Imprudent Lady (4 page)

The poet indicated by a slight jerk of his head to Murray that he would like to leave. Appalled at the meeting, Prudence did nothing to detain them.

“Oh, a glass of wine. Surely you will do me the honour to take a glass of wine before you leave,” Clarence said. He gave no chance for refusal, but pulled a cord and summoned a servant to fetch it at once.

The delay gave Clarence a chance to mount his own hobby horse. “Are you interested in art at all, my lord?” he asked the guest.

“Yes, indeed. I saw some very fine pieces in Greece,” Dammler answered, thinking to get over the next quarter of an hour with a good discussion of art. The poor fellow was a fool on the subject of literature, but might know something of art, as he had raised the subject.

“Oh, Greece, there is nothing there but rubble,” Clarence informed him, dismissing at a word the entire classical heritage. Dammler stared, and a smile slowly formed on his face.

“Indeed?” he said in his most drawling, affected voice.

“Smashed to bits, all of it. You've seen those pitiful broken bits and pieces Elgin had carted home. A scandal. The man is senile, not a doubt of it. No, when I say
art
I refer to painting."

“Ah, yes, painting. Well, I spent some time in Italy. Rome is worth seeing, and Florence of course..."

No mere tourist was to take the floor. “I daresay you are familiar with the
Mona Lisa?"

“Yes,” Dammler answered, slow to give up hope, and thinking still to hear some esoteric bit of history or lore connected with the famous painting.

“It's by da Vinci,” Clarence told him in a knowing way.

Dammler's smile reappeared, accompanied now by a wicked twinkle in his one visible eye. “So I hear,” he agreed in an encouraging tone.

“I believe our guests are in a hurry, Uncle,” Prudence mentioned.

“Not at all,” Dammler contradicted.

“Hurry? Nonsense, we are discussing art. Ah, here is the wine. How pleasant it is to sit chatting with cultured gentlemen who are interested in something other than politics and the price of corn."

“You were saying something about the
Mona Lisa,"
his guest reminded him. Murray frowned an apology at Prudence, and accepted a glass of wine.

“Yes, so I was. It is a wonderful painting, the
Mona Lisa. La Gioconda
the dagos call it.” Miss Mallow's heart sank to her shoes, but there was to be no escape. “Clever the way da Vinci set up the model so he wouldn't have to paint her ‘head-on.’ That is the most difficult pose to paint because of fore-shortening. The whole thing has to be foreshortened from that angle—dashed tricky business. And he cut her off just below the waist, too, to eliminate the problem of proportion. When you get into a full length portrait you have proportion to contend with. He avoided all that by posing her cleverly and cutting her off at the waist. I sometimes use that pose myself when I am in a hurry."

“You do some painting yourself, do you, Mr. Elmtree?” Dammler asked with a show of interest.

“I dabble a little. Not professional, you know, but the way you dabble in rhyming. Just for my own enjoyment."

“Just so,” the premier poet of England agreed.

“Yes, I did a likeness of my niece a while ago. Something on the lines of the
Mona Lisa.
But I gave Prudence an eyelash, of course...” He rambled on with his stunt of using a symbol, and Lawrence's jealousy of him, the incredible speed of eighty-seven portraits a year. Each of his follies was dragged out before Murray finally pulled Dammler away, protesting that the visit was too short.

“A man like that is better than a week at a spa,” Dammler said as they walked to the carriage. “I had some fear the English eccentric was a dead species, but I am happy to see he is alive and well and living in Grosvenor Square."

Back in the house, Clarence turned to his niece and said, “Well, well, he seemed a pretty nice fellow, your new beau."

“He is not a beau, Uncle,” Prudence replied, defeat in every line of her body.

“Ho, you are a sly puss. Nabbing a marquis under our very noses. Not a beau, indeed. Wait till I tell Mrs. Hering and Sir Alfred."

“I wish you would not..."

“Nonsense, I am not ashamed to know him. He is a capital fellow. Knows all about art. I shall drop him a note and ask him if he would like to pose for me."

“Oh, Uncle, indeed you must not!"

“I can slip him in between the Purdy twins and Mrs. Mulgrove—a week Monday I can start. Monday to Wednesday—three days. He will be no work at all. It will take very little fixing up to make him look well on canvas. He has a fine eyelash—pity about the patch, but I will paint that out, of course."

Mr. Elmtree could not understand why his niece went into a fit of desperate giggles, but charitably assumed it was due to her great luck in nabbing Lord Dammler for a beau. He was dismayed he had forgotten to get the fellow's address to drop him a line for his appointment. Prudence did not mention the efficacy of Mr. Murray as an intermediary, and the subject dropped.

The following week was a calm one for Miss Mallow, allowing her to catch her breath after her spate of public life. She sat home working most days and went with Uncle Clarence and her mama to one very dull dinner party and with an aged female friend of her uncle to a concert of antique music. Lord Dammler was feted at Carlton House by the Prince Regent, found that an unknown young female had smuggled herself into his apartment during his absence one evening and was waiting for him in his bedroom, was requested to write a comedy for presentation at Drury Lane, won a thousand pounds at faro, enjoyed a flirtation with Lady Margaret Halston, and was presented with a paternity suit for a child conceived while he was still in America, by a girl who knew his reputation but not his itinerary. It was a calm week for him, too.

On Friday evening he stopped at Lady Melvine's to take her to a rout he would prefer to have missed. He found her dressed and ready, a hideous purple turban on her head and an excess of diamonds sparkling about her person.

“Setting up as a shop window, Het?” he quizzed her.

“Don't I look horrid? But I haven't a stitch to wear, and the diamonds detract attention from this old gown, don't you think?"

“They certainly detract from your elegance. Nothing is so vulgar as too many diamonds. You don't need both the necklace and that awful cluster of brooches, do you?"

“No matter, when I walk in with
you
I will be the envy of them all."

“You forget I have a reputation to maintain, Auntie."

“The reason I am so ill prepared is that I have spent the whole afternoon reading another book by that Miss Mallow you recommended."

“Oh, has she written more than one?"

'Three—all delightful.
The Cat in the Garden
is the one I have just put down."

“Sounds monstrously exciting,” he drawled, then yawned behind long fingers. “Is it about animals then?"

“No, it is a two-legged cat referred to in the title. An old tabby like me who lurks about her garden seeing things she shouldn't, and telling."

“Which she also shouldn't. I'm surprised at such dissipation coming from Miss Mallow's pen."

“You cannot know her well!” Hettie laughed.

“Hardly at all. Don't tell me
you
have her acquaintance."

“I've met her. Fanny Burney brought her to call on me last week, and sat with her lips pursed the whole visit at her protegée's impertinence."

“I think we must be speaking of two different ladies. My Miss Mallow could not by the broadest interpretation be called impertinent."

“Not to your face maybe. She does a fine job of ripping you up behind your back."

“Indeed!” He looked stunned. “May I ask what she said? We are virtual strangers. It is odd she should speak to my discredit."

“It is rather your works she dislikes than yourself."

“I seem to recall she complimented me on the cantos."

“Ask her sometime for her true opinion."

“I am asking
you,
Hettie. What did she say?"

“My, how your head has become swollen! A fellow writer may not find a single fault in your work without your mounting your high horse. Well, it was nothing so very bad after all. She only took exception to your being chased by Indians and rescuing three women and emerging unscathed to attend a ball and dally with the governor's wife the same night. I must say, it seemed a point well taken."

He shrugged. “I am not a novelist who counts up the hours in a day, but a poet. Was there anything else?"

“She was not happy at your hogging the whole world for your setting. She is to launch her next heroine off into the cosmos and out-do you in wonders."

“She is welcome to try her hand at it. I make no claim to having visited the stars. Is that the sort of thing she writes?"

A peal of laughter escaped Lady Melvine. “Good God, no! She was funning. Very down to earth indeed. She couldn't be more so. Well, I have her three books here. See for yourself."

“I don't read novels."

“Suit yourself. You're missing a good bet."

He picked up
The Composition
and glanced at it. “Very well, I'll try it. It will lull me to sleep one night, I expect."

“Indian giver!” Hettie charged. “Oh, by the way, if you chance to be speaking to her again, she knows you gave me the book—and the very day you received it, too, so don't put your foot in it."

With a tapered finger, he reached up and adjusted his black patch. “Now I wonder if
that
is what got her hackles up? I've already told her how much I enjoyed it."

“Oh, when did you see her again?” Lady Melvine naturally had no hope of making a romantic conquest of her nephew, but she took a proprietary interest in his affairs.

“Last week. I found her a dead bore—not a word to say for herself, but she has an uncle whose acquaintance I could come to cherish."

Hettie teased him to say more, knowing by his smile there was some joke in the matter, but he refused to satisfy her vulgar curiosity. The rout was a squeeze, at least until Lord Dammler took his leave, when several others left as well. He went to a club and lost half the money he had won the week before. As he was about to step out of his carriage before his apartment, his hand brushed Miss Mallow's book, and with a shrug he carried the three slim volumes into the building. It was not yet late. Taking a glass of ale, he opened Volume One, skimming a line here and there. He smiled at a telling phrase or a description, and before long was reading in earnest. Unlike his aunt, he was a fast reader. Before he went to bed, rather late, he had finished the second volume, and before he had his breakfast in the morning, he finished the third and was converted to Miss Mallow's growing list of supporters.

Had he been informed beforehand that the novel was about a youngish spinster and her boring aunt, living alone in a quiet neighbourhood with only a country person for romantic interest, he wouldn't have opened the cover. But though nothing much happened, he kept turning the pages, eager to peer into the minds and hearts of these normal people. It had an air of reality about it— that, he fancied, was the trick. No preposterous doings of the sort he wrote about—no, to face the dreadful truth, here was
literature,
and what he wrote was claptrap. He sat musing for some time on the matter, and the more he compared the prim little lady's work with his own tales, the more dissatisfied he became. He went out and bought copies of the other two novels, and spent an afternoon reading
The Cat in the Garden.
Having already met her uncle, he recognized him as the musical lady in
The Composition.
He marvelled at her nerve in serving up such a parody—she, who looked as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She knew, of course, that the old boy didn't read. But who was she writing about in this other one? He was convinced it was a real person, and one he was curious to meet. Tired with reading, he went out to a dinner party that evening and found himself seated beside “Silence” Jersey, the most renowned chatterbox in London. He smiled to think what Miss Mallow would make of her. The fact that she was never silent removed nine-tenths of the burden of conversation from him, and he thought again of Miss Mallow. On an impulse he decided he would call on her again—take her out for a drive to get her away from the babbling uncle, and see what she had to say for herself. He figured he could draw out a shy young lady without too much trouble. How the
ton
would goggle to see him driving in the park with an unknown little spinster! This too amused him.

Next day he stuck to his resolution, and prepared himself in the morning to pay her a visit. He was amazed to find himself a little nervous. Not in a missish quake, of course. He had supped with princes and dined with princesses, flirted with duchesses and countesses without a qualm, but he did feel a qualm at calling on this little lady no one had ever heard of. The thought had taken hold that she would be judging him, as she so obviously had judged her uncle, and found him wanting. What would she write of himself if she decided to slip him into one of her books? “A gentleman who brought Society to its knees with the aid of an eye patch and a piece of doggerel...” No, she would cut closer to the bone than that.

But when he was later confronted with the live novelist, the qualm seemed to have transferred itself from his bones to hers. She looked quite thunderstruck to see him in her saloon, but not so surprised that she failed to warn the butler there was no need to disturb Mr. Elmtree. No more than he did she want that tongue ruining their visit. Her mother, a sensible but not remarkable woman, sat with them for ten minutes, at the end of which time Dammler repeated the mention of a drive. “I will take good care of your daughter, ma'am,” he assured Mrs. Mallow.

“Prudence is pretty well able to take care of herself,” she replied.

“She is well named,” he smiled.

Prudence looked at him closely. At that instant she realized he was mere flesh and blood. The most pleasing combination of flesh and blood ever seen, perhaps, but a mere mortal after all. Her awe of him fled like a small cloud before a howling wind.