so sadly out of curl, locked away in her room and drinking laudanum. Oh yes, it’s true. She’s fallen into a lethargy. That you should accuse her of boldness was a dreadful blow to her pride.” And what of Lord Carlin’s own pride? He was the one whose ears had first been blasted and then boxed and then sent off to the devil with a flea therein. Was he not entitled to some sympathy? “No!” replied Mr. Rutherford, when presented with this suggestion. “The ladies are pea-brains, on the whole; and it is not seemly to take advantage of them. As gentlemen, we owe a certain delicacy of conduct to the silly widgeons who pay us their compliments. The devil, Kit! You should know that a gentleman can’t just go about callously breaking hearts.” This unique line of reasoning had not previously presented itself to Lord Carlin. Now that it did so, with Jevon Rutherford’s blessing, Kit struggled against the appalling suspicion that he had behaved less than honorably. “Instead,” Mr. Rutherford added bitterly, “you induce my sister to fritter away her chances and then cast her off. A simple kind word is all that is required to make her heart-whole again, but do you offer it? No! Rather you sit here jawing with me.” Could Lord Carlin have successfully navigated his course from Jevon Rutherford’s bedroom to the street outside, he would long since have quitted this unpleasant interview; and though he doubted his 119

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legs would support him, a debility attendant upon the excellence of the punch, he now tried to rise. His assumption had been correct; abruptly he sat down again. With immeasurable dignity, he stated extreme reluctance to have any further acquaintance with a damsel with whom he would forever be at daggers drawn. “Damned if there’s any pleasing you!” retorted Mr. Rutherford. “First you wish to have nothing to do with the well-brought-up young women who are forever casting the handkerchief in your direction because you say they bore you to death. Now you don’t want to deal further with my sister, who hasn’t bored anyone in all her life. But that’s your business and it’s no skin off my nose if you make a rare muddle of it! Let us talk of something else.” With this suggestion Lord Carlin fell in readily enough, and soon the gentlemen were engaged in conversation of a nature that, had she been present to listen and contribute, would have been greatly enjoyed by Lady Easterling. Despite his dislike of hearing such talk from the lips of females, Lord Carlin was one of those wealthy patrons of the Fancy commonly known as Corinthians, and had frequently acted as patron to promising young bruisers who showed unusual prowess in street brawls. On one memorable occasion, during his salad days, the viscount had even turned his own drawing room into a sparring ring. Older now and more sedate, he contented himself with witnessing exhibitions conducted at the Fives Court in St. Martin’s Street, Daffy’s Club at the Castle Tavern in Holborn, and the Thatched House Tavern in St. James’s. The relative merit of ‘Gentleman’ Jackson and Mendoza occupied them a while longer; and then, in excellent charity with one another, the gentlemen sent out to Gunther’s for a repast most unsuitable to a tipsy invalid. Over cakes and biscuits, fine and common sugarplums, ices and tarts, they continued to converse amiably, while Lord Carlin resolved to at the first opportunity conduct himself in a very ardent manner that would cause Lady Easterling to take him in disgust, and the enterprising Mr. Rutherford congratulated himself that his chosen sacrificial lamb would do precisely that woolly-headed thing.

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Seventeen The next day, not only Mr. Rutherford but also Lord Carlin were both absent from their customary haunts, both absences a result of overindulgence in conviviality. Indeed, so very severe were the pangs of remorse and retribution suffered by these two gentlemen that Mr. Rutherford could not recall the nature of the nacky notion which had presented itself to him. Lord Carlin’s memory was much clearer, perhaps due to his freedom from the effects of Battley’s Sedative and Morris’s Drops, but the things he recollected eased not his malaise. Chief among them was that Mr. Rutherford’s blessing had been bestowed. In this manner did the two gentlemen pass their mornings, and the larger portion of the afternoon, secluded in their respective bedchambers in the Albany and Grosvenor Square. Others among our dramatis personae were rather more ambitious, and much less delicate. Young Mr. Kingscote had sallied forth to Astley’s Royal Amphitheater in Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth, there to breathe in deeply of the mingled smell of horses and sawdust, and gaze wide-eyed upon dazzling equestrian displays, which concluded with a most dramatic re-enactment of Waterloo, during which Wellington and Napoleon met face to face upon the battlefield and edified their audience with an exchange of noble and virtuous platitudes. Miss Valentine and Lady Easterling, meanwhile, prepared to embark upon an expedition to Oxford Street. Not without considerable to-do had Lady Easterling emerged from her seclusion, and not a single servant employed in Blackwood House was long left in ignorance of the fact she did so only under duress. “Because I don’t have the heart for it, and that’s that!” announced Lady Easterling bluntly, to anyone within hearing distance of the 121

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green-and-slate entry hall. “Well, I ask you! Would you wish to be traipsing about the metropolis if your heart had been broke?” Miss Valentine looked upon Jaisy, and upon that lovely, stubborn little countenance saw a determination to wring every possible ounce of drama from the situation. Miss Valentine was very weary of dramatic enactments and romantic high flights. “Oh, do stop this posturing, Jaisy!” she said crossly. “You are simply sulking because for once in your life you have not had your own way, and very tedious it is for those of us who never do!” “Sulking, am I?” Lady Easterling’s fingers curled into fists. “You are a fine one, Sara Valentine, to chastise me for indelicate conduct! Because though you may accuse me of indulging in die-away airs, you cannot accuse me of being on the downward path to perdition, which ain’t true of everyone in this room!” Thomas was the sole remaining occupant of the entry hall, and Thomas’s wooden countenance was an excellent indication that this conversation was the closest he had ever come to depravity. Scant doubt remained as to whom Lady Easterling considered steeped in vice. Whoever would have thought Jaisy would be such a puritan? All this fuss over a little kiss! Or if not just one, then no more than three! “Oh, Jaisy!” Miss Valentine said helplessly. And at that very moment, or as near it as makes no difference, yet another among our dramatis personae experienced a similar rebellion against the more unpleasant aspects of his allotted rôle. Sir Phineas Fairfax, Lady Blackwood’s long-suffering man of business, had managed briefly to convince himself that in the dowager duchess’s current machinations he had done his part. Had he not fetched Arthur Kingscote to London, as demanded? Hopefully Arthur Kingscote and Lady Easterling would see the wisdom of fulfilling Greorgiana’s ambition, and no further exertion would be required of him. His misapprehension was manifest to Sir Phineas the instant he stepped through the pedimented door. In the entryway stood Lady Easterling and Miss Valentine, engaged in argument. Upon closer scrutiny, Sir Phineas remedied that observation. Lady Easterling was arguing. Miss Valentine looked as if she wished to sink through the floor. “No better than one of the wicked!” insisted Lady Easterling, whose broken heart had not prevented her from decking herself out in a 122

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Spanish pelisse of shot sarcenet trimmed with Egyptian crepe and Chinese binding, lemon-colored kid gloves and slippers, and a redicule of painted velvet — after all, one never knew by whom one might be seen. “You, of all people, to be embarked upon the primrose path! It weighs very heavily upon my heart! By Jove, Sara! First Jevon and then Arthur! What next, I wonder — or who?” “Arthur?” echoed Miss Valentine, looking positively aghast. “Oh, no, Jaisy!” “I know!” Lady Easterling responded unappreciatively. “Another cinder! Moonshine!” Miss Valentine embarked upon the primrose path? queried Sir Phineas of himself. Engaging in assignations and trysts? The notion was patently absurd. Not that Miss Valentine wasn’t an attractive young woman, because of course she was. Obviously Lady Easterling was in no frame of mind to appreciate an application of logic. “Say — and think — what you will!” snapped Sara. “At least I do not go about boxing the ears of everyone who doesn’t wish to marry me!” “Fair and far off!” Lady Easterling retorted promptly. “I ain’t seen any indication that anyone wishes to marry you! Which is very often the way of it with ninnyhammers who indulge in tender encounters before the knot is tied!” And then, a great deal too late, she clapped her lemon-gloved hands over her mouth. “Jupiter! What have I said?” “A great deal of nonsense,” Miss Valentine replied, with a degree of self-possession that raised her even higher in the opinion of at least one member of her audience. “I cannot imagine what Sir Phineas must think of the pair of us.” Sir Phineas’s opinion of Lady Easterling, he did not deem it politic to air, but it was highly unflattering. Toward Miss Valentine, however, he felt as he always had, a respectful fondness not untinged with regret. Were he twenty years younger, or even ten; had he anything to offer her other than the somewhat foolish fancies of a man past his prime — but he did not, and he was additionally very firmly set in his bachelor ways. “You must not concern yourself with that, dear lady!” he offered gallantly. “I can conceive of no circumstances under which my opinion of you might be altered for the worse.” On Lady Easterling he fixed a stern eye. “Or which would lead me to look upon you with less than the greatest respect.” 123

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“Oh, my Sara is prime!” Lady Easterling informed him, unabashed; and in her turn refrained from voicing her resolution that her friend should not turn into a prime article of virtue. “You must not mind me, sir; I talk a great deal of poppycock when I am out of frame! Naturally Sara did not have tender encounters in the garden with either my brother or Arthur — it was all a hum! And now do you think we might go, Sara? The horses have been waiting all this time.” What could Sara say? With an apologetic glance at Sir Phineas, and an accustomary glance at Thomas, Miss Valentine passed through the pedimented door. Tender encounters? mused Sir Phineas. The phrase had a distinctly depraved ring. Did Arthur Kingscote prefer Miss Valentine to Lady Easterling? Such preference was easily understood. No young man in possession of his senses would wish to ally himself with an inconsiderate, outspoken, rag-mannered baggage like Lady Easterling. Yet Arthur had as little chance of avoiding marriage with Lady Easterling, wish that avoidance fervently as he might, as he had of wearing the crown. In fact, decided Sir Phineas, Sara Valentine was even less accessible than that article for Arthur Kingscote as well as himself. Sir Phineas didn’t envy Arthur his dilemma. Thought of rousing the dowager duchess’s displeasure made Sir Phineas shake like a blancmange himself. But was Sara so inaccessible? pondered Sir Phineas, as he ascended the stair. He could not rid his mind of the accusations made by Lady Easterling. Absurd as it was to think that the meek and docile Sara embarked on assignations and engaged in trysts, Jevon Rutherford was legendarily talented in such activities. Surely Jevon would not deem Sara a suitable target for his wiles and blandishments? Jevon Rutherford’s success in the petticoat-line was due to no special effort on his part; he was more pursued than pursuer; surely he would not deliberately lead a young woman of good birth and sterling character deliberately astray? After due reflection, Sir Phineas decided that Jevon Rutherford would do no such thing. Too, he recalled the pretty little opera dancer who was Jevon’s current flirt. It seemed to Sir Phineas that Jevon had been a trifle cavalier toward that lovely ladybird of late, which was very remiss in him. Had Sir Phineas been twenty years younger, or even ten, he would have been happy to offer his consolations to a lady 124

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so cruelly neglected — and with none of the reservations he had concerning his similar conduct toward Miss Valentine. These were air-dreams only; Sir Phineas had a horror of appearing foolish or outré. No pretty little opera dancer, no matter how cruelly neglected, would favor him over Jevon Rutherford. Sir Phineas had no wish to play second fiddle, even to so irresistible a courtier as Jevon was. Anticipating defeat, he would not enter the lists. But Jevon Rutherford and Sara Valentine? Sir Phineas paused outside the door of the dowager duchess’s morning room. Having settled in his own mind that Jevon would never seek to lead astray a well-broughtup young woman like Miss Valentine, Sir Phineas could only hope that Lady Easterling’s inferences had lacked any basis in fact. Were Jevon to try and make a match of it with Sara, his aunt would doubtless banish him forever, from her purse as well as her presence. Very, very narrow was the pathway that the dowager duchess decreed must be walked by her heir. Poor Sara! Sir Phineas thought. One hoped she was not epris. Thomas, too, was thinking of Miss Valentine, as he escorted Sir Phineas up the stair; but in very different terms. Miss Valentine’s selfpossession had stricken Thomas not with admiration for the nobility of her nature, but with astonishment at her imperviousness to shame. Also, Thomas had begun to doubt his own wisdom. At the time, with Jevon Rutherford’s silver in his pocket, it had seemed only kind to keep a still tongue in his head. Thomas was no gabble-grinder who went about tale-pitching at every opportunity; and it was possible, as Mr. Rutherford had claimed, that the scene Thomas had witnessed was not so shocking as it seemed. Possible but not probable, he now believed. Had not Lady Easterling said that Miss Valentine had engaged with Mr. Kingscote in similar depraved pursuits? Such goings-on were not at all what Thomas was accustomed to. He should never have confided in Lady Easterling, Thomas now understood; but he had gotten in the way of telling her things. Lady Easterling had a knack for drawing out information before one realized what he was about. If only she hadn’t spoken out so frankly in front of Sir Phineas! Sir Phineas would repeat the conversation to the dowager duchess, who would immediately realize her butler had been less than honest with her, and Thomas’s goose would be cooked. Should he make a clean breast of things and thus save his own neck? 125

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wondered Thomas, and then recalled Mr. Rutherford’s stern warning that in such a case he would personally flay his betrayer to within an inch of his life. Though he could not know it, Thomas had no need for fear on Sir Phineas’s account; Sir Phineas had no intention of repeating the ridiculous accusations leveled by Lady Easterling. (Lest the reader experience too great a sense of relief on behalf of Miss Valentine, however, the author feels compelled to point out that a large number of servants staffed Blackwood House, and that it is not unreasonable to suspect that others may have been within earshot.) Sir Phineas stepped into the morning room, a churning sensation in his stomach, as if therein nested a large and lively family of butterflies. “Bah!” observed the dowager duchess, enthroned as usual in her massive eagle-headed chair. “It took you long enough! Sit down, Phineas!” Sir Phineas was relieved to do so; the dowager’s acerbic countenance rendered him even queasier. Without further amenities, Georgiana brought him up to date on the addlepated antics of her family. “The fishmonger is master in his own house!” she concluded waspishly, after confirming Miss Valentine’s previous assertion that Lady Easterling had developed a penchant for boxing gentlemen’s ears, most notably those of Viscount Carlin. “Luckily, Carlin is too much the gentleman to spread the story; and I collect he also made a cake of himself! Then there is Arthur, mooning after Sara, of all people, and she hasn’t a farthing with which to bless herself. I tell you, Phineas, I am out of charity with the lot!” No whit cheered by this announcement, Sir Phineas folded his hands upon his fluttering midriff. “Perhaps if you were to explain to Mr. Kingscote and Lady Easterling—” “Don’t talk like a nodcock, Phineas!” responded the dowager duchess, who was not beyond deploring her niece’s common habits of speech in one moment, and in the next appropriating a particularly appropriate phrase. “If you prevent the people meeting in the open, you’ll drive them to plots and assignations — look at the French! Besides, it is not Jaisy or Arthur I wished to speak to you about, but that silly twit of a companion of mine.” She knew, decided Sir Phineas sadly; she must know or else why mention Sara Valentine and assignations in the same breath? “I am sure,” he offered lamely, “things are not as bad as they seem.” 126

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A dowager so firmly in position at the helm of her own ship had no need of platitudes to ease her passage. “Oh, no!” Georgiana retorted. “In my experience, things are usually worse! What, specifically, are we talking about, Phineas?” Not by his lips would Sara Valentine be damned. “Nothing in particular!” Sir Phineas valiantly lied. “I was merely making a generalization.” “Secrets!” snarled Lady Blackwood. “Everyone has them of late. You needn’t think I don’t know that mischief is afoot, or that Sara is up to her neck in it — and her neck it very well may be if what I suspect is true! I am not in the habit of nourishing serpents in my bosom. I want you to keep a sharp eye on Sara for me, Phineas.” It took him a brief time to comprehend what she required of him, but then replied firmly, “You ask me to spy on Miss Valentine? I regret, madam, that I must refuse!” From the dowager duchess, this display of gentlemanly reluctance won no praise. “You will regret it, do you refuse me, Phineas!” she replied ominously. “Like it or no, you will stick as close as a court plaster to Sara — pretend you are courting her if it pleases you any better! Not that I have said you may have the silly twit! Because if you do not oblige me in this, Phineas, I shall find someone else who will!”

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Eighteen Some few days later, Mr. Kingscote and Lady Easterling conversed in a similar vein. The setting for this conversation was Almack’s Assembly Booms in King’s Street, St. James’s. Founded in the previous century by a Scottish valet of the Duke of Hamilton as a fashionable resort for aristocratic gamblers, Almack’s was the setting for elite subscription balls every Wednesday evening during the Season. A committee of tonnish ladies reigned over the revels, and their rule was absolute. Vouchers of admission to Almack’s were more eagerly sought after, and more difficult to obtain, than presentations at Court. Trade of any sort was barred, to the third and fourth generations, including generals and admirals and ambassadors. There was no appeal from denial of admission. Picture, then, this temple of the haut ton. Was it done up in the Palladian style, with carved and coffered ceilings married to damask or stuccoed walls, with elaborate gilded cornices and triumphal doorways? Were the assembly rooms done up in the Egyptian style, the Chinese? French Rococo or Venetian Baroque? Startling as it may perhaps seem, and did seem to many who ventured for the first time therein, Almack’s was nothing of the sort. The dancing took place in a large bare room with a bad floor, half of it partitioned off by crimson ropes behind which the spectators stood. In a gallery at one end, the orchestra played. Off to the side were two or three smaller rooms, in which refreshments were served. No repast from Gunther’s, these; no tarts and ices and sugarplums. Almack’s ran only to tea and lemonade, bread and butter and stale cakes. Why then, the reader queries, did Almack’s enjoy such popularity? It is all of a piece with Jevon Rutherford’s philosophy. The gentlemen being as perverse as the ladies in wanting what they could not have, the pleasure of Almack’s 128

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was not in actually going there, but in the mentioning of the fact to the less privileged among one’s friends. But to return to more important matters: Mr. Kingscote and Lady Easterling were engaged in conversation. This did not go forward with any great speed, due to the stately movements of the gavotte upon which they were embarked. Thus: “Bound for where? By way of what?” inquired Mr. Kingscote. “Perdition! The primrose path!” responded Lady Easterling, and pinched him. “Georgiana is watching us, you ninnyhammer! Do try and not look as if someone had just planted you a wisty cantor. Remember, we have made up our minds to take the field!” As may be deduced from this snippet of conversation, which is very typical of any conversation between Lady Easterling and Mr. Kingscote, they had embarked upon a conspiracy, the purpose of which was to delude the dowager duchess into a false complacency, and thereby to gain time. What Lady Easterling meant to do with the commodity so dearly purchased, Mr. Kingscote had no idea, but he very fervently wished her every success. Close acquaintance had not reconciled Arthur to the young lady whom Georgiana decreed would be his wife. “I thought it was a cinder,” he protested, when the movement of the dance brought him once more into the proximity of Lady Easterling’s delicate earlobe, “that made her act that way!” “A cinder!” echoed Lady Easterling, with a scornful glance. “Moonshine! It is very clear that you haven’t had much to do with designing females!” A designing female? Sara Valentine? But she had seemed so docile and so meek! Not at all how Arthur would have imagined an adventuress! To think that he had actually removed a cinder from the eye of such a creature! What a mooncalf she must consider him. Arthur flushed. Lady Easterling, too, was ruminating, as she gracefully performed the movements of the quadrille; rumination was a pastime which had occupied her much of late, for there had been precious little else to do while languishing in her room. The diddling of the dowager duchess — and if Georgiana was cork-brained enough to place reliance on the ravings of a broken-hearted damsel, her consequent disillusionment was entirely her own fault — was but a part of Jaisy’s scheme. Jaisy 129

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habitually dramatized herself. Of course she never had any serious intention of squandering her handsome fortune and her equally handsome self on a country bumpkin. Why, just look at him! A cravat so high and wide he could not even turn his head, so tight that his eyes bulged, a pea-green waistcoat! Her companion in duplicity was looking very blue-deviled, decided Lady Easterling, and pinched him once again. That Arthur was out of humor, she had already taken note, but Arthur Kingscote was not of sufficient importance to long engage her rather skitter-witted little brain. The quadrille ended; Mr. Kingscote and Lady Easterling strolled from the dance floor. “Miss Valentine seems a good sort of girl,” observed Arthur, who still grappled with the astonishing notion that Miss Valentine might be a base adventuress. “Oh, yes! Sara is the best — except for her one little flaw, which is entirely Georgiana’s fault, or perhaps Jevon’s. Yes, I think it must be Jevon’s, because he started this whole business, and Sarah did once have a tendre. And now Sir Phineas Fairfax has taken to dangling after Sara, which is all my fault, and Georgiana doesn’t even seem to mind! Which I must consider very remiss in her because she’s always prosing on about propriety to me, and I ain’t the one who’s in danger of blotting my copybook. Sir Phineas could be Sara’s grandfather! And I cannot forget it was my tongue that spilled the beans! He never paid Sara any special attention until I intimated to him that Sara’s nature was a trifle warm, you see!” Arthur, whose experience with the fair and the frail was even slighter than his knowledge of adventuresses, thought of the hours he’d passed in company with the worldly Miss Valentine, hours during which he had bestowed upon her not the most remotely indelicate word or glance. What a dolt she must think him! A bumbling bucolic babe in the woods! Though Arthur had no desire whatsoever to engage Miss Valentine in improprieties, the thought that he had been oblivious to whatever subtle invitations she had offered made him wish to gnash his teeth. “Sara pooh-poohs the notion,” Lady Easterling continued, “that Sir Phineas’s sudden tendency to stick as close as a court plaster means anything, but I’ll wager a pony that it does, and I fancy I know a little more than Sara about such things. Not that I am one to go in for assignations and trysts, so you needn’t get ideas!” 130

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The sole idea in Arthur’s brain was to avoid his dowager-determined fate. He had scant faith in the ploys of Lady Easterling. For all her airy promises of circumventing the dowager duchess, Jaisy was only slightly more intelligent than a nit. Sara Valentine, on the other hand, was so clever as to have duped the dowager duchess, as shrewd an old gorgon as ever drew breath. Arthur might be a veritable innocent in such matters, but he didn’t think Georgiana would keep in her employ a hired companion whose nature was so sociable. Perhaps his wisest course might be to try and persuade Miss Valentine to utilize her considerable talents on his behalf. Lady Easterling, who had no inkling that Mr. Kingscote meant to wheedle Miss Valentine into becoming his ally, regarded that young man with great impatience. It did not suit Jaisy’s ideas of what was proper that a gentleman whom she had said she would marry — never mind if she meant it or not — would habitually wear so long a face. If Arthur was unhappy, Jaisy was sorry for it, but she had already apologized very prettily for boxing his ears. What more could he expect? Arthur was a very poor-spirited person, she decided, sadly lacking in bottom and in dash. “If you breathe a word of what I have told you,” Jaisy hissed, “I vow I will do a great deal more than box your ears!” “Hang it!” Arthur responded indignantly, his pride stung. “Oh, I say, there’s Carlin, in the doorway. What are you doing? Unhand my sleeve!” This unsporting request, Lady Easterling very rightly ignored. “I am going to apologize to Carlin,” said she. Apologize to Carlin? But Jaisy had vowed she’d be broken on the rack before doing such a thing! Did Georgiana have such an instrument hidden away in the depths of Blackwood House? Arthur turned his head and encountered the dowager duchess’s flinty gaze. Hastily he looked away. It was remarkably easy to envision the dowager presiding over a veritable chamber of horrors, and deriving malicious amusement from the workings of iron-maiden and thumbscrew. As Arthur, pondering which of the various means of torture was most likely to be practiced on him, by his ill-tempered benefactress, escorted Lady Easterling through the two hundred occupants of the ballroom, Lord Carlin paused in the doorway. Having never been refused a voucher of admission to anything in all his life, Kit failed to appreciate the exclusive tone of Almack’s, and personally considered evenings spent 131

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within the Assembly Rooms the dullest possible. However, he had not ventured forth this evening in search of enjoyment. Lord Carlin had not forgotten his father’s decree that he must wed, and had forced himself to come to Almack’s so that he might further observe the bevy of hopeful beauties who aspired to his hand, and perhaps discover one among them for whom he might learn to care a bit. Deuced difficult it was, this choosing of a wife; yes, and damned dispiriting. Other fellows seemed to go about the business in much more cheerful states of mind, thought Lord Carlin, impressed by such sangfroid. Grimly determined, he glanced around the ballroom. Bearing down on him, in company with one of the Lady Patronesses, was Jaisy. Lord Carlin’s first impulse, upon glimpsing this appalling sight, was toward flight. Since no gentleman would behave in so cowhearted a manner, Lord Carlin stood his ground, and therefore was commanded by the Lady Patroness to stand up with Jaisy for the waltz, that shocking excuse for hugging and squeezing first introduced by Countess Lieven and “Cupid” Palmerston. This conversation, also, was interrupted by the movements of the dance and the proximity of the fellow dancers, but Lady Easterling was not one to allow minor hindrances to interfere with her grand plan. During her self-imposed exile in her bedchamber, Lady Easterling had begun to wonder if there might not be a teensy bit of truth in the horrid accusations leveled at her on all sides, and to think she had been a trifle pushing as regarded his lordship. Apparently Lord Carlin preferred demure and submissive damsels in whose mouths butter would not melt. Very well, Jaisy would be demure and submissive, even if her stomach turned at her own missishness. She peered up at Lord Carlin through her long eyelashes. “Sir, I owe you an apology.” What was it he had decided during his visit to the Albany, over a bowl of steaming bishop? That ardor alone would persuade Lady Easterling to leave off making a dead-set at him? “No, Lady Easterling,” he responded gallantly, and pressed her hand. “It is I who must apologize to you.” “No, no!” Jaisy protested, with a melting glance. “‘Twas I who provoked you to it. If truth be told, I no doubt deserved to be shook. But you did not deserve to have your ears boxed or your sleeve creased or to be kicked in the shin, or to be wished to the devil, and I roost earnestly implore you to forgive me for doing such an unhandsome thing.” 132

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Somewhat anxiously, Lord Carlin peered about, but none of the other dancers whirling about the floor appeared interested in his conversation with Lady Easterling. “Say no more of it, I beg! We will forget what has chanced.” “I daresay you may do so easily enough.” Not without good effect had Lady Easterling practiced languishing in her room. “I cannot! I am a sad romp, I fear, and though you may be disposed to be kind about it, I’ll go bail anyone else here would pull a long face over it, did they know what has passed between us; and would say that I should never have had a turn-up with you in the first place, and in the second that I didn’t give a very good accounting of myself, and third that you were perfectly correct to send me to the rightabout. So I’m sure I can’t blame you for serving me up home-brewed — oh! I mean for giving me a sharp set-down. Because I am resolved, sir, that I shall not talk to you about cross-and-jostle work, or bits of blood and bone!” Were the world to learn of his tête-à-tête with Lady Easterling, and the appalling conduct of both parties therein engaged, Lord Carlin would be made a laughingstock. The realization was almost as unnerving as Lady Easterling’s current conduct, for she was uttering her highly unique observations in the most lachrymose of manners. Kit remembered that he had shaken her ladyship by the shoulders until the teeth had rattled in her head. He wondered if in so doing he had somehow damaged her brain. “You have nothing to say to me,” Lady Easterling observed, even more morose. “I know how it is, and I am not surprised. I was bent on making a stir in the world, and you were very snugly placed, and very well-accustomed to wretched little nobodies who pretend to your hand. I was very pushing; I see that now. But I hope I know when I am beaten at the post, and how to concede, and I don’t bear you the least little grudge, sir. It is not your fault that I am in an enfeebled state of health. Indeed, I think you’re the best of good fellows, and I am sorry I have made you mad as fire, because I don’t wish we should stand on bad terms. Now, though I have liked our dance excessively, I am feeling a trifle worn down, so perhaps you would return me to my aunt.” Bemused by so abrupt a volte-face, Lord Carlin obliged, and delivered Lady Easterling up to the dowager duchess with a polite bow, and did not notice that the dowager repaid his courtesy with a rabid scowl. His own countenance similarly marred, a fact that did not go 133

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unobserved by his fellow revelers. Lord Carlin made his way through the crowd. Not one of the bevy of hopeful beauties caught his eye, though each one certainly tried; nor did any acquaintance’s greeting smite his ear. Lord Carlin was fast in a fit of introspection. Lady Easterling’s bizarre behavior had caused him to reassess himself. In so doing, Kit was not sure he liked what he found. A coxcomb, she had called him, a curst loose-screw; and Kit had taken what at the time seemed justifiable offense. Now he was not so certain that Lady Easterling’s judgment had been erroneous. Who but the most callous of blackguards could act toward a lady so cruelly as he had done, no matter if he did hold the lady in dislike? Yes, and that was another instance in which his nature fell far short of the ideal, because Lord Carlin had far preferred the rag-mannered baggage to the simpering miss with whom he’d just dealt. Jevon had claimed his sister had never bored anyone in all her life, Lord Carlin recalled. Well, she had just bored him for half an hour. He had thought Jevon was hoaxing him with the tale of Lady Easterling fallen into a despondency. Appallingly clear, now, that Jevon had not been. And it was further evidence of the ignobility of Kit’s character that he should find young ladies who tried to please him a dead bore. Because his steps had led him thither, Lord Carlin paused in one of the anterooms to refresh himself with tepid tea and stale cake, a vantage point from which he had an excellent view of Lady Easterling and her aunt. The dowager duchess was looking in better spirits, while Jaisy appeared both tragic and resigned. Poor thing! thought Lord Carlin, stricken to the core of his being by the result of his cruel and selfish thoughtlessness. Where was Lady Easterling’s dimpled grin, the merry twinkle in her eye? Both gone, and his fault. She had sought to please him, and had failed; his disapproval had led her to change herself into a pattern-card of respectability. Obviously, everything she had said of him was true. Carlin was a coxcomb and a curst loose-screw. Matters could not be left in this highly unsatisfactory manner; somehow Lady Easterling must be persuaded to abandon her missish guise. Infinitely more appealing had been her own harum-scarum ways. They would not do for Carlin, naturally, but the hoydenish Jaisy would suit some other gentleman very well — probably any number of other gentlemen. And it was further indication of his innate knavishness that this conclusion made Lord Carlin feel as sulky as a bear. 134

Nineteen Fate, having tipped Lady Easterling a doubler, was in the process of similarly serving home-brewed up to her brother Jevon, who was strolling along Oxford Street on this particular day. The weather had turned from eternal fog and mist to impending torrential downpour, and few pedestrians were about. Rain would turn the dust and refuse accumulated in the gutters into mud that in some places would, be ankle-deep. Had Mr. Rutherford realized the nature of the day, he might well have remained snugly within his chambers at the Albany. Despite the imminent danger of a dunking, Mr. Rutherford was not displeased with his decision to take the air, for even this mild degree of exercise proved beneficial to the functioning of his intellect. Jevon had lain too long abed, he now realized. Important things were happening in the world. A gentleman of action should be out among his peers, gleaning the latest news and acting upon it, instead of shuffling like an invalid between his own lodgings and his aunt’s residence in Queen Anne Street. Yes, and those forays had gained him precious little benefit, Jevon reflected. A frown creased his handsome brow. He had not set eyes on his beloved since their last encounter in this very neighborhood, when she had with such tender solicitude bade him go in out of the cold. Tender solicitude? Jevon inquired of himself. The misbegotten Confucious received more solicitude from Miss Valentine than he. And moreover was much more often privileged to enjoy her company. Sara was avoiding Jevon, obviously, retiring to her garret the moment he set foot within the entry hall of Blackwood House, behaving very like a lady who had taken an aversion. That she had done no such thing, Jevon of all people should have known, due to his vast 135

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experience with feminine crotchets and megrims. Was he not the bestbeloved gentleman in all of London, Jevon Rutherford of the disarming smile and great good humor and golden hair? Certainly he was, though Jevon’s handsome head was not so swelled that he dwelled upon the fact. His looking glass showed him the same reflection as always. He concluded that a man embarked upon the winning of his chosen lady derived no benefit whatsoever from myriad past amours. That Miss Valentine might fancy herself in the latter category instead of the former never occurred to Jevon, because he did not think of his Sara in that way — or not for more than moments, transgression for which he may surely be forgiven, gentlemen stricken by Cupid’s dart being prone to somewhat heated fantasies, especially gentlemen with backgrounds so enviable as Jevon’s. But that background availed him nothing now, was perhaps a distinct hindrance. Jevon could not rid himself of the appalling suspicion that his beloved preferred a country bumpkin. Determined as she was to avoid Jevon, Sara apparently enjoyed rattling around the metropolis with Arthur Kingscote in tow. Love is a malady with frequent adverse effects. Jevon’s customary good humor had abandoned him, as had — in the case of Arthur Kingscote — his tolerance. He thought he would like to see Mr. Kingscote drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered, at the very least ridden out of the city on a rail, and at the best, trundled off to the infernal regions in a handcart. Mr. Rutherford, as he indulged in these unhappy and uncharitable thoughts, proceeded in a leisurely manner along Oxford Street. This was a wide thoroughfare, its pavement inlaid with flagstones, its street lamps enclosed in crystal globes, its shops offering every manner of merchandise from stuffed birds to the finest English porcelain. Jevon passed by linen-drapers, silk mercers, dressmakers and milliners. His desultory glance moved over windows displaying jewels and silver, china and glassware, silks and muslins and calico. Mr. Rutherford’s manner was that of a man who has sampled a ruddy, luscious-looking apple, and has found it sour. For this disillusionment, a lesser man might have held the apple to blame. Mr. Rutherford was more generous. It was he who had gazed upon the fruit and experienced hunger, who had plucked the apple from its bough and bitten into its red flesh. Therefore, any indigestion he suffered was his own fault. And furthermore, a mouthful of sour 136

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apple was infinitely preferable to having bitten into a worm. As may be deduced from the preceding example of his logic, Mr. Rutherford was an optimist. He was also a man on whom severe head colds had a disastrous effect, as if congested nasal passages also blocked the clear flow of thoughts to and from his brain. Mr. Rutherford was not accustomed to coming in second-best in the game of hearts. Very well; this time he had been dealt a less-than-perfect hand, and he must determine his best strategy. Should he nobly step aside and allow his Sara the suitor of her choice? Arthur Kingscote would doubtless dote on her, shower her with affection and never cause her a moment’s unease. Actually, Arthur Kingscote would probably make Sara a more comfortable husband than Jevon himself, because a gentleman with Jevon’s background could never be certain just who or what might appear unheralded on his doorstep, no matter how thoroughly he’d reformed. This realization did not noticeably alleviate the tension in Mr. Rutherford’s jaw. He had not hitherto realized just how very unmixed a blessing would be marriage to himself. Had it occurred to him that Miss Valentine might have a not unreasonable objection to the intrusion of diverse females into their connubial bliss, he might have long ago embarked upon the reform of his way of life. Yes, and then again he might not have, because that way of life had suited very well until recently. Jevon had not thought about marriage with his Sara until she had hoaxed him with her declared intention of going upon the boards, and Kit had introduced the subject of wedlock. What an amazing thing was coincidence! mused Jevon, and shook his handsome head. If not for those two chance remarks, he might still not have realized that his customary pursuits no longer appealed. Or, Jevon amended, for he was honest with himself, that the notion of pursuits engaged upon with Sara appealed a great deal more. Quantity had too long diverted him. Quality was all. His chosen lady of quality would not have him, Jevon reminded himself, not that so disheartening a fact was one he was likely to forget. What was to be done? Jevon was not certain. He did not think he possessed sufficient nobility of character to allow his Sara to bestow her hand upon a country bumpkin, even if Arthur Kingscote was the better man. Some resolution of this muddle would present itself to him, Jevon decided. Meanwhile, Sara could bestow her hand upon no 137

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one whilst in the employ of Lady Blackwood. And hadn’t the dowager duchess intended Arthur Kingscote for Jaisy? What a pretty bumblebath! Jevon realized he had been standing for several moments staring blankly into the window of a corsetier’s shop. Quickly he continued his perambulations, lest some passing acquaintance deduce his excellent physique was due less to a bountiful Nature than to the Apollo, a constricting influence composed largely of whalebone. First Jaisy must be settled, and then Jevon could devote his energies to Miss Valentine once more. Tempting as was the idea of Arthur Kingscote rendered unsuitable for further pursuit of Miss Valentine by marriage to Lady Easterling, Jevon could not condemn his sister to so ruinous a mésalliance. Carlin it would have to be, in defiance of the dowager duchess, a notion first conceived by Mr. Rutherford after overindulgence in egg hot and bishop and dogs’ noses, Battley’s Sedative and Morris’s Drops; and now remembered after prolonged inhalation of cool damp air. From every angle, Mr. Rutherford re-examined his brainstorm. Prolonged cogitation, the situation had called for. Mr. Rutherford seriously questioned whether he had cogitated long enough. Too late now to stay his hand; the die had been cast. There was more in him of his damnably manipulative aunt than Jevon had hitherto realized. This was his day for lowering reflections, it seemed. After brief contemplation of his own ignoble character, Mr. Rutherford progressed to more constructive thoughts. That Carlin had begun to pay very marked attentions to Jaisy, Jevon was aware — not from Kit, who had grown very reticent on the subject, as if he mistrusted the quality of his friend’s advice, but from mutual acquaintances with wagers on the matter listed in various of London’s betting books. These acquaintances had greatly enlivened Jevon’s sick room. It would have taken more than the risk of contracting a head cold to deter them from avidly following the progress of their bets. A pang of guilt smote Jevon, and was as abruptly dismissed. Once Jaisy was tied-up, he would be free to reintroduce the subject of trysts to Miss Valentine. Consequently, he must be gratified by the woolly-headed conduct of his chosen sacrificial lamb. Because he had embarked upon this expedition with a vague notion that he might again encounter his beloved similarly venturing abroad, Jevon paused to take stock of his surroundings. On a street corner stood a woman selling apples hot from her charcoal stove, a child ped138

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dling lavender grown at Mitcham and used in linen-presses to counter the abominable smell of the laundry soap; crossing the street was a chimney sweep carrying brush and scraper and shovel, and wearing in his cap a brass plate containing his master’s name and address. Then Jevon’s eye was caught by a huge mosque, its cupola white and blue, surmounted by a crescent and driven by a dapper young man. When this astounding spectacle revealed itself as an advertisement for a patent medicine, Jevon actually smiled. As he did so, the first drops of rain began to fall. Cursing, he ducked inside the nearest establishment, which turned out to be the Pantheon Bazaar. Jevon shook raindrops from his person, then ran a knowledgeable eye over the diverse array of merchandise. Tippets of fur and feathers, French gloves and Indian muslins, satins and brocades, ribbons and plumes and lace; hinged silken parasols with folding wooden handles and whalebone frames; shawls of wool and silk — none of these miscellaneous feminine folderols and fripperies were alien to Mr. Rutherford, although he did gaze with slight astonishment upon some of the more fanciful merchandise, in particular a wash of Magnetic Dew Water, guaranteed to restore a youthful appearance even to ladies of antiquity. It was as he was contemplating bestowing some of this miraculous concoction upon his aunt that Mr. Rutherford realized he too was being observed. No dire presentiment struck him, as in justice it might have done; a man of Mr. Rutherford’s legendary exploits grows accustomed to the disadvantages of fame. Furthermore, Jevon was too kindly to slight any of the females by whom he had been favored, or even those who had merely wished to favor him, the numbers of which were legion and might be encountered anywhere. He turned to discover who owned the eyes which were boring holes into his back, with an expression of faint interest on his handsome face. Not even then did premonition strike him, with the discovery that the eyes were dark and lively, and set within the face of the pretty little opera dancer from Drury Lane. Quite the opposite. Jevon was as pleased to encounter that damsel as any other but one, because he suspected he’d treated her rather shabbily, encouraging her to get up her hopes when he meant to use her only as a decoy. Therefore he generously indicated his satisfaction with this chance encounter, and engaged the little opera dancer in the sort of sparkling conversation for which he was justly 139

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famed. That conversation’s charm consisted more in the manner of delivery than in its content. Jevon sought a tactful means by which to indicate to his companion that their mutually profitable interlude was at an end. His thoughtful eye fell upon a very fetching cottage bonnet of yellow twilled sarcenet, trimmed with lavish bunches of cornflowers and tied with a large yellow ribbon bow. Giggling, the opera dancer snatched the bonnet from his hands and crushed it down onto her head. His Sara would have looked fine as fivepence in that bonnet, Jevon thought wistfully. He wished that he might shower her with bonnets and every other extravagance. Unfortunately, Jevon’s competence would not stand such nonsense, and he had no doubt that Georgiana would fly straight into the boughs at the merest indication of an alliance between her hired companion and her heir. Again, so be it. Jevon would bypass any number of fortunes in favor of his Sara; and Sara, having not a penny to her name, was not likely to quibble over living on a competence. All the same, Jevon wished the worldly goods which he intended to bestow upon Miss Valentine amounted to much more. By now, perhaps, the reader may have noted certain resemblances between Mr. Rutherford and Lady Easterling. Though they differed greatly in temperament. Lady Easterling being extremely volatile and Mr. Rutherford largely blasé, they shared a common point of view, to wit, that a Rutherford must eventually be granted his or her request. Lady Easterling wanted Lord Carlin, and never for an instant doubted that having her would be Carlin’s fate; Mr. Rutherford felt similarly toward Miss Valentine. Both recognized that their progress would be stormy; nonetheless, both had determined to take the field. And, as Fate had planted Lady Easterling a facer, so did it hover in the wings to present a wisty cantor to Mr. Rutherford, who had no inkling that his comeuppance was about to be served. Outside the Pantheon Bazaar, the rain fell even harder. Oblivious to the elements, Mr. Rutherford contemplated his pretty little opera dancer. His attention centered not on the damsel but on her frivolous headgear. Of his beloved Sara’s lust for bonnets, Mr. Rutherford was aware. In point of fact, there was very little about Sara that Jevon didn’t know, always excepting the secrets of her heart, and even about those he could make a very shrewd guess. But deuced if he could understand why she encouraged Arthur Kingscote to dangle after her and cut off Jevon’s 140

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own compliments in mid-speech. If any other woman had thus blown first hot (the incident in the garden of Blackwood House) and then cold (every incident thereafter), Jevon would have thought she wished to rouse his jealousy. Sara, however, was no designing female. All the same, Jevon was so very envious that he quite understood his sister’s impulse to box her beloved’s ears. Too long, the little opera dancer had waited to be told that the cottage bonnet rendered her complete to a shade. She had already noted Mr. Rutherford’s tendency toward wool-gathering of late. Therefore, she grasped the quickest means of recapturing his wandering attention: she raised on tiptoe, placed her arms around his neck and kissed him enthusiastically. Though Mr. Rutherford was somewhat startled to be abruptly embraced, and in the midst of the Pantheon Bazaar, he took no particular offense. Little opera dancers were prone to express their gratitude in this straightforward fashion, and though he no longer was as appreciative of such a lack of artifice as once he had been, he was not so churlish as to refuse to cooperate. Such a nonchalant attitude may seem a trifle startling — but Jevon Rutherford had already embraced a thousand women, at the most conservative estimate. He had no reason to think that one more kiss would signify. Therein lay Mr. Rutherford’s error, and misfortune’s cue. As Jevon attempted to dissuade his opera dancer from further embracing him, yet without wounding her feelings in the process, he heard behind him a muffled oath, uttered in a voice that was disastrously well known. All need for tact forgotten, Jevon wrenched the clinging arms from around his neck and thrust the little opera dancer away. He turned around in time to glimpse Miss Valentine’s sodden and bedraggled person, to note the high color burning in her stricken face, before she slammed the shop door and ran back out into the raindrenched street.

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Twenty “By Jupiter?” exclaimed Lady Easterling, when apprised of these events. “What an unfortunate family we are! Why didn’t you go after her?” Mr. Rutherford gazed upon his sister — clad for an evening at Drury Lane Theater in a gown of pale blue muslin trimmed with knots of white ribbon — through eyes that were reproachful and reddened. “I did follow her, as soon as the accursed door came unstuck! Made an utter cake of myself, running down the street and calling out her name!” “And yet she ignored you?” Jaisy’s blue eyes were opened wide. “That was very bad of her — in fact, it don’t sound at all like Sara! And why should she cut up so stiff just because you went in out of the rain?” Mr. Rutherford considered enlightening Lady Easterling as to the precise nature of his encounter with Miss Valentine, and then refrained. There were some things one did not discuss with one’s sister, among them a pretty little opera dancer who was at that very moment posturing upon the stage. “She did not exactly ignore me,” he said, and sneezed. “I caught up with her just as she was climbing into Sir Phineas’s carriage — oh yes, she was with Sir Phineas! I cannot decide if I dislike him more, or that mincing court-card! I was asked to state my business, if you please. When it evolved I had none — I’ve no intention of making Sir Phineas privy to my confidences; he’d merely repeat them to our aunt — I was sent about it! They did not even offer to take me up in the carriage, despite the rain; but drove right past me — and didn’t my man just give me a rare trimming for coming home covered with mud!” Cautiously, Lady Easterling regarded her aunt, but Georgiana was deep in conversation with Arthur Kingscote at the far side of the box. Arthur did not look to be deriving any great enjoyment from the 142

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dowager’s discourse. Lud, but wasn’t he a figure in his brown-spotted silk coat and breeches, his waistcoat embroidered with metallic threads, his pale pink stockings, seals and fobs and knots of ribbon at his knees! But what had Jevon said about Arthur? Could it be that Sara fancied him? Jaisy recalled that Arthur had offered to remain at Blackwood House this evening and keep Sara company, a generous suggestion which had made Georgiana quiver with outrage and announce that she wouldn’t have her servants mollycoddled, no matter how ill they were with head colds. Jevon had not ceased to speak even when his sister’s attention wandered, and was going on in a manner that made Lady Easterling wonder if his exertions in Oxford Street had resulted in a delirium of the brain. What tumble was this that he bewailed? From what heights did he claim abrupt, painful descent? And what had Beau Brummell and Lord Byron to do with anything? “Now she won’t even speak to me,” muttered Mr. Rutherford, into a handkerchief that was much too delicate for use by a gentleman, “I vow I’m at my wits’ end.” “Poor Jevon!” His sister kindly patted his arm. “You are regularly under the hatches, are you not? There is no need to be thrown into such a pucker. Sara has been cross as crabs before. She’ll come about and you will be bosom-bows again!” That he wished to be a great deal more than bosom-bows with Miss Valentine, Mr. Rutherford did not deem it prudent to confide. His sister had a prodigious loose way of talking — as, now that Jevon thought of it, did another member of Lady Blackwood’s household. “I understand,” he said with disapproval, “that Thomas let the cat out of the bag.” “Thomas?” Briefly, Lady Easterling looked blank. “Oh, the butler! I have meant to speak to you about that, Jevon, because if Sara is on the downward path to perdition it is all your fault. Until you took her out into the garden, she had never shown the slightest inclination toward that sort of thing.” Here Mr. Rutherford interrupted to explain that he had not taken Miss Valentine into the garden but had merely found her there, and again sneezed. “Oh, yes!” retorted Lady Easterling scathingly. “Next you will try and tell me it was a cinder. Moonshine, Jevon! The odds are against anyone getting that many cinders in her eye! No, you must face up to 143

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your responsibilities. You are to blame that Sara has set out upon the primrose path.” The primrose path? His Sara? What poppycock was this? Jevon expressed a blunt opinion that his sister’s head was filled with windmills. “Windmills!” Lady Easterling was exceedingly indignant. “Of all the unhandsome things to say! I ain’t the one who’s nattering on about Byron and Brummell and tumbling down hills — whatever that may mean! No, and I ain’t the one either that’s led poor Sara astray. Jupiter, Jevon, you should have known better! In some instances ignorance is bliss! But you had to go and kiss Sara and make her curious, which was very bad of you — although I’ll warrant Arthur and Sir Phineas like it well enough.” Had he not lost his sense of the ridiculous, Jevon might have taken his sister’s statements with the liberal seasoning of salt that they deserved. Gentlemen in whom Cupid’s darts have lodged, however, are not noted for a large appreciation of the absurd. “Were you a man,” he said, in dangerous tones, “I would demand satisfaction for that insult.” “Insult!” Lady Easterling’s pretty cheeks turned pink with suppressed outrage. “Tell you what, Jevon — it’s you as has windmills in your head! Didn’t I see Sara in the garden with Arthur? I hope I may know an embrace when I see one, no matter how much people try to put me off the scent with all this talk of cinders. And isn’t Sir Phineas sticking as close as a court plaster to Sara?” She sighed. “Which I must confess is my fault, because I let it slip that Sara had been kissing both you and Arthur. I’ll admit I am very surprised in Sir Phineas. I wouldn’t have thought him the sort of gentleman to dangle after a lady hoping to be kissed — not that Sara acts as if she wishes to kiss him, mind! Still, I’ll warrant he hopes that she will!” Had not Mr. Rutherford already been seated, these horrid revelations would have brought him to his knees. He was appalled to discover that his own lack of self-control had not such disastrous results. For wishing to kiss Sara, Jevon could not fairly fault either Arthur Kingscote or Sir Phineas Fairfax; Jevon himself wished the same thing a great of the time. Nor could he fault his Sara for her sudden enthusiasm for kissing, which was undeniably a very pleasant pastime. Still, despite his great good humor and his large tolerance for the foibles of 144

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his fellow man, and despite his own vast experience of kissing, which rendered disapproval even more unfair, Mr. Rutherford did disapprove, and violently. If his Sara had developed a penchant for kissing, who was better qualified to humor her than himself? Yet she would not speak to him, apparently preferred the indulgences of her employer’s plump and elderly man of business, and a mincing court-card. “Have I put you in a tweak?” inquired Lady Easterling, when her brother uttered a sound very like a growl. “Nobody is forcing Sara to do what she don’t want, except for Georgiana, and Georgiana always has!” She frowned. “Do you know, there’s something mighty queer about Georgiana these days; she acts like she knows something the rest of us don’t. Gives me a very nasty turn, she does! Furthermore, Georgiana ain’t said a word about Sir Phineas dangling after Sara, but tells her to go and enjoy herself. Not that I should enjoy myself in Bullock’s Liverpool Museum, which is where he took her on the day when it rained—” Her eyes widened. “Jupiter! Do you think Georgiana means Sara to marry Sir Phineas? He is quite old! Myself, I’ll wager it’s Arthur Sara is hankering after, not that Georgiana would allow it, because she means Arthur for me. Jevon, what was that you said!” What Mr. Rutherford had voiced, almost beneath his breath, was a fervent wish that Arthur Kingscote, Lady Blackwood and Sir Phineas Fairfax might all be summarily dispatched to the infernal regions by way of a handcart. No obliging imp appearing to perform this service, he dropped his head into his hands and tried desperately to think. Astonished that her blasé brother should exhibit himself thus in the pathetics, Jaisy stared at him. “What have I said to put you in a fit of the blue-devils?” she inquired solicitously. “Are you blaming yourself for Sara’s queer starts? Well, I can’t say you shouldn’t; it is all your fault — but if you hadn’t kissed her, someone else eventually would have, because she is very pretty, and the outcome would have been the same. Since someone was eventually bound to have kissed Sara, you are doubtless the properest person for the task. I remember very well that she once had a tendre. But just because you kiss a lady don’t mean you have to develop a dog-in-the-manger attitude about her, as you of all people should know!” “Sara,” reproved Mr. Rutherford, “is not just any lady!” Lady Easterling’s blue eyes opened wide as saucers. “Zounds! You fancy Sara yourself!” 145

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This declaration, delivered in tones of frank bewilderment, caused Mr. Rutherford to wince. “Pray moderate your voice!” he hissed, with a quick glance at his aunt. “It is midsummer moon with you!” crowed Jaisy, though in softer tones. “No wonder you are hipped! Well, there is no use in asking me to help you, because I have decided Sara must have Arthur, if only Georgiana can be persuaded to agree to it, and she very well might since I mean to have Carlin, which will leave poor Arthur unclaimed! I am very sorry for you, Jevon, but Sara must be allowed to have her choice.” “Yes.” Looking grim as the dread reaper, Mr. Rutherford rose. He did not give utterance to his determination that Miss Valentine’s choice should fall on him, a decision influenced, if need be, by coercion or witchery. Abruptly, he departed his aunt’s box, and the theater as well, and retired to his lodgings in the Albany, there to engage in prolonged cogitation over a steaming punch bowl. Feeling rather hipped herself. Lady Easterling gazed around the theater, which was crammed to its elegant rafters with spectators eager to witness A New Way to Pay Old Debts, featuring the popular Mrs. Glover and the astounding Mr. Kean. For her own part, Jaisy harbored scant appreciation of that latter genius, an ugly little man with a voice harsh as a hackney coachman’s. An opinion of the play itself, she was hardly entitled to put forth, since she had watched scarcely a moment of the entertainment. She was not even thinking of her brother’s sad fix. Instead she was pondering Lord Carlin, as often she did, and wondering how she was to bring him up to scratch, Jaisy hoped she might turn the trick before much more time elapsed. For so volatile a lady to long sustain the stultifying mantle of prim propriety was a very wearing task. Yet Carlin seemed to like her missishness; it was only since she’d made herself into a dreary pattern-card of respectability that he’d started coming round. Therefore she must sustain her detested rôle, at least until the knot was tied. That she might be better suited by a gentleman less starched-up never occurred to Lady Easterling. Carlin might not adore her à la falie, or be willing to expire at her feet; he might not even be the slightest bit sympathique; but Jaisy intended to have him all the same. As Lady Easterling thus racked her fertile little brain, the curtain descended at the close of the five-act piece, and one of the actors stepped forward to inform the spectators of the next evening’s fare. 146

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Then he bowed and retired through one of the doors which always stood open on the stage. It was the signal for much scuffling of feet and animated talk, and a reordering of the occupants of the boxes, for the ton took advantage of the interval to gossip and visit and stare. An evening’s performance in a London theater seldom lasted less than five hours, and consisted of two or three works. Still to come was the closing farce. But there was Carlin, paying his respects to Georgiana, who didn’t look especially gratified. Quickly, Jaisy erased the contemplative expression from her face and contrived to look woebegone. “Lady Easterling.” Lord Carlin’s voice expressed concern. “You seem to be in the mopes. Perhaps I might be of assistance.” Certainly he might, if he would only pop the question! “Would that you could,” sighed Jaisy. “But I fear no one can help me, sir.” “What’s this? High flights!” soothed Kit, as he drew up a chair. “It cannot be so bad as all that. Would you care to tell me about it? In my experience two heads are better than one.” Such a generous outlay of sympathy was not what Lady Easterling had expected when she embarked upon this particular shenanigan, and she was pleased beyond description to have uncovered Carlin’s Achilles’ heel. As a perfect gentleman, he would respond with innate chivalry to a damsel in distress. Therefore, Jaisy would become immediately distressed. She masked her elation with a sorrowful moue. “If only I dared!” “My dear Lady Easterling, I promise you may trust me!” Kit’s pleasant features were unquestionably sincere. “Should you choose to confide in me, I will not breathe a word of it to any other living soul. I do not care to see you so out of spirits. Perhaps you have been trying a little too hard to do what is proper. There was nothing seriously at fault in the way you were, if I may presume to say so. I fear you took my, er, chance remarks too much to heart, for I am the highest of sticklers, and others are less nice in their notions.” He heard his own words and winced. “I mean, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. And I suspect you are not listening to me.” Nor had she been, but puzzling over how best to direct Cupid’s arrow to his lordship’s exposed soft spot. “Like any neck-or-nothing rider, I have taken a rattling toss or two,” she confided, “but never did I think anyone would beat me at the post! Especially I did not think that my own brother—” 147

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“Ah!” interrupted Lord Carlin. “You need say no more, Lady Easterling: I know all. I have even remonstrated with him on the subject, but he will not hear a word against her, and seems unaware of the consequences of so grave a mésalliance. I should not speak of such things to you, I know, but you are already aware of the creature’s existence — and that Jevon permitted you to be so is most reprehensible! Which is beside the point. But I had thought you favored the match.” Jaisy, who had introduced her brother into the conversation so that he might serve the function of a red herring, stared blankly at her companion. “What match?” said she. Lord Carlin looked a trifle arch. “You need not try and act as if you do not know what I’m talking about!” he reproved. “We talked about this once before, if you will recall. I refer to your brother and that unsuitable female — what was her name? Sara! Pray do not insult my intelligence with a further display of innocence.” “Sara!” Lady Easterling’s first impulse was to inform Lord Carlin that he was positively paper-skulled, but recollection of her recent conversation with Jevon gave her pause. “But Sara fancies Arthur!” she protested faintly. “Or at least I think she does!” “Thank God for that!” Kit responded piously, then added: “Who the deuce is this Arthur?” Gloomily, Jaisy gestured toward the other occupants of the box. “That is Arthur. And my aunt intends him for me.” Lady Blackwood meant to marry off her niece to a man who was openly dangling after a pretty little opera dancer? A man of nature so passionate that he had stolen a march on Jevon Rutherford? Though arranged marriages were the way of the world, Lord Carlin thought Lady Easterling’s position very sad, and so he said. “An opera dancer?” echoed Jaisy, in outraged tones that made Lord Carlin cringe and caused Lady Blackwood’s elbow to connect sharply with Arthur Kingscote’s ribs. “What rubbishing thing is this, Carlin?” “Don’t play off your airs with me!” retorted his lordship, whose patience was fast running out. “You know as much about it as I, because you told me the wench’s name.” Lady Easterling’s lovely eyes were opened so wide they threatened to momentarily pop right out other head. “I did?” “You did.” The provocations offered him by this skitter-witted female were almost more than flesh and blood could stand. Lord 148

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Carlin crossed his arms upon his chest and willed them to remain thusly placed, lest he succumb to the temptation to clench his fingers around Jaisy’s slender neck. “You told me her name is Sara. At the time I marveled that you could speak so calmly of the fact that your brother means to marry an opera dancer from this very theater.” “Jupiter!” Jaisy teetered on the thin edge between revelation and bewilderment. “I see it now! Sara ain’t an opera dancer, Carlin; she’s my aunt’s companion. And Jevon told me but moments past that he fancies her, but she fancies Arthur, not that Georgiana would approve.” “Your brother fancies a great many females, it would seem.” Lord Carlin’s manner was chill. “He has intimated to me several times that he means to marry his opera dancer, whatever her name may be.” “Marry,” echoed Lady Easterling despondently; she had just realized what the most ominous consequence of that ill-judged marriage must be. So starched-up a gentleman as Carlin would never ally himself with a lady whose brother was leg-shackled to a female of whom the best that could be said was that she was a great deal less than she should be. “If Jevon means to marry that — that creature, then he must have meant to offer my poor Sara a slip on the shoulder, and I cannot think highly of Jevon’s priorities! Indeed, I don’t think much of Jevon himself — unless you was hamming me, sir?” She shot Carlin a suspicious glance. He shook his head. She sighed. “I thought not. Dashed if I ever thought Jevon would act so beggarly. He must not be allowed to go through with it. Somehow we must contrive to spike his guns.” Almost, Lord Carlin took exception to Lady Easterling’s assumption that he would render her assistance; then he decided that her endeavors on the behalf of her brother might divert her from further attempts to make herself into a pattern-card of respectability, and thereby relieve him of the need to persuade her to abandon her efforts. In all fairness, dancing attendance on her ladyship had not been so onerous a task as he had anticipated. Jaisy was never predictable, despite the prim and proper airs she’d lately adopted. She was an interesting conversationalist, despite the colorful quality of her language, and could tell many amusing anecdotes about all manner of diverse pursuits, not least the hunting field. Lord Carlin was fond of following the hounds himself, and thought there were few sights finer than a field of fox hunters in fall chase. Once he had overcome his ini149

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tial distaste at discussing such matters with a female, he had found it pleasant enough to compare notes with Lady Easterling about the goodly show of foxes they had respectively seen. One thing Jaisy didn’t lack for was courage, Kit decided. Few females, upon receipt of the alarming intelligence that a beloved brother was about to contract a ruinous mésalliance, could remain sufficiently calm and levelheaded to plan what was to be done to prevent it. Personally, Kit thought her efforts would be useless. Nonetheless, let her try her best to scotch the affair; as a gentleman, he would render her what assistance he could. In such outlandish situations, action was always preferable to its opposite. That Lord Carlin had never previously become involved in an outlandish situation, and consequently was very ill-prepared to judiciously determine what should and should not be done, did not occur to him. Nor did he pause to wonder whether his conclusions about whom Jevon Rutherford wished to marry were correct. What was it Lady Easterling’s late husband had said about easily getting over rough ground? The Season was almost over, no one of importance remained in London after July. Lord Carlin would lend Lady Easterling whatever assistance she required — and then retire to the country and his ancestral estates, from which he would not budge an inch until Lady Easterling bestowed her hand and heart elsewhere. There were numerous flaws in Lord Carlin’s logic, chief among them his blithe assumption that Lady Easterling would allow him to escape her net so easily. Nor did he pause to consider whether, freed of the lady’s whims and stratagems, his existence might not grow depressingly dull. Above all, he failed to take sufficient note of another of the late Lord Easterling’s adages, that concerning the folly of wagering against unknown steeds. Had he been available for comment on the subject, Lord Easterling would have readily agreed that his harum-scarum widow was a very dark horse indeed.

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Twenty One Miss Valentine solemnly paced Lady Blackwood’s morning room, a book tucked under one arm, Confucious at her heels. With an expression of grave disapproval, she gazed upon the relief panels of dancing nymphs, the ox-skull frieze, the gilt suite with light frames and straight turned legs, the dowager’s massive eagle-headed chair. Surreptitiously, she aimed a defiant little kick at that article, which caused Confucious to growl at her, which caused her in turn to glare. “Do be quiet!” Sara snapped. “Or I vow I shall do something for which we will both be sorry, you — you misbegotten cur!” Belatedly, she recalled who was in the habit of referring to Confucious in those unappreciative terms. Folly to have thought even for a moment that he might care for her, to mind so much that he bestowed particular attentions on other females. The ultimate betrayal lay in that fetching bonnet which Jevon had bestowed upon his petite amie, and which Sara had eyed several times in the past, avariciously. So costly a confection had been beyond the resources of her slender purse. That Jevon should have bestowed her bonnet — in which terms Sara thought of it, as if longing were the father of ownership — upon a Paphian girl made her disillusionment complete. “Oh, damn!” Miss Valentine uttered rebelliously, and seated herself on a tapestried sofa. Confucious snarled. Sara bent and lifted him onto the sofa beside her. Confucious followed his tail around in a circle three times, then settled down comfortably to snooze, in the process of which he twitched and groaned and drooled profusely upon Sara’s skirts. Those skirts were flower-strewn muslin this day, and flounced; Sara’s sleeves were frivolously puffed, and her neckline cut lower than was suitable for a hired companion, especially one with a head cold. Having thus 151

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reminded herself of her affliction, Sara sneezed. To complete her dissatisfaction with life in general, she could not even find her favorite handkerchief. If only she were a female of sufficient enterprise to kick over the traces! Sara thought once again. But she was not. She was instead a wretched spineless worm who would forever scuttle hither and thither in response to another person’s will, as she was doing this very moment. Georgiana met with her every morning in this chamber, to lay out the various menial chores with which Sara was to fill her day. Other companions did nothing more onerous than dealing with correspondence, or reading aloud from some improving tome, or perhaps mending a piece of fine lace. She must perform all manner of diverse chores — from preparing for the preservation of the dowager’s complexion a recipe comprised of white flowers and cucumber water and minced pigeon-meat, to cleaning and pressing the dowager’s wardrobe — as if she were a lady’s maid. Even lady’s maids might be presented with the occasional bonnet by an admirer, thought Sara, and sneezed again. She would never have more bonnets than those she purchased for herself, in lieu of prudently saving up her wages for a rainy day. A sad lot was that of Miss Sara Valentine. Neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring was she. Looking rather grim, Sara opened her book and began to read. This volume, Culinae Famulatrix Medicinae by Dr. A Hunter, was a very improving tome, and combined such exotic recipes as “Balnamoon Skink” (a Scotch version of chicken-in-the-pot) and “Brado Togado” (Indian shrimp and spinach), with a variety of philosophical observations. Thus Miss Valentine learned that an artful woman was a saint in the morning and a glowworm at night; and that a lady less than well endowed with native wit should learn to dance well, so that what she lacked in the head might be made up by her heels. Furthermore, observed Dr. Hunter, beauty fades. A wise woman laid in a stock of something to take its place. Feeling distinctly out of charity with Dr. Hunter, Sara flung Medicinae across the room. As she did so, the morning-room door was flung open. She started guiltily. But it was only Jaisy, who espied Miss Valentine and beamed. “Capital! I had hoped I’d find you here alone because I am very wishful of speaking with you. Sara, you have had a hairs-breadth escape!” Escape was a matter that had much occupied Miss Valentine’s mind of late — escape from a life of unremitting drudgery. “I have?” she inquired doubtfully. 152

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“Oh, yes?” With the utmost disrespect. Lady Easterling seated herself in the dowager duchess’s chair. “You will not credit it — I cannot myself! It beats everything! — but he did offer you attentions that were rather too pointed, and you must immediately perceive that he would net have done so did he not seek to lead you into a ruinous entanglement!” As if her head were not already sorely abused by this miserable cold, now Jaisy must set her conundrums that made her brow ache. “I do not immediately perceive anything!” wailed Miss Valentine, as she raised her handkerchief to her reddened nose. “Pooh!” Lady Easterling cast her friend an arch, reproving glance. “You needn’t try and bamboozle me! Nor need you feel that it was very stupidly done of you to so nearly be taken in, because I’m sure no one knows better than Jevon how to cut a wheedle! Although it has me quite in a puzzle why he should try and play off his tricks on you!” Though Miss Valentine was not certain that she comprehended all the ramifications of the conversation in which she was engaged, she had no difficulty in recognizing an insult. “Jaisy, I thank you!” she snapped into her handkerchief, and with such hostility that Confucious stirred. “Next you will tell me that I am grown a positive dowd!” “Well.” Lady Easterling cast an appraising glance at her companion’s gown. “Don’t cut up so stiff, Sara! I didn’t mean you was an antitode! But you have been left on the shelf and you ain’t the sort of female Jevon usually engages in flirtation. Depend upon it, he did intend to offer you a slip on the shoulder, which is very shabby conduct even for the most hardened flirt in London, which Jevon definitely is!” “Jaisy, please! You are making a great piece of work about nothing, my dear.” “Am I, Sara?” Of course Sara must be chagrined by Jaisy’s knowledge other sad unsteadiness of character, most recently demonstrated by monstrous unmaidenly conduct. Should Jaisy repeat to Sara Jevon’s nonsense about a partiality? On the whole, Jaisy thought not. Already Sara had exhibited an appalling eagerness to follow Jevon up the garden path. Better that she be persuaded to forget him immediately. “Poor, poor Sara! And to think that before Jevon led you astray you was always so painstakingly discreet.” 153

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Uncharitably, Miss Valentine wished that she retained possession of the Medicinae still, so that she might now hurl it at Lady Easterling’s lovely pea-brained head. “Jevon led me nowhere!” she protested, in tones garbled by mingled rage, frustration and head cold. “I beg you will let the subject drop.” If Jevon had not led Sara up the garden path, then Sara had led Jevon, reasoned Lady Easterling; and there was a want of modesty about such conduct which she could not condone. Jaisy might be a rag-mannered baggage with a fondness for the Fancy and all sorts of sporting talk, but in comparison to Sara, Jaisy was a veritable candidate for sainthood. Any degree of scruples possessed by Miss Valentine, Lady Easterling sadly realized, wasn’t worth the purchase of a guinea. “I didn’t mean you should fall silent altogether!” said Sara, around another sneeze. Lady Easterling collected her errant thoughts, and with a determined expression applied herself once more to her task. “It is you, Sara, who are doing it rather too brown! You need not try and spare my feelings; a man who is set on marrying an opera dancer is capable of any infamy, even if he is my own brother, and so I freely admit! Nor need you fear I deplore your lack of judgment as concerns Jevon. I am very pleased that you are taking it so well — I’d be fit to blow my brains out if I learned I’d been offered false coin — but there! And I always thought you was a biddable female!” Miss Valentine inhaled deeply, coughed and strove for patience. “Jevon did not offer me false coin. And what is this nonsense about an opera dancer? You must have got it wrong!” “I did no such thing!” Lady Easterling retorted, so belligerently that Confucious raised up on his haunches, eager to observe a regular rowdy-do. “I had it straight from Carlin, and Jevon told him so himself! If you knew what Jevon was about, and didn’t send him to the rightabout, you are as cork-brained as he is, Sara! No, no, do not try to deny it!” she added, as Miss Valentine tried to speak. “It is too late to try and turn me up sweet! I see just how it is with you, and the only solution is that you must marry immediately.” Sara picked up Confacious, who had been inspired by Jaisy’s indignant outburst to spit and snarl, and cradled the dog in her arms. He did not make a comfortable bundle, but squirmed and growled and treated her to great gusts of malodorous doggy breath. “I must?” she echoed faintly. 154

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“Yes.” Lady Easterling was pleased to make even that infinitesimal degree of progress. “You will understand why I must take back my former offer to take you away with me; I cannot provide shelter — and bonnets! — to a female who is likely to be offering to kiss Carlin the moment my back is turned. You cannot expect it of me! Nor can you deny this habit you have developed of kissing every gentleman in sight! Jevon! Arthur! Sir Phineas!” “Sir Phineas!” echoed Miss Valentine indignantly. “I never!” “Excellent,” retorted Lady Easterling. “He is a great deal too old! You had much better have Arthur, because I don’t mean to! Don’t misunderstand me, Sara, I wish you very well, just like I do Jevon, but I am also tempted to wash my hands of him?” She withdrew a missive from her sleeve and waved it for emphasis. “And I have also told him, if he goes through with this marriage to an opera dancer, that he will be disinherited by both Georgiana and me — but don’t be taking notions, Sara, because if Jevon, er, takes you under his protection, the result will be the same. You had much better have Arthur, because clearly you must have someone!” On this Parthian shot she rose, shook out her skirts and exited the morning room, leaving Miss Valentine too flabbergasted to even sneeze in farewell. In the hallway, she found Arthur, contemplating his reflection in the looking glass. Very noteworthy that reflection was today: Mr. Kingscote wore a bright yellow coat with padded breast, huge plated buttons, skirt-tails that reached below the knee, and French riding sleeves; lime green pantaloons of ribbed kerseymere, a frilled shirt and cashmere waistcoat, and Hessian boots. Lady Easterling accorded this vision a great deal less approval than the vision accorded itself. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself!” she said scathingly. Arthur knew no reason why he should not experience a degree of satisfaction, such a Tulip of fashion was he. Lady Easterling’s expression, he noted, was not especially appreciative. Arthur turned this way and that, craning his head to observe his reflection from several improbable angles. “Have I a crease? A thread? Not a smudge?” he inquired anxiously. Sara preferred this jackanapes, this cawker, to Jevon? Jaisy could make no sense of it. However, Sara must have whom she wanted — and since Jevon would only play fast and loose with her, the fact that 155

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Sara wanted a basket-scrambler like Arthur Kingscote was, if incomprehensible, also for the best. At least she could do a bit to secure her Sara’s happiness. “You are a cruel man, Arthur Kingscote!” announced Jaisy, and sighed. “I would not have thought you a man who would treat a lady in this cavalier fashion, who would encourage her to set her cap at you and then leave her to wear the willow. Oh! It is very sad.” What was this? wondered Arthur. He thought Lady Easterling had made a dead-set at Lord Carlin. Could he have been mistaken? Had Arthur so bedazzled her that she realized Carlin was, in comparison, dull stuff? Though Arthur didn’t fancy Jaisy in the slightest, it was no small compliment that she’d taken a marked fancy to him. Arthur exchanged a smug, meaningful glance with his reflection. Not only was he a man of fashion, but a gay blade, forsooth! But comment was called for. “You honor me. Lady Easterling!” he said, with what he considered a gentle leer. “Moonshine!” retorted her ladyship irritably. “I wish you would not grimace at yourself while I am trying to speak. You have behaved very scaly to Sara, Arthur. I can tell you that to win the admiration of someone like Sara ain’t nothing to cavil at!” “Sara?” Arthur was so astonished that he left off gloating over his own reflection and stared instead at Lady Easterling. “You’re all about in the head!” “No, Arthur, I am not.” Sara must have the man she wanted, Jaisy reminded herself once more, cork-brained as the choice might seem. “Sara has taken a marked fancy to you; she as much as told me so! If you were not such a gudgeon, you would have seen she was casting out lures!” The only lures that Arthur Kingscote was qualified to recognize were those dangled at the end of fishing lines, but he would have served as fish-bait himself before admitting to such abysmal ignorance. “Oho!” said he. “Cawker!” responded Lady Easterling. “Well, Arthur, what do you mean to do about it? Only the greatest beast in nature would leave poor Sara to wear the willow, as you have done.” “No, no!” Arthur protested, horrified. “I assure you, nothing of the sort! Tell you what, I’ll go talk to Miss Valentine. Set the record straight, you know!” 156

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“Capital!” All was up to Sara now; Jaisy had done her reluctant best to promote this singularly inappropriate romance. “I knew you would not hold it against Sara that she has been a trifle, er, indiscreet; she will cut all the others now that her affections have become settled on you. Don’t dawdle, Arthur! She is waiting in the morning room.” During her ladyship’s revelations, Mr. Kingscote’s self-esteem had grown by leaps and bounds. He had hitherto underestimated himself, he now understood. No simple country bumpkin could have won the heart of a woman of the world, an adventuress living on her wits, a scheming temptress like Sara Valentine. Clearly she had misinterpreted his attempts to persuade her to help him avoid marriage with a female whom he feared would regularly assault his person; perhaps she thought his request for assistance in duping the dowager duchess a very clever ploy. And so it would have been clever, had it been a ruse, realized Arthur, as with a firm and masterful stride he approached the morning-room door. Behind him, Lady Easterling rolled her eyes heavenward, and then proceeded down the hallway. Briskly, Arthur applied himself to the doorknob, stepped into the room. What a dashing young blood was he, he decided, as he permitted himself a peek into a Venetian mirror. Complete to a shade, and up to all the rigs, as Lady Easterling might have put it. Scant wonder that he had attracted the interest of a woman of the world, and without even trying. This was only the first of many splendid adventures, he fancied, among the frail and the fair. Then he realized that he was being studied quizzically by the frail one herself. “Good day, Arthur!” she said cordially. “You are looking positively top-ofthe-trees!” Ah, she sought to cloak her tender sensibilities behind a mantle of bright banter, and Arthur must show her that there was no need for masquerade. There was but one reasonable course of action now. Adventuress though she might be, Miss Valentine was also very ladylike. Or perhaps she was too modest to make him overtures. As a gentleman, his duty was clear. He must sweep her off her feet. With that admirable resolve, Arthur strode boldly across the room, plucked Confucious from the sofa, carried the snarling dog at arm’s length to the doorway, deposited him in the hallway and quickly shut the door. Then, once more, he strode boldly to the sofa and sat down beside Miss Valentine. “Arthur,” she said, bewildered. “What are you about?” 157

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“You know!” responded Arthur, with what he intended as a kindling glance. “And I’ll wager you will like it excessively! But enough of talk!” Upon which observation he clamped one arm around Sara’s shoulders and pulled her inexorably toward him. This was not the first time a young man had tried such tactics; Sara placed her hands on Arthur’s chest, her arms held rigid, and glared. “Release me this instant, you fool! You go beyond the line of being pleasing! Release me and we shall both forget that you have made an exhibition of yourself.” Naturally she would put up some pretense of coyness, Arthur decided; and she would never forgive him if he failed to persevere. Therefore, with his other hand he pushed aside her outstretched arms and, before she could protest further, crushed her against his chest. Hanged if he’d realized this pursuit of dissipation would be such curst uphill work, he thought, as, rather grimly, he set about kissing Miss Valentine. Since there was little she could do about it, her arms pinned at her sides, Sara endured that embrace. In all honesty, she admitted that she had not struggled against it as energetically as she might. Despite the unflattering opinion held other by Lady Easterling, Miss Valentine had in all her life been kissed by but one gentleman, and the revelation that he had intended to offer her a slip on the shoulder had affected Sara like a slap in the face. Therefore, she allowed Arthur Kingscote to embrace her, due to no addle-pated notion of thus taking her revenge, but because she wished to learn if anyone else could kiss so well. Alas, if Arthur Kingscote was a fair example, no one could. At last he released her, and Sara drew back. Belatedly she realized that Confucious, exiled in the hallway, had set up a frenzied barking that must have drawn the attention of every member of the household to the morning room. That barking now had stopped. “I say, Sara!” said Mr. Kingscote, who was much less acute. “That was jolly good fun, was it not?” Miss Valentine did not reply. Slowly, she turned toward the doorway. Arthur, too, became aware of the ominous quality of the silence then. Even Confucious had ceased to snarl and howl. He, too, looked at the doorway. Lady Blackwood stood there, like an avenging angel, bearing aloft not a flaming sword but a very triumphant-looking Pekinese. 158

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Abruptly, Mr. Kingscote’s delusions of grandeur vanished like a puff of smoke. The dowager’s malevolent expression left no doubt she was thoroughly incensed. He would be cast off without a farthing, and his impecunious family likewise. “Hang it!” ejaculated Arthur, and glared at the ashen Sara. “Now see what you’ve done!” “What I have done?” echoed Miss Valentine, and sneezed. What had she ever done but what was expected or demanded of her, by Georgiana and Jaisy, Jevon and now Arthur himself? She had tried her very best to please all concerned, and to what end? The dowager duchess’s venomous demeanor indicated that Sara would be turned out into the streets to starve, as all along she had known would come to pass. Her rainy day had burst upon her and she had not a shilling saved with which to purchase an umbrella. Miss Valentine reacted as must any meek and self-effacing a female in so untenable a position, served up such unpalatable fare. She burst into tears.

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Twenty Two When the summons came, Sir Phineas was at Tattersall’s, grand mart of everything concerned with equestrian recreations, the sports of the field and the business of the Turf. How the dowager duchess had known where to find him, Sir Phineas had left off wondering many years past. He supposed she had agents watching him, even as she had instructed him to watch Miss Valentine. Reluctantly, he moved away from the circular counter where he had lounged, forgetting for several moments at a time that he was not and never would be sufficiently plump in the pocket to pay one hundred guineas for a thoroughbred. Casting a last wistful glance at the fireplace, over which hung a painting of the great racehorse Elipse, Sir Phineas followed the footman out into the street. Tattersall’s stood at Hyde Park Corner, no great distance from Queen Anne Street. The hour was still early; the noon bells had not yet rung. Sir Phineas wondered what had prompted Georgiana’s terse and peremptory summons. Tension hung over Blackwood House like fog over the city of London, and within the morning room was its source. But to tarry longer would only bring down the dowager’s wrath upon his head. Sir Phineas pressed his knuckles to his belly, which had begun to flutter alarmingly. Within the morning room, all at first appeared relatively serene. Lady Blackwood was enthroned in her carved eagle-headed chair, Confucious seated in her lap. Both gazed in a pettish manner upon the dowager’s butler, who stood before them. Thomas looked, thought Sir Phineas, as if he were willing his knees to cease to shake. His stomach quivered all the more violently, in sympathy.

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“Phineas!” The dowager’s gaze was dagger-sharp. “I am quite out of charity with you! I did not instruct you to enjoy yourself with my companion — or perhaps she cozened you also with her artful ways!” “Artful? Miss Valentine?” Much as Sir Phineas dreaded to bring down Georgiana’s wrath, there were limits to what flesh and blood could endure. “Poppycock!” “Poppycock to you, Phineas!” Lady Blackwood’s smile was grim. “We have been quite properly taken in. Not that I would have been, had people been so frank with me as they are instructed to be, you among them!” “I?” In response to a gesture from the dowager. Sir Phineas collapsed upon the tapestried confidante. “Forgive me, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Forgive you, Phineas? Not likely! At the cost of being redundant, I must state once again that I am prodigious displeased about this cursed business.” The dowager tapped her fingers irritably upon the chair arm. “What business is that, Georgiana?” Sir Phineas inquired cautiously. “Don’t try and hoodwink me, Phineas!” Lady Blackwood replied sharply. “My silly twit of a companion has done an excellent job of blotting her copybook. It exceeds belief that I should have so misjudged the creature — fancy, I thought her a well-brought-up young female!” “You are speaking of Miss Valentine?” Recalling certain accusations made by Lady Easterling in the presence of both the butler and himself, Sir Phineas glanced at Thomas. The butler looked as if he wished the floor to open up and swallow him. Sir Phineas experienced a familiar sinking sensation in his own midriff. “Surely you are too severe.” “Am I, then?” Georgiana shifted in her chair. “No sooner was my back turned than the ninnyhammer put her foot wrong! Sullied her reputation, in short! You look skeptical, Phineas. I had thought you a person of sound judgment.” “It is not my judgment,” responded Sir Phineas unwisely, “that is in question here. I wish you would explain to me why you think Miss Valentine has, er, fallen into licentious ways.” This not unreasonable request brought a flush to the dowager’s cheek and a gleam to her spiteful eye. “Aha!” she crowed. “I said no

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such thing, not being such a pea-goose as to think Miss Sara Ninnyhammer is no better than one of the wicked, even if I’d discover her in any number of squalid intrigues with vain silly court-cards! I’m not the member of this household who is preoccupied with sin.” She shot an unfriendly glance at Thomas. “Mayhap I am the only member of the household who is not! Never have I heard such fustian! Well you may look embarrassed, Phineas. You should know by now that eventually I learn of every word spoken in my household. Your failure to inform me of my companion’s outrageous conduct is not something I shall soon forgive.” Not only Sara Valentine was in the basket; Sir Phineas foresaw that he would soon share her uncomfortable perch. He could not regret his fall from grace, even if with the loss of Lady Blackwood’s good will he lost also his largest source of income. After a lifetime of obeying Georgiana’s strident requests, there was allure in solitude. “I am not aware that Miss Valentine engaged in havey-cavey conduct,” he responded, with more boldness than was his wont. “Perhaps if you would begin at the beginning, I might make some sense of this.” “Or devise some explanation of your own disloyal conduct!” The dowager’s smile was not kind. “As you will! You are aware that I took Sara in after her father’s death, when it evolved that her father had been singularly unprepared for his departure from this life — a lack of foresight that Sara shares! I am not unaware that she squanders the extremely generous wage I pay her on bonnets! As I am not unaware that Thomas here caught her kissing my nephew in the garden and said not a word of it to anyone but Jaisy.” “‘Twas Master Jason, my lady!” protested Thomas, his plump features corpse-white. “He said if I told he’d flay me within an inch of my life!” “You should have heeded Jevon’s words!” she snapped. “Or if you had to break your promise, you should have told anyone but my prattle-box of a niece. Now the entire household knows of the business, and I am very tempted to flay you beyond that fatal inch!” Poor Thomas looked so terrified that Sir Phineas thought it his Christian duty to intervene. Too, he was curious. “You don’t mind that Miss Valentine — and your nephew — er?” said he. “Er?” mocked lady Blackwood. “Phineas, you are a milksop! I am only surprised that Jevon didn’t kiss the silly twit sooner, because he 162

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is a tremendous flirt and something of a rogue. Lud, Phineas, you look so shocked! Had Jaisy not learned of it — and through Jaisy, the whole staff — I would have been tempted to overlook the incident.” Here — as Sir Phineas digested the dowager’s novel viewpoint, to wit that the only true indiscretion was to make one’s indiscretions public — Thomas felt compelled to comment. “It wasn’t just Master Jevon, my lady — as Sir Phineas can confirm. Today wasn’t the first time Miss Valentine was caught out with Master Arthur. I’m sure that no one of us is wishful of condemning her unfairly, my lady, but there’s no ignoring the evidence.” “No, there is not,” Georgiana repeated, and gestured irritably. “Do go away. And have Miss Silly Twit brought to me.” With more haste than was seemly, Thomas quit the room, tottered past the zealous maidservants and down the stairway, to take refuge at last in his pantry, where amid the plate and china which would be used at this day’s supper he soothed his shattered nerves with an entire bottle of her ladyship’s excellent claret. Doubtless the old harridan would eventually discover his transgression, and take appropriate redress; but Thomas was in immediate need of revival, and would not be deterred by thought of future travail. Setting aside the empty bottle, he brushed the back of his hand across his mouth, then leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the table, and promptly fell asleep. Meanwhile, due to her companion’s failure to comply with her imperious summons, the dowager duchess fumed. In the course of her bad temper, Sir Phineas was treated to a great many comments about vipers nourished in one’s bosom, and the sharpness of serpents’ teeth. After surprising Arthur Kingscote embracing Sara, Lady Blackwood had banished both miscreants to their respective chambers, Sir Phineas learned, and had then held a number of enlightening interviews with various members of her domestic staff, roundly denouncing each one of them in turn. “Everyone knew about this imbroglio but me!” she raged, and abruptly rose, inadvertently dumping Confucious onto the floor. The dog howled. “Oh, do hush, you wretched beast!” she snapped, and crossed the room to tug savagely on the bell pull that hung by the fireplace. A terrified maidservant immediately appeared in the doorway. “Where is Thomas?” inquired the dowager. “Never mind! Bring Sara to me, immediately!” 163

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The maidservant — Moffet — bobbed an awkward curtsey. “Yes, mum! At once, mum!” she mumbled, and disappeared. Ill-temper somewhat assuaged by this evidence of the awe she inspired, the dowager turned to Sir Phineas, her arms crossed beneath her bosom, which was displayed to very undowagerlike advantage by the extreme décolletage of her puce satin gown. Once more Sir Phineas’s butterflies awoke. “Perhaps you have misinterpreted the evidence,” he offered quickly, before Georgiana could dwell further upon his failure to do his duty. “I should not say so, but Arthur Kingscote is not the sort of young gentleman to appeal to a woman of Miss Valentine’s refined preferences.” “Women of refined preferences don’t go trysting in my garden in plain view of everyone in the house!” Lady Blackwood replied brutally. “In point of fact, they don’t tryst at all, being uniformly nambypamby and mealy-mouthed. It was different in our day, was it not, Phineas? For all that, this is no longer our day. Sara had behaved in an unconscionably foolish manner, and must pay the consequence.” Could it be that the dowager would be lenient with the errant Sara? wondered Sir Phineas, with sudden hope. Or had he just imagined that he glimpsed a faint trace of some basic humanity in her dark sharp eye? Perhaps it was not too late to try and pour oil on troubled waters. “Consider, Georgiana: how can you be certain that Miss Valentine is not a victim of circumstance? Your nephew is a flirt, as you yourself have said. Miss Valentine can hardly have any real interest in him, or he in her, because they barely spoke when they met by accident the other day.” In the dowager’s dark eyes could be currently seen no warmth, and the implacable expression on her ravaged features denied the slightest possibility that compassion had ever even briefly lingered there. “What other day, Phineas?” she inquired. “Georgiana, you are unfair to Miss Valentine! It was a chance meeting, I swear. We were caught by the rain in Oxford Street and ducked for shelter into the Pantheon Bazaar. Jevon was there before us, engaged in conversation with—” Dare he omit that detail? One glance at the dowager’s virulent features assured him he dared not. “With a certain little opera dancer from Drury Lane. He was buying her a bonnet. So far is Miss Valentine from being embarked on the primrose path that she no sooner grasped the situation than she immediately departed the premises.” 164

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“You fascinate me, Phineas,” said the dowager. “The silly twit ran out into the rain and thereby got a drenching and caught a head cold. It serves her right. And what did Jevon do?” It occurred to Sir Phineas that, in attempting to smooth over the misunderstanding between Lady Blackwood and Miss Valentine, he was presenting Mr. Rutherford in a most unfavorable light. Sir Phineas bore Mr. Rutherford no malice, and it was not his intention to alienate the dowager duchess from her heir. “Mr. Rutherford behaved very commendably!” he immediately explained. “He followed us out. So offended was Miss Valentine that she refused to hear his apology, and I fear we left him standing in the middle of the street. In the pouring rain.” Sir Phineas frowned. “I had not realized before, but the whole episode was very odd. Although I cannot censure Miss Valentine for not wishing to remain in the same room as a gentleman’s, er, chère amie.” “Lud, Phineas, but you’re a green-head!” observed Lady Blackwood, almost charitably. “You fancy the chit yourself, I’ll warrant. More fool you!” Georgiana was watching him, assessingly, he thought. “I have the highest regard for Miss Valentine, but I am more than twice her age. Were I twelve years younger, or even ten — but I am not! And I am very set in my ways.” “Green-head!” Lady Blackwood repeated. “I was not talking about Sara. Or about marriage! Now that you have explained away the silly twit’s misconduct with Jevon, perhaps you will try and sweep her misconduct with Arthur under the rug also. Ah, but here is Sara herself — and it took you long enough, my girl! Sir Phineas has been kind enough to inform me that you and my nephew are not on speaking terms. Therefore, whatever passed between you in my garden is supposed to not signify. Have you anything to add in your own defense?” How pale she looked, thought Sir Phineas sadly; how woeful and withdrawn. “No, ma’am. It was all a misunderstanding.” “Humph.” The dowager walked slowly toward Miss Valentine. “I conjecture next you’ll try to tell me this fuss over Arthur is a misunderstanding also.” “Yes, ma’am.” Though she kept her eyes discreetly lowered, Sara resolutely stood her ground. “It wasn’t Arthur’s fault.” Georgiana snorted derisively, then reached out long supple fingers and grasped Sara’s chin. Sara winced. “Cinders, I understand!” snapped 165

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the dowager. “Look at me, girl! How dare you try and set my plans at naught?” Unflinching, Miss Valentine looked up into her employer’s malicious countenance. “I did not mean to do so!” she protested. “I could not help myself!” “Paugh!” observed Lady Blackwood. “You want resolution, miss! Well, there’s an end to it. I suppose I should be grateful no more harm was done.” “Oh!” gasped Sara tearfully. “You are very kind!” “Balderdash! I’m nothing of the sort.” Preparing to substantiate her claim, the dowager released Sara’s chin. “The coachman can be ready in twenty minutes; I’ll give you two hours. What I won’t give you is a character, since from all accounts you have one.” “But,” gasped Miss Valentine, as ashen as Thomas had been a scant half-hour past, “you said no harm had been done.” “No, save to your reputation, which is what makes it unthinkable that you should remain here.” Patently unconcerned with Sara’s distress, Lady Blackwood once more tugged the bell pull. “If I allowed you to remain, I would next learn you had allowed the footmen to remove cinders from your eyes — or Thomas! Cinders! Don’t bother to show me a sad face, my girl; I don’t think you’re — what did my bird-witted niece call it? Fallen into licentious ways! All the same, I cannot appear to condone your misconduct, else all my staff will think they may similarly misbehave — and all London hear of it. The sad fact is that though it’s the thing for a young gentleman to sow his wild oats, it’s not the thing for a female to do likewise. Therefore, you must leave. I will not give you a reference, because to do so would be to give you leave to misbehave in some other household. Nor will it avail you to apply to my niece for succor. Jaisy will soon discover that she too must knuckle down. That is all. Attend to your packing. The carriage will be waiting to convey you to your destination two hours hence — and if you have not made ready for your departure at that time, I vow I will turn you out into the street!” Miss Valentine’s lips had parted as if she meant to speak out in her own defense; now she pressed them tightly together, executed a perfect curtsey and turned toward the door. In so doing, she almost stumbled over Confucious, who during the course of his long, cross lifetime had seen many servants come and go, and who consequently recog166

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nized the signs of impending departure. Confucious was not feeling kindly disposed toward the dowager duchess, who had so unceremoniously dumped him on the floor; and at any rate, his loyalty was centered wholly in his stomach. On arthritic legs he trailed after Miss Valentine, the sole person in Blackwood House who could be trusted to remember that elderly gentlemen of crotchety disposition need to be regularly fed. After Miss Valentine had exited — in the process narrowly avoiding collision with the maidservants clustered in the hallway and eavesdropping at the door — Sir Phineas heaved himself upright. Always he had wished he might do something to ease Miss Valentine’s stony path. Now he wished so more than ever. “You are a cruel woman, Georgiana!” he said. “Green-head!” For the third time. Lady Blackwood maligned her man of business. She seated herself again in the carved chair, her own face reminiscent of those savage beaked heads. “I should have let her remain, so Arthur could further compromise her, or Jevon break her silly heart? Oh, yes, Sara has a tendre for my nephew; she always has had! You’ll see, Phineas: all three of them will come to thank me for this day’s work.” Always Sir Phineas had wished to assist Sara: and now he thought he saw a way in which he might. Georgiana would be furious, he knew, would take her business elsewhere — but there were times in a man’s life when choices had to be made. Bucolic solitude was no great price to pay for an easy conscience. But he must remain expressionless, lest Georgiana guess his intention. And he must leave at once, if his purpose was to be achieved. “I hope you may be correct, Georgiana!” he said grimly, and strode out of the room, once more interrupting the maidservants in their favorite position, with ears pressed against the door. No sooner did Sir Phineas pass by than they resumed their listening posts. Now Moffet exchanged with her fellow eavesdropper a look of mutual astonishment. Strange sounds issued through the morning-room door, as if the imperious Dowager Duchess of Blackwood had succumbed to whoops.

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Twenty Three Sir Phineas and Georgiana — each embroiled up to the eyebrows in tangled schemes — had failed to consider a certain very snaggy knot: Lady Easterling. Jaisy was not a damsel to sit idly by while Fate went about planting facers to all and sundry. Nor was she a damsel to be left at the post, try as Georgiana might to outjockey her. No sooner had the news of Miss Valentine’s abrupt dismissal been brought to Lady Easterling by Moffet, another of the staff with whom she was prone to gossip, than Jaisy had sought out her friend. When private speech proved impossible — the dowager duchess had invaded Sara’s mean little bedchamber, there to speed her packing with gruesome tales of females forced to earn their livings in various horrid ways, such as manufactories or coal pits, and a sidelight on the number of English females shipped across the Channel to work in Continental brothels, and a zestful description of a pauper asylum in Bethnal Green — Jaisy next repaired to Arthur’s room. That unchivalrous gentleman refused her admission, shouted crossly that he wished to see and speak to no one and quite ignored her promises of assistance. Undeterred, Jaisy unearthed inkwell, paper and quill, and slid voluminous and explicit instructions for the unjumbling of this dreadful coil under Arthur’s door. Then she returned to her own chamber and donned a carriage dress of corded muslin, a cottage hat and lilac satin shawl. Carlin was engaged to take her up beside him in his carriage this afternoon. So that his lordship need not become involved in the confusion which reigned this day in Blackwood House, she slipped out through the recessed pedimented door and awaited his arrival on the steps. She had not long to wait. Punctuality was among his lordship’s virtues. 168

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If Lord Carlin was surprised that Lady Easterling should choose to await his arrival on the doorstep, unprotected by a single footman, he made no sign — and in point of fact Lord Carlin was not especially surprised. As result of frequent exposure, Kit was growing inured to Jaisy’s highly irregular conduct. Often she exasperated him, but mingled with the exasperation was another emotion that he found difficult to define. Perhaps the Rutherford lack of stability was contagious. Lord Carlin could conceive no other explanation of why, when Lady Easterling was at her most outrageous, he wished primarily to smile at her antics. That Lady Easterling was in an outrageous frame of mind today was obvious; she looked like the cat that had been at the cream. Lord Carlin was very curious about what mischief was currently afoot. He could not be so ill-bred as to inquire, nor did he wish to encourage his companion’s larks. Lord Carlin put forth an exceptionable observation on the British goods that were piling up unsold in every port. Just days past the Morning Chronicle had reported that not a single entry for import or export had been made at the London Custom-House during the course of a full week, an event unprecedented in that establishment’s history. Jaisy was not interested in the wretched state of the economy, as explained to her so patiently by Lord Carlin, in goods that piled up unsold, or workers who were out of a place. It was all very sad, she realized, and it was very generous of his lordship to try and elevate her mind; but Jaisy thought it very silly to dwell upon misfortunes which one could not amend. Ills that one could mend were another matter; and scrambles that one had already unraveled were the most gratifying of all. Lady Easterling was all cock-a-hoop, and well deserved to be. If the weather was overcast, it was not actually raining, and thus qualified as a splendid day. Carlin had taken her up beside him in his vis-a-vis, a white-upholstered conveyance with copper springs and iron shafts. Having tidied away the twisted affairs of her friend Sara, Jaisy was free to enjoy without reservation the privilege of being seated beside London’s most eligible bachelor in his carriage, for all the world to see. With the air of a connoisseur, she studied the horse that drew this light conveyance. “Grand hocks and splendid shoulders! Forelegs well before him! A spanking turn-out!” she commented generously. 169

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By this evidence of her ladyship’s excellent spirits, his lordship was neither elated nor dismayed. He had become accustomed to her frank manner of speech, as well as to her unpredictability. Jaisy’s manners might lack polish, she might be a sad romp with a regrettably colloquial manner of expressing herself, but she was a sunny-tempered creature who would never bore a man to death. Furthermore, she was quite lovely, now that the dimples had reappeared in her cheeks, and the roguish twinkle in her huge blue eyes. That the return of her ladyship’s sunny mood and hoydenish eccentricities signified he need no longer dance attendance upon her in an attempt to persuade her toward those very ends did not occur to Lord Carlin, which is just as well, because had his memory not been so conveniently dilatory, his own spirits would have sunk. In excellent charity with one another, then, Lord Carlin and Lady Easterling embarked upon their carriage ride, Lord Carlin being so generous as to promise that Lady Easterling might tool the reins at some future date, and Jaisy professing herself most appreciative that his lordship should trust her with his bang-up bits of blood and bone. If Kit winced at her choice of phrase, it was inwardly; and his forebearance was rewarded by Lady Easterling’s assertion that he was a regular dash who turned out in prime style. During this exchange of compliments, Lord Carlin’s whiskey turned into the leafy byways of St. James’s Park, where once Henry VIII had demolished a leper colony to erect a palace in its place. James I had introduced mulberry trees into the park, and Charles II had added a canal running from the mulberry garden to Whitehall. “Lady Easterling,” added his lordship, “why is it that I suspect you are not paying the slightest attention to me?” “Jupiter!” Lady Easterling started so violently she almost tumbled off her seat. “You gave me a nasty turn! I was thinking of Georgiana, and that I was right to suspect her civility, because Georgiana usually ain’t! And now look what’s come of it. Jevon wished to offer Sara a slip on the shoulder, and I think it is probably a very good thing that she saw him buying a bonnet for his opera dancer in the Pantheon Bazaar, because I am not at all certain she would not have let him, so frequently is she getting cinders in her eye — not that Sara couldn’t do a great deal worse than Jevon, even if he does wish to marry a female of low repute. I do not mean to imply that Sara should place herself 170

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under a gentleman’s protection, of course, but there’s no denying she and Jevon would have suited very well, because they both have this habit of kissing everyone in sight. But Sara fancied Arthur, so it was not to be — which is also just as well, since Jevon’s interest is fixed elsewhere!” She turned her head to gaze pertly upon Lord Carlin. “Did you say something, sir?” Kit knew the futility of trying to stem Jaisy’s flow of words once she was in full spate, as currently she was, having interpreted her escort’s speechless condition as indicative of avid interest. “What a morning we have had!” Gustily, she sighed. “And all because Georgiana caught Arthur kissing Sara in the morning room. I warned Sara about this trysting, but she did not heed me. Georgiana flew right into a pelter, and it all came out — that Sara had been kissing Jevon as well, and Arthur previously.” She frowned. “Cinders! Georgiana didn’t believe it any more than I did! And it turns out that Sir Phineas wasn’t dangling after Sara because I had intimated to him that her nature was a trifle warm, but spying on her for Georgiana, which I must say wasn’t very sporting of him!” This Sara sounded to Lord Carlin like a female of very equivocal character, and one who had no business in any respectable household. Arthur Kingscote sounded scarcely more admirable. Yet Lady Blackwood had hired one as her companion, and intended to marry the other to her niece. Had not Lord Carlin been acquainted with the dowager duchess, this inhumanity would have passed belief. Since he was, it did not. Georgiana was not one to lightly change her mind. “Sara’s been turned off,” Jaisy continued. “Poor thing! I tried to speak with her, but Georgiana was being most uncivil, and wouldn’t allow me to get in a private word. And Arthur wouldn’t speak to me. Still, I’ll wager I’ve contrived to settle up his accounts creditably!” Settle up his accounts? Surely Lady Easterling did not mean that she had paid the scoundrel’s debts? That so exquisitely fetching a lady, albeit a rag-mannered one, should be forced to squander her fortune on a libidinous wastrel did surpass belief. “Good Gad!” responded Lady Easterling, having made the acquaintance of his lordship’s indignant conclusions. “I ain’t such a nodcock as to squander my blunt on a cawker like Arthur, even if I could, which I can’t, because my fortune is tied up. Easterling was used to say the ready flowed like water through my fingers, which is 171

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doubtless why he made it impossible for me to breach my capital. And though Easterling was a very downy one, it is all deuced inconvenient, which brings me to something I wish particularly to discuss with you.” Looking anxious, she laid her hand on his sleeve. “Would you mind so very much — Georgiana will do nothing for Arthur, not now — I should like to make him an allowance!” Lord Carlin eyed Jaisy’s clutching fingers and resigned himself to yet another irreparably creased sleeve. “An allowance?” he repeated blankly. “Out of my own money, naturally!” Apace with her anxiety, Lady Easterling’s grip tightened. “It is only fair! I had meant to take Sara into my household before she embarked upon this kissing spree, but now I clearly see that it will not serve! I would much rather make Arthur an allowance than take the chance of Sara kissing you!” Kit had a strong suspicion that there were ramifications of this conversation that he had failed to grasp. “Kissing me?” he echoed faintly. Clearly his lordship was aghast at the idea that he might be accosted by a female of such catholic tastes as Sara Valentine, and Lady Easterling made haste to ease his mind. “I knew you would not like it!” she soothed. “Don’t fret, you will not be reduced to such straits. Sara will have Arthur, though why she should want him I cannot imagine, but each to his own taste. I only hope that Arthur does not botch the business! I told him just how to go about it, but I did not know precisely how to get to Gretna Green.” “Gretna Green?” repeated Lord Carlin, in tones even more horrified. “Oh, yes!” Victim of no false modesty, Lady Easterling was delighted with her own inventiveness. “Ain’t it a nacky solution? Georgiana will be mad as fire but even she can’t force me to marry a gentleman who’s already married to someone else. And Sara will like an elopement very well, I’ll warrant; I would myself! Not that such a thing would do for someone so stiff-rumped — I mean, with such a strong sense of propriety! — as yourself.” Stiff-rumped, was he? In addition to being a coxcomb and a curst loose-screw? If nothing else, reflected Lord Carlin, association with Lady Easterling had fast taught him humility. “You speak in jest, I hope,” he said repressingly. Jaisy widened her big blue eyes. “Why, no! Why should you think I was hamming you? I do not scruple to tell you, sir, that I ain’t one to 172

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stand still and allow fate to mill me down! Sara and Arthur haven’t a ha’-porth of spirit between them. If I hadn’t taken a hand, we’d have all been brought to a standstill.” She frowned then, as Lord Carlin leaned forward to murmur instructions to his fascinated coachman. “What’s amiss?” That question Lord Carlin answered at great length, and in such terms as left no doubt that elopements were not undertakings of which a starched-up and stiff-rumped gentleman could approve. The kindest explanation his lordship could conceive of Jaisy’s appalling conduct was that, when he had shaken her till the teeth rattled in her head, he had also addled her brain. Jaisy responded to this stern denunciation as would any instinctive flirt, which detracts no whit from her sincerity: her huge eyes filled with tears. “Oh!” she breathed. “You have taken me in disgust, as Georgiana said you would! It makes me very sad! Because I want more than anything to please you, and I cannot bear that we should stand on bad terms!” A tear slid down her delicate cheek, trembled on the end of her dainty nose. Lord Carlin glanced first at his coachman’s rigid back, and then at Lady Easterling’s averted face. A second tear followed the first, and then a third, splashing unchecked on her ribbed muslin dress. Halfexasperated, half-ashamed and totally disarmed. Kit applied his handkerchief to her damp cheeks. “I don’t wish you to think poorly of me!” she sobbed. Fortunate it was for Lord Carlin that few people were abroad in the Green Park this day, or the newest on-dit to circulate among the West End clubs would be that he had callously reduced Lady Easterling to tears. Fair Fatality! He had named her well. Aloud, he said: “If you wish to please me, you will instantly cease this missishness. It is not at all seemly.” Lady Easterling lowered the handkerchief to regard his lordship with belligerence. “I vow there is no satisfying you!” she snapped. “First I am bold as brass, and now I am too coy! I wish you would make up your mind what it is you want before I am driven into an apoplexy!” Lord Carlin, face to face with opportunity, clutched at it. “What I don’t want is for you on my account to try and make yourself into a pattern-card of respectability.” 173

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“If that don’t beat all!” Lady Easterling twisted the handkerchief between her fingers, with results more ruinous even than those wrought on his sleeve. “There is no use in trying to bamboozle me into thinking you liked me as I was, because I ain’t that great a pea-goose! You needn’t try and be kind about it; I see exactly where the trouble lies. You will never like a madcap like myself, and I’m sure I cannot blame it in you, for you are a nonpareil! A regular Trojan!” She sniffled. “All of which goes to show that Easterling didn’t know what he was talking about! Even if one does throw one’s heart over, one’s horse don’t necessarily follow? And it is all most unfair, because all I ever wanted was that you should show me a little preference!” That he had already shown Lady Easterling a great deal more preference than exhibited to any other lady in all his life, those ladies including the immediate members of his family, did not occur to the guilt-stricken Kit. Since he could not deny that he had spoken unappreciatively of Lady Easterling, and not only on the occasion she had overheard, he sought to assuage her hurt by some other means. “You mustn’t pay any heed to what I think!” he protested, then went on to remind her ladyship that she deemed him a stiff-rumped, starched-up coxcomb, and a curst loose-screw. “That stung, did it? My wretched tongue!” Jaisy’s fingers flew to her mouth, as if she could stuff back into that reckless orifice words best left unsaid. “I beg you will forgive me! I did not mean it, but you had made me very angry. And I am very sorry if I have made you angry again, because truly I meant to do no such thing.” So often had Lady Easterling reiterated her desire to please him that Lord Carlin had begun to wonder if it might not be true. He retrieved his handkerchief from her lap and applied it to his damp brow, then glanced from Lady Easterling’s woebegone face to his coachman’s rigid back. “Jarvey, drive on!” he said to the latter, and to the former: “Abominable baggage! What am I to do with you?” Lady Easterling took no offense at being thus disrespectfully addressed; instead she interpreted his lordship’s exasperation as a sign that her current batch of transgressions had been erased from the slate. As with many another shriven sinner, her relief expressed itself in ebullience. “La, sir!” she responded, with a wicked twinkling glance. “I’d have thought you could reason that out for yourself!”

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Certainly Lord Carlin could do so; unlike various of his associates, Lord Carlin had not been shortchanged by the Almighty in regard to intellect. “We’ll talk about that later!” he said hastily. “Right now you must tell your aunt what you have told me.” “Jupiter!” gasped Jaisy, her eyes wide. “All of it, sir?” Lord Carlin contemplated Lady Blackwood’s reaction were she to be made privy to some of her niece’s more provocative remarks, and regretfully decided that a gentleman could not honorably induce spasms in even the most viper-tongued of harridans. “No, no! Only the part about Sara,” he explained. Jaisy looked rebellious. “I thought you wished to please me,” he added craftily. “You are as bad as Easterling!” In a very truculent manner, Jaisy stuck out her lower lip. “He was used to say that though I could not be driven, I could be led! It is not at all elevating to be treated like a donkey with a carrot being dangled in front of its nose! Oh, very well, if nothing else will do — but I hope you realize that if Georgiana prevents Arthur from eloping with Sara, she will force him to marry me, and we will all three be miserable!” Carlin vouchsafed no response, being wholly occupied with contemplation of the deceased Lord Easterling’s most recently revealed words of wisdom regarding his mule-headed spouse. Unaware that the viscount was turning over in his mind the infinite guises in which a carrot might be offered a recalcitrant donkey, Jaisy pondered the quixotic workings of Fate. With victory within her grasp, she had been laid low, and by as neat a bit of cross-and-jostle work as she had ever seen.

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Twenty Four In very little time, Lord Carlin and Lady Easterling arrived at Blackwood House. The journey had been accomplished with a maximum of speed and a minimum of conversation, that confined to Lady Easterling’s muttered commentary upon handy bunches of fives and cross-and-jostle work, and his lordship’s insistence upon following the honorable course. “Honor be damned!” snapped Lady Easterling. “I am sorry if you do not like it,” Lord Carlin said calmly, “but our duty is clear.” “I suppose you are correct,” sighed Jaisy. “Have you ever noticed that doing one’s duty is most often curst unpleasant?” And then the front door swung open, and they stepped into the entry hall. Lord Carlin and Lady Easterling adjourned to the drawing room, where the dowager duchess was seated upon her crocodile sofa. Her countenance was no more welcoming, as she gazed upon Lady Carlin, than that reptile. Lest he misinterpret her expression as appreciation of his presence, the dowager said, “Paugh!” Lord Carlin was not so easily intimidated, however. Nor was he any more inclined than his hostess toward passing time in empty politenesses. He nudged Jaisy, who clung like a barnacle to his prow, as if she expected her aunt to forcibly detach her therefrom. Jaisy cast him an anguished look. Sternly, he nodded. “Georgiana,” she said weakly, “there is something I must tell you, not because I think I should, but because Carlin insists. It is about Sara. I have — she has — Arthur has — oh, the deuce!” “Pea-goose!” observed the dowager unkindly. “If you mean to tell me that the silly twit has spirited away Confucious, I am well aware of it. Ingratitude! After all I have done! I hope Miss Ungrateful Twit 176

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may discover what it is like to be bitten on the hand that provides sustenance, because it is a great deal less than what she deserves!” “By Jove!” Lady Easterling briefly forgot her own unhappiness in concern for her friend. “I don’t call it very charitable to wish that poor Sara may be bit!” Once more Lord Carlin nudged her. “Confound it! I don’t know how to tell you this, Georgiana, but Sara has eloped!” Oddly, the dowager duchess did not seem particularly startled by this blunt announcement. “You amaze me!” she said, in tones that indicated the opposite. “Dashed if I understand you!” retorted Jaisy, inspired by her aunt’s nonchalance with a sense of grave injustice. “I thought the news that Sara had eloped would put you in a tweak. Instead you ain’t even miffed. And you was always boring on at me about propriety! It’s you as is heedless of the conventions, aunt! If you don’t mind that Sara should run away with Arthur, you should have let them do the thing up properly.” During this imprudent outburst, the dowager’s eyes had narrowed and her lips had thinned. “Arthur!” she repeated, in tones so ominous that Jaisy shrank closer to Kit. “What have you been about, miss?” Though Lady Blackwood’s wrath was an excellent excuse to snuggle closer to Lord Carlin, who it must be remembered had a weakness for damsels in distress, Jaisy walked in trepidation of no one. “I have a great kindness for Sara,” she said, with immense dignity. “She wanted Arthur, and so I arranged she should have him, because no one deserves to be happier more than Sara, after all the years during which you have bullied her and made her miserable.” Lady Blackwood’s raddled features had assumed an alarmingly ruddy hue. “Cawker!” she ejaculated. “Jackanapes! Nodcock!” “A mincing court-card!” agreed Jaisy. “A man-milliner! And you wished to marry him off to me!” “Not Arthur!” Georgiana snapped. “You!” Was her aunt in her dotage? wondered Jaisy. Or was the fact of Sara’s elopement with Arthur too much for her to grasp? “Not me, but Sara?” she generously explained. “That’s what I have been trying to tell you. They’ve flown to Gretna Green.” As if to release her pent-up frustration by an expenditure of energy, Lady Blackwood rose from her crocodile couch. “I was not referring to elopements,” she retorted, “but to who was the greatest pudding-head!” 177

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“Pudding-head!” echoed Jaisy, incensed. “As if it were not bad enough that Fate had drawn my cork and spilled my claret, now you accuse me of being crack-brained! It is very bad! But even though I have been napped a rum ‘un, Georgiana, you stand to be outjockeyed yourself, because you can’t make me marry a silly chub who’s run off with someone else, no matter how much you cudgel your brain. I refuse to do it! So you needn’t try to prevent Sara reaching Gretna Green!” The dowager’s response to these intelligences was awesome; so incensed was her demeanor that Lord Carlin wondered if she was indeed prone to seizures and spasms, and Lady Easterling retained her own composure only with great effort. “Oh, I say!” came a sleepy voice from the doorway, making them all start nervously. “Has Miss Valentine eloped? Hanged if she isn’t an enterprising minx!” Arthur then became aware that of the three pair of eyes fixed on him, none was especially sympathetic. “Have I intruded on a private conversation? I did not mean to! The racket woke me up and I came to see what caused the fuss! Look, I will go away!” “Oh, no you won’t!” Lady Easterling detached herself from Lord Carlin and grasped Arthur’s bright yellow sleeve. “What the devil are you doing here?” “Where the devil else would I be?” Arthur twitched his arm away and anxiously inspected his sleeve. “If you’re referring to the farrago of nonsense you shoved under my door — and your penmanship is abominable; half of it I couldn’t even make out! — and the half I could was caper-witted enough! Elope! You’re queer in the attic! A man don’t elope with his fancy-piece!” “Fancy-piece!” echoed Lady Easterling and her aunt, in uniform consternation, which was the sole occasion on which they were ever in accord. Shaken but still game, Arthur stood his ground. “Call her whatever you like, the facts remain. Miss Valentine is a designing woman, an adventuress, a Jezebel — and ‘twas you yourself who told me so, Jaisy, because I thought she did have a cinder in her eye!” Could it have been a simple cinder that had prompted Sara to invite Arthur’s attention? Jaisy wondered belatedly. If so, she had done her friend a grave injustice. “Jupiter!” she breathed. “Exactly so!” observed the dowager duchess, dryly. “You see—” “I see you will resume bullying me to marry Arthur!” cried Jaisy. “And I won’t! Pack me off to the country like you have done my poor 178

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Sara — do whatever you want! Because no matter what you do I won’t be married to a nodcock!” “Oh, I say!” Arthur interjected indignantly. “What I was going to say,” Georgiana interrupted, “is that I am very pleased with Arthur for not going through with a singularly bird-witted elopement. Indeed, I do not recall when I have been so pleased with anyone. I believe I must reward you, Arthur. What manner of reward do you wish?” Only briefly did Mr. Kingscote indulge in visions of lifetime allowances and raiment in such a very high kick of fashion as to make all the other would-be dandies stare. “I wish,” he said, with fingers crossed, “not to be married to a rag-mannered baggage who will be forever ripping up at me, to say nothing of boxing my ears!” Lady Blackwood regarded her protégé, all generous impulses obviously fled. “She is a wealthy baggage. You would do well to reconsider.” “No, he wouldn’t!” interrupted Jaisy. “Because I would make it my sole aim in life to make him miserable! Anyway, you gave your word, Georgiana. To retract now would not be honorable.” “Honorable!” hooted the dowager. “Balderdash!” “I won’t marry her!” insisted Arthur, adopting a bellicose stance that went ill with his lime-green kerseymere pantaloons, frilled shirt and padded yellow coat. “I swear I’ll put an end to my existence before I marry such a madcap!” “You will, will you?” inquired the dowager duchess pettishly. And Jaisy sought relief for her indignation in tears. Into the resultant fray, Lord Carlin leapt. His silence throughout the preceding encounter is indicative of no lack of interest therein, but quite the opposite. Lord Carlin’s lack of comment resulted from preoccupation with the busy activity underway in his brain. Whether Sara Valentine was or was not an adventuress did not particularly concern him, nor whether Arthur Kingscote was the fashionable fribble he appeared. Lord Carlin was too busy exploring the possibility that Lady Easterling might be married against her will to a man she obviously could not regard as highly as a wife should regard her husband, a man who was obviously incapable of preventing her from landing continually in the briars; and exploring his own emotional response to it. What was it Jevon had said about wanting what one could not have? It occurred to Lord Carlin that perhaps not only females suf179

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fered this weakness. Obviously the dowager duchess did not intend that he should have Jaisy, being busily involved in bestowing her elsewhere. But did Lord Carlin want her? This was the point that so occupied his mind. Certainly he thought of Jaisy at queer times of the day and night, and very pleasant were those ruminations centered upon the rag-mannered little baggage who had made at him a dead-set — but what was this? Arthur Kingscote was going on at great and bitter length about the occasion on which Jaisy had boxed his ears. “Cut line, cawker!” said Kit, so suddenly that Jaisy uttered a little shriek. “I have heard quite enough of this nonsense. Lady Easterling not only boxed my ears, she kicked me in the shins and put horrid creases in several of my sleeves! Do you hear me boring on about my mistreatment at her hands? You do not. And do you know why you do not hear me say such things?” Lord Carlin’s attitude was so very pugnacious that Arthur tugged at his cravat, suddenly grown tight. “Because you liked it, I suppose!” “No! Because to speak thusly of a lady is ungallant!” Lord Carlin paused and frowned. “At least I think that’s why.” Not the least bit interested in Carlin’s reasons for taking up the cudgels in her niece’s defense, Georgiana returned to the attack. “Do stop sniveling!” she advised Jaisy. “Since Arthur doesn’t want to marry you — yes, Arthur, you may have your wish! — we must think of something else. But you needn’t think your interference in my business will go unpunished, miss!” Jaisy wept all the harder, envisioning herself subjected to rack and thumbscrews. As did Arthur, who, freed of the sword which had hung over him, could now afford to be generous. “Oh, I say!” he protested. “No reason to be hard on the chit!” “No reason!” Lady Blackwood turned on him a look that made Arthur wish his kind words had never left his mouth. Lord Carlin meanwhile reached a decision, and reached out for the sobbing Jaisy and drew her to his side. “No need,” said he. “Jaisy has misbehaved and she is very sorry for it — aren’t you, puss? And in the future she will be entirely too busy with my business to meddle elsewhere.” Not surprisingly, Lady Blackwood took strong objection to this further meddling on the part of his lordship. Nor was she reluctant to express her displeasure. For a space of several moments, pandemoni180

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um reigned. Into this affray walked Sir Phineas. He gazed about him in astonishment. The dowager duchess stood behind her crocodile sofa, her hands clenched into fists, her raddled face distorted with rage, exchanging insults with an equally irate Lord Carlin, who clasped a wide-eyed and tearful Lady Easterling to his side. Also witness to the skirmish, if removed as far as possible from the combatants, was Arthur Kingscote, a very incongruous figure in conjunction with the Egyptian hieroglyphic wallpaper. Sir Phineas was in no frame of mind to appreciate so bizarre a scene. “Silence!” he bellowed. Instantly, he was obeyed. “What in blazes is going on here?” Before the dowager could speak, Lord Carlin did so, and in terms that temporarily divested her of the ability; Lord Carlin was not without skill in arms, though he lacked experience in the art of outright warfare. No mean foilsman, he had never crossed blades with a lady — but now that he had been inspired to set up his standard, unsheath his épée and throw away its scabbard, he had not the least compunction about not only fleshing his sword, but putting his opponent to a coup de grâce. “I was just informing Lady Blackwood,” he said calmly, “that I am going to marry her niece.” “Marry!” echoed Jaisy, recovering the use of her tongue in the same instant as Georgiana lost her powers of speech. “Oh, may I?” Lord Carlin looked down into the lovely face turned up so anxiously to his. “Yes — but only if you are very, very good.” “I will be, I swear it!” Lady Easterling promised, with reckless bliss. “As good as good can be! And to think I thought you wasn’t très sympathique!” “My darling!” responded his lordship, profoundly stirred by his lady’s reckless promise, which he interpreted as evidence of innate nobility. “Pish tush!” observed the dowager, singularly unmoved. “What if I refuse consent, eh?” “You wouldn’t!” Jaisy cried. “Even you couldn’t be so unfair!” Could she not? Unpleasantly, Lady Blackwood smiled. Once more, Lord Carlin forestalled her malice. “It doesn’t signify,” he said to the damsel encircled so comfortably by his arm. “Jevon gave me his blessing some time past. Any objections put forth by Lady Blackwood to our union can only be construed as sour grapes. But why are you looking so unhappy, puss?” 181

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“I was thinking of poor Sara!” sighed Jaisy, unwittingly relieving her newly acquired fiancé, who feared she guessed his ungrateful reaction to the blessing Jevon had so prematurely bestowed. “Perhaps if she isn’t embarked upon a kissing spree, we can have her with us. Which leaves only poor Jevon, and I do not see any way he may be made happy, because once he has married his opera dancer Georgiana will cut him off without a farthing and everyone else will deny him the entrée.” “Opera dancer?” echoed the dowager duchess, and sank down abruptly upon the crocodile couch. “I should think I might!” It was Sir Phineas’s moment before the footlights and he stepped forward without the slightest hesitation, and without the least stagefright. “That contingency you need not consider, Georgiana!” he said sternly. “Although did it come about, you would have only yourself to blame — and maybe this will cure you of making mischief!” Curiously revitalized, the dowager sat erect. “I doubt it!” she said wryly. “Furthermore, I suspect you have been meddling yourself!” “I have.” Before her baleful gaze, Sir Phineas did not flinch. “And if you do not like it, I quite frankly do not care a fig. You may take your business elsewhere, and it is all the same to me — because, Georgiana, you give me a bellyache!” So astounded by these uncharitable remarks that they ceased to stare besottedly at one another, Lady Easterling and Lord Carlin braced themselves for an outburst of the dowager’s wrath. When it was not forthcoming, they exchanged fond and perplexed glances and approached the crocodile couch. Georgiana was bent double, her raddled face hidden in her hands. Sir Phineas, too, crept closer, his plump face concerned. From the dowager’s contorted person issued the same bizarre sounds as had previously astonished an eavesdropping Moffet. When she considered her audience sufficiently conscience-stricken — and were she not in so excellent a humor she would have seen to it that they all paid dearly for their various displays of impertinence — the dowager straightened. “Green-head!” she remarked to Sir Phineas, whose anxious features were first within her view. “Why should I take my business elsewhere after you have done precisely what I wanted you to do, and achieved that of which I had almost despaired? Perhaps you would consider an introduction to Jevon’s opera dancer as suitable reward? You may console the wench in his stead!” Serenely, 182

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she gazed upon the countenances clustered around her, Carlin and Jaisy looking uniformly bewildered, Sir Phineas’s features grown alarmingly red. But where was Arthur? Making himself into as unobtrusive figure as possible, there by the fireplace — not that one would ever be especially unobtrusive when clad in bright yellow and lime green. Something would have to be devised for the jackanapes, now Jaisy had put herself out of reach. A pity, that; Jaisy’s fortune would have done the Kingscotes very nicely. Ah well, there were other fishes in the ocean, and heiresses in need of respectability. Georgiana did not expect Arthur would have any objection to a bride whose dowry smelled of the shop. After today’s disgraceful exhibition, he would dare not. Tomorrow she would make herself aware of all the spinster heiresses whose origins were tainted by trade. How anxiously they all watched her, as if anticipating the dreadful trimming that they all deserved. Perhaps later she might oblige, but at this particular moment Georgiana was in charity with all the world. “I have always liked Sara,” she remarked to the room at large. “Arthur, ring the bell! It is time for tea.”

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Twenty Five Lady Blackwood’s elegant berlin barreled at a spanking pace along the turnpike road. Its exterior, on this journey, was not laden down with luggage, Miss Valentine having chosen to have her bandboxes stowed inside, along with her portmanteau. Though he did not think it seemly that the elegant berlin should be thus treated like a common stage, the coachman’s silent forebearance had been rewarded. Miss Valentine had discovered a cranky stowaway in her portmanteau. They were too far out of the city at that point to reasonably turn back, and so now Confucious bore Miss Valentine company. Nor did the coachman deem it seemly that the berlin’s white-and-blue-silk upholstered interior be violated by an ill-tempered canine, but better the berlin’s silk interior than his copper box. As it was he wondered how he was to remove the unmistakable aroma of dog from the white and sky-blue silk. But wait! Had his eyes played him false, or had he noticed movement in that distant copse? Could a horseman lay in wait? Miss Valentine, meantime, was contemplating Confucious, and her own unhappy fate. Had Miss Valentine known that the Dowager Duchess of Blackwood held her in affection, it might have somewhat relieved her apprehension, but she had during the course of her association with Lady Blackwood been given no reason to conclude that Georgiana held anyone dear. Nor was Miss Valentine deluded into thinking Confucious regarded her fondly, despite his presence in her portmanteau. That he expected her to provide him sustenance had already been made clear. Unfortunately, the coachman’s instructions did not allow for leisurely halts at wayside inns. Sara thought she must be at least as hungry as Confucious, for she had been sent off without her tea. Her stomach rumbled unhappily; her congested head 184

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ached; her nose felt as if at any moment she would give birth to a powerful sneeze. Altogether, there were at that moment in all of England few creatures more miserable than she. Of those creatures, however, Confucious was one. Sara suspected the dog regretted his inclusion in this expedition as much as she did herself. Confucious was not a good traveler, Sara had already discovered, to the great disadvantage of the contents other portmanteau. What her distant relative would think upon her unannounced arrival, disheveled and unkempt and with a travel-sickened beast in tow, Sara dreaded to think. What his shrewish wife would say about this ignominious arrival was easily imagined. What she would say about Confucious boggled even an imagination inured to the worst by intimate acquaintance. Sara steeled herself to endure taunts for as long as need be, which hopefully would not be long at all, because she was resolved to spend no unnecessary moment as an object of begrudging charity. But what was she to do to earn her independence? Georgiana had gone on at great and gruesome length about the trials and tribulations endured by females engaged in trade. Ever since, Sara had been haunted by a persistent vision of herself harnessed to a coal truck, doing the work of a pony in the pits. She would not come to that, she hoped. Few less onerous occupations remained open to a female who had been turned off without a reference, as she had been. It was typical of the dowager duchess that, having refused her ex-companion the one boon that would have insured her future drudgery would be genteel, she had sent her packing in positive luxury. Gloomily, Sara surveyed the crystal chandelier that hung from the berlin’s ceiling, the table with drawers, the ormolu clock. For Georgiana’s quixotic generosity, Miss Valentine was not at all grateful. Truth be told, she would much rather have been turned out into the streets. Georgiana had wished to remove her as far as possible from the male members of the family, Sara supposed. Confucious snarled. Sara sank into a reverie. It was as Sara contemplated the prospective alliance of a certain male member of Lady Blackwood’s family with a pretty little opera dancer from Drury Lane that the coachman thought he spied a waiting figure in a distant leafy copse. Sara was roused from her brown study — or more precisely, black — by a wild lurching of the berlin. With one hand she clutched the portmanteau, and the other her head, 185

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on which was perched the most frivolous of all her bonnets, a confection of ostrich plumes, ribbon and lace. Angry voices smote her ear. Highwaymen! she thought, recalling horrid tales of such legendary gentlemen of the road as Dirk Turpin and Jack Shepherd. The carriage had been waylaid. Her few remaining treasures would be wrested from her, her beloved bonnets, her mother’s pearls. Even meek and self-effacing ladies have a sticking-point, and Miss Valentine perforce reached hers. She would defend her few remaining treasures to the death, if necessary — but by what means? She had no pistol with which to arm herself, no dagger, épée. Even as the berlin lurched to a stop, her eye alit upon the portmanteau, from which issued snarls and growls and other sounds similarly indicative of profound hostility. Miss Valentine lifted Confucious out of the portmanteau and dropped him on the berlin floor with permission to bite anyone who appeared in the carriage doorway. Then she scrunched shut her eyes, and put her hands over her ears, and prayed. Even as she did so, the carriage door swung open, and distantly she heard the sounds of great strife. At length peace again descended. She removed her hands from her ears, and cautiously opened her eyes. Her prayers had been to good advantage, it appeared. Sprawled half in and half out of the carriage, arms clasped over the back of his head and face hidden against the carriage floor, was a man. That he was not dead was made evident by the curses he now voiced. Furthermore, though his coat sleeve was sadly shredded, she saw no trace of blood. “Oh, good dog!” said Sara to Confucious, who stood triumphantly astride his prey. And then she realized that the intruder’s curses were uttered in familiar tones. Hastily she snatched Confucious away. The intruder rose and set his abused person as best he could to rights, without a single smidgeon less than his usual sang-froid. Not until he politely requested that Miss Valentine provide him with a strip of muslin torn from her petticoat did she recover herself. “Oh, Jevon!” wailed Miss Valentine, as she hastened to comply, tucking the snarling Confucious for safekeeping under her arm. “You are hurt! I shall never forgive myself! I thought you were a highwayman!” Gallantly, Mr. Rutherford directed his gaze elsewhere than upon the shapely ankle revealed by Miss Valentine’s assault upon her petticoats, an act motivated not in the least by disinterest, and accomplished not before he glimpsed an ankle worthy of contemplation by 186

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the most discerning connoisseur. Mr. Rutherford promised himself a leisurely and luxurious contemplation of both that ankle and its mate at a none-too-distant date. With that pleasant prospect in mind, he said: “You have fallen in the habit of leaping to conclusions, my precious. No thanks to that misbegotten cur, I am not hurt.” “Oh.” Miss Valentine looked confused. “Then what do you want with my petticoat?” Mr. Rutherford smiled. She blushed. “This!” he said simply, and bound the strip of muslin around Confucious’s muzzle. Then he deposited the dog in the portmanteau, snapped it firmly closed and wedged it between the bandboxes on the opposite seat. Having thus disposed of Confucious and banished him additionally from the remainder of our tale — the concerned reader may be relieved to know Confucious took no harm from his incarceration, though his temper did suffer accordingly, as result of which he bit the shrewish wife of Miss Valentine’s distant relative at his journey’s end — Mr. Rutherford arranged himself very comfortably beside Miss Valentine, closed the carriage door and bade the coachman drive on. Miss Valentine eyed him rather crossly, her initial astonishment being speedily replaced by annoyance over her dreadful fright. “You are the most impudent rascal who ever existed!” she announced. “How dare you waylay my carriage and frighten me into fainting fits! And where are you taking me, by the way?” If Miss Valentine had hoped Mr. Rutherford brought reprieve, her hopes were cruelly dashed; he informed her that their destination was still Kent. “I wished to speak to you,” he added. “Since you have been determined to avoid me, this seemed the only way. No, do not interrupt! I understand perfectly why you have been so cool.” Fervently, Miss Valentine hoped that her companion overestimated his powers of perception. Though that he should have guessed the extent of her obsession with him caused her cheeks to flame. “I doubt you do!” she replied icily. Thoughtfully, Mr. Rutherford regarded her. “I do not go about buying bonnets for all the ladybirds in London,” said he. “If you will like it, Sara, I would be happy to in the future buy bonnets for no one but you.” He had meant to offer her a slip on the shoulder all along, Sara realized, and in the train of that realization came a dreadful rage. “How dare you ask me to play second fiddle to a — er — a female of low repute! No doubt I won’t be able to convince you that I don’t care a but187

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ton for you, because you must know otherwise — but you may offer me all the bonnets in the world and I shan’t become your — er—” “Ladybird,” supplied Jevon helpfully. “Bit o’ muslin, light o’ love!” “All those!” To her horror, Sara felt her eyes fill with tears. “Even if I have been turned off without a reference! And it is very unkind of you to even suggest such a thing to me, or remind me how far I have come down in the world!” She sneezed. Mr. Rutherford drew a handkerchief and applied it to Miss Valentine’s reddened nose. “But I didn’t suggest it! I suspect that piece of moonshine originated with my sister — who, I may remind you, is the pea-brained member of the family. As for the female for whom you saw me purchasing a bonnet in the Pantheon Bazaar, that was by way of giving her her congée.” Miss Valentine was determined that Mr. Rutherford should not realize his admission had rekindled hope in her foolish breast. “She seemed prodigious grateful to be given her ticket-of-leave!” “Yes, well.” Jevon looked apologetic. He could hardly explain that females generally were grateful to him, whether he was embarking upon a flirtation, or winding up an association of a more particular sort, whether he was dispensing fashionable bonnets or merely disarming smiles. The latter, he now employed. “My darling Sara, you are mutilating your handkerchief.” Her handkerchief? But Jevon had placed it in her hand. Sara took a closer look. “It is mine. How came you by it? I remember now! You kept it all this time?” “I not only kept it, I carried it next my heart.” Thus did Mr. Rutherford put forth a pretty premise, which had the additional virtue of being the truth. “Now will you let me try and explain how all these misunderstandings came about?” To deny a man who had carried her handkerchief next to his heart permission to bare his soul would have been cruel in the extreme. Miss Valentine was not the least bit cruel. “Certainly!” she said gruffly. Mr. Rutherford took immediate advantage of her generosity to clasp her hands in one of his own and with the other to tilt up her chin so she must look into his face. By this latter indulgence of a wish to study her beloved features, Jevon almost defeated his own purpose. Few females could gaze upon his own bedazzling features and remain sufficiently clearheaded to heed anything so mundane as mere conversational gambits. 188

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Miss Valentine was not among that scant number, and references to Lord Byron and Beau Brummell and painful tumbles from the heights passed her right by. Nor did she react to Mr. Rutherford’s admission of jealousy as regarded Mr. Kingscote, save to suggest that perhaps her old friend had taken leave of his senses. “I think I must have!” admitted Jevon, handsomely refraining from pointing out that Sara’s own conduct had scarcely been more rational. “But I was trying very hard to court you in the proper manner, and you remained so devilish cool.” “What a rogue you are!” marveled Miss Valentine, in a somewhat breathless tone of voice. “How could I be other than cool when all of London knew you were dangling after that, eh—” “Paphian girl!” interjected Mr. Rutherford. “Do go on, my love!” “I shall!” She blushed, and tried to frown. “I thought you were being kind because I had practically invited you to tryst with me.” “And an excellent notion it was!” said Mr. Rutherford promptly. “I mean to discuss it with you again in just a few moments! As for the other, I feared you would turn skittish if you realized how very desperate my case had grown, and so I sought to throw you off the scent, which I freely admit was very stupidly done of me. Now, if there are no other questions—” But of course there were, and Sara meant to see this business settled. Resolutely she ignored the tingles running up and down her spine. “You have still not told me how you came to be here.” Though Mr. Rutherford grew a trifle weary of his darling Sara’s incessant questions, to deny her an explanation would be unkind. Too, a better understanding of the great inconveniences he had endured on her behalf might advance his suit. “Jaisy wrote me an addle-brained missive, threatening all manner of dire redress did I marry my opera dancer or alternately seduce you, which alerted me that you might harbor some doubt about the nature of what I wished to offer you; and then Sir Phineas confirmed the worst. And now, my pet—” But once more Miss Valentine interrupted. “Jevon!” she whispered, half-swooning with shock. “You cannot mean — You dare not — But you said we were going to Kent!” “So we are, where we shall be married very properly from your father’s house.” Jevon’s hands moved to her shoulders. “And now—” “But Georgiana will disinherit you!” wailed Miss Valentine. 189

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“A fig for Georgiana!” Mr. Rutherford retorted violently. “Will you be quiet and let me kiss you!” The matter presented to her in so reasonable a manner, Miss Valentine instantly complied. The dowager duchess did not disinherit Mr. Rutherford, of course; and Jevon and Sara dwelt as excellently together as she had always anticipated they would. London’s most eligible ex-bachelor and his Viscountess also dwelt together excellently well, each curbing the other’s less admirable traits, so that in time Jaisy became a great deal less rag-mannered, and Carlin grew noticeably less stiff-rumped. Sir Phineas Fairfax continued as Lady Blackwood’s man of business for the remainder of his life, and continued in his odd way to be devoted to the dowager’s interests. In a manner much more easily understood, he also remained devoted to a certain little opera dancer who graced the stage at Drury Lane, and who, after the cavalier treatment accorded her by her previous admirer, was very receptive to the addresses of a gentleman less charming and disenchanted, and rather more free of foibles. Once safely returned to Queen Anne Street, Confucious never set forth again a-traveling, and established with the smallest kitchen maid a mutually beneficial arrangement by which she advanced rapidly in the dowager’s estimation and he was regularly fed. Mr. Kingscote eventually abandoned such sartorial exuberances as padded jackets of bright yellow and pantaloons of lime green, and settled down in the Midlands with a manufacturing heiress whose conduct was as unexceptionable as her nature was placid, and who never once in all the years of their union even thought of boxing his ears. In short, as Lady Easterling might have put it, no matter how many facers she planted her victims in the process, Dame Fortune arranged that all resolved itself very satisfactorily.

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Biography Maggie MacKeever Maggie MacKeever is a pen name for Gail Clark. Gail Clark was born and raised on a diary farm in southwestern Pennsylvania. A strong desire not to teach secondary school English, led her to southern California, which was as far away as she could reasonably expect to get. Once in Los Angeles, after various employment adventures and misadventures, Clark settled into the film industry, and gradually made her way into post-production sound. After further exertions and reversions, she became a sound editor who specializes in dialogue replacement work, a process that involves going with actors and directors to a sound stage where they try to recreate, or improve, their original performances, with sometimes very entertaining results. Clark's great love, though, has always been writing. She has written television commercials, educational and industrial film narration, screenplays, and historical romances. Her interests include reading, music, weaving, needlework, stained glass, computers, and roses. Clark and her husband Lee live in the Hollywood Hills with their housecats Andy and Mo.

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