“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.”
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!”
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 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 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 o
f 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!”
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 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 cow-hearted 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.”
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 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.
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