Imprudent Lady (5 page)

“I wonder how many times you have had to listen to that platitude,” he said as they went out the door.

“More times than I care to remember."

“And it isn't true either,” he said, giving her a hand into the carriage. It was far and away the grandest carriage Miss Mallow had ever been in. Papa had kept a little gig, and Uncle Clarence had a lumbering old coach that had been in the family twenty years. Dammler's was a spanking new one, shiny with a crest on the side. Silver mountings gleamed everywhere, and in the interior the seats and squabs were covered in real tiger skin.

“Oh, how
savage!"
she laughed.

The carriage seemed suddenly to be in very poor taste. “I am not prudent either, to have put my pelts to such a base use. I'm sorry I didn't keep them for rugs."

“Surely walking on them is no more noble than sitting on them?” she remarked.

It was a mere nothing—a thoughtless comment to fill time until they should be moving, but again it made him feel foolish.

“Why did you call me imprudent?” she asked, trying not to show in too obvious a manner her interest in this magnificent carriage. There were little doors and silver pulls mounted on the side, which raised her curiosity. “To have treated your uncle Elmtree so was a shabby trick, Miss Mallow."

She looked at him in amazement. Could it be he considered meeting himself such a treat he felt her uncle to have been deprived because she told the servant not to call him? Certainly Clarence would think so, but for Dammler to suggest it himself was a piece of pride she could scarcely swallow without chewing it a bit.

“What
have
I said to make you hate me already, ma'am?” he asked. “I intended to be on my best behaviour. You must own you gave him a fine raking in
The Composition."

“Oh, you mean you
read
it?” she asked.

“Indeed I did, as soon as I could tear it out of Hettie's hands. I lent it to her,” he added, not considering it a real lie, as he had no notion of returning the gift.

“Oh, but he never guessed, nor would he if he ever got round to reading it. How did you figure it out? My changing him to a woman fooled everyone else. Not even Mama suspected."

“I saw what you were up to at once. Bach's fugues are the
Mona Lisa,
and the baroque counterpoint is her foreshortening. I don't think you worked in an analogy to the eyelashes, did you?"

It was horrid to laugh at Uncle Clarence, but so very nice to have someone who understood and did not disapprove, that she could not suppress a smile. “No, nor the symbols either—they are a recent innovation."

“Lawrence will snap it up in no time,” he warned her with a quirk of his black wing of eyebrow, and a conspiratorial smile.

“And claim it for his own—that is another of his tricks to be watched out for. He took to putting on a bit of impasto to highlight the nose as soon as ever Uncle Clarence invented it."

“Plagiarist! He'll be posing them in three-quarters profile with their hands folded if we don't keep a sharp eye on him. I adored your books. You are a
real
artist with words."

She flushed with pleasure, but demurred, “It is yourself who is the acknowledged artist."

“Humbug—don't try to gammon me. They're claptrap, Miss Mallow, and you know it."

“Oh, indeed they are not! They are stunning tales. I like them excessively."

“That is not what I hear,” he wagged a finger at her. “Now that you are famous you must watch your tongue. And it will take some watching, too, I'll wager. I have it on good authority Miss Burney was chagrined at your impudence, and Lord Dammler is certainly offended at your criticism of him. Especially as it was so very much to the point."

“Oh, but I didn't..."

“Didn't claim you must send your heroine off to the moon, since
I
had grabbed the world for my playground? Of course you did. Hettie's tongue runs like a river, but she doesn't lie."

“I—I was only funning, you know."

“I know, now that I have met you. Come to know you a little I mean.” He was anxious to know her better. She was different from anyone he had met since returning to England. “I wish you will tell me all about
The Cat in the Garden.
Who is she?"

“She, as you might guess now that you are on to my trick, is a man—a horrid old nosey Parker who lived near us in Kent. He was a bachelor of a certain age—funny how they haven't the reputation for malice and spite we spinsters have, but they are just as bad. He was always peeking over the hedge when I had company."

“So
you
are Emily. I didn't suspect that."

Emily was a lively young lady with much of Prudence in her. “No, I made her up,” she said, remembering she had been something of a beauty. “I just used the circumstance of a nosey person making mischief and fabricated from there."

“I don't think I could do that."

“Surely you made up at least half of the adventures you wrote about. They could not
all
have happened to you."

“They all happened to somebody. Some of them I had second hand, but I didn't make any of them up out of whole cloth. That is the leap of imagination that defies me."

Prudence looked skeptical. “I didn't think, from reading your works you would stick at anything."

“I have been taken for Marvelman because of the name I chose. He was not meant to be me. The cantos were just scribblings to wile away time when I was bored of an evening. It can be boring far away from company, or in the thick of it, for that matter."

As they entered the park, a sensation was caused by the appearance of Dammler's carriage. It was recognized and every second vehicle they passed wanted to stop for the occupant to have a word with him. There was no guessing from his smiling face and joking conversation that he was bored. Certainly Prudence was not. She hadn't had such a day before in her whole life. Dammler introduced her to a few notables, but usually he just said a few words and drove on.

“How do you find life in a fish bowl?” he asked with a disparaging smile during a brief interlude when he was let alone.

“Very exciting, but I don't know how you stand the pace if it's always like this."

“It is frequently worse,” he said tersely. “This was a poor idea coming here. We can't talk. I should have known how it would be. We'll head for the outskirts."

The excitement died down as they entered the Chelsea Road, and conversation was again possible. They drove and talked for a long time—about their work, his travels, but very little about Prudence herself. As he left her at the door he said, “Next time we'll talk about
you,
Miss Mallow. I have been running off at the mouth about myself, which is a poor way of getting to know you. Tomorrow?"

She nodded and entered the house in a dreamlike state to be rallied by her uncle about her new beau. “Knew all along he was sweet on you. I could tell by his eyes—eye. I'll have to remember to paint that patch out. He is a good-looking fellow but for that one little blemish. What had he to say for himself?"

“He spoke highly of your work, Uncle."

“Did he indeed? Odd as he has never seen it, but I daresay they are whispering about me at Court. Sir Alfred, you know, would slip them the word about my symbols. He is often at Court. So he is anxious to see my work, is he? Well, I shan't mind to show him about my studio as he is practically one of the family. When does he come again?"

“Soon I expect,” Prudence answered prudently.

“If he happens to drop by while I am in the studio, don't hesitate to send for me. I am only doing the twins. I shan't mind stopping for a minute. Or bring him. Let him see how to pose.” This about a gentleman whose likeness had been taken by the greatest artists across the whole of Europe, and who knew the Mona Lisa's pose as well as she knew it herself. Prudence bit her lip. Her uncle's nonsense, which had long since become nearly unbearable, was funny again, for in her mind she shared it with Dammler.

“We must not make too much of it, Clarence,” Mrs. Mallow warned. “It is just courtesy on his part because they are both writers."

“Pooh, he is in love with her. I have already told Mrs. Hering. She was green with envy. She would like you to take him to call one day, Prue, when you and Dammler have nothing better to do."

“Uncle, you mustn't say such things. What if he should hear? I'd be mortified."

“You are too shy, my dear. Such a fellow as Dammler wants a little encouragement. He is bound to be backward, being handicapped as he is."

“What do you mean? How is he handicapped?"

“Why, his eye, to be sure. But don't let it put you off. I'll take care of that, and posterity will never know the difference. What symbol would he like?"

“It is not settled you are to paint him, Uncle."

“I have agreed to it. There is no problem. The only question is a symbol. Mention it to him the next time he comes ‘sparking’ you."

“He is not ‘sparking’ me."

“What a girl. She won't say a thing ’til she has his ring on her finger."

The matter was settled in his mind, and any objections were only coyness. He had already told Mrs. Hering, and would tell everyone else he met in the next two days.

Dammler called the next afternoon as promised, and by standing with her pelisse ready to fling on, Prudence escaped without subjecting him to teasing jokes from her uncle. They avoided the park this time, and drove north towards Harrow. It was his intention to draw out Miss Mallow about herself that day, but she felt her monotonous life could not be of much interest to him. While he was under sail over stormy oceans, she had sat in her backyard reading, or in her study writing. His talks with foreign kings and chiefs and emperors must be more entertaining than her visits to a sick friend with a bowl of restorative pork jelly, or cutting out an underskirt; and in the end he did most of the talking, and she most of the listening.

It was only their second outing, but they seemed already like old friends, and Prudence ventured to ask, “What was it that caused you to take your trip around the world? It is hinted at in the cantos, but not explained."

“There was a good reason for leaving it vague. It wasn't fit to print."

“Yet another liaison in your crimson past?” she asked leadingly. She had already heard of a few.

“Mmm. It does me no credit, and the lady in the case even less. Why did
you
leave Kent?"

She told him in a few words. It seemed always thus. His questions could be answered in a second, whereas the answers to hers, she was sure, held an interesting story. She wished strongly to hear it. “Was she an English lady?” she asked to urge him along. He had already told of intrigues with a Russian and an Indian.

“Yes, a married lady, a neighbour of my uncle's.” He then tried again to revert to her life. “And how did you come to take up writing novels?"

The tale of her copying experience was equally dull and explained in two sentences. “What was she like, the married lady?” Prue pressed a little harder.

"Now
I wouldn't think her anything out of the ordinary. A ripe lady—thirtyish—still very attractive, in a mature way that appealed to my youth. I was just down from Cambridge at the time, you remember. Not up to snuff at all."

“She took care of the matter for you, I collect?"

“You are quite determined to hear the whole salacious tale, I see. So be it, but don't say I didn't warn you. She was my uncle's mistress. He was a widower, and she also was widowed. She lived in one of his houses, and the relationship between them was known by everyone except my green self. When he lay dying, she came every day to sit and talk to him, and stayed around in the evening to talk to me."

He stopped, and Prudence said, “That's not so bad."

He looked at her askance. “The evenings were not
entirely
devoted to talk. You know how these things progress—or perhaps you don't. But they
do
progress, believe me. Under the guidance of an expert, as my uncle's friend most assuredly was, they progress far and fast. I fell in love with her in about two days, or minutes. The day after my uncle died, I asked her to marry me and was cut to the quick when she laughed in my face."

“You offered
marriage
to such a woman?"

“I was young, and so stupid I can hardly believe it myself. I knew nothing, but she had more sense. She didn't want to be saddled with a jealous young hothead of a husband. No, indeed, my offer scared her out of her wits. She fled to the local innkeeper for solace, and I, my heart in tatters, couldn't get far enough away.” A nostalgic smile at his foolish past made him look as if he almost regretted her refusal still. “Well, of course I really had an itch to travel anyway, or I shouldn't have gone so far, or stayed so long. I never told anyone else that story, Miss Mallow. You worm everything out of me, and you are the very one I oughtn't to tell such bawdy tales to, a proper little lady like you. And you tell me nothing of yourself, oyster. Tell me all about your suitors. I'll wager you had a string of them in your salad days."

Miss Mallow didn't feel she was quite wilted yet, but she had the impression Dammler thought her older than she was. She tried to think of a romance from her youth. There was only Mr. Springer, whom she had idolized without ever a hope of return. He was the prize catch of her neighbourhood; all the girls were after him. She had known his mama fairly well, and she fashioned a piece of fiction around him, leaving it very vague, but not so one-sided as it had been.

“Why didn't you have him?” Dammler asked when she finished.

“I don't know,” she answered, smiling to think how quickly she would have had him, had he ever asked.

“Have you ever regretted not marrying?” Obviously he considered marriage at her advanced years out of the question. The cap, of course...

“No. Oh, no, I have my work, and I enjoy it."

“And so do we all! I am happy you showed Mr. Springer the door. I know him you see, and always found him a bumptious fellow."

“You know him!” she gasped, then remembered too late that Ronald Springer had gone to Cambridge, had been there, apparently, at the same time as Dammler.