Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea

by Kage Baker

  The envelope was full of scarlet rose petals.

  “What about the ring?” asked Miss Rendlesham.

  “I returned it, of course,” said Lady Beatrice, and that was the end of that.

  And once, Mrs. Corvey said the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society was still pursuing him, with an eye to somehow harnessing his mad engineering skills. But Mr. Pickett had sailed for Botany Bay in a state of high tragedy and was thus far obdurate about never returning to the Motherland.

  And once, Mr. Felmouth came down from London for the afternoon, and brought them all various little toys he had devised solely for their amusement, in apology for their holiday being interrupted. He gave the dandy horse to Herbertina permanently, which was very well received.

  Mrs. Drumm left Mr. Pickett’s household within a day or two, and took lodgings down the hall from the Ladies. She was able to demonstrate her skills at water ices to Mrs. Corvey’s complete satisfaction. She and Mrs. Corvey spent pleasant afternoons going over future menus, and completing the security paperwork necessary for her to be hired as staff at Nell Gwynne’s.

  However, a few days after the debacle in the bay (as Dora called it), a couple of the Gentlemen came to see Mrs. Otley. They had with them the sketches and correspondence that she had sent to Mr. Charles Darwin. He had forwarded them to the Gentleman’s Speculative Society, telling them that he himself was not in sufficient health or leisure to give these relics the attention they deserved, but that he thought experts ought to see them. And so the Society was taking them over, and they would appreciate it greatly if Mrs. Otley would turn over the bones she had so far excavated, and refrain from excavating more.

  “Oh. I had hoped to name the species,” she said sadly when she handed over the hat box, pink ribbon still intact.

  “Ah, but it has a name,” they told her. “It is called Homo Crewkernensis, and we are sorry to say one of our number is already investigating it. But it is a splendid find, and you will receive all proper credit when it is written up.”

  Mrs. Otley had to be content with that. And as her correspondence with Mr. Darwin continued and even increased after the incident, she did not consider herself badly used.

  Domina got a wardrobe of matching collars and leashes, and went to London to make her fortune.

  And so their oddly interrupted holiday resumed its idyll, and was judged to be, all in all, a very splendid time. When at last they left for home, though, Miss Rendlesham presented Mrs. Corvey with a great deal of literature on holiday villas in the Lake Country, as well as a volume of the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

  Mrs. Corvey allowed that she would seriously consider giving Torquay a miss next year. The Lake Country sounded as if it might be very peaceful, very peaceful indeed.

  Refreshed and triumphant then, they went home. And August was a time of great relief and rejoicing in the vicinity of Whitehall.