Maggie MacKeever (22 page)

Jevon realized he had been standing for several moments staring blankly into the window of a corsetiere’s shop. Quickly he continued his perambulations, lest some passing acquaintance deduce his excellent physique was due less to a bountiful Nature than to the Apollo, a constricting influence composed largely of whalebone.

First Jaisy must be settled, and then Jevon could devote his energies to Miss Valentine once more. Tempting as was the idea of Arthur Kingscote rendered unsuitable for further pursuit of Miss Valentine by marriage to Lady Easterling, Jevon could not condemn his sister to so ruinous a
mésalliance.
Carlin it would have to be, in defiance of the dowager duchess, a notion first conceived by Mr. Rutherford after over-indulgence in egg hot and bishop and dogs’ noses, Battley’s Sedative and Morris’s Drops; and now remembered after prolonged inhalation of cool damp air. From every angle, Mr. Rutherford re-examined his brainstorm. Prolonged cogitation, the situation had called for. Mr. Rutherford seriously questioned whether he had cogitated long enough.

Too late now to stay his hand; the die had been cast. There was more in him of his damnably manipulative aunt than Jevon had hitherto realized. This was his day for lowering reflections, it seemed.

After brief contemplation of his own ignoble character, Mr. Rutherford progressed to more constructive thoughts. That Carlin had begun to pay very marked attentions to Jaisy, Jevon was aware—not from Kit, who had grown very reticent on the subject, as if he mistrusted the quality of his friend’s advice, but from mutual acquaintances with wagers on the matter listed in various of London’s betting books. These acquaintances had greatly enlivened Jevon’s sick room. It would have taken more than the risk of contracting a head cold to deter them from avidly following the progress of their bets. A pang of guilt smote Jevon, and was as abruptly dismissed. Once Jaisy was tied-up, he would be free to reintroduce the subject of trysts to Miss Sara Valentine. Consequently, he must be gratified by the woolly-headed conduct of his chosen sacrificial lamb.

Because he had embarked upon this expedition with a vague notion that he might again encounter his beloved similarly venturing abroad, Jevon paused to take stock of his surroundings. On a street corner stood a woman selling apples hot from her charcoal stove, a child peddling lavender grown at Mitcham and used in linen-presses to counter the abominable smell of laundry soap; crossing the street was a chimney sweep carrying brush and scraper and shovel, and wearing in his cap a brass plate containing his master’s name and address. Then Jevon’s eye was caught by a huge mosque, its cupola white and blue, surmounted by a crescent and driven by a dapper young man. When this astounding spectacle revealed itself as an advertisement for a patent medicine, Jevon actually smiled. As he did so, the first drops of rain began to fall. Cursing, he ducked inside the nearest establishment, which turned out to be the Pantheon Bazaar. Jevon shook raindrops from his person, and then ran a knowledgeable eye over the diverse array of merchandise.

Tippets of fur and feathers, French gloves and Indian muslins, satins and brocades, ribbons and plumes and lace; hinged silken parasols with folding wooden handles and whalebone frames; shawls of wool and silk—none of these miscellaneous feminine folderols and fripperies were alien to Mr. Rutherford, although he did gaze with slight astonishment upon some of the more fanciful merchandise, in particular a wash of Magnetic Dew Water, guaranteed to restore a youthful appearance even to ladies of antiquity. It was as he was contemplating bestowing some of this miraculous concoction upon his aunt that Mr. Rutherford realized he too was being observed.

No dire presentiment struck him, as in justice it might have done; a man of Mr. Rutherford’s legendary exploits grows accustomed to the disadvantages of fame. Furthermore, Jevon was too kindly to slight any of the females by whom he had been favored, or even those who had merely wished to favor him, the numbers of which were legion and might be encountered anywhere. He turned to discover who owned the eyes which were boring holes into his back, with an expression of faint interest on his handsome face. Not even then did premonition strike him, with the discovery that the eyes were dark and lively, and set within the face of the pretty little opera dancer from Drury Lane.

Quite the opposite. Jevon was as pleased to encounter that damsel as any other but one, because he suspected he’d treated her rather shabbily, encouraging her to get up her hopes when he meant to use her only as a decoy. Therefore he generously indicated his satisfaction with this chance encounter, and engaged the little opera dancer in the sort of sparkling conversation for which he was justly famed. That conversation’s charm consisted more in the manner of delivery than in its content, for Jevon sought a tactful means by which to indicate to his companion that their mutually beneficial interlude was at an end.

His thoughtful eye fell upon a very fetching cottage bonnet of yellow twilled sarcenet, trimmed with lavish bunches of cornflowers and tied with a large yellow ribbon bow. Giggling, the opera dancer snatched the bonnet from his hands and crushed it down onto her head. His Sara would have looked fine as fivepence in that bonnet, Jevon thought wistfully. He wished that he might shower her with bonnets and every other extravagance. Unfortunately, Jevon’s competence would not stand such nonsense, and he had no doubt that Georgiana would fly straight into the boughs at the merest indication of an alliance between her hired companion and her heir. Again, so be it. Jevon would bypass any number of fortunes in favor of his Sara; and Sara, having not a penny to her name, was not likely to quibble over living on a competence. All the same, Jevon wished the worldly goods which he intended to bestow upon Miss Valentine amounted to much more.

By now, perhaps, the reader may have noted certain resemblances between Mr. Rutherford and Lady Easterling. Though they differed greatly in temperament, Lady Easterling being extremely volatile and Mr. Rutherford largely
blasé,
they shared a common point of view, to wit, that a Rutherford must eventually be granted his or her request. Lady Easterling wanted Lord Carlin, and never for an instant doubted that having her would be Carlin’s fate; Mr. Rutherford felt similarly toward Miss Valentine. Both recognized that their progress would be stormy; nonetheless, both had determined to take the field.

And, as Fate had planted Lady Easterling a facer, so did it hover in the wings to present a wisty cantor to Mr. Rutherford, who had no inkling that his comeuppance was about to be served.

Outside the Pantheon Bazaar, the rain fell even harder. Oblivious to the elements, Mr. Rutherford contemplated his pretty little opera dancer, his attention centered not on the damsel but on her frivolous headgear. Of his beloved Sara’s lust for bonnets, Mr. Rutherford was aware. In point of fact, there was very little about Sara that Jevon
didn’t
know, always excepting the secrets of her heart, and even about those he could make a very shrewd guess. But deuced if he could understand why she encouraged Arthur Kingscote to dangle after her and cut off Jevon’s own compliments in mid-speech. If any other woman had thus blown first hot (the incident in the garden of Blackwood House) and then cold (every incident thereafter), Jevon would have thought she wished to rouse his jealousy. Sara, however, was no designing female. All the same, Jevon was so very envious that he quite understood his sister’s impulse to box
her
beloved’s ears.

Too long, the little opera dancer had waited to be told that the cottage bonnet rendered her complete to a shade. She had already noted Mr. Rutherford’s tendency toward wool-gathering of late. Therefore, she grasped the quickest means of recapturing his wandering attention: she raised on tiptoe, placed her arms around his neck and kissed him enthusiastically.

Though Mr. Rutherford was somewhat startled to be abruptly embraced, and in the midst of the Pantheon Bazaar, he took no particular offense. Little opera dancers were prone to express their gratitude in this straightforward fashion, and though he no longer was as appreciative of such a lack of artifice as once he had been, he was not so churlish as to refuse to cooperate. Such a nonchalant attitude may seem a trifle startling—but Jevon Rutherford had already embraced a thousand women, at the most conservative estimate. He had no reason to think that one more kiss would signify.

Therein lay Mr. Rutherford’s error, and misfortune’s cue. As Jevon attempted to dissuade his opera dancer from further embracing him, yet without wounding her feelings in the process, he heard behind him a muffled exclamation, uttered in a voice that was disastrously well known. All need for tact forgotten, Jevon wrenched the clinging arms from around his neck and thrust the little opera dancer away. He turned around in time to glimpse Miss Valentine’s sodden and bedraggled person, to note the high color burning in her cheeks, before she slammed the shop door and ran back out into the rain-drenched street.

“By Jupiter!” exclaimed Lady Easterling, when apprised ofthese events. “What an unfortunate family we are! Why didn’t you go after her?”

Mr. Rutherford gazed upon his sister—clad for an evening at Drury Lane Theater in a gown of pale blue muslin trimmed with knots of white ribbon—through eyes that were reproachful and reddened. “I
did
follow her, as soon as the accursed door came unstuck! Made an utter cake of myself, running down the street and calling out her name!”

“And yet she ignored you?” Jaisy’s blue eyes were opened wide. “That was very bad of her—in fact, it don’t sound at all like Sara! And why should she cut up so stiff just because you went in out of the rain?”

Mr. Rutherford considered enlightening Lady Easterling as to the precise nature of his encounter with Miss Valentine, and then refrained. There were some things one did not discuss with one’s sister, among them a pretty little opera dancer who was at that very moment posturing upon the stage. “She did not
exactly
ignore me,” he said, and sneezed. “I caught up with her just as she was climbing into Sir Phineas’s carriage—oh yes, she was with Sir Phineas! I cannot decide if I dislike him more, or that mincing court-card! I was asked to state my business, if you please. When it evolved I had none—I’ve no intention of making Sir Phineas privy to my confidences; he’d merely repeat them to our aunt—I was sent about it! They did not even offer to take me up in the carriage, despite the rain; but drove right past me—and didn’t my man just give me a rare trimming for coming home covered with mud!”

Cautiously, Lady Easterling regarded her aunt, but Georgiana was deep in conversation with Arthur Kingscote at the far side of the box. Arthur did not look to be deriving any great enjoyment from the dowager’s discourse. Lud, but wasn’t he a figure in his brown-spotted silk coat and breeches, his waistcoat embroidered with metallic threads, his pale pink stockings, seals and fobs and knots of ribbon at his knees!

But what had Jevon said about Arthur? Could it be that Sara fancied him? Jaisy recalled that Arthur had offered to remain at Blackwood House this evening and keep Sara company, a generous suggestion which had made Georgiana quiver with outrage and announce that she wouldn’t have her servants mollycoddled, no matter
how
ill they were with head colds.

Jevon had not ceased to speak even when his sister’s attention wandered, and was going on in a manner that made Lady Easterling wonder if his exertions in Oxford Street had resulted in a delirium of the brain. What tumble was this that he bewailed? From what heights did he claim abrupt, painful descent? And what had Beau Brummell and Lord Byron to do with anything?

“Now she won’t even speak to me,” muttered Mr. Rutherford, into a handkerchief that was much too delicate for use by a gentleman. “I vow I’m at my wits’ end.”

“Poor Jevon!” His sister kindly patted his arm. “You are regularly under the hatches, are you not? There is no need to be thrown into such a pucker. Sara has been cross as crabs before. She’ll come about and you will be bosom-bows again!”

That he wished to be a great deal more than bosom-bows with Miss Valentine, Mr. Rutherford did not deem it prudent to confide. His sister had a prodigious loose way of talking— as, now that Jevon thought of it, did another member of Lady Blackwood’s household. “I understand,” he said with disapproval, “that Thomas let the cat out of the bag.”

“Thomas?” Briefly, Lady Easterling looked blank. “Oh, you mean the butler! I have meant to speak to you about that, Jevon, because if Sara is on the downward path to perdition it is all your fault. Until you took her out into the garden, she had never shown the slightest inclination toward that sort of thing.” Here Mr. Rutherford interrupted to explain that he had not taken Miss Valentine into the garden but had merely found her there, and again sneezed.

“Oh, yes!” retorted Lady Easterling scathingly. “Next
you
will try and tell me it was a cinder. Moonshine, Jevon! The odds are against anyone getting
that
many cinders in her eye! No, you must face up to your responsibilities. You are to blame that Sara has set out upon the primrose path.”

The primrose path? His Sara? Jevon expressed a blunt opinion that his sister’s head was filled with windmills.

“Windmills!” Lady Easterling was exceedingly indignant. “Of all the unhandsome things to say!
I
ain’t the one who’s nattering on about Byron and Brummell and tumbling down hills—whatever
that
may mean! No, and I ain’t the one either that’s led poor Sara astray. Jupiter, Jevon, you should have known better! In some instances ignorance is bliss! But you had to go and kiss Sara and make her curious, which was very bad of you—although I’ll warrant Arthur and Sir Phineas like it well enough.”

Had he not lost his sense of the ridiculous, Jevon might have taken his sister’s statements with the liberal seasoning of salt that they deserved. Gentlemen in whom Cupid’s darts have lodged, however, are not noted for a large appreciation of the absurd. “Were you a man,” he said, in dangerous tones, “I would demand satisfaction for that insult.”