Minuet (9 page)

“You father knows what’s best, Sally,” he said, making a move at last to pat the hand on his arm. He noticed she did not use the
citoyen
that always grated on his ear, nor did she appear to take any notice of the pat.

“I am not at all sure,” she went on. “Mama said to keep after him, and myself, I think the Monsieur Renard takes too long. Time is short.”

“Who is Monsieur—ah, you mean Fox. Charles Fox is generally held to be one of the cleverest men in the country. You can’t do better than to put yourself in Fox’s hands.”

“If
you
say so, I will do it. I think you are très
prudent,
Degan. It is a time for caution. How did you get so prudent and stodgy? You are still young. What happened to all your
joie de vivre?”
she asked in a light, bantering way.

His chest, which had begun to swell at the first remark, deflated rapidly. “I am not stodgy,” he said hastily.

“Me, I think you are very old in your ways.”

“Nonsense, I am an excellent bruiser, rider to hounds, and so on.”

“But exactly! All the dull English sports you do. I knew it would be so. You wear dark coats, and drive a black carriage like an undertaker. Do you have a strumpet?”

“Certainly not!”

“I knew it. Why have you not? You are not even married. You need a
chère amie
to unstifle you. I arrange it for you.”

“I can arrange it for myself!”

“Good. Do it at once. You will be much more
amusant
if you take a lover. It is always so. The men with pretty lovers are more gay and more fun. You would not be at all bad if you had a woman to sharpen up your jackets and make you smile
de temps en temps.
So many glum frowns you carry. They must be very heavy.”

Degan swallowed twice, shaking his head to be sure this conversation was really taking place. A young, unmarried lady was offering to procure a lover for him! “Sally, you mustn’t carry on like this in England! It will be misunderstood—”

“Ah,
morbleu,
you turn
moraliste
on me again. In public I am the great prude, but
entre nous,
Degan, you are
très ennuyeux.
Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked as the carriage pulled up to the door of her father’s house.

“I need it,” he said, in a weak voice.

“Now remember, if Papa is still up, you tell him nothing. Already he hates poor Henri.”

“Why does he let you run about with him then?”

“Because he cannot stop me,
chou!”
she said, laughing and pinching his chin very familiarly as he helped her down from the carriage. This piece of impertinence met with not a single stricture, but only a surprised smile.

Harlock had already retired, and Sally entertained a gentleman caller all alone in the saloon at an hour fast approaching midnight, without the gentleman so much as mentioning the fact. Rather than condemning this loose behavior, which would have sent him into the boughs had the gentleman been other than himself, he found it rather cozy. He did inquire, before leaving, when Miss Fawthrop was likely to arrive, but when he was told she was in bed with a cold, he did not see fit to name any of the other half dozen spinster relatives who could have filled the post equally well.

When he went home not much later, it was his own conduct he questioned. He had become a bit dowdy of late. Not that he had any notion of setting himself up with a ladybird, but there was no reason he need be outfitted like a demmed tooth drawer, and walk around with a frown on his face. There was no frown on his face that night, but rather a bemused smile as he recalled their tête-à-tête.

Sally too thought of it. She must be careful in England. Mama had told her the people here were very strict, and obviously it was true. She had been taken for a strumpet—such a pretty word really—only because she had been unescorted at the masquerade.

She must listen more to Citoyen Degan. That dull old dog would steer her on a course that the highest stickler would approve. She thought she had surprised him when she pulled his chin in fun, but he hadn’t said anything, so that must be all right. He was not at all ugly when he smiled, as she had three times that evening made him do, but how one had to work to force a smile out of him! Perhaps she would tease him a little, and see if she could smarten him up.

Chapter Seven

Life at Berkeley Square soon fell into a pleasant routine. Sally would take breakfast with her father in his room, see him off to the House with a question as to the progress made on Mama’s rescue, then, reassured on that point, would arrange her own calendar. She lacked no escort for any outing she cared to undertake, despite Miss Fawthrop’s defection. Mérigot was frequently at her door, and when he was not, and also frequently when he was, Degan was there to accompany her.

With Mérigot she went to Vauxhall Gardens, to tour the Tower and see the wild beasts at Exeter Exchange, to browse around the shops and sip
caf
é
au lait
at La Forge while chatting to the émigrés. With Degan she went to hear her father speak in the House of Lords, to see St. Paul’s Cathedral, and to take tea with Lady Cork, whom she found
très ennuyeuse.
On her outings with Degan, she was required to make her own amusement, for after Notre Dame, she could not be impressed with the work of Monsieur Wren, and she could hear Papa speak any time.

She pointed out, when he suggested that the many looks cast on them were due to her ensemble, that it was perhaps his own jacket of an uncompromising black and severe cut that caused the looks. When he next time wore with his Spartan jacket a flamboyant waistcoat of sprigged roses, she was quite sure it was his outfit and not her own that caused smiles.

“You must decide whether you are an undertaker or a gentleman, Degan,” she quizzed. “The jacket of one and the waistcoat of the other is very bad taste, like a rosebud growing on a dead twig.”

She carried out her intention of teasing him into style, and earned quite a few smiles over these days. “If you are going to be one of
my
beaux, you must let your hair grow a little longer,” she cautioned him.

“I do not aspire to become one of your beaux,” he lied amiably. “Merely I mean to see you do not fritter away
every
hour of the day in idleness.”

“If you take me to any more churches, Degan, I insist on a reward.”

“And what would you like for a reward?”

“I would like to hear you laugh sometime. Yes, if I agree to go to another church with you, you must learn by heart a very good joke to amuse me. I bet you don’t know one single joke.”

Degan was sure he knew one, but after racking his brain for five minutes, he could not call one to mind, and replied laughing that her
chapeau
was the funniest joke he could think of. He found less occasion to quiz it when they began meeting replicas of it on every block. “The joke is on you, Degan,” she pointed out.

Nor were the fashionable elite at all unkind to Sally. Several came to call, and invitations were received to such a multitude of assemblies that many had to be refused. A card to the ball of Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, however, was accepted as a matter of course. The only question in it was who was to accompany Sally. Mérigot had been asked because of her and did not like either to pass up the invitation or to go alone. Degan could not like to see her make an entrance to such a prestigious do with only a caper merchant to keep her in line, and even Harlock spoke of taking a peek in as Fox was sure to be there. It was finally decided that the party of four would go together. It would be the first time Mérigot had been seen in public with Lord Harlock.

All on her own, Sally took another decision. For this occasion, she would wear the English mode. She had an elaborate gown made up in white with silver spangles and small panniers. She had her hair lightly sprinkled with powder so that it appeared at a glance to be gold, with just enough powder added to tone down the copper. A wig she now found too uncomfortable to wear, but in other respects she looked more English than usual.

Harlock nodded with his customary approval and said, “You’ll be the prettiest girl there.”

“Ravissante,”
Henri decreed, looking her up and down critically in a way that made Degan long to punch him.

She then looked to Degan for a compliment, thinking her new style would please this Englishman. She was surprised to see he was neither smiling nor appreciative. “Very nice,” he said, but uncertainly. She didn’t look like Sally in that dashed hair, and the panniers hid her lithe figure.

“You don’t like it!” she charged. “I wore this outfit just for you.” This was untrue, of course, but she had come to know him well enough that she could play on his emotions quite at will.

“I like it! It’s very nice,” he said with more conviction, but still no approval in his eyes.

She was vexed enough with him that she said not a word on his own new style. He had got made up a new jacket in claret velvet, and had had a gaudy diamond removed from the vault and dusted off for the ball. White lace fell in elegant folds from his neck and wrists, bothering him considerably. Felt like a demmed woman. She took an arm of Mérigot and on the other side her father’s, to punish him.

The guests at the ball were more appreciative than Lord Degan of the French beauty. She was much sought after, and took care that her card was full till dinnertime, that Degan see she was very popular. The duchess introduced her to Charles Fox, an ugly little man, very short and not at all elegant. She was surprised Georgiana should bother with him. But she soon discovered that his charm was in his talk, not his person. He was witty, and a gazetted flirt.

“The duchess didn’t tell me you were a beauty,” he said waggishly. “Had I known, I would have been across the Channel myself and brought your mama home.”

“When may I expect to see her, monsieur?” she asked.

He blinked at the “monsieur,” but eccentricity never bothered this eccentric individual. “Very soon, I hope. I have discussed all that with your father. What I want to talk about now is
you.
I hear you are turning all the young fellows’ heads. Now if I were fifteen years younger, I’d show them all the way.”

“One hears you show them all the way, despite your maturity,” she replied, with a smiling glance to the duchess.

“Heh heh, sassy minx. I’m not all that old, you know.”

“‘Mature’ was the word I used, monsieur.
Il y a de la diff
é
rence.”
Her eyes implied she harbored no fondness for callow youth.

Without further ado he grabbed her arm and dashed off for the next dance. At dinner, the Harlock party sat with the duchess and her close friends, where the flirtation between the Whig and the French lady continued, increasing in pace. Georgiana was too wise to show any jealousy; she smiled benignly on the pair of them. Degan too put on a show of enjoying it, but when he saw Sally reach across from her chair and pull Fox’s chin, he glared repressively.

At the end of the meal he walked at a fast pace to her side. “Time to leave off flirting with Fox,” he said sternly.

“You mean to flirt with me instead, Degan?”

“You’re dressed like an Englishwoman tonight; try if you can act like one.”

“I cannot be so dull, unless you give me a large sleeping draught,” she replied.

“There is a wide margin between dullness and flirtation. One can be lively without being ill-behaved.”

“Why do you not encroach on that wide margin,
citoyen?
It is not necessary to stay so severely on the side of dullness.”

“I haven’t missed a single dance.”

“Nor enjoyed one either, I think? You look much like a martyr with two broken legs, forced to hobble through the night. Your dashing jacket is no disguise,
mon ami.
Better you should wear sackcloth and ashes to indicate what a penance it is for you to have to be merry at a ball.”

“I am having a marvelous time,” he insisted grimly.

“Ah, Degan, I would dislike seeing you in agony, if all these heavy frowns and hard stares indicate joy. Come, attempt a smile for me. It is done by turning up the corners of the lips, and showing your teeth.” She laughed brightly at him, till a reluctant smile settled on his face.

“It’s not the dancing that bothers me, but these dangling curtains of lace. I’ve got my cuffs red from hanging in my wine, and knocked over a dozen dishes at the table.”

“You are ripe to turn
sans-culottes, citoyen.
The elegancies of life are wasted on such as you.”

“You don’t approve of my new style?”

“The jacket,
oui;
the hanging lace curtains,
non.
If they cannot be managed with elegance, they are better discarded. And you don’t like my outfit either, I think?”

“I complimented you on it.”

“Yes, like a jealous father pretending he approves of the daughter’s bridegroom. Me, I dislike it too. My head itches from the powder, and I find my panniers as bothersome as your curtains. Tomorrow we put them in the waste basket where these bourgeois trappings belong.”

“An excellent idea. One other point and we shall be on cordial terms again. It is not done for a young girl to wag an older man’s chin, as you did Fox’s at dinner.”

“Non?”
she asked, surprised. “But you said nothing.”

“I am saying something now, at my first opportunity.”

“But I wagged your chin,
mon vieillard,
and you smiled. I keep track of those rare occasions when Degan ceases to frown, you see.”

“That’s different. I’m your cousin, and I am
not
an old man!”

“Why do you behave like one then?”

“I can’t help not being French.”

“Degan, you amaze me. Almost that sounds like an apology.”

“For my lack of animation, not my nationality.”

“C’est la même chose.”

“You’re supposed to be half English. Don’t—”

“Supposed
to be! Don’t let Papa hear you say so! To imply I am not legitimate would very much displease him.
Morbleu—
such a suggestion from
you!
I begin to wonder if I am not teaching that English blood of yours to circulate in French.”