Fair Fatality Page 21

  Twenty-three

  * * *

  Sir Phineas and Georgiana — each embroiled up to the eyebrows in tangled schemes — had failed to consider a certain very snaggy knot: Lady Easterling. Jaisy was not a damsel to sit idly by while Fate went about planting facers to all and sundry. Nor was she a damsel to be left at the post, try as Georgiana might to outjockey her. No sooner had the news of Miss Valentine’s abrupt dismissal been brought to Lady Easterling by Moffet, another of the staff with whom she was prone to gossip, than Jaisy had sought out her friend. When private speech proved impossible — the dowager duchess had invaded Sara’s mean little bedchamber, there to speed her packing with gruesome tales of females forced to earn their livings in various horrid ways, such as manufactories or coal pits, and a sidelight on the number of English females shipped across the Channel to work in Continental brothels, and a zestful description of a pauper asylum in Bethnal Green — Jaisy next repaired to Arthur’s room. That unchivalrous gentleman refused her admission, shouted crossly that he wished to see and speak to no one and quite ignored her promises of assistance. Undeterred, Jaisy unearthed inkwell, paper and quill, and slid voluminous and explicit instructions for the unjumbling of this dreadful coil under Arthur’s door. Then she returned to her own chamber and donned a carriage dress of corded muslin, a cottage hat and lilac satin shawl. Carlin was engaged to take her up beside him in his carriage this afternoon. So that his lordship need not become involved in the confusion which reigned this day in Blackwood House, she slipped out through the recessed pedimented door and awaited his arrival on the steps. She had not long to wait. Punctuality was among his lordship’s virtues.

  If Lord Carlin was surprised that Lady Easterling should choose to await his arrival on the doorstep, unprotected by a single footman, he made no sign — and in point of fact Lord Carlin was not especially surprised. As result of frequent exposure, Kit was growing inured to Jaisy’s highly irregular conduct. Often she exasperated him, but mingled with the exasperation was another emotion that he found difficult to define. Perhaps the Rutherford lack of stability was contagious. Lord Carlin could conceive no other explanation of why, when Lady Easterling was at her most outrageous, he wished primarily to smile at her antics.

  That Lady Easterling was in an outrageous frame of mind today was obvious; she looked like the cat that had been at the cream. Lord Carlin was very curious about what mischief was currently afoot. He could not be so ill-bred as to inquire, nor did he wish to encourage his companion’s larks. Lord Carlin put forth an exceptionable observation on the British goods that were piling up unsold in every port. Just days past the Morning Chronicle had reported that not a single entry for import or export had been made at the London Custom-House during the course of a full week, an event unprecedented in that establishment’s history.

  Jaisy was not interested in the wretched state of the economy, as explained to her so patiently by Lord Carlin, in goods that piled up unsold, or workers who were out of a place. It was all very sad, she realized, and it was very generous of his lordship to try and elevate her mind; but Jaisy thought it very silly to dwell upon misfortunes which one could not amend. Ills that one could mend were another matter; and scrambles that one had already unraveled were the most gratifying of all. Lady Easterling was all cock-a-hoop, and well deserved to be. If the weather was overcast, it was not actually raining, and thus qualified as a splendid day. Carlin had taken her up beside him in his vis-a-vis, a white-upholstered conveyance with copper springs and iron shafts. Having tidied away the twisted affairs of her friend Sara, Jaisy was free to enjoy without reservation the privilege of being seated beside London’s most eligible bachelor in his carriage, for all the world to see. With the air of a connoisseur, she studied the horse that drew this light conveyance. “Grand hocks and splendid shoulders! Forelegs well before him! A spanking turn-out!” she commented generously.

  By this evidence of her ladyship’s excellent spirits, his lordship was neither elated nor dismayed. He had become accustomed to her frank manner of speech, as well as to her unpredictability. Jaisy’s manners might lack polish, she might be a sad romp with a regrettably colloquial manner of expressing herself, but she was a sunny-tempered creature who would never bore a man to death. Furthermore, she was quite lovely, now that the dimples had reappeared in her cheeks, and the roguish twinkle in her huge blue eyes. That the return of her ladyship’s sunny mood and hoydenish eccentricities signified he need no longer dance attendance upon her in an attempt to persuade her toward those very ends did not occur to Lord Carlin, which is just as well, because had his memory not been so conveniently dilatory, his own spirits would have sunk.

  In excellent charity with one another, then, Lord Carlin and Lady Easterling embarked upon their carriage ride, Lord Carlin being so generous as to promise that Lady Easterling might tool the reins at some future date, and Jaisy professing herself most appreciative that his lordship should trust her with his bang-up bits of blood and bone. If Kit winced at her choice of phrase, it was inwardly; and his forebearance was rewarded by Lady Easterling’s assertion that he was a regular dash who turned out in prime style.

  During this exchange of compliments, Lord Carlin’s whiskey turned into the leafy byways of St. James’s Park, where once Henry VIII had demolished a leper colony to erect a palace in its place. James I had introduced mulberry trees into the park, and Charles II had added a canal running from the mulberry garden to Whitehall. “Lady Easterling,” added his lordship, “why is it that I suspect you are not paying the slightest attention to me?”

  “Jupiter!” Lady Easterling started so violently she almost tumbled off her seat. “You gave me a nasty turn! I was thinking of Georgiana, and that I was right to suspect her civility, because Georgiana usually ain’t! And now look what’s come of it. Jevon wished to offer Sara a slip on the shoulder, and I think it is probably a very good thing that she saw him buying a bonnet for his opera dancer in the Pantheon Bazaar, because I am not at all certain she would not have let him, so frequently is she getting cinders in her eye — not that Sara couldn’t do a great deal worse than Jevon, even if he does wish to marry a female of low repute. I do not mean to imply that Sara should place herself under a gentleman’s protection, of course, but there’s no denying she and Jevon would have suited very well, because they both have this habit of kissing everyone in sight. But Sara fancied Arthur, so it was not to be — which is also just as well, since Jevon’s interest is fixed elsewhere!” She turned her head to gaze pertly upon Lord Carlin. “Did you say something, sir?”

  Kit knew the futility of trying to stem Jaisy’s flow of words once she was in full spate, as currently she was, having interpreted her escort’s speechless condition as indicative of avid interest.

  “What a morning we have had!” Gustily, she sighed. “And all because Georgiana caught Arthur kissing Sara in the morning room. I warned Sara about this trysting, but she did not heed me. Georgiana flew right into a pelter, and it all came out — that Sara had been kissing Jevon as well, and Arthur previously.” She frowned. “Cinders! Georgiana didn’t believe it any more than I did! And it turns out that Sir Phineas wasn’t dangling after Sara because I had intimated to him that her nature was a trifle warm, but spying on her for Georgiana, which I must say wasn’t very sporting of him!”

  This Sara sounded to Lord Carlin like a female of very equivocal character, and one who had no business in any respectable household. Arthur Kingscote sounded scarcely more admirable. Yet Lady Blackwood had hired one as her companion, and intended to marry the other to her niece. Had not Lord Carlin been acquainted with the dowager duchess, this inhumanity would have passed belief. Since he was, it did not. Georgiana was not one to lightly change her mind.

  “Sara’s been turned off,” Jaisy continued. “Poor thing! I tried to speak with her, but Georgiana was being most uncivil, and wouldn’t allow me to get in a private word. And Arthur wouldn’t speak to me. Still, I’ll wager I’ve contrived to settle up h
is accounts creditably!”

  Settle up his accounts? Surely Lady Easterling did not mean that she had paid the scoundrel’s debts? That so exquisitely fetching a lady, albeit a rag-mannered one, should be forced to squander her fortune on a libidinous wastrel did surpass belief.

  “Good Gad!” responded Lady Easterling, having made the acquaintance of his lordship’s indignant conclusions. “I ain’t such a nodcock as to squander my blunt on a cawker like Arthur, even if I could, which I can’t, because my fortune is tied up. Easterling was used to say the ready flowed like water through my fingers, which is doubtless why he made it impossible for me to breach my capital. And though Easterling was a very downy one, it is all deuced inconvenient, which brings me to something I wish particularly to discuss with you.” Looking anxious, she laid her hand on his sleeve. “Would you mind so very much — Georgiana will do nothing for Arthur, not now — I should like to make him an allowance!”

  Lord Carlin eyed Jaisy’s clutching fingers and resigned himself to yet another irreparably creased sleeve. “An allowance?” he repeated blankly.

  “Out of my own money, naturally!” Apace with her anxiety, Lady Easterling’s grip tightened. “It is only fair! I had meant to take Sara into my household before she embarked upon this kissing spree, but now I clearly see that it will not serve! I would much rather make Arthur an allowance than take the chance of Sara kissing you!”

  Kit had a strong suspicion that there were ramifications of this conversation that he had failed to grasp. “Kissing me?” he echoed faintly.

  Clearly his lordship was aghast at the idea that he might be accosted by a female of such catholic tastes as Sara Valentine, and Lady Easterling made haste to ease his mind. “I knew you would not like it!” she soothed. “Don’t fret, you will not be reduced to such straits. Sara will have Arthur, though why she should want him I cannot imagine, but each to his own taste. I only hope that Arthur does not botch the business! I told him just how to go about it, but I did not know precisely how to get to Gretna Green.”

  “Gretna Green?” repeated Lord Carlin, in tones even more horrified.

  “Oh, yes!” Victim of no false modesty, Lady Easterling was delighted with her own inventiveness. “Ain’t it a nacky solution? Georgiana will be mad as fire but even she can’t force me to marry a gentleman who’s already married to someone else. And Sara will like an elopement very well, I’ll warrant; I would myself! Not that such a thing would do for someone so stiff-rumped — I mean, with such a strong sense of propriety! — as yourself.”

  Stiff-rumped, was he? In addition to being a coxcomb and a curst loose-screw? If nothing else, reflected Lord Carlin, association with Lady Easterling had fast taught him humility. “You speak in jest, I hope,” he said repressingly.

  Jaisy widened her big blue eyes. “Why, no! Why should you think I was hamming you? I do not scruple to tell you, sir, that I ain’t one to stand still and allow fate to mill me down! Sara and Arthur haven’t a ha’-porth of spirit between them. If I hadn’t taken a hand, we’d have all been brought to a standstill.” She frowned then, as Lord Carlin leaned forward to murmur instructions to his fascinated coachman. “What’s amiss?”

  That question Lord Carlin answered at great length, and in such terms as left no doubt that elopements were not undertakings of which a starched-up and stiff-rumped gentleman could approve. The kindest explanation his lordship could conceive of Jaisy’s appalling conduct was that, when he had shaken her till the teeth rattled in her head, he had also addled her brain.

  Jaisy responded to this stern denunciation as would any instinctive flirt, which detracts no whit from her sincerity: her huge eyes filled with tears. “Oh!” she breathed. “You have taken me in disgust, as Georgiana said you would! It makes me very sad! Because I want more than anything to please you, and I cannot bear that we should stand on bad terms!” A tear slid down her delicate cheek, trembled on the end of her dainty nose.

  Lord Carlin glanced first at his coachman’s rigid back, and then at Lady Easterling’s averted face. A second tear followed the first, and then a third, splashing unchecked on her ribbed muslin dress. Half-exasperated, half-ashamed and totally disarmed. Kit applied his handkerchief to her damp cheeks. “I don’t wish you to think poorly of me!” she sobbed.

  Fortunate it was for Lord Carlin that few people were abroad in the Green Park this day, or the newest on-dit to circulate among the West End clubs would be that he had callously reduced Lady Easterling to tears. Fair Fatality! He had named her well. Aloud, he said: “If you wish to please me, you will instantly cease this missishness. It is not at all seemly.”

  Lady Easterling lowered the handkerchief to regard his lordship with belligerence. “I vow there is no satisfying you!” she snapped. “First I am bold as brass, and now I am too coy! I wish you would make up your mind what it is you want before I am driven into an apoplexy!”

  Lord Carlin, face to face with opportunity, clutched at it. “What I don’t want is for you on my account to try and make yourself into a pattern-card of respectability.”

  “If that don’t beat all!” Lady Easterling twisted the handkerchief between her fingers, with results more ruinous even than those wrought on his sleeve. “There is no use in trying to bamboozle me into thinking you liked me as I was, because I ain’t that great a pea-goose! You needn’t try and be kind about it; I see exactly where the trouble lies. You will never like a madcap like myself, and I’m sure I cannot blame it in you, for you are a nonpareil! A regular Trojan!” She sniffled. “All of which goes to show that Easterling didn’t know what he was talking about! Even if one does throw one’s heart over, one’s horse don’t necessarily follow? And it is all most unfair, because all I ever wanted was that you should show me a little preference!”

  That he had already shown Lady Easterling a great deal more preference than exhibited to any other lady in all his life, those ladies including the immediate members of his family, did not occur to the guilt-stricken Kit. Since he could not deny that he had spoken unappreciatively of Lady Easterling, and not only on the occasion she had overheard, he sought to assuage her hurt by some other means. “You mustn’t pay any heed to what I think!” he protested, then went on to remind her ladyship that she deemed him a stiff-rumped, starched-up coxcomb, and a curst loose-screw.

  “That stung, did it? My wretched tongue!” Jaisy’s fingers flew to her mouth, as if she could stuff back into that reckless orifice words best left unsaid. “I beg you will forgive me! I did not mean it, but you had made me very angry. And I am very sorry if I have made you angry again, because truly I meant to do no such thing.”

  So often had Lady Easterling reiterated her desire to please him that Lord Carlin had begun to wonder if it might not be true. He retrieved his handkerchief from her lap and applied it to his damp brow, then glanced from Lady Easterling’s woebegone face to his coachman’s rigid back. “Jarvey, drive on!” he said to the latter, and to the former: “Abominable baggage! What am I to do with you?”

  Lady Easterling took no offense at being thus disrespectfully addressed; instead she interpreted his lordship’s exasperation as a sign that her current batch of transgressions had been erased from the slate. As with many another shriven sinner, her relief expressed itself in ebullience. “La, sir!” she responded, with a wicked twinkling glance. “I’d have thought you could reason that out for yourself!”

  Certainly Lord Carlin could do so; unlike various of his associates, Lord Carlin had not been shortchanged by the Almighty in regard to intellect. “We’ll talk about that later!” he said hastily. “Right now you must tell your aunt what you have told me.”

  “Jupiter!” gasped Jaisy, her eyes wide. “All of it, sir?”

  Lord Carlin contemplated Lady Blackwood’s reaction were she to be made privy to some of her niece’s more provocative remarks, and regretfully decided that a gentleman could not honorably induce spasms in even the most viper-tongued of harridans. “No, no! Only the part about Sara,” he
explained. Jaisy looked rebellious. “I thought you wished to please me,” he added craftily.

  “You are as bad as Easterling!” In a very truculent manner, Jaisy stuck out her lower lip. “He was used to say that though I could not be driven, I could be led! It is not at all elevating to be treated like a donkey with a carrot being dangled in front of its nose! Oh, very well, if nothing else will do — but I hope you realize that if Georgiana prevents Arthur from eloping with Sara, she will force him to marry me, and we will all three be miserable!” Carlin vouchsafed no response, being wholly occupied with contemplation of the deceased Lord Easterling’s most recently revealed words of wisdom regarding his mule-headed spouse. Unaware that the viscount was turning over in his mind the infinite guises in which a carrot might be offered a recalcitrant donkey, Jaisy pondered the quixotic workings of Fate. With victory within her grasp, she had been laid low, and by as neat a bit of cross-and-jostle work as she had ever seen.

  Twenty-four

  * * *

  In very little time, Lord Carlin and Lady Easterling arrived at Blackwood House. The journey had been accomplished with a maximum of speed and a minimum of conversation, that confined to Lady Easterling’s muttered commentary upon handy bunches of fives and cross-and-jostle work, and his lordship’s insistence upon following the honorable course. “Honor be damned!” snapped Lady Easterling. “I am sorry if you do not like it,” Lord Carlin said calmly, “but our duty is clear.”

  “I suppose you are correct,” sighed Jaisy. “Have you ever noticed that doing one’s duty is most often curst unpleasant?” And then the front door swung open, and they stepped into the entry hall.