by Cari Hislop
“Maybe he’ll change?”
“The sun will set in the morning before John becomes a saint.”
“If Mr Smirke is so bad why did my father leave me in his care?”
“Clearly your father had a singular hope that you’d torment our brother.”
“But I don’t want to torment anyone. I try to be friendly and helpful, but I get told to go away. I share what I’m thinking or feeling and people become irritated or upset with me. What’s wrong with me? Why don’t people like me?”
Agnes looked up from a half embroidered grape vine. “You’re an indomitable truth fairy flitting about cheerfully forcing the world to see its flaws. Very few people want to know the truth my dear, it’s uncomfortable.”
“It doesn’t seem to bother you.”
“Truth never frightens me. Things are as they are, but I don’t expect other people to believe or want the truth either. For instance, when you told Lady Tate that she looked exactly like her poodle; you broke her heart. Lady Tate will hate you forever because she doesn’t want to know that she looks like her poodle. She wants to think that people think she looks like the latest idea of beauty.”
“But she’s seventy and I thought she looked adorable in her old fashioned wig. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t think it a compliment.”
“I’m afraid your virtuous intent becomes null and void when an individual’s self inflated image of themselves is splashed by the truth.”
“And Mr Smirke doesn’t like me because…?”
“My brother is doubtless torn between finding you a beautiful desirable woman and the fact you make him see himself as he really is…” Agnes smiled with unholy glee. “…a most uncomfortable position for any man, but for a villain it must be insupportable agony. Your father was a genius.”
“But I want a family. I need people to talk to. I hate being alone!”
“John’s very similar. If he could he’d have a slave that would entertain him or retire at the snap of his fingers. If you do decide to marry the devil, be warned he’ll expect you to keep him company or warm his bed on demand. If I’d been so unlucky to find myself his wife, I’d have closed my eyes and thanked God I didn’t have to gut fish for a living.” The mahogany bracket clock demanded attention as twelve strikes announced that another hour of life was over. Miss Lark sat numbly contemplating her awful future. She was the legal property of a man who might force her to re-enact the images in his favourite paintings. Perhaps he was a villain, but the night before at table he’d made her feel like a beautiful woman who could ask for the moon, have it plucked from the sky and put on her plate. He’d looked like a man in love.
Her heart danced in triumph. Her guardian was the breathing image of his beautiful portrait and more exciting and dangerous than the man of her dreams. Hopefully she’d persuade him to kiss her at least once. Had she really seen love in his eyes or had she imagined it? It was another depressing thought to add to the list. The probability of dying an old maid seemed to solidify with every breath.
The hands of the clock appeared to be slowing. How long was he going to sleep? Miss Lark chewed another nail and wondered how she’d endure being thrown back into the loneliness of Bolingbroke. Being near Mr Smirke was proving more pleasurable than she’d imagined. There was something magical about how he moved, the way he turned his head or held his glass. He really was a beautiful painting come to life. She sighed in despair; she’d lost her heart to a painting. If only the painting would get out of bed.
John lay entrenched under his covers ignoring his bursting bladder, stinking armpits and rumbling stomach as the clock chimed twelve. As soon as he rolled out of bed the clock would start ticking off reasons why he’d spend the rest of the day feeling miserable. At the top of the list was facing his ward’s large unhappy eyes as he pushed her into his carriage. As long as he stayed in bed the day couldn’t begin. A few minutes later he rushed from his bed and grabbed the chamber pot. His bladder relieved, he stood shivering in his nightshirt. Where was his blasted valet? The man had orders to appear every fifteen minutes after eight to see if Smirke was awake. After five minutes John felt he’d waited as long as kindness could ever possibly demand. Picking up his discarded Sunday breeches still lying on the floor, he pulled them on with vicious force popping off several important buttons. Storming from the room, he shouted for a servant and nearly tripped over an upstairs maid half buried in a linen chest. “I want my valet. Go tell that lazy blockhead Woods that there are two whole weeks before his next day off. That means he has to work fourteen days before he can go whoring. And tell him if I don’t see his surly lip in my room immediately I’m going to…” How could one punish a lazy valet without involving physical force? “…he’ll forfeit a new Christmas bonus.”
“But he’s dead Sir.”
“I don’t want to hear any of his infamous excuses. I want this hair off my face and a bath before one-thirty.”
“I’ll get Master James’s valet right away Sir.”
John took in a loud breath through his nostrils, “Are you deaf woman? I want Woods!” As he roared at the young woman he could almost hear a heavenly pen scratching a check in the wrong side of a heavenly piece of parchment headed, ‘John Sebastian…heaven or hell’?
“Woods is as dead as a, a piece of wood Sir.”
“He can’t be dead. He was perfectly healthy last night when I told him to go to blazes.”
“Well he’s good and gone this time Sir. He’s laid out on his bed if you wish to pay your last respects Sir.” John whirled away and headed downstairs for the basement. Woods couldn’t be dead; he was only thirty-two.
A gleeful looking boy met him at the bottom of the stairs, “If yer come to see the body it’s in there Sir.” John pushed past three kitchen maids crying into their aprons and walked over to the bed where Woods lay in his shirtsleeves.
“Do you hear me laughing Woods? Get up before I sack you without a reference.” John bent down and snatched up one of the coins. “Get up!” The eye snapped open and stared past him at the ceiling.
“You can’t flog a dead valet, Sir.” John turned to find a sniffling chamber maid looking at him as if he had two heads. “We were keeping each other warm last night. He made an awful noise and rolled away. I thought he was asleep, but he was dead.” John stared numbly at the man who’d been shaving his chin, ironing his cravats and sharing his sins for sixteen years. John began to tremble as he stared at the lifeless body. He didn’t feel sad. He wasn’t even sorry that the man was dead. He was overcome with terror. He was only a year older than the dead man. He too could roll over one night and find himself stitched into a woollen sack. He’d be thrust back into awful darkness, tormented by his own company. He blinked away unmanly tears as he swallowed a cry for his mother. He turned and rushed blindly from the room, back up the stairs in search of comfort.
***
Agnes looked up from her embroidery to see her brother-in-law standing in the open doorway looking in the direction of his ward with wild eyes. “The fact that your valet is dead does not excuse you from social niceties John. We didn’t want to know that you have a hairless plucked chicken chest and we certainly do not wish to see the remaining two buttons on your fall pop off and reveal nature’s cruelty. Spare our eyes your unsightly flesh and go finish dressing.” John didn’t hear Agnes as his ward turned her large eyes in his direction. His heart erupted against the inside of the skin exposed by the open neck of his nightshirt.
“Oh Mr Smirke, you look dreadful!” Miss Lark jumped up and rushed to John’s side. “You must have loved him very much.” His brain was swirling with thoughts of cornflowers and kissing the lips attached to the feminine hand kindly fluttering against his sleeve.
“Loved who?”
“Mr Woods, your dead valet.”
“What about him?”
“You’re taking his death very hard.”
“Am I? I don’t want to go back there…”
“You don’t n
eed to. Someone else will stick him in the ground. In the spring you can plant a tree over his grave. I’ll help you.”
“Plant a tree? Who cares about Woods? I don’t want to die!”
“No one wants to die Mr Smirke…well, not unless you’re one of those people who want to do themselves in, but those people aren’t very sensible. What sensible person would want to die when they could have adventures and be loved? Not that I’ll ever have either…come to think of it, why does anyone want to live?”
“I refuse to die. I won’t go back there. I won’t. I refuse!” John drew in a long shuddering breath, but it wouldn’t fill his lungs.
“Relax Mr Smirke; let me help you to your room.” John groaned as the soft warm arm around his waist turned his legs to jelly. “Do you have a red beard Mr Smirke? I didn’t know a blonde man could have a red beard. I like it…”
Agnes stepped into the hall, “Joan Lark, where’s your good sense? He’s probably spent all morning thinking of a way to get you to touch his stinking shirt. You’re feeding his vanity. The next thing you know he’ll need your help warming his bed.” Agnes’s eyes filled with glee as John’s cheeks drained of colour.
“J…Joan?” The word was a gasp of horror as John looked down at smiling lips only inches from his own. “I thought your name was Jane…your name is Joan?”
“Agnes…help…he’s fainted.” John cringed away from the smelling salts and moaned into a silk draped knee as a feminine hand caressed his cheek. “Mamma…”
“Your mother’s in France with her new husband remember?”
“Go away Agnes and spend your sympathy on your two hellions.”
“If Joan wishes to befoul her skirts pandering to your theatrics you’ll be replacing them, but don’t lie there all day. I’m expecting visitors. I don’t want my friends to think I’d allow you to lie on the floor to look up their skirts.”
John’s eyes adjusted to ripples of light highlighting folds of black silk and slowly looked up into cornflowers filled with concern. “It’s alright Mr Smirke. You’re not going to die for a very long time. I’m going to take good care of you.” The clock chimed half past twelve as John closed his eyes and prayed for deliverance.
Chapter 7
John stared out the large rectangles of glass framed by green and gold walls watching the rain. He was reclining on a Recamier day bed facing away from Agnes and her stream of visitors wondering if any man could be so wicked as to deserve Miss Joan Lark’s company for eternity. An eerie peaceful feeling mocked any attempt to deny she was ‘the Joan’ he’d been searching for. His black eyes drifted to his immediate left and devoured the sight of the innocent beauty embroidering a large cornflower on her apron. His mouth watered at the pleasurable prospect of examining virgin flesh in private, and then his mouth went dry at the thought of waking up and finding himself shackled in Bedlam.
There was no way he was going to marry the girl. There had to be a spinster younger than seventy somewhere in England who could love him. The war with France was over; he’d send the girl off to see Europe and if she disappeared into the pocket of an Italian prince so much the better.
Woods had been dead for almost two weeks and John hadn’t yet managed to get as far as ordering the carriage. Every morning he opened his eyes and promised himself that he’d escort her back to Bolingbroke as soon as he’d finished his breakfast, but for some reason he couldn’t follow through. His heart tapped happily his chest as he let his eyes wander from golden curls down to black slippers peeping out from under her skirts. Any moment she’d say something strange, something maddening.
“How’s your drawing coming Mr Smirke?” It was a perfectly innocuous question, and just the one he most did not want to be asked. His eighth attempt to draw the pleasant scene out the window was not coming along at all. His amateurish renditions made him cringe. It didn’t look anything like the image in his head. He felt like throwing his sketchbook out the window followed by his pencil.
“Mind your own business.” He turned the page in his sketchbook and started again.
“You could try sketching something else. Perhaps it’s too dull a subject.”
“What a good idea Miss Lark. Perhaps if you took off your dress and stood in front of the window I’d be inspired?” With burning cheeks she silently picked up her chair and forcefully turned her back on the wicked man and continued embroidering. After ten minutes of being ignored John was seething. Determined to be kind, he successfully refrained from screaming at his ward to turn around. “Alright, you’ve made your point. I shouldn’t have said it, but I told you to mind your own business.” There was no response from the back of his ward. “I didn’t actually mean it. I was being sarcastic.” After five more minutes of deliberate silence his pride cracked. “I’m sorry.” The words felt strange on his lips, but he sighed with relief as she picked up her chair and turned back to face him as if nothing had occurred.
“Would you like me to move my chair in front of the window Mr Smirke?”
“Yes, that would be helpful Miss Lark.”
“About here?”
“That will do. Dare I ask why you’re smiling?”
“I was just thinking how the image of you sitting there sketching would make a beautiful painting.” John glowed with pleasure as he concentrated on sketching his ward oblivious to the rest of the room. Two hours later he closed his sketchbook almost pleased with the result and rubbed his chest as he watched his ward try on her finished apron. The large bachelor button could only catch the eye, stitched over her right breast.
“Umm…” John coughed to clear his waterlogged tongue. “Do you realise men will see that and think you’re announcing a desire to wed?”
“Yes of course.” Her smile seemed to command the rhythm of his heart. “If it was spring I’d tuck a real cornflower in my bosom and think about the man I want to marry and wait and see if it wilted by evening, but it’s not likely to make much difference. The man of my dreams doesn’t want to marry a penniless truth-fairy.”
“What are you talking about? Don’t tell me you think you’re a fairy.”
“Agnes…” John’s question was forgotten as Miss Lark rushed to the window to see who or what was causing the commotion outside. “What a magnificent coach and six…they look like they’ve come a distance.”
John joined her at the window as a long list of detested relations came to mind. “Thank goodness…it’s only Peter.”
“Peter, your brother the Viscount of Adderbury? How exciting. Do you think he’ll stay long?”
John’s pleasant smile soured. “He’s probably just passing through.”
“Does he look like you? James says he’s one of the kindest men in England and that he’s looking for a wife.”
“Whoever he’s looking for, he’s not looking for you.”
“James said…”
“I don’t care what James said, I am your guardian and I don’t like you referring to my brothers by their Christian names.”
“But James insisted. He says I’m family.”
“James is too kind.”
“Well isn’t that what you’re supposed to be if you don’t want to end up in hell? I thought you were trying to reform your evil ways? You don’t appear to be doing a very good job to me.”
John clenched his teeth as his blood pressure increased at the sight of an impudent raised eyebrow. “I am being kind. And how would you know what I’m trying to do?”
“Agnes told me. She says you said…”
“Agnes doesn’t know anything and neither do you.”
“My father didn’t think women knew anything either. He said women should always marry men at least fifteen years older. Apparently having one foot in the grave makes a man wiser, but I always thought that was stupid. Look at you, you’ve been dead and you don’t seem very wise to me. If you were wise you wouldn’t have challenged that man to a duel when you were unfit to wave about a sword.”