Fair Fatality Read online

  “And then,” announced her ladyship, “I shall set myself up in the very latest mode, and you shall come and be my companion, Sara, and you may have as many bonnets as you please!”

  Ruefully, Miss Valentine glanced at the bonnet on the seat beside her, a confection of large ribbon bows and ruchings and ostrich feathers perched atop the bandboxes and cosmetic case and picnic basket. In all else she had schooled herself to be the ideal servant, meek and uncomplaining, decorous and affable; bonnets were her one remaining frivolity and she indulged herself shamelessly. Were she to continue to indulge that frivolity, via the generous wage paid her by her employer, she had best make an effort to reform the harum-scarum manners of her employer’s scapegrace niece.

  “That would be very nice,” Sara said diplomatically, “but first we must bring you up to snuff, my pet. Jaisy, I do not know precisely how to phrase this, but —”

  “Give me the word with no bark on it!” invited Jaisy. “I shan’t take snuff!”

  Miss Valentine availed herself of a deep breath. “Though you were a belle in the country, you must not expect to have a similarly dazzling career as an acknowledged beauty in London. Things, my dear, are different in the metropolis.”

  Came a brief silence. Lady Easterling pondered her companion’s remarks, and doubted very much if gentlemen anywhere were so different as all that, which is not an unreasonable viewpoint for a damsel who had all her short life had innumerable admirers in tow. She thought that perhaps her beloved Sara had grown a trifle bacon-brained as result of prolonged exposure to the Tartarish dowager duchess. Or perhaps Sara was remembering that she, too, had been an accredited beauty in the country, but in London had failed to attract.

  “You are in a very teasing mood!” Jaisy responded generously. “I don’t regard it! If bosom bows cannot speak without roundaboutation, I don’t know who may. But you are all about in the head, Sara, if you fear I shan’t take; I’ll wager anything you wish that I’ll be top-of-the-trees. How Friday-faced you look! Are you wishing me to the devil? Silly widgeon! On my solemn word of honor, we shall rub along together very well!” The carriage hit yet another pothole. Lady Easterling neatly fielded Sara’s silly hat, then added in a burst of candor: “So long, that is, as you don’t take the addle-pated notion that you may prevent me from cutting a dash!”

  Two

  * * *

  Dusk had fallen upon the metropolis when Lady Blackwood’s traveling-carriage drew to a halt before a freestanding stone-fronted house located in a fashionable section of the metropolis. Built as were the majority of London townhouses. Blackwood House dominated a long strip of land running back from Queen Anne Street. On the foremost portion of the lot presided the residence itself; behind the house lay a brick-enclosed garden; in the very rear, fronting on Duchess Street and reached by a subsidiary road, stood a coach house and stables which could accommodate twelve horses and four coaches.

  Toward these accommodations the coachman proceeded, having disgorged his passengers in front of Blackwood House. As had the stables, the residence had benefited from the abilities of the brothers Adam, and was noted for its admirable portico and proud display of ornamental ironwork, its Venetian windows, the pedimented door set within a shallow arch. Beyond that pedimented doorway lay an entrance hall japanned in soft shades of slate and green with gilt decoration, embellished with Ionic columns. Beyond the entrance hall lay an abundance of polished wood adorned by the occasional carpet, and an enviable stone staircase.

  The door was opened to the ladies by no less august a personage than Lady Blackwood’s butler Thomas. His expression, as he gazed upon Miss Valentine, was indicative of great relief.

  “Lady Blackwood has been inquiring, miss,” Thomas offered in hushed tones, as he ushered the newcomers into the entrance hall, “as to whether you had yet returned. She is in the morning room. If I was to venture an opinion, miss, it would be that you attend her straight-away.”

  “On the fidgets, is she?” inquired Lady Easterling with bright interest, while Miss Valentine sighed and untied her frivolous bonnet strings. “I told you we wouldn’t be in the house above two minutes before Georgiana started cutting up stiff! We might as well go and confront the old gorgon in her den and get the worst over with. The morning room you said? Good God, man, what the devil have you done to your hand?”

  “Thomas, your hand!” echoed Sara. “You have hurt yourself! Oh, dear! You must have displeased Confucious. I am so sorry, Thomas — because if I had been here it would have never come about.”

  “Confucious?” queried Lady Easterling, as Thomas struggled with a most unprofessional impulse to state a frank and extremely unflattering opinion of his employer’s ill-tempered lap dog. “Is that horrid creature still alive? Jupiter! The brute must be in his dotage. I’ve always held he should have been drowned at birth, but Georgiana took a fancy to him, which just goes to show! Moreover, Sara, I see no reason for you to feel guilty because the beast bit someone — as I recall, Confucious always is biting someone! — because Georgiana herself sent you to fetch me. And if you had been here, it would’ve been you who was bitten, so obviously you have had a very narrow escape!” Having delivered herself of these eminently reasonable sentiments, Jaisy beamed upon her audience.

  That audience did not appear especially taken with her ladyship’s reasoning. Instead they exchanged glances that smacked very strongly of anticipated fellow-suffering. “Confucious does not snap at me,” Sara said, without overt gratification. “It is one of my tasks to feed the little brute.” Then Thomas suggested diffidently that the Dowager Duchess might have all their heads for washing, were she any longer left twiddling her thumbs.

  Thus abjured, the ladies passed through the green and slate entrance hall, up the grand stone staircase, to the first-floor morning room, pausing only long enough to shed bonnets and wraps. Blackwood House, as always, was blanketed by a profound hush. In return for the generous wage she paid, Lady Blackwood expected her domestic staff to court exhaustion on her behalf, and was prone to assign any idle-looking servant some highly distasteful task. Thomas himself had on more than one occasion been reduced to such ignominious chores as polishing the furniture with a combination of treacle, oil, small beer, sulphuric acid and ivory black. Consequently, the entire domestic hierarchy, from superior Thomas down to and including the least significant kitchen maid, dreaded to attract their mistress’s attention as much as they feared to excite her acidulous tongue.

  Lady Blackwood was enthroned, according to her custom, in her morning room, a chamber most notable for an entablature with a striking frieze of ox skulls married to walls decorated with beautiful relief panels of nymphs dancing. The furnishings included a gilt suite upholstered in Beauvais tapestry, very light frames on straight turned legs. Rare plants grew out of lacquered boxes. A candelabrum of four lights in pale blue-green and white was supported by porcelain elephants’ heads. Seated in a massive chair ornately carved and gilded with scrolled arms that terminated in eagles’ heads with sharp savage beaks, the dowager duchess clasped upon her lap a bundle of multicolored fur through which protruded a damp black nose and the scant remnants of what had once been an exceptionally fine set of viciously sharp teeth. Though time may have diminished Confucious’s ability to wreak mass mayhem among his foes, it had not similarly dulled his less amiable instincts. He pointed his nose at the doorway and snarled.

  In this manner interrupted in her self-appointed task of hand-feeding her beloved pet a repellant-looking mixture from a china bowl, Lady Blackwood also directed her attention to the interlopers. A thin, elegant lady in her mid-sixties, Lady Blackwood was every inch the aristocrat, from the top of her exquisitely coifed white head to the tip of her nimble toes. She was not beautiful, nor had she ever been; and like her ill-tempered pet, the dowager duchess had suffered the ravages of time.

  Eyes narrowed, Lady Blackwood glared in a distinctly inhospitable manner at her niece. That keen regard, Jaisy cheerfully returned. “Well, miss?�
�� snapped the dowager duchess. “Have you nothing to say to me?”

  “Certainly I do!” said Jaisy promptly, and seated herself without further ado — and without her aunt’s permission — in a delicate armchair, “though I can’t think how you knew! First I must thank you for having me with you in London, even though I do think you might have invited me before. But never mind that! Had you given me my Season when I came of age, I would not have married Easterling; and say what you will about Easterling, he was a great gun!”

  Unaccustomed to young ladies who dared address her disrespectfully, the dowager duchess scowled so severely that her eyebrows almost met atop her nose. Very well acquainted with the dowager’s methods of dealing with those hapless creatures who roused her displeasure, Sara caught her breath. “Don’t hover, you silly twit!” snapped Lady Blackwood, thus reminded of the presence of a hireling upon whom she might without reservation vent her wrath. Cowed, Sara withdrew to a far corner of the chamber. The dowager returned her attention to her niece. “As for you, my girl, I have no desire whatsoever to discuss Easterling.”

  “No, and I don’t know why you should!” retorted Jaisy, with unabated good cheer. “He didn’t like you above half, either! Said you was a — but never mind that! The fact is that I was in the devil of a pucker until your invite came. I was set on coming to London, but I wasn’t sure how the thing could be arranged — which brings to mind something that I particularly wished to say to you, aunt!”

  “Oh?” said the duchess, but in so ominous a tone that Sara, in her corner, shuddered.

  “Indeed!” responded Lady Easterling, archly. “I must tell you that the arrangements made for our journey here were not at all what I am accustomed to. The inn where we paused for refreshment was a very shabby place, and no matter what Sara may say to the contrary, I’ll wager the landlord was in league with highwaymen. We would probably have been waylaid en route had I not made known my suspicions — because the landlord knew we were on our guard, and therefore his accomplices dared not waylay us!”

  A colossal ruin indeed was the dowager duchess’s face, and on those raddled features now was an expression of the utmost disfavor. “Poppycock!” she said.

  Promptly, Lady Easterling demonstrated not only her sublime disregard of divergent viewpoints, but the remarkably one-track quality of her thoughts. “And it is a very good thing,” she added severely, “that I did warn off the scoundrel, because your coachman would doubtless have delivered us right up! You are pulling a long face, aunt; I assure you the man is quite cowhanded! At times I truly thought he was wishful of overturning us in a ditch — but now I see that was a cork-brained notion, because much as you may disapprove of me, it would avail you nothing if I broke my neck!” Having absolved her aunt of malice aforethought, Jaisy smiled. “I am not complaining, mind!”

  The dowager duchess — who had sat so motionless during these artless confidences that her lap dog had taken umbrage, as result of which he had been abruptly deposited on the floor — at length stirred. “I am truly sorry to have discommodated you, Jaisy,” she uttered scathingly.

  To sarcasm, also, Lady Easterling was indifferent. “Are you, by Jove?” she inquired, blue eyes opened wide. “If that don’t beat all! I don’t mind admitting I didn’t expect you would be so agreeable; as I remember you was in the habit of delivering sharp set-downs! Which just goes to show that one shouldn’t count one’s eggs before they’re hatched! Now you will understand why I have decided to set up my own stables. I daresay if I ask him Jevon will put me in the way of something slap.”

  “Something slap?” echoed the dowager duchess blankly.

  “A bit of blood, an elegant tit!” Jaisy helpfully supplied. “You know, sweet goers! Easterling taught me to tool the ribbons in prime style, so you needn’t fret!”

  “Tool the ribbons?” the dowager repeated, in tones indicating an opinion that only in the very nick of time had Lord Easterling succumbed to a putrid sore throat. “Not another word, I beg!”

  “No?” Lady Easterling cocked her lovely head. “Why not?”

  “I believe, Jaisy,” Sara cautiously offered, “that your aunt does not think it would be appropriate for you to set up your own stable.”

  “Hah!” Lady Blackwood irritably shifted position in her chair. “Was that what the chit was nattering on about? ‘Something slap,’ indeed! How dare you bring the stable into my morning room, miss? I am very displeased with you — and with you as well, Sara, because I expressly charged you to check my niece’s starts, and you have disobeyed. This is how you repay my kindness! I suppose you think it was to enjoy a holiday that I sent you to fetch Jaisy! Well, you shall have a holiday when I decide you deserve one, and not a moment before!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Sara meekly, and bent to pick up Confucious, who was worrying her skirts.

  “Nor need you think your brother will go behind my back,” the dowager continued rather spitefully. “Jevon will not disoblige me so long as I hold the purse strings. He is to attend the soirée that I have arranged in your honor some days hence. Quite frankly, Jaisy, it must be your object to speedily re-wed.”

  “Oh, yes!” Jaisy agreed serenely. “I have resolved to wed London’s most eligible bachelor.”

  “Carlin?” The dowager duchess elevated her brows. “How came you to hear of Carlin, pray? That rascal Jevon will have mentioned him. It has always puzzled me how those two came to be friends, so disparate are they in nature — but that friendship will avail you nothing, miss! Take my advice and put Carlin out of your mind, for he is the highest of sticklers and very much above your touch.” She paused, as if inviting comment. When none was forthcoming, she rose.

  “Sara will tell you, Jaisy,” the dowager added, almost cordially, “that it is never the least use disputing with me, for I always have the best of it! Just remember that we shall deal well enough together so long as you do not try my civility too high.” On this excellent piece of good advice, she strode majestically from the room.

  Briefly, silence reigned. Then Jaisy stirred. “By Jove!” she uttered, exhibiting excellent good spirits for a young lady whose aspirations had been squelched so recently by the dowager’s heavy hand, “that was the hardest wheedle I’ve ever had to cut! Dashed if I know why you allow Georgiana to treat you so shabby, when you was once a regular out-and-outer, up to all the rigs — but that’s neither here nor there! I knew that if I was to fly into a pelter, Georgiana would blame you, and so I took all she said in good part, even though I wished to make a great piece of work of it.”

  Confucious, roused from sleep by Lady Easterling’s indignant voice, raised his head and growled. Hastily, Miss Valentine restrained the dog. Quickly, she squelched the unchristian impulse to allow the beast to savage the newest addition to her already bursting budget of woes. Having ceased to snarl, Confucious commenced panting, to the detriment of Sara’s dove-gray dress. “Thank you, Jaisy, for your sacrifice!” she said, a trifle sardonically.

  “Pooh! ‘Twas nothing!” On Jaisy’s incomparable features appeared an expression which inspired Sara with foreboding.

  Nor did Jaisy dispel the misgivings suffered by the lady whose reluctant task it was to make of her a silk purse. “So my aunt Georgiana thinks I may not cast my net so high as Carlin?” she inquired. “I think my aunt Georgiana must have windmills in her head!”

  Three

  * * *

  Unlike his sister Jaisy, Jevon Rutherford appreciated the viper-tongued Dowager Duchess of Blackwood, although he suspected he might feel differently were he obliged to dwell under the hen’s — or harpy’s — foot. As it was, as Georgiana’s heir, Jevon was obliged to make obeisance. Fortunately, Jevon had a large sense of the ridiculous. This enviable attribute, coupled as it was in Jevon’s nature with unflagging good humor and a very thick skin, equipped him admirably to deal with his overbearing relative. Too, Jevon Rutherford was as handsome as Lady Easterling was beautiful, and long accustomed to wheedling ladies of all ages and descrip
tions into allowing him his head.

  Despite all his amorous vagaries, and his habit of doing what he pleased, Jevon was neither petulant nor spoiled. Wed to his bedazzling physical appearance — gleaming golden curls and twinkling blue eyes set within indescribably beguiling features that were rendered further fascinating by a disarming smile; a physique that though of only medium height was nicely fashioned withal, with no need of padding to flesh out shoulders or calf — was a tolerant turn of mind and a rather surprising practicality. Though as heir to the Dowager Duchess of Blackwood, Jevon could have borrowed against very great expectations, he instead chose to live within his means, which required the exercise of various economies, for Jevon’s papa had been rather less sharp-sighted, and consequently had bequeathed his son a mere competence. With good humor unabated by even this tragic blow, Jevon staked no more at play than he could afford, and refrained from engaging in the absurd wagers so beloved of his cronies, and in general contrived to be beforehand with the world. Furthermore, such was Jevon’s charm that his friends did not take umbrage at his rueful tightfistedness. And if Jevon Rutherford was a great deal less circumspect as regarded the ladies, having had under his careless protection an awesome procession of fair barques of frailty, he was only human, after all. As a matter of record, the ladies who favored Jevon Rutherford wreaked no havoc with his slender resources, for when he frankly admitted he could not afford to lavish expensive baubles upon his incognitas, the ladies immediately nobly resolved to give their all for love.

  Such, then, was the quality of Jevon Rutherford’s existence on a certain April evening in the year 1816. He had that day engaged in the pursuits customary to a gentleman of ample leisure, if slender resource: He had enjoyed colloquies with his tailor and bootmaker, during which he had perfected the creases in his pristine cravat; he had sauntered up St. James’s Street, exhibited himself in White’s bay window, Gentleman Jackson’s Bond Street boxing saloon and at Hyde Park Corner in Tattersall’s. After examining the latest acquisitions at Tatt’s, and engaging with his cronies in desultorily witty conversation on a great many diverse topics — the recent arrival of the Elgin Marbles from Greece; the lamentable condition of the economy as a result of the recently concluded war; the shocking conduct of the exiled Princess of Wales, who on last report had, whilst in Greece, posed for her portrait as the repentant Magdalen, during which sittings she had exhibited a great deal of her person, and not the least remorse — Jevon returned to his lodgings, and a light repast of cold chicken and champagne, before donning evening attire and setting out for Queen Anne Street.