Percy sauntered to the bar and somehow dosed the runner’s ale. Even Seelye, who knew his intention, never saw how he did it.
The runner returned and downed the ale to be on his way. After thanking the landlord for his hospitality, he left. Two Horsemen followed hard on his heels.
Stoker had a purposeful, staccato stride. Or rather, a few hundred feet from the tavern he did. Farther along, his gait wobbled until he plunked himself down on an bench outside another public house. He shook his head woozily and rubbed his eyes.
Percy and Seelye sat on either side of him and greeted him in friendly fashion. Stoker looked vaguely right and left before subsiding against Seelye’s shoulder.
They hoisted the runner to his feet with so much urgency, his head flopped like a rag doll’s. Off his hat flew. But Seelye, being keenly alert, caught it one-handed and put it on.
They made an odd threesome: a stubby, bare-headed city man with feet dangling in air between an aristocratic gentleman and a scruffy, bearded boatman wearing clogs and an incongruously natty low beaver. All the while, Seelye and Percy carried on a jolly back-and-forth for the benefit of passersby.
They needn’t have bothered. Townspeople averted their eyes at the runner’s apparent inebriety and boatmen shrugged it off. If they suspected criminal mischief, they concluded it was none of their business.
They went to the easternmost wharf, where they bundled Stoker aboard a Reading-bound narrow boat whose skipper accepted the fare for their passenger no questions asked. He reminded Seelye of the estimable Mr. Plimpton. In fact, the two skippers were well acquainted, a further reassurance to Seelye who accepted the man’s pledge to treat Stoker well.
Being less trusting, Percy mentioned that their indisposed friend was a Bow Street officer who must not be impeded, should he wished to disembark.
They left him slumped astern in the skipper’s care and headed back to the Black Bear Inn.
“I hope this gives us a head start to Bristol.”
“If you’re concerned, it’d be easy to pack her off to Town from here,” Percy said.
So soon? No.
“I’d love to,” Seelye lied, “but I told her she can go to Bristol with—,” he hesitated, “Bibendum.”
Percy grinned to his canines, drat him.
“Isn’t much farther, where’s the harm?”
“The runner will likely head there himself when he’s able,” Percy pointed out.
“Or he might think Jane wants the bear at Athlingcourt. It’s not far from here either.”
“He could go there first and still catch you in Bristol, Seelye.”
“Then I’ll see the lady gets away safely the moment we dock,” he said. “I won’t allow Rostand’s hireling to catch her out.”
“Very well,” Percy said. “I’ll meet you at the chairman’s slip in the floating harbor the day after tomorrow.”
“How can I thank you for all you’ve done?”
“No need, you’re going to win me our wager,” his friend chortled.
“Am not,” Seelye said. “That’s why I wish to express my gratitude now. I won’t feel as bad when I disappoint you.”
“If you say so.” And with that, his sniggering friend departed.
Seelye picked up the victuals and walked to the Invictus. He looked forward to presenting Jane with his bounty.
By the time he reached the flyboat, it was almost midway in the flight. Coming downhill, he was awestruck by the sight of her standing serene on deck amidst the bustle.
In town, she dazzled the eye in her trove of diamonds, but here, she bowled one over without the optical tricks of gemstones or leaded crystal chandelier lustres. It dawned on him—albeit much too late—that the lady herself enraptured one’s senses. And he came alive at the sight of her.
He boarded jauntily, cloth sack slung over his shoulder. With a tilt of his head, he beckoned her to precede him into the cabin, which she did to the voluble disappointment of the neighboring boat’s crew.
The smell of fresh baked tarts made his mouth water. One by one, he laid out the parcels, unsure which were savory and which were sweet. He wanted to present her a perfect feast, one course at a time. Unfortunately, the first he untied was meant for last.
Before he could set it aside, she cried, “Oooh!” and helped herself to one of the cheesecakes topped with berry jam.
That didn’t upset him, the way she enjoyed it did. She threw her head back with eyes closed and hummed her delight. Worse, his body responded with its own growing and grossly improper display of appreciation. He sat down abruptly and tried not to think of tasting the trace of jam on her mouth. But all he could do was stare. Rapt.
Eventually, she became aware of the fraught silence and opened her eyes. She stopped chewing.
“You, woman, are a shameless snabble-cakes.”
“I told you I was hungry, Seelye,” she said through half-chewed cheese cake. “And they look so delicious.”
Her sibilance sent moist crumbs flying.
He glanced down at what splattered his shirt and let loose a gust of laughter. Her embarrassment and his own worsening predicament were absurd. Besides, laughter diverted him (a good thing), although it did nothing to blunt her effect on his lower body (a bad thing). Not to mention what her laughter did to another organ skipping and thumping in his chest with a will of its own: Drat it. Drat it. Drat it. Drat it. Drat it. Drat it.
The moment crackled between them. That is, until he tweaked her nose like a fourteen-year-old boy and busied himself unwrapping the rest of the packets.
The juvenile lapse mortified him but what else could he do?
Jane’s sensuous sighs over wedges of onion and asparagus tart and the fragrant slices of minced steak pie twisted him up like a rope. Worse, fate had suddenly encumbered him with the apparatus of a randy schoolboy.
What he himself had, he didn’t notice. He ate without tasting, too preoccupied with the impossible task of trying to dampen her effect on him. Freed from propriety and table manners, her uninhibited expressions of satisfaction worked like a windlass grinding gears to raise the paddle between his legs.
When she was finished, she gave one last, languorous sigh. “Oh, Seelye, that was perfection. I’m stuffed.”
“Don’t mention it, please,” he said and slid lower in his seat.
Her unfortunate word choice instantly brought to mind stuffing her in other ways and caused greater embarrassment under the table.
She dabbed her mouth, set aside her napkin, and shifted forward. This was the signal for a gentleman to leap up and pull out a lady’s chair. But he didn’t. He couldn’t very well stand up displaying tented trousers.
“Shall I leave you to your port?” she asked and gave him a quizzical look.
“No port on board.”
“We could talk then.”
“Not now,” he ground out.
“I suppose you’ll tell me about Maguilla when you’re ready,” she said quietly and stood on her own to leave the cabin.
He waited until he was presentable to join her on deck.
Plimpton dozed at the tiller. His boys and the other boat’s crew had their hands full opening and closing the paddles. Seelye rummaged in his kit bag by the crate for his journal and pencil.
“May I sketch you to pass the time, Jane?”
“Is there jam on my face?” she asked from where she sat in the bow. “Why else would you want to?”
He thought to answer her joke with one of his own but said, “Because it would make a lovely picture.”
Her bemused expression and the background fields lent a touch of the Renaissance to the composition. This was the image he wished to fix in memory, that of Jane looking directly at him, unaware of his regard. She shrugged a shoulder and shifted to offer her profile.
“Look this way, please.”
She turned back but kept her eyes averted to study the patchwork quilting of meadows and sprouting fields under cultivation.
He hum
med as he worked to delineate in small part her full-blown beauty. Much of it, he realized, was in the animation of her limpid eyes. By now, her face was second nature to him, having studied her at close quarters for days. He was able to capture the fleeting wistfulness he saw.
“Do you regret having me along?” she asked.
“Yes, I was an idiot,” he said without thinking and instantly regretted it. Looking up, he found the Ice Maiden.
“I’ll go if you’ll hire me a coach and tolerable abigail,” she said. “Is that what you want?”
He let her question hang in the air while he sharpened his pencil.
“I should,” he said. “But I don’t.”
He glanced up at her shyly. There she sat, her expression shifting from surprise to confusion, to suspicion, and finally, relief.
“What George wouldn’t give for a portrait of ‘Lady Jane, Stunned Speechless,’” he teased.
To which she teased, “And what I wouldn’t give for a deaf mute brother-in-law.”
“Quiet, you,” he chuckled. “I’m making your likeness and an open mouth will not flatter.”
He puzzled over her while his hand moved over the page. She chose to be impossible, but why? Why refuse every offer for years? Percy had supposed Jane was wearing the willow for someone.
Could it be? He did not like the idea but perhaps it was time to find out.
“How do you enjoy the Season so far, Jane?”
“Not at all. You?”
“I’m easily amused.”
He pondered the shape of her mouth, but captured her lower lips’ tenderness satisfactorily after she stopped frowning.
“If you take no pleasure in the Marriage Mart, Jane, why haven’t you accepted someone and left the field to other ladies? Rostand wasn’t the only earl seeking your hand.”
She peeked at him, her eyes veiled by lush, feathered lashes. It was a beguiling little look he managed to record for posterity.
“I had my reasons,” she said, “but it’s of no earthly interest to you.”
“Not so. For once your truculence intrigues me.”
“Leave it, Seelye.”
“Can’t. I must annoy, wheedle, and coax.”
“Wheedle away, I shall never tell you.”
She shifted away from him.
“Turn back, Jane, you may still ignore me.”
She grumbled but did as he directed. And Seelye did as she invited, wheedling to know more, asking the same question a dozen different ways, until Jane claimed to be tottering on the verge of madness.
“If I tell you, will you stop interrogating me?” she asked.
“I might.” To hide his triumph, he kept his eyes down and outlined the fields behind her.
If he had watercolors for the blue of her eyes and the dozen shades of green cast by shadows of bordering trees, he might at last relax with a fair likeness complete. Then he might admire her objectively, as one does a lovely portrait, without feeling pangs of yearning or regret.
“If you must know,” she said softly, “I fell in love and vowed to marry him and no one else.”
Her answer landed like a fist to his gut.
With the portrait incomplete, he closed the journal on his pencil with a clap.
“What happened to him? Too timid to come up to scratch?” he asked, giving her his undivided attention. “One would think he might screw up his courage in four years. Why pine for such a milquetoast?”
“He was no such thing,” she retorted. “I loved him.”
“How touching,” he said, furious with Jane when he should sympathize. “When did you two meet?”
“A long time ago.”
“Ah, in the prehistory known as your first Season?” he asked, angry at and envious of her milquetoast.
She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Not four years ago,” she said, “or even twice that.”
“You mean to say he stole your heart in the schoolroom? That, Jane, was despicable.”
“He was kind to me,” she whispered. “He said that I had pluck.”
“Why moon over a fellow who states the obvious?” he said before he grasped the full import of what she’d revealed. “So this unnamed clod pate is the root cause of your bad behavior ever since? He has been the sole obstacle between you and your future? Good God, Jane, I thought you cleverer than that.”
He longed to take her by the shoulders and ki—no, shake her till her rational faculties rattled back to order.
“He was wonderful to me,” she said defiantly.
“Was? Dead, one hopes,” he grumbled.
“Not at all.”
“Not even a little?” he huffed. “More’s the pity.”
“No, he’s simply—” she said eventually, “unavailable.”
With effort, Seelye gentled his tone, “At least eight years ago, eh? Doomed love’s a bit much for a child, don’t you think? Weren’t Romeo and Juliet a wizened fifteen before they perished in despair?”
“I was young, yes, but I knew even then.”
With more effort, he bit back a bilious retort and said, “I am sorry your constancy wasn’t rewarded.” He meant to leave it at that but found himself blurting, “Say, since he’s fully alive, why don’t I horsewhip him half to death for you? Wouldn’t you like that? I would.”
“You’re kind to offer,” she chortled, “but you could hardly do a proper job of it.”
“Is that so?” he sniffed. “I’ll have you know I can horsewhip any milquetoast of any size or stripe when sufficiently provoked.”
“Not this one,” she choked, “you’d only hurt yourself trying.”
How she struggled to maintain her composure, brave girl. She fought back the sobs, but her eyes swam with moisture.
“Please don’t cry, Jane, or I’ll have to break a vow and kill him fully.”
“You mustn’t do that. It’d be suicide,” she gasped.
“Oh, ye of little faith! I say he was a cad to lead you on and disappoint you. He deserves a good drubbing, that one,” he said. “Shall I cut him down to size with my rapier wit while I’m at it?”
“You wouldn’t find fault with him,” she choked out, “any more than he’d find fault with himself.”
“Conceited, is he?”
She howled and turned away. In time she calmed enough to say, “Perhaps a bit but the truth is he didn’t know I had feelings for him before he went off to war.”
“War? He should’ve known better. How old were you?”
She hid her face in her hands. “Eleven.”
“What?” he squawked. “At eleven, you’re meant to outgrow hopeless infatuations. Foolishness like that is just a stage.”
Bad enough he envied a man because Jane loved him, but this was insupportable. The insinuating toad had to have been one of George’s friends. Or a cousin. Cousins always ran tame in the duke’s household. But who could’ve impressed her—?
“Not that great, lumbering looby Ralph?” Seelye growled.
Her utter astonishment confirmed his guess.
Pompous Ralph Babcock, a second cousin with more hair than brains, strutted off to war and married overseas. Ralph had the Babcock looks and was dashing enough in a doltish sort of way but hardly a proper match for Jane.
“Jane, how could you have had a tendre for that witless hunk of cheese? Love isn’t just blind, it’s deaf, dumb, and as much a moron as Ralph,” he said, disgusted by her choice. “You and he would have never done. He’s much too conventional.”
“Aren’t I?”
He roared at that, hilarity making his voice ascend the scale. “Look around you! Bear. Boat. Canal,” he gasped, waving a hand at each. “You are many things, Jane, but not that. You might go through the motions, give the nod to propriety or use it like a bludgeon, but so far as I can tell, you are without precedent. You need a more venturesome counterpart—someone able to moderate your considerable force of personality without quashing it.”
His diatribe sobered her. And he regretted whatever
he’d said that made her dab at her eyes with her sleeve.
“You’ve worn the willow long enough for a man who never deserved you in the first place,” he said more gently. “You shall have better.”
“That’s kind of you to say, Seelye,” she replied, “but I think it’s impossible.”
Chapter 33
In which our heroine and hero revisit the past.
Over the course of their conversation, Jane’s mood teetered up and down. Her spirits plunged fearfully when Seelye tried to identify her romantic disappointment, only to be launched into high fidgets when she knew he had no earthly idea whom he disparaged as a witless hunk of cheese. But what goes up must come down again. Giddy amusement gave way to misgivings and ultimately to lowering self-reflection.
How mortifying! It never crossed Seelye’s mind that he was her beloved. He had been too old to notice her affection for him back then, and the possibility was too ridiculous to contemplate now.
But now, she understood why. At one-and-twenty, would she herself take seriously a young boy’s infatuation? No. She’d be kind and patient because it would pain her to discourage someone so vulnerable. She’d indulge him, let him follow her about, and assume he’d outgrow calf love. Just as Seelye did.
Now what?
She agreed with him on one point: to be happy, she must marry a venturesome counterpart. The rub was she could think of only one man who met that criterion and he wasn’t Ralph Babcock.
* * *
The narrow boat moored for the night outside Seend Cleeve.
Jane asked to join him on Bibendum’s moonlit walk, saying, “All I ate would sit too heavy on my stomach for sleep otherwise.”
Seelye agreed but said little, still disgusted with her for loving a dunderhead and with the dunderhead for breaking her heart.
Ralph Babcock? The man had the wits of a weevil and the spine of an earth worm.
In the human silence, Bibendum enjoyed night sounds as much as smells, perking his little ears and lifting his nose to partake the night air’s scents. The walk was uneventful, albeit productive for the bear.
His Lordship's Last Wager Page 28
