“Next, we’ll hear you’ve no staff but Gimlet,” the dowager marchioness warbled and wrung her hands. “How will you live without a cook or a maid? I won’t return, you know. I can’t be seen trundling one of Exmoor’s parlor maids back and forth in his carriage. That would only fuel more squalid retrenchment rumors.” She sniffed into a lacy bit of cotton lawn. “Do write, dear, for I shall miss you.”
“Don’t take on so,” Seelye said.
“Exmoor could see you restored to your rooms in Jermyn Street,” she turned to beseech her eldest. “Surely, you can.”
The marquess stared back at her, his first chin tucked into his second, and said nothing.
“No, he can’t,” Seelye answered for him. “I gave the nabob my word.”
“Shoddy of Percy to ask you,” Exmoor put in.
“He arranged it as a favor for a friend and I was happy to oblige.”
What Seelye failed to disclose was that Percy arranged it as a favor to him as well. In addition to saving the valet tax and wages, Seelye made a tidy sum from Percy’s connection over and above the monthly cost of his new lodgings and what he’d pre-paid on his Jermyn Street rooms. Thanks to Percy, he could clear his last few debts. Best of all, it was discreetly done, as were all of Percy’s dealings.
“Your circumstances alarm me dreadfully,” she said. “You hasten my end and make my final days fretful, I vow.”
“You’re as hale and lovely now, as you were twenty years ago, ma’am.” Seelye leaned down to kiss her cheek. “All your friends complain of it to me.”
“That is nothing but religious applications of fard nightly and pimpernel water with Unction de Maintenon.4 Disregard my complexion,” she said querulously. “Anxiety has devastated my internal organs and left me a husk.”
She wilted against the settee’s arm only to recoil from it.
Exmoor rolled his eyes and started to pace the room.
“See? You’re not only afflicting our mater’s vitals, but you’re causing me embarrassment, which I won’t have. Scotch all of the talk or I’ll be vexed.”
“There’s more?”
“My dear, your hair,” the dowager marchioness said and glanced sidelong at his head.
“My what?”
“Your hair, man, and demme if I don’t agree. Y’might say it’s outgrown your Brutus and bidding fair to become a Byron,” his older brother said with evident satisfaction at his quip.
“And your stocks are limp,” she said.
“My neckcloths are fine. I am fine. I’m doing—” he bit back the truth. “My temporary valet’s doing his best.”
“S’not good enough if you look disreputable. I say your Gimlet’s off to a dismal start.”
“Nevertheless, I’m determined to help him, Exmoor.”
“What? He helps you. That’s what servants do and we pay for. You’re not some latter-day Leveller5 crackpot, are you?” The marquess leveled a scowl at his brother. “Recall, the marquessate was created after the Restoration.”
“I am merely compassionate. My new man has an impairment and I won’t sack him so long as he makes an honest effort.”
“Is he a thief?” their mother asked.
“That’s neither honest nor an impairment, ma’am.” Seelye cast about for inspiration. “How shall I put this? He’s—”
“A what?” she cried, her green eyes round with dread.
Exmoor stopped pacing, both chins tucked, and barked, “Out with it, drat you.”
There came an irresistible impish impulse, to which Seelye succumbed. “He’s an opium eater, poor soul.”
“Good God, sack the man,” his brother cried. “Turn him off without a character.”
“I won’t. Others depend on him.”
“Who could possibly depend on an opium eater?” his brother demanded.
“A widowed mother and—” Seelye hesitated. “A sister.”
“Let ‘em work for a living. They’re not your responsibility,” his older brother said. “Always said you were too softhearted.”
Although Gimlet and his relatives didn’t exist, the marquess’ comment hit a nerve.
“Too softhearted? His mother’s consumptive and his sister’s gone blind making lace.”
“Exmoor, do something,” cried the dowager. “Say something. He’s become a social reformer and they’re always so unpopular.”
“Stop this or I’ll have you packed off to Bedlam along with your opium-crazed valet. How’s that, ma’am?” Pleased with himself, Exmoor planted an elbow on the mantle, only to flinch and check his sleeve for dust. “Dash it,” he said and slapped at the dirty fabric, “any plebe can keep a maid.”
“I won’t survive the shame,” their mother hiccuped before collapsing against the settee’s cushions.
Dust motes burst into the air.
“Unnatural boy, the squalor, the ignominy!” she said.
Seelye groaned.
“Take care,” she warned, Cassandra-like. “An undisputed top of the trees today can topple from those heights tomorrow.” And whispered, “Only consider Brummell.”
“I am more solvent every day, not less,” Seelye replied, “and I can still set the style.”
“‘Fraid not! That Byron fellow’s already perfected this, this,” the marquess stuttered and pointed with his chins at Seelye, “slovenly rig of yours. Didn’t he hobble about all wild-eyed, heathenish hair, limp linens and whatnot? Look where it’s landed him, infamous and skulking abroad. He is no one to emulate.”
“I look nothing like Byron. He was pudgy the last I heard,” Seelye said and spread his arms wide. “Whilst I am not.”
“He does look thin, Exmoor,” she fretted to her eldest. To Seelye, she asked, “Are you eating? Pray, tell me you keep a good cook.”
Seelye thought to fib again but shook his head.
“Oh, Exmoor, he’ll starve to death and be found in dirty linen, stripped of everything Gimlet can pawn. I cannot bear the thought.”
“His linens look clean enough. Just badly pressed,” the marquess told her.
“I’ll be fine,” Seelye said, without defending his stocks. They were too sore a subject to broach.
“As any fool knows, a man needing a rich wife keeps himself up,” Exmoor lectured him. “By the way, Bloomsbury’s full of bluestockings. No earthly use to you and your vaunted charm.”
“True, it’s not Mayfair or St. James,” Seelye said, “but for now, here I am.”
“Someone with a lovely dowry,” their mother mused, “a lovely, lovely dowry, that’s what you deserve, my dear. So, please don’t pay the tradesmen. Do, I beg, remember how important appearances are.”
“How could I ever forget?”
Seelye was left to contemplate appearances after his relatives fled his lodgings.
Before his remove to Gower Street, Seelye had accumulated as many encomiums as a nonpareil as Jane had accrued nasty nicknames as a debutante. He was an out and outer, bang up to the nines, slap up to the mark, complete to a shade, not to mention, up to every rig and row on all matters of masculine presentation. That, however, was under threat without Montret in residence.
Suffice it to say, Mrs. Carmody did not have a Belgian work ethic where his lordship’s stocks were concerned. Nor did she believe in starch, unlike his absent valet who had devout faith in the divine powers of rice powder.
Non-denominational about starch out of necessity, Seelye accepted the droopy neckcloths stoically when he received them from his short-term landlady. Some also returned scorched light tan in places from her too-hot iron. As a consequence, the color of his cravats evolved from Montret’s blinding white to slightly less so, and much less so. In weeks, most were a shade he thought of as ‘Carmody cream,’ and quite a few featured random, darker toasted patterns thanks to her indifference.
His lordship adjusted to discolorations in the way he adapted to his stocks’ limpness, with brazen ingenuity.
Rather than waste money on new stocks doomed to suffer the
same fate, he decided to make her desecrations the dernier cri. It appealed to his sense of the absurd to imagine valets in Mayfair sick with anxiety trying to replicate the mottled shade Mrs. Carmody achieved effortlessly through incompetence.
Given his reputation as a tastemaker, sagging ivory stocks did not topple Seelye from his pedestal. They did mystify aspirants of fashion who studied his style. He made certain of it. He dressed himself as if donning a uniform before battle, wearing either antique ivory or pale jonquil silk waistcoats to complement the color of his cravats. Most days, he strolled or rode a hired hack in Hyde Park at five o’clock sporting his unusual neckwear as a statement.
It wasn’t much of a risk but it enlivened his day a little. Uncertainty sharpened his senses in a welcome, familiar way. On the strut, he felt the prickle of danger because it took nerve to pull it off. The stakes were farcical perhaps, but his social life did hang in the balance.
The real test came at White’s. He didn’t bat an eye answering a gentleman’s comment about the unusual color of his stock.
With perfect sangfroid, he said, “There’s no point looking for this exquisite shade of Gris de fille de joie, sir.”
“Never heard of it,” the fellow admitted sheepishly.
“You might know it as ‘soiled dove gray’?” he suggested helpfully.
“It’s not gray precisely, is it?” the prosaic man said, studying it closely.
“Should hope not, part of its mystique,” he replied and lifted his chin to display it better. “Only the ignorant refer to it greige.”
“How d’you come by it, if I may ask?”
“It’s an awful bother,” he sighed extravagantly. “Nuns of the Magdalene Penitenti weave it in Flanders. To get any, I had to buy every ell right off the boat.”
“My man can only lay hands on plain white.”
“Tell you what, I’ll leave the next shipment to others. That is, if the good sisters export any more. French aristos fight tooth and nail over it, you know.”
And so it went till Saville Row was inundated with requests for cotton lawn in ‘Gris de fille de joie.’
Emboldened by this success, Seelye wondered why not knots? Each morning, he tied one stock as carefully as he could and that was that. This was the lesser of two evils. The fewer neckcloths he discarded as failures, the fewer opportunities he gave Mrs. Carmody to abuse them.
One curious gent sidled up, eyeing his cravat.
Seelye unsheathed his quizzing glass, paused for effect, and said with a lazy wave of his hand, “If you’re wondering, the knot is of my own invention. Deuced difficult to achieve the proper wilt. I call it” (another pause) “the Sleet Storm. A bit insouciant even in half dress, but then so am I.”
They chuckled together and he departed. Sauntering away, he felt the man’s gaze follow him.
He dispatched the doubters one by one with a cool head and steady quizzing glass. Enjoying the game, he gave his inner imp free reign to name each morning’s result. And he delighted in the minor stir he caused.
It never occurred to him that someone else might enjoy the jest as much as he.
Whilst lounging down Bond Street one day, it was his luck to be buttonholed by an anxious young dandy just as Lady Jane and her maid approached.
“Is that the Antithetical, Lord Seelye?” the aspirant asked. “Or the Languid? The pillory? Wait, I know, it’s the Sixes-and-sevens, ain’t it?”
Seelye noted the quiver of Lady Jane’s lips at the man’s rush of words. Memory of an inappropriate kiss distracted him momentarily. He also noted how the dandy stared hungrily at her, stopping short of drooling but only just.
“This feeble effort?” he asked to wrestle the fop’s attention back.
“It’s not the Noose—” the man resumed, “I see that knot all over Saint James now.”
“Hello, Lord Seelye,” Jane said.
“Lady Jane, good day,” he responded and tipped his hat before he introduced the dandy to her formally.
Hearing her full name, the other man’s appreciation blinked into startled recognition.
“La-Lady Jane, your servant, I’m sure,” he stuttered.
“Do you admire his lordship’s way with knots as much as I?” she asked the man, eyes twinkling.
The coxcomb blushed up to his pomaded locks to be acknowledged by the infamous beauty.
“Indeed I do, my lady, but he refuses to name it,” the toad-eater said in shy flirtation. “I don’t doubt he would reveal it if only you would ask.”
Jane’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“I am not well-versed in the manly art of the cravat, sir,” she said, “but even I recognize this unique achievement.”
The skin at the back of Seelye’s neck prickled. And he asked her, “You do?”
She turned to face him fully, all innocence. “Certainly, my lord. Is it not the Golden Goiter?”
Seelye’s sudden crack of laughter startled the other man and gratified the lady.
“None other,” he said and bowed. He would’ve complimented her discernment, but she was already walking away.
There was no denying the lady had wit.
Stodgy traditionalists—such as Clun, Percy and Ainsworth—did not adopt the Golden Goiter or appreciate the joke. They accused him of embarking on yet another quixotic wager and wished him well.
Thanks to Jane, Seelye flaunted his landlady’s ravages in good humor for the most part. But one consequence of retrenching sincerely annoyed him. He had no competent valet to trim his hair.
Chapter 9
In which is illustrated the meaning of Tempus Fugit.
Yet again, Mrs. Carmody deigned not to answer knocking at the front door. Seelye stomped downstairs.
Where, he would like to know, were the other damned residents while this racket went on? He flung the door open to find a startled footman on the stoop. He took no notice of the man’s livery.
“Milord, this is for you.” The servant offered him a sealed note. “I’m to wait.”
Seelye read it on the spot.
“Assure her ladyship, I’ll call on the hour,” he said and sent the servant on his way.
“Close tha’ door! I’m freezing my nose orf,” Mrs. Carmody yelled somewhere at the other end of the narrow, dark hallway.
He slammed the door shut, took the stairs two at a time, and entered his rooms so preoccupied that he called for Montret before recollecting with a sigh where his valet was, and was not.
“Retrenching,” he growled.
Seelye hated to do for oneself as best one can. He much preferred others do for him their best, for their best was always better, with the exception of Mrs. Carmody who should be charged with grievous bodily harm by means of hot iron and stock.
He dressed quickly, dragged a brush through his overgrown hair, and heard an alarming crackle. He looked in the mirror’s cracked glass to find his hair had flung itself into a halo of static frizz.
“Damnation!” he cried and pawed at his head ineffectually.
The coal fire in his sitting room dried the air to the point that he experienced painful shocks whenever he stalked across the threadbare rug in stockinged feet. Evidently, arid conditions also made his hair stand on end when finally attended to.
“What is the point of grooming,” he asked of no one, “if it leaves one’s hair a mess?”
He opened a tin and rubbed pomade through it.
That’s odd.
He sniffed. The volatile essence stung his eyes.
“Better yet, it reeks of wintergreen,” he said aloud. With eyes swimming, he read the tin’s lid: Porter’s Excellent Muscle Liniment.
“Good God.”
He stared helplessly at his fractured reflection. The unguent glued his hair into an oily semblance of order. With no more time to rectify his mistake, Seelye concluded his preparations and found himself standing on the pavement in the open air waiting for a hackney. His eyes watered prodigiously from the minty stench enveloping his head.
>
He snagged a passerby’s curious glance.
Never at a loss, he dipped the brim of his beaver slightly. The man bowed and sniffed again before walking on. Only then did Seelye realize his favorite curly beaver would emit essence of Porter’s every blasted time he doffed it.
When the hackney cab pulled up to its destination on Portman’s Square, Seelye paid the man and went to the door of Lady Abingdon’s residence.
A gentleman kept his hat and gloves in hand to show that his call would be brief. Thus, Seelye was shown into her ladyship’s first floor drawing room, holding his wintergreen-wafting beaver and York tan gloves. Politeness required brevity, but he hoped his great aunt would invite him to stay longer.
Seelye nodded to Miss Banke before approaching her ladyship to kiss her cheek in greeting. The dowager countess had thinned since his last visit.
Time was precious where it concerned Lady Abingdon’s last wish.
“What is your progress with Jane?” she asked without preamble.
“Not what I’d hoped.” He glanced over in Miss Banke’s direction. “Am I being indiscreet?”
“She’s entirely trustworthy.” Despite dark smudges, her ladyship’s green eyes danced. “And very earnest.”
“Oh dear, earnest,” he murmured sympathetically. He also noted her rougher voice and difficulty swallowing the barley water at hand.
“One must make allowances, though, for this is dreary work,” she said. “Now, what of Jane?”
“I’ve only succeeded in setting up her back,” he told her.
“Tempus Fugit, as Abingdon would say. Everyone will be back for Parliament after Easter and the Season will begin in earnest. There’s not a moment to lose,” her ladyship said. “Or do you come to admit defeat?”
“I do not,” he said.
“Nor will I.” She sniffed delicately to and fro, seeking the smell’s source. “What is that odor?”
“The stench of austerity, ma’am,” he said and put his hat and gloves on a table far away before sitting. “It reminds me of all I’ve sacrificed for principle recently.”
“Really? In what way?” her ladyship asked, looking intrigued.
“In a way most inconvenient to me but necessary to my self-esteem,” he replied. “But I’d rather talk about anything else. Even Jane.”
His Lordship's Last Wager Page 8
