Poetic Justice, a Traditional Regency Romance (Regency Escapades)

by Alicia Rasley

"Pulton's, down by Printer's Alley. Look at the frontispiece."

  She opened the book to the first page. There, scrawled across it, was the name John Dryden. She knew a bit of disappointment, that he hadn't added some sentimental or provocative message above his signature. "Thank you, John. You might add the date there, you know."

  "Add the date? Why? You don't think—Jessica, that's not my hand."

  "You mean this is the other John Dryden's copy? The poet's? Oh!" She turned back to the signature and traced it with her finger. "He was a friend of Mrs. Behn, wasn't he? Perhaps she gave this to him." She paged through it, searching for the annotations that were the mark of an enthusiastic reader. "Look, he's marked this passage." Heat rose in her cheeks as she scanned the page. "And I can imagine why. My word." She closed the book, glancing back at her uncle with a laugh, glad John was intuitive enough not to ask her to read it aloud. "Thank you. This will be quite an addition to my collection. Not the Parham, I mean. I've started my own little library."

  "The Seton collection?"

  "Oh, I like that. The Seton collection. It's rather eclectic, right now, because I haven't decided what my specialty will be. Perhaps it should be women writers. I've got several works by Frenchwomen like Marie de Pisan and Madelaine De Scudery. Do you know of any collectors who focus on that area?"

  John's eyes narrowed as he considered the question. His remoteness was gone, along with any lingering tension from the confrontation with Mr. Wiley. Jessica bent her head to hide her smile and pretended to examine the book's binding. She was good at diverting him, at drawing him out. It took only a puzzle.

  "None that I know. That would give you an advantage. If you chose an area such as early Caxton works, you'd have to compete for your acquisitions, which drives the price up considerably. And, truth to tell, it won't take you long to get a comprehensive selection, with so few women writers getting into print. To supplement it, you might look for collections of letters, or private diaries, which wouldn't be printed. I can keep a watch for you, if you like." John frowned thoughtfully and started counting off likely authors on his fingers. "Hannah More—very recent, but that makes her first editions easy to locate."

  "Elizabeth Inchbald."

  "Anne Bradstreet, the American poet."

  "Suzanne Centlivre."

  "Aphra, of course. You might even find theatre promptbooks, since she came after the Great Fire. And, well, I might be able to locate with an odd poem or two by Queen Elizabeth—and they would be odd. She thought meter should submit to royal command."

  Jessica declared laughingly, "I'd settle for her signature on an official document! Queen Elizabeth!"

  They were so involved in planning the new Seton Collection of Continental and British Female Literature that Jessica almost forgot her uncle, sitting silent on the settee. Guiltily, she turned to him with a smile. "I'm sorry, Uncle. We must be boring you terribly."

  Uncle Emory shook his head and rose. "No, no. You young people go on and converse. I'll just go tell your aunt that the altercation is over and she can come out now." At the door he paused and looked back, and she waited for him to speak the thoughts that were clouding his eyes. But he only repeated, in that oddly indulgent tone, "You young people go on. I'll leave the door open."

  In the bustle of getting off to Vauxhall, Jessica gave little thought to her uncle's strange attitude. But when John got out of the carriage at the dock, she asked her aunt, "Is Uncle Emory ailing? He seemed so distracted when we left."

  Peering out the window, Aunt Martha gathered up her shawl and reticule. "Oh, it's just that Mr. Wiley. He has been taking Parham aside and whispering to him, and upsetting him. Your uncle is a congenial man, you know, and he doesn't like such goings-on. But it will all be over soon." She gave her niece's attire an assessing regard, as if Jessica were yet a naughty child, then nodded her approval. "What a pleasant notion, going to Vauxhall by boat! And it's a lovely night for it. Now you remember to thank Sir John specially for arranging this."

  Jessica agreed meekly to mind her manners, and dismissed her uncle's distraction from her mind as they journeyed to the dock. Their longboat was painted like a Venetian gondola and poled by an old man in a striped jersey and black hat with a red ribbon. "Apt, isn't it," John commented, "as we'll be seeing scenes from Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet."

  Even Aunt Martha enjoyed the short ride up the Thames, exclaiming, "How pretty!" when they rounded the bend to see the gardens all lit up with lanterns, like stars winking in the trees. On this "Italian night," the dock was covered with a gaily striped awning in Mediterranean colors, and porters dressed in bright Borgia-style doublet and hose leaped up to help the ladies out of the boat.

  "How do you say thank you in Italian?" Aunt Martha whispered to John when they were all securely ashore.

  "Just as you do in English." John tossed a half-crown to each porter, then smiled down at Lady Parham. "Grazie e buona sera will do very well."

  Aunt Martha repeated this to the porters, conscientiously trying to reproduce John's fluent pronunciation. They grinned and ducked their heads, one replying, "And bona sara to you, too, miladies."

  Jessica was pleased to see her aunt trying so hard to get into the fun of the evening, taking John's arm without a demur as they started down the Grand Walk and making no sharp comments about the couples who kept veering off into the shadows. She did, of course, remark, "Vauxhall is rather thin of company, with everyone off in the country," an odd enough observation considering the hundreds of people strolling about the grounds.

  But when she added, glancing about, "We needn't worry, need we, with Sir John here to protect us from the riffraff," Jessica wondered if her aunt was more anxious than she let on. She didn't get out much in company anymore, and disliked the dark.

  Rather to Jessica's surprise, John kept the stream of conversation steady until the strange amalgamation of Shakespeare and Handel began. She would not have thought him at ease with an older lady, something of a dragon of society. But then, Aunt Martha was hardly forbidding tonight, even in her inevitable black dress, and she even managed to say no more than once or twice that she hadn't been here since before Waterloo.

  There was something about Vauxhall that never failed to revive the spirit, some magic that made Jessica forget the artifice involved, rather as she chose to ignore the greasepaint and wigs on the actors pretending to be Shakespeare's creatures on the orchestra platform. While the footlights held the darkness at bay, casting a flickering illusion over the audience, it was easy to pretend that this was Verona or Venice, and that all the world was a stage in a starlit grove in a fragrant garden.

  And with John beside her, pouring out champagne (though Aunt Martha archly protested), smiling that wicked smile whenever an actor in the expurgated Merchant referred to the character Jessica, it was easy to pretend that the evening would last forever.

  Reality, however, encroached, in the unlikely guise of Damien Blake, who after what he termed an arduous search, entered their supper box. After a cursory greeting to her aunt and a nod to John, he sank down on his knees next to Jessica's chair. He was the very picture of a poet, his dark hair artistically disarranged, his cravat carefully casual, his eyes ardent.

  "Your uncle told me I would find you here."

  It was another indication that John's scheme was working. Uncle Emory wouldn't have directed Damien here if he wasn't looking with greater favor on his suit. Involuntarily Jessica glanced at John and found him regarding her with that ironic look she knew so well. But she hadn't time to speak to him, for Damien was pulling something from his pocket and declaiming.

  "I shouldn't have come tonight, except I could wait no longer to present you the meager sum of my endeavors in the wild."

  His flourishing presentation of the scroll of poems was marred only by Aunt Martha's remark, "You were in the wild, Damien? Oh, I thought you'd gone to Gloucestershire."

  Damien inclined his head slightly at this, then laid the scroll on Jessica's lap
. She thanked him, suppressing a worry that the picturesquely blotted ink on the cover would run off on her favorite silver gown. "How nice of you, Damien. And after you sent me that lovely sonnet too." John, she saw at a glance, had resumed his conversation with her aunt, and was ignoring Damien with every fibre of his being.

  "How could I do less!" Damien possessed himself of her hand, exclaiming over it, "After all, you are my very inspiration, my muse, my reason for writing! Every night I would gaze up at the moon and dream of your perfect face, my very own Luna."

  She wasn't sure she should be flattered to be called moon-faced, but she supposed she was being unromantic again. Still, a flush rose in her cheeks as she heard John murmur to her aunt, as if in response to a query,

  "Oh, I like best Biron's line from Love's Labour Lost—you know:

  'Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

  Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,

  Figures pedantical.'

  Particularly apt in these times of affectation and artifice."

  Aunt Martha was nodding as if she agreed completely. "You are right, Sir John. Affectation is a curse of the day. Damien, dear, do get up. Your valet will chide you for mussing your trousers."

  "That's true, Damien." Jessica detached her hand from his. "The farce is about to begin. You'd best get back to your box."

  "My box? You know me better than that, Jessica," he chided, taking the empty seat next to her. He glanced with some disdain around the box John had hired, with its elaborate plasterwork and a blithe maypole mural by Francis Haydon. "I am standing in the pit, with the rest of the working men."

  Once again Jessica's gaze flew to John's eyes, now she saw there a reflection of her own amusement. As the lights dimmed, she smiled at him, and sensed, as he smiled back, a slight lessening of tension in the straight line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders.

  The farce was a short scene from an Italian commedia delle' arte of the sort popularized by Grimaldi. Jessica couldn't enjoy the clown capering on the stage, for Damien was whispering some sort of nonsense in her ear, and she could just feel John's tension again, crackling across the yard or so that separated them. This is what he wanted, she told herself resentfully, for Damien's suit to be renewed and accepted, so that she could inherit the collection and take possession of the lost play. That must be what she wanted too.

  Irritably she shrugged, dislodging Damien's hand from her arm. To cap the ruin of the evening, she could hear her aunt's quiet weeping even over Damien's recitation of some love ode. Sighing, Jessica reached into her reticule and felt around the Aphra Behn book for a handkerchief.

  But John was quicker, handing Lady Parham his own handkerchief and taking her hand. Fortunately the clown's billowing costume brushed one of the footlights and caught on fire. He exited hurriedly, pursued by the properties manager, who had pulled down a heavy drapery and was beating on the flames. The show must be over.

  "I shall go." Damien rose, politely ignoring her weeping aunt. "I will call on you in the morning, Jessica, to see how you liked my verses."

  Distractedly, Jessica nodded. Aunt Martha had quieted now, and was dabbing at her eyes with some embarrassment. "I am sorry, Sir John. It's just the clown. He reminded me of Trevor. You remember, don't you, Jessica, how Trevor used to laugh at the clowns at the fair?"

  Jessica murmured something and patted her aunt's knee. It was inadequate, but then, everything was.

  Aunt Martha drew a quavering sigh and tried to smile at John. "It's the small things, you know, that remind me."

  "Oh, I know," John said unexpectedly. "I remember, after my father died, my mother could hardly abide the sight of strawberries. Poor Sophie. When she and my brother were just married, she prepared the most elaborate pie with the first strawberries, and she was so proud she presented it to Mother to cut after dinner. She didn't understand why Mother burst into tears and ran out of the room."

  "She must have loved your father very much," Aunt Martha said, smiling, though the tears still glistened in her eyes.

  "She did. And my father loved strawberries. He never would have run out on Sophie's artistry, you may be sure."

  "And you may be sure, Sir John," Aunt Martha said, "that I know exactly how kind you are being to an old lady. And you shouldn't be, not with a young lady so close at hand."

  "The young lady," Jessica said firmly, before John could say whatever it was that was causing that sardonic tilt to his mouth, "thinks it's time to get home. Too many late nights will age me fast."

  As they gathered up their belongings, her aunt said, "Do say we will do this again next week, Sir John. I would so enjoy it, and I know Jessica will too."

  John located her black shawl on the back of her chair and placed it on her shoulders. "Unfortunately, I must decline, Lady Parham. Tomorrow I will be occupied closing the library, and then I will be leaving town for a few days."

  Jessica shot him a sharp glance as they left the box. He has said nothing about leaving town before Damien arrived. Her suspicions were proved correct when he said coolly, "I think Jessica, at least, will be too occupied with her poetry reading to have time for more outings."

  Jealousy—that the result of the success of his scheme? Whatever it was, Jessica knew he would give her no time to debate it, and no time to untangle this latest coil.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.

  The Merchant of Venice, III, v

  When he returned to his flat the next evening, John found letters from his Weymouth agent and his younger brother requesting his return. Good, he thought, folding the letters away. Now that the library was locked up, and Wiley locked out, John needed an excuse to get away from town and away from the knot of emotions he'd gotten himself tied in. Far away in Dorset he could rest his weary mind and restore his tattered perspective.

  He called to Arnie to pack a valise, then sat down at his desk to send the necessary letters. On the third, after starting "Dear Jessica," he hesitated and decided not to list all the warnings he thought she might need to hear. She was grown, and could take care of herself. She'd been adroit enough, at least, in playing the card he had dealt her when he suggested this courtship pretense. Already her uncle was becoming amenable to alternatives to a most unequal marriage.

  Of course, that poet Blake was hardly one to negotiate the channel just opened for him. He probably wouldn't even notice the buoys marking his path. A spar applied to the side of his head might wake him up, but from his appearance, John doubted it. His eyes had that same moonstruck expression that distinguished the sainted Trevor, but Trevor at least had the excuse of being dead.

  Damien Blake was just dead to reality. He never noticed the world had changed when he was off writing his sonnets. Jessica's liveliness—her life—would be wasted on him.

  But that wasn't John's concern. He dashed off a quick note to say he would be back in a few days. Then he drew a savage line under his signature, and turned his mind to home.

  ***

  The Coronale was still docked at Weymouth, and John planned to sleep aboard. But his brother greeted this intention with incredulity. "Rubbish. Why would you sleep in a hammock, when you can have a perfectly good bed right here?"

  John rose from the table to pace across the tiny shop, repressing a shiver at the herbs hanging to dry in the window, the rope of garlic adorning the counter. "I've slept in a hammock most of my life. Besides, my cabin's as big as this room." And pleasanter, he almost added. But he closed his mouth tight over the words. Against all sense, his younger brother loved this odiferous place.

  "Well, I didn't mean you should sleep here, did I? I meant in the house. Sophie's expecting you, and the youngsters are speculating what you brought them from town." Dennis glanced down at the papers he kept rearranging, and added with careful neutrality, "Unless you're staying at the Keep, of course."

  "No. If you think it won't put Sophie out. I expect you'll give me our old room again."
They'd shared a room for ten years, there under the eaves of the old Tudor house on the edge of the village. Last year when John slept there, he'd found tacked to the wall the maps he'd drawn of the seven seas, back when they were only a vision to him. Sophie, bless her heart, knew how to decorate a room.

  "Least I can do, considering all you're doing for us." Dennis shuffled the papers again. "I didn't mean to ask you for this, you know. But Sophie insisted you wouldn't mind, even if the shop was meant to be yours."

  "Don't be a fool, Denny." John returned to the table, took his seat, held his hand out for the loan papers. He knew gratitude came hard to his brother, and didn't want to prolong the agony.

  They'd never gotten on, not in all their lives. John was three years older, and spent most of his youth building sailboats to take out on the bay. For companionship and carpentry he had the socially superior but temperamentally similar Michael Dane, son of the local lord. Dennis he mostly ignored.

  And by his twelfth birthday, John was sailing with the free-traders every moonless night.

  He could only imagine the rows his parents had over him, on those nights while he was unloading brandy and silk from France and Dennis lay unsleeping in the room under the eaves. Sometimes Denny would still be awake when John crawled in the window after dawn. He was always a worrier, the conscientious one, the dutiful son. John was the black sheep, but withal, their father's favorite.

  They both knew that, and both knew the injustice of it, that their father had always meant for John to take over the shop, though Dennis was the one who spent his childhood playing and then working behind the counter. He'd had to learn the medicinal formulas on his own, for his father refused to teach him. John hated the shop, hated the smells, the strings of herbs hanging over the cashbox, the diseased patrons, the confined space, hated the very idea of a shop. And only his avowal to close it down should he be unfortunate enough to inherit it forced his father, nearing death, to leave it to the more deserving son.