Since the Surrender (16 page)

Why in God’s name had he proposed last night? He would never ascribe it to impulse: impulsive was the last thing he was; all of his decisions were reasoned. But then again, his reasoning was always swift and informed by instinct, and he was invariably right…and invariably obeyed.

Which was why he was quite surprised when he’d been rejected. Last night’s proposal could only have been his way of responding to instinct, but he didn’t know what this particular instinct was in service of. Solving the problem of saving Rosalind from herself? Resolving guilt surrounding an indiscretion that had haunted him for years? Or ensuring that she would be in his bed forever?

None of those things alone seemed quite right.

He sighed. She wanted to determine what she wanted. It seemed a thoroughly reasonable thing to want. Since in that moment he’d only, in truth, considered what he wanted. And why shouldn’t she want it, too? Again: he was generally so right.

And then listening to her, perversely, he wanted desperately for her to have whatever she wanted.

Which might not, of course, be him.

Which was not at all what he wanted.

Though her body seemed fairly certain it wanted him. And this could very well be the key to convincing her that he was what she wanted after all.

His body was quite, quite certain it wanted her. More than it wanted its next breath.

its next breath.

Above all he wanted her to be safe and happy forever. Which struck him as an extraordinarily selfless thing to want, and quite surprising, since it might very well mean he wouldn’t get what he wanted, and he generally did get what he wanted, because he made certain of it.

And thus he awakened with a hangover comprised of frustrated logic, thwarted lust, and a lingering disbelief that he’d issued a marriage proposal, for God’s sake.

But as promised, he’d sent word to Kinkade late last night asking if he might call upon him in the morning, because this was apparently what she truly wanted from him.

Kinkade had sent word back to him promptly—Kinkade always kept absurd hours—directing him to a pub on the outskirts of Covent Garden. Doubtless Kinkade intended to spend a day with an actress lodged above it, which would mean that all he had to do was tumble downstairs for a bit.

Chase’s head throbbed with contradictions and complexity and difficulty. These were, of course, his favorite things. Perversely, despite the disappointment and frustration, he had hadn’t felt more charged with purpose in years, and he went downstairs so early and sober that he startled the maids.

At breakfast he found a reply from his efficient sister Genevieve, apparently delivered by a frantic messenger.

Dear Chase,

Thank you for your typically effusive letter. Urgency a bit alarming, but only to me, as Mama is accustomed to alarming things from the men in the family. V. pleased to discover edifying yourself with art. The painting does sound hideous. I have never in my life heard of

Rubinetto and do not recall this particular painting being a part of the Montmorency collection, although they possess other respectable pictures. Please ask someone to translate his name into English for you, as I blush to do it in this letter. Do you already know? Are you teasing me? Is our cousin the vicar handsome?

This is very important. Do not come home until you know.

Much love, your sister,

Genevieve

Despite the fact that he’d been banished, Chase smiled. Of his sisters, Olivia was fiery and Genevieve gentle, but he sometimes suspected the fiery ones suffered the most, and that the gentle ones merely needed just the right gust of wind from life to become fiery. He worried about both of them.

Rubinetto, he knew, meant “cock.”

He poured nearly an urn of coffee down his gullet and finally got out the door.

He’d thought the fresh air would enliven his mind and spirits, but the air was as dense as a sweaty blanket, which did nothing for his mood. His clothing would likely be glued to him by the time he mood. His clothing would likely be glued to him by the time he reached Kinkade, and he wished he’d thought to bring a fresh shirt to change into before he called upon Rosalind.

He wanted to throw off the entire world like a sweaty blanket. Still, he walked. Swiftly, scarcely limping at all. But his Covent Garden destination took him once again past the ragged square outside the Montmorency Museum, where the day became much, much worse:

Because a puppet theater was erected in the square. He slowed, as one would, should one encounter a carriage accident with bodies strewn everywhere.

Punch wasn’t just having a go at Judy. As luck would have it, this was a more elaborate affair. On a stage, two marionettes were engaged in a spastic dance—their arms somehow linked, their legs kicking somewhat in unison, which he supposed indicated a talented puppeteer, otherwise they would have ended in a knotted heap of rattling limbs on the stage, but which didn’t matter in the least to him. That anyone would wish to be a puppeteer astounded him. He suppressed a primal shudder and began to turn to go back the way he’d come.

But then, by God, if he didn’t hear, in a pair of horrible puppety falsetto voices:

“And if you thought you’d never see

The end of Colin Eversea

Well come along with me, lads, come

along you’ll see

The pretty lad is mighty glad

That you were right—he’s free!

Everybody!

Oh, if you thought you’d never see—”

Obediently, everybody did indeed launch into song. Chase struggled not to clap his hands over his ears. He did pull his hat down a little more snugly.

For God’s sake. It never, never ended.

Granted, it was an insidiously infectious tune. While Colin was in prison and his release had seemed likely, Chase and his brothers had invented their own verses, mostly concerning his sexual prowess, his body odor, his intelligence. Things of that sort. He imagined performers throughout England found it a pity to waste a perfectly good melody simply because Colin hadn’t been hung by the neck until dead after all, as scheduled, and had carried on writing verses.

Chase wondered, in a moment of flailing horror, whether there would be numerous new iterations as Colin grew older. He could think of one now:

If you thought you’d never see

The glamorous Colin Eversea

Up to his shoulder in a cow—

Come along with me, boys! Come along

with me!

The crowd cheered and clapped their approval of the song, and the marionettes bowed and curtsied in their revolting loose-jointed way, batting wooden-lidded eyes, sweeping wooden arms across their wooden tums in bows.

He stopped short of stampeding away through the crowd; he did take two determined steps through it, hoping his height and breadth would inspire people to part for him. A hat had appeared and seemed to be traveling through hands, no doubt initiated from behind the puppet stage, and the clink of coins cheerfully volunteered joined mingled laughter and cheers.

People snugly wedged him.

He eyed the crowd like a battlefield to assess the best way to clear a path, and was contemplating bringing his walking stick down on the instep of the man next to him by way of beginning when the puppety voices began squeaking out another song. It felt as though they were dragging their puppety claw fingers down his spine.

He tossed a glance over his shoulder, unable to resist it. And discovered the song came with a gay little dance, more like a reel this time. Two puppets were approaching and retreating from each other on the stage.

“High diddle diddle

The cat and the fiddle

The cow jumped over the moon

The little dog laughed to see such a sight

And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

That silly child’s rhyme about intrigue in old Queen Bess’s court?

The masses certainly could be cheaply entertained. He tried again to move. He was still solidly wedged. He turned his shoulder, thinking he might begin to sidle, but the bulk of a gentleman seemed to magically spill into the space he’d created. A crescent moon, painted gold, suddenly dropped down over the stage, twisting on its wire, shining like a curved blade in the sun. Five silver stars followed—bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce—and then came the inevitable cow. This was a marionette, a big, bulky, soft-looking animal, and it was to jump over the crescent moon by whomever was jerking its strings. Chase was desperate to get away before a puppety dish and spoon joined the party.

With an effort of will he squeezed between two large women and a round man in a blue coat who were rooted like trees by the show and oblivious to the one person in the crowd pointing away from the stage. It was unworthy of him, but did it: he brought the stick down

—lightly, but warningly—inside the boot of a man standing there. The man shifted a very little.

And in this rugged fashion—wending, elbowing, employing his walking stick—he managed to reach the outskirts of the crowd when a second verse started up:

“High diddle diddle

“High diddle diddle

The cow’s in the middle

And the angel’s playing a tune

All the lords laugh

At the gels on their backs

All underneath the half-moon.”

Chase froze.

Very reluctantly, very slowly, he rotated back toward the puppet theater. The hair at the back of his neck prickled alertly. He pulled his hat farther down over his eyes to shield them from the sun and stared at the stage.

The rest of the crowd was smiling and clapping, delighted by this new verse.

The clapping finally died away and the clustered audience dispersed, trailing away one by one or in happy, cheaply entertained pairs, still laughing, some still singing. At last just he and marionettes remained in the square. He could clearly see the little puppet theater again from his distance of about fifteen feet.

The puppets remained on the stage, side by side as if in peculiar puppety solidarity against this solitary large and mortal human made of meat and bone gazing at them. Apart from a breeze that lifted the edge of the female puppet’s frock, they were entirely motionless, which meant they were being held motionless through the will of someone holding their strings—otherwise the breeze would have swayed their fragile limbs, too, and they would have dangled in a grisly way, like freshly hung felons. Behind those clunky wooden lids edged in bristly little lashes, two pairs of large, flat turquoise eyes…

Stared at him.

He studied the puppets, taking in the details to keep his flesh from crawling. The male puppet had a nose as formidable as an oar. Not quite the crescent moon that Punch’s chin and nose created as they curved up and down to meet each other; still, quite phallic, and quite a deliberate deformity. Not at all amusing, as far as he was concerned. Their complexions were smooth, with a matte luminosity, carved and polished in an exaggerated parody of human features

—long chins, huge eyes. Their faces were painted in brilliant colors: bulbous crimson cheeks and huge, pouting crimson lips, enormous turquoise eyes, each with a black pupil square center. The female puppet’s bright yellow hair was fashioned of something fine, perhaps silk thread, and wound up on her head in a style that his sister Genevieve would have approved of and would never have been able to achieve on her own.

Neither of the puppets blinked.

For a good thirty seconds Chase stared them down as though they were enemy spies. The peculiar prickling sensation at the back of his neck amplified. As if bristly little marionette eyelashes brushed against it.

Brrrrr.

He whirled on his heels and crunched off over the cobblestones the way he had come, thumping down his walking stick. He thought he could feel their wooden gaze on the back of his neck. could feel their wooden gaze on the back of his neck. The cow’s in the middle.

Just a bastardization of a nursery rhyme, surely. But he hadn’t any children, and he could not be expected to know the current verses. Cows are whimsical, he told himself. And ubiquitous. The cow had jumped over the moon, after all, in the first verse, a verse everyone knew. Unsurprising that it should do things in the second verse as well.

The angel’s playing her tune.

And angels…

Well, angels were simply everywhere and in everything, too. Fireplace carvings, cornices, hymns, altar cloths, stained glass windows.

Paintings. Brothels.

Underneath a half-moon.

There was indeed a half-moon in that painting.

All of those things were in that hideous painting at the Montmorency Museum. The one allegedly donated by Kinkade. The one Rosalind was fascinated by.

All the lords laugh at the gels on their backs.

The image struck him as sinister, though this could have everything to do with the fact that it was sung by puppets. The crowd clearly didn’t see it that way. But they weren’t viewing it through his particular lens.

through his particular lens.

Chase drew even with a portly man, who was buffing an apple against the front of a grayish shirt as he walked. He recognized him from the puppet crowd. The man stopped and slowly, deliberately, opened his jaws to guillotine the apple. Chase said, “They’re quite good, aren’t they?”

The man clapped his jaws shut with a start and looked up to find the tall Captain Eversea gazing down. He grinned disarmingly. Not the usual response to him, Chase reflected, but perhaps the puppets had put the man in a good mood.

The man jerked his thumb behind him, but declined to turn his head back toward the theater. “Them puppets? Dead right! Funny, ain’t they! D’yer ’ear the bit about Colin Eversea?” The man inhaled ominously—Chase reared back in preparation—and then came out with bellowing joyfulness: “Oh, if ye thought ye’d nivver see—”

“I. Heard. It!”

The man blinked in astonishment.

Chase cleared his throat; he hadn’t meant to bark. “That is, yes, I heard it,” he hurriedly added with what he hoped was convincing cheeriness, “‘La la la, everybody sing!’ I in fact stopped to watch the puppets because I heard the song. One of my favorite tunes.”