Minuet

by Joan Smith

  “To hell with Henry.”

  “Oh, I like those words. To hell with Henry! How angry they sound. But still he must fight the duel. Otherwise I am disgraced.”

  “You will be in disgrace if he does. It is best to keep this unsavory affair quiet, and trust Ashmore will have the good sense to do the same.”

  “Ah oui, he is the poltron, that one. Picking on an unprotected woman. He is a good friend of yours?”

  “No, he is not.”

  “No? Then there is no excuse for you not to fight! I thought he was your friend. Nothing else could excuse your lack of protecting my name.”

  “He was a friend before tonight. And I don’t by any means consider him fully to blame either. What was anyone to think, finding you alone at a do like this?”

  “He was to think me a strumpet. Je comprends. I should not have come. Let us go. I shall let Henri worry. It will serve him well for bringing me here. But citoyen, you must not tell Papa. He will only worry unduly.”

  “He will worry; not unduly.”

  “You must not tell him, please.”

  “He ought to be told how Henry behaves when he takes you out.”

  “Oh, Henri behaves well enough. It is only that he told me to stay with de Rasselin, but he is a terrible dancer, that one. How he lacère the toes. Henri had word of a smuggling ship going to France, and wished to confirm the details. There—there is Henri now,” she said, looking out the door. Before Degan could get a hand on her, she had darted out. By the time Degan reached them, Mérigot was making his bows, and thanking Degan for taking her home. Degan had a great deal to get off his chest, but when Sally turned to him with a smile and put her hand on his arm, he felt his ill humor fall away as if by magic.

  “We must look très déclassés, toi et moi,” she said with a merry smile. “I in my sheet, and you in that horrid thing. Why did you not have your domino pressed, Degan?”

  The toi et moi had an intimate sound to it that pleased him. She usually used the more formal vous. Her former crimes began to seem quite trivial. She was half forgiven before the door of the carriage was closed, and when she offered no objection to his sharing her banquette, but moved over to make room for him even before he had chosen a seat, he began to see she had been put upon badly by Mérigot.

  He was surprised, pleasantly so, when she then reached out and took his arm in the darkness. This was a style never before come across with the dull ladies who were his occasional partners. French manners, he assumed, and said nothing. He felt an urge to reach out and pat those fingers that did more than just lie there. They were holding his arm with a noticeable pressure.

  Her conversation was not in keeping with any mood of intimacy, however. “Henri has got positive word on a lugger that will take a band to France if Fox’s plan falls through,” she told him. “It is a Monsieur Fargé from Folkestone. One of the émigrés is in on the deal. Le baron de Persigny. You recall the man with the arm missing? It is how he meets expenses till he reclaims his estates. He will land them at Cap Gris. Do you think I should ask Papa to hire him, Degan?”

  “You father knows what’s best, Sally,” he said, making a move at last to pat the hand on his arm. He noticed she did not use the citoyen that always grated on his ear, nor did she appear to take any notice of the pat.

  “I am not at all sure,” she went on. “Mama said to keep after him, and myself, I think the Monsieur Renard takes too long. Time is short.”

  “Who is Monsieur—ah, you mean Fox. Charles Fox is generally held to be one of the cleverest men in the country. You can’t do better than to put yourself in Fox’s hands.”

  “If you say so, I will do it. I think you are très prudent, Degan. It is a time for caution. How did you get so prudent and stodgy? You are still young. What happened to all your joie de vivre?” she asked in a light, bantering way.

  His chest, which had begun to swell at the first remark, deflated rapidly. “I am not stodgy,” he said hastily.

  “Me, I think you are very old in your ways.”

  “Nonsense, I am an excellent bruiser, rider to hounds, and so on.”

  “But exactly! All the dull English sports you do. I knew it would be so. You wear dark coats, and drive a black carriage like an undertaker. Do you have a strumpet?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “I knew it. Why have you not? You are not even married. You need a chère amie to unstifle you. I arrange it for you.”

  “I can arrange it for myself!”

  “Good. Do it at once. You will be much more amusant if you take a lover. It is always so. The men with pretty lovers are more gay and more fun. You would not be at all bad if you had a woman to sharpen up your jackets and make you smile de temps en temps. So many glum frowns you carry. They must be very heavy.”

  Degan swallowed twice, shaking his head to be sure this conversation was really taking place. A young, unmarried lady was offering to procure a lover for him! “Sally, you mustn’t carry on like this in England! It will be misunderstood—”

  “Ah, morbleu, you turn moraliste on me again. In public I am the great prude, but entre nous, Degan, you are très ennuyeux. Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked as the carriage pulled up to the door of her father’s house.

  “I need it,” he said, in a weak voice.

  “Now remember, if Papa is still up, you tell him nothing. Already he hates poor Henri.”

  “Why does he let you run about with him then?”

  “Because he cannot stop me, chou!” she said, laughing and pinching his chin very familiarly as he helped her down from the carriage. This piece of impertinence met with not a single stricture, but only a surprised smile.

  Harlock had already retired, and Sally entertained a gentleman caller all alone in the saloon at an hour fast approaching midnight, without the gentleman so much as mentioning the fact. Rather than condemning this loose behavior, which would have sent him into the boughs had the gentleman been other than himself, he found it rather cozy. He did inquire, before leaving, when Miss Fawthrop was likely to arrive, but when he was told she was in bed with a cold, he did not see fit to name any of the other half dozen spinster relatives who could have filled the post equally well.

  When he went home not much later, it was his own conduct he questioned. He had become a bit dowdy of late. Not that he had any notion of setting himself up with a ladybird, but there was no reason he need be outfitted like a demmed tooth drawer, and walk around with a frown on his face. There was no frown on his face that night, but rather a bemused smile as he recalled their tête-à-tête.

  Sally too thought of it. She must be careful in England. Mama had told her the people here were very strict, and obviously it was true. She had been taken for a strumpet—such a pretty word really—only because she had been unescorted at the masquerade.

  She must listen more to Citoyen Degan. That dull old dog would steer her on a course that the highest stickler would approve. She thought she had surprised him when she pulled his chin in fun, but he hadn’t said anything, so that must be all right. He was not at all ugly when he smiled, as she had three times that evening made him do, but how one had to work to force a smile out of him! Perhaps she would tease him a little, and see if she could smarten him up.

  Chapter Seven

  Life at Berkeley Square soon fell into a pleasant routine. Sally would take breakfast with her father in his room, see him off to the House with a question as to the progress made on Mama’s rescue, then, reassured on that point, would arrange her own calendar. She lacked no escort for any outing she cared to undertake, despite Miss Fawthrop’s defection. Mérigot was frequently at her door, and when he was not, and also frequently when he was, Degan was there to accompany her.

  With Mérigot she went to Vauxhall Gardens, to tour the Tower and see the wild beasts at Exeter Exchange, to browse around the shops and sip café au lait at La Forge while chatting to the émigrés. With Degan she went to hear her father speak in the House of Lords, to see
St. Paul’s Cathedral, and to take tea with Lady Cork, whom she found très ennuyeuse. On her outings with Degan, she was required to make her own amusement, for after Notre Dame, she could not be impressed with the work of Monsieur Wren, and she could hear Papa speak any time.

  She pointed out, when he suggested that the many looks cast on them were due to her ensemble, that it was perhaps his own jacket of an uncompromising black and severe cut that caused the looks. When he next time wore with his Spartan jacket a flamboyant waistcoat of sprigged roses, she was quite sure it was his outfit and not her own that caused smiles.

  “You must decide whether you are an undertaker or a gentleman, Degan,” she quizzed. “The jacket of one and the waistcoat of the other is very bad taste, like a rosebud growing on a dead twig.”

  She carried out her intention of teasing him into style, and earned quite a few smiles over these days. “If you are going to be one of my beaux, you must let your hair grow a little longer,” she cautioned him.

  “I do not aspire to become one of your beaux,” he lied amiably. “Merely I mean to see you do not fritter away every hour of the day in idleness.”

  “If you take me to any more churches, Degan, I insist on a reward.”

  “And what would you like for a reward?”

  “I would like to hear you laugh sometime. Yes, if I agree to go to another church with you, you must learn by heart a very good joke to amuse me. I bet you don’t know one single joke.”

  Degan was sure he knew one, but after racking his brain for five minutes, he could not call one to mind, and replied laughing that her chapeau was the funniest joke he could think of. He found less occasion to quiz it when they began meeting replicas of it on every block. “The joke is on you, Degan,” she pointed out.

  Nor were the fashionable elite at all unkind to Sally. Several came to call, and invitations were received to such a multitude of assemblies that many had to be refused. A card to the ball of Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, however, was accepted as a matter of course. The only question in it was who was to accompany Sally. Mérigot had been asked because of her and did not like either to pass up the invitation or to go alone. Degan could not like to see her make an entrance to such a prestigious do with only a caper merchant to keep her in line, and even Harlock spoke of taking a peek in as Fox was sure to be there. It was finally decided that the party of four would go together. It would be the first time Mérigot had been seen in public with Lord Harlock.

  All on her own, Sally took another decision. For this occasion, she would wear the English mode. She had an elaborate gown made up in white with silver spangles and small panniers. She had her hair lightly sprinkled with powder so that it appeared at a glance to be gold, with just enough powder added to tone down the copper. A wig she now found too uncomfortable to wear, but in other respects she looked more English than usual.

  Harlock nodded with his customary approval and said, “You’ll be the prettiest girl there.”

  “Ravissante,” Henri decreed, looking her up and down critically in a way that made Degan long to punch him.

  She then looked to Degan for a compliment, thinking her new style would please this Englishman. She was surprised to see he was neither smiling nor appreciative. “Very nice,” he said, but uncertainly. She didn’t look like Sally in that dashed hair, and the panniers hid her lithe figure.

  “You don’t like it!” she charged. “I wore this outfit just for you.” This was untrue, of course, but she had come to know him well enough that she could play on his emotions quite at will.

  “I like it! It’s very nice,” he said with more conviction, but still no approval in his eyes.

  She was vexed enough with him that she said not a word on his own new style. He had got made up a new jacket in claret velvet, and had had a gaudy diamond removed from the vault and dusted off for the ball. White lace fell in elegant folds from his neck and wrists, bothering him considerably. Felt like a demmed woman. She took an arm of Mérigot and on the other side her father’s, to punish him.

  The guests at the ball were more appreciative than Lord Degan of the French beauty. She was much sought after, and took care that her card was full till dinnertime, that Degan see she was very popular. The duchess introduced her to Charles Fox, an ugly little man, very short and not at all elegant. She was surprised Georgiana should bother with him. But she soon discovered that his charm was in his talk, not his person. He was witty, and a gazetted flirt.

  “The duchess didn’t tell me you were a beauty,” he said waggishly. “Had I known, I would have been across the Channel myself and brought your mama home.”

  “When may I expect to see her, monsieur?” she asked.

  He blinked at the “monsieur,” but eccentricity never bothered this eccentric individual. “Very soon, I hope. I have discussed all that with your father. What I want to talk about now is you. I hear you are turning all the young fellows’ heads. Now if I were fifteen years younger, I’d show them all the way.”

  “One hears you show them all the way, despite your maturity,” she replied, with a smiling glance to the duchess.

  “Heh heh, sassy minx. I’m not all that old, you know.”

  “‘Mature’ was the word I used, monsieur. Il y a de la différence.” Her eyes implied she harbored no fondness for callow youth.

  Without further ado he grabbed her arm and dashed off for the next dance. At dinner, the Harlock party sat with the duchess and her close friends, where the flirtation between the Whig and the French lady continued, increasing in pace. Georgiana was too wise to show any jealousy; she smiled benignly on the pair of them. Degan too put on a show of enjoying it, but when he saw Sally reach across from her chair and pull Fox’s chin, he glared repressively.

  At the end of the meal he walked at a fast pace to her side. “Time to leave off flirting with Fox,” he said sternly.

  “You mean to flirt with me instead, Degan?”

  “You’re dressed like an Englishwoman tonight; try if you can act like one.”

  “I cannot be so dull, unless you give me a large sleeping draught,” she replied.

  “There is a wide margin between dullness and flirtation. One can be lively without being ill-behaved.”

  “Why do you not encroach on that wide margin, citoyen? It is not necessary to stay so severely on the side of dullness.”

  “I haven’t missed a single dance.”

  “Nor enjoyed one either, I think? You look much like a martyr with two broken legs, forced to hobble through the night. Your dashing jacket is no disguise, mon ami. Better you should wear sackcloth and ashes to indicate what a penance it is for you to have to be merry at a ball.”

  “I am having a marvelous time,” he insisted grimly.

  “Ah, Degan, I would dislike seeing you in agony, if all these heavy frowns and hard stares indicate joy. Come, attempt a smile for me. It is done by turning up the corners of the lips, and showing your teeth.” She laughed brightly at him, till a reluctant smile settled on his face.

  “It’s not the dancing that bothers me, but these dangling curtains of lace. I’ve got my cuffs red from hanging in my wine, and knocked over a dozen dishes at the table.”

  “You are ripe to turn sans-culottes, citoyen. The elegancies of life are wasted on such as you.”

  “You don’t approve of my new style?”

  “The jacket, oui; the hanging lace curtains, non. If they cannot be managed with elegance, they are better discarded. And you don’t like my outfit either, I think?”

  “I complimented you on it.”

  “Yes, like a jealous father pretending he approves of the daughter’s bridegroom. Me, I dislike it too. My head itches from the powder, and I find my panniers as bothersome as your curtains. Tomorrow we put them in the waste basket where these bourgeois trappings belong.”

  “An excellent idea. One other point and we shall be on cordial terms again. It is not done for a young girl to wag an older man’s chin, as you did Fox’s at din
ner.”

  “Non?” she asked, surprised. “But you said nothing.”

  “I am saying something now, at my first opportunity.”

  “But I wagged your chin, mon vieillard, and you smiled. I keep track of those rare occasions when Degan ceases to frown, you see.”

  “That’s different. I’m your cousin, and I am not an old man!”

  “Why do you behave like one then?”

  “I can’t help not being French.”

  “Degan, you amaze me. Almost that sounds like an apology.”

  “For my lack of animation, not my nationality.”

  “C’est la même chose.”

  “You’re supposed to be half English. Don’t—”

  “Supposed to be! Don’t let Papa hear you say so! To imply I am not legitimate would very much displease him. Morbleu—such a suggestion from you! I begin to wonder if I am not teaching that English blood of yours to circulate in French.”

  “You know perfectly well I didn’t mean to imply anything of that sort. I only wondered that you should appear so completely French when you’re half English.”

  “It is not the French blood only that makes me different from you people. When you have lived through a Terror, knowing any day your turn for the national razor may come up, you lose the fear of trivialities. What one says of you is unimportant, unless they say you are against the Revolution. That is the only crime in France. It changes the outlook. With your life in constant danger, you tend to live each day to its fullest, in case it is your last. Whether the hair is white or red, cela n’importe pas. Still, I don’t mean we care for nothing. Those things that are dear to one become more dear—family, loved ones, friends, and having some enjoyment from the experience of being alive. Moderation tends to lose out. A person with no passion in his life, nothing about which he is willing to make a fool of himself, is not alive completely. We say, in France, he is an Englishman,” she added with a quizzing smile. “Now why do you make me talk of such serious things at a ball? We shall speak of the music instead. It is very bad, non? Much better in France. Tears come to the eyes, to hear the “Marseillaise,” so stirring when it rises in the streets, with everyone removing his hat and singing in his loudest voice. There isn’t a dry eye anywhere. I think it is perhaps the music that makes the English appear half asleep. At home it is the style to dance nowadays to the lively Carmagnole.”