Springtime Pleasures

by Sandra Schwab

  The only streams Charlie had seen in London had been the Thames and the Serpentine in Hyde Park. She had not detected anybody fishing in any of these waters, but the topic was worth a try. Didn’t gentlemen spend a lot of time in the country in the summer and autumn? They would be able to go fishing then, wouldn’t they?

  And so, when they first met in the course of the set, Charlie gave Lord Chanderley a sunny smile and asked, “Don’t you find fishing extremely exciting?” When she took the proffered hand, something like a tingle shot up her arm and she had to fight hard to keep the smile in place. His hand was large, and even through both their gloves she could feel the hardness of his palm.

  One-two—they stepped towards each other.

  Oh my! she thought, her breath hitching in her chest.

  With his fingers closed around hers, she could now feel their strength. And their size. Her hand felt positively dwarfed within his!

  Three-four—they stepped back.

  “Fishing?” His brows rose. In contrast to the rest of his hair, they were dark, almost black. And very bushy.

  One-two—and around, around in a circle.

  Heat radiated from his body. And a… scent. A very nice one. Very masculine, too. Indeed, he was a very masculine man, being so tall and, well, becoming.

  Very becoming.

  “Personally, I find catfish a bit of a nuisance,” Charlie said, her smile still firmly in place, despite the tingles that seemed to have taken up residence in the pit of her stomach. “Not only are most of them so monstrously big as to make it a real effort to drag them out of the water, but skinning them is rather tedious work, too.”

  He gave her a blank look. Perhaps he had never caught catfish before. She seemed to recall that Old Squire Nettles had imported them many, many years ago to Ardochlan, the village near St. Cuthbert’s. Therefore Charlie elaborated her point when she met Lord Chanderley again.

  “Cutting the skin beneath the head and then pulling it down, I mean. Tedious. And your hands stink.” She thought about this for a moment. “Perhaps not as a bad as scraping the scales off and getting them all over you, though. But breaking their backbone to get the innards out, now that I wholly detest! Truly, it makes me shudder just to think about it!” She gave a tiny shudder to prove her point, but also because it felt so very delicious when Lord Chanderley held her hand in his. She had not known that holding somebody’s hand could evoke such… such feelings. Overwhelming feelings. She wished they could dance the waltz so he would hold her hand all the time. But she had been told that young girls did not dance the waltz in London. It would be most improper—which was a gross unfairness, if she now thought about it.

  They went around and around each other again.

  “Well, better than eels, I suppose,” Charlie remarked somewhat absentmindedly because she was inwardly still smarting about the waltz. “Slimy, slippery things, eels. But they taste nice.” With a regretful pang, she let his hand go as she moved back in line. “Do you like eels?” she asked the lady standing next to her.

  She gave Charlie a confused look. “Ihls? Is that a new poet?”

  “A poet?” Charlie blinked. “No. It’s a fish.” She shook her head. My, but the people of London were a strange lot!

  ~*~

  Griffin climbed into his cousin’s carriage and flopped onto the seat opposite Boo. With a relieved groan, he stretched out his legs as far as the confined space allowed. “Oh, by gum! How’s a fellow to endure rounds and rounds of such damned overheated and overcrowded affairs?”

  Boo had the nerve to bellow a laugh. “It’s no laughing matter,” Griff said testily as the carriage jerked into motion. He frowned. “I don’t understand how you can stand to attend such monstrous events on a regular basis! All those giggling debutantes and chattering mamas!” Not to mention the gossipmongers, only waiting to get a bit between their teeth. “It’s enough to drive a man deranged!”

  Which only made his cousin laugh harder. “One ball, Griff! You’re this disgruntled after only one ball?”

  Griff threw his hat at him. “It was a damned circus! Did you see how those matrons ogled me?” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “As if I were bloody damn naked!”

  “Which only means that they consider you a piece of prime flesh.” Boo’s grin nearly split his face in half.

  “Bloody hell!”

  “For their daughters, that is.”

  “Gaggle-toothed, cheese-faced chits,” Griff growled. “Bah! I felt like a horse at Tattersall’s!” He narrowed his eyes. “I would have thought that most would steer clear of me, given… you know.”

  Boo stifled a yawn and then shrugged. “You shouldn’t mind people like Greykin or Mrs Wilson, who hasn’t got a kind word for anyone. You’re the heir to a jolly earldom. So if the mamas parade their daughters in front of potato-faced me, they will most certainly parade them in front of you as well, what with you having a much nicer countenance and being a viscount to boot.”

  “Bah!” Gloom settled over Griff like a black thundercloud. In the following days, weeks, months he would have to endure endless repetitions of this evening—encountering people of Mrs Wilson’s ilk, dancing (which surely must have been invented by the devil to torture hapless souls!), trading inane niceties with giggling chits, seeing other girls giggle and whisper behind their fans… He shuddered. “How can you stand it? All of it?”

  Boo gave a shrug. “I like dancing. So I go to balls and assemblies, where people will dance.”

  “Bah! It’s unnatural!”

  Boo laughed again.

  Griff considered taking off a shoe and throwing it at his cousin’s head.

  “Surely it was not all a bad evening,” Boo now said, meaningfully. “I did see you smile—lud! that must have shocked the other ladies exceedingly!—I did see you smile when you danced with one lady.”

  For a moment the vision of two very fine, green eyes teased Griff’s memory, and his lips curved. “Izzie’s new friend. She’s a funny little thing.”

  “I wouldn’t call her little, exactly.”

  Now it was Griff’s turn to laugh. “No, not exactly. I heard Whalebottom call her a giantess.”

  Boo snorted. “The oh-so Honourable Lord Walbottingham is a dwarf,” he said. “And a rather unpleasant, self-important little dwarf on top of that. Who gives a fig for what he says?”

  “Not I, certainly. But you have to admit that the way she grabbed that glass of lemonade was a tad hoydenish. Poor Izzie—she’d waited for the lemonade for so long!”

  “I offered to fetch her a new glass, but she declined and insisted I stay and keep her company.”

  The two men exchanged a glance.

  Boo shook his head. “Women!”

  “Pffft. Women!” Griff echoed.

  For a moment, they remained silent, each mulling over the mysteries of the other sex.

  “Her figure is rather boyish, too,” Griff remarked after a while.

  His cousin grunted.

  “Izzie’s friend. The giantess. She hasn’t got much…” Griff cupped his hands in front of his chest. “Must have the tiniest bosom in the whole of London.”

  Another grunt, which Griff interpreted as an invitation to continue his musings.

  “Must be strange—not having a nice handful to fondle.”

  “She could stuff her stays with woollen stockings.” Boo grinned.

  “Bah, woollen stockings!” But he couldn’t help laughing at the image Boo had conjured up. What was more, he still couldn’t shake off the memory of those fine green eyes that had sparkled at him from behind these ridiculous spectacles. It was true, the girl didn’t possess much in the way of sweets, yet she had a rather lovely smile.

  And she had befriended Izzie.

  And…

  And…

  His smile dimmed.

  Lord, she had looked so alive. Despite the horrid coiffure and the equally horrid spectacles, she had positively sparkled. Like a diamond.

  “A diamond of
the first water,” he murmured.

  “What? Didn’t hear you there.”

  Griff cleared his throat. “There was something about that girl, don’t you think so? She sparkled.”

  Boo stared at him as if he had suddenly grown a second head. “Sparkled?” he echoed.

  Griff nodded. “Like a diamond.” He cocked his head to the side. “Would you believe that during our dance she talked about gutting fish?” He hadn’t felt like a horse at Tattersall’s when he had danced with her. She hadn’t ogled him, and she hadn’t giggled either. Instead she had happily babbled on about catfish and eels and how to take them apart, and all the while she had sparkled.

  Something in his chest constricted.

  “Damn,” Boo said. “You are… You have… Damn. Griff.”

  She was not handsome, not in the traditional way. But there was an inner kind of beauty that made her shine and had made him feel drawn to her.

  “George.”

  “Hm?” He looked up, surprised at the use of his childhood name. “What is it?”

  “She talked about gutting fish?” Even in the dim light inside the carriage he could see that Boo wore the most peculiar look on his face.

  “Yes. Isn’t it most extraordinary?”

  Boo opened his mouth, then closed it again and, sighing, rubbed the back of his neck.

  “What? What is it?”

  An unaccustomed seriousness stole over Boo’s features. “You are supposed to find a wife, George.”

  Suddenly uncomfortable, Griff shifted his shoulder against the back of his seat. “Yes. You know that.”

  “Think of it: which young lady talks about gutting fish?” Boo asked, his tone very soft. “Your parents will expect your wife to talk about the latest fashion and watercolours and music and, if she is very adventurous, gardening. But not about gutting fish.” He bit his lip.

  Griff felt as if his cousin had plunged him into icy cold water. A large hand seemed to reach into his chest to mercilessly squeeze his heart to pulp.

  Yet Boo was far from finished. “And that name, Stanton? Izzie mentioned that the girl appears to be related to the Dolmores. Do you remember that monstrous scandal that erupted when we were still lads? Dolmore’s younger sister eloping to God-knows-where with an impoverished young artist? I’m almost positive that his name was Stanton.”

  Griff closed his eyes.

  “I wouldn’t have mentioned it, if I hadn’t seen how you… Damn it!” Boo’s frustrated sigh wafted through the carriage. “Griff, you looked at her as if she were the Fairy Queen herself, and you the poor mortal asshead. But, by Gad, it wouldn’t do. See, Lewdon has a painting hanging in the gallery of his abbey down in Devon, a classical nude, but a nude nonetheless. Lew’s father, the old goat, always boasted that he bought it because it shows Dolmore’s sister in all her glory and that the elopement was financed with his money. It is a good—a very good thing Lew is currently too busy with his classical manuscripts to be coming up to Town for the Season.”

  There was a pause.

  Griff opened his eyes again to find his cousin staring at him with an expression that looked awfully like pity.

  “Griff, Miss Stanton is not someone your parents would consider a suitable bride for you.”

  The ghastly thing was that Boo was right. Utterly and absolutely right. Griff’s stomach heaved, and bitterness gnawed at his insides. He wondered whether this was how an animal felt when it was caught in the ragged teeth of a trap.

  “You cannot court her,” Boo went on. “You know Lymfort. He would never countenance such a connection. Just now, when you talked about her, I saw how you—” An odd note had crept into his voice, and he had to clear his throat. “You must stay away from her. I am so sorry.”

  “No, no. Don’t be.” Griff felt as if he was cast in ice. Indeed, when he looked out of the window of the carriage at the houses rolling by, he was almost surprised that the pavement and the window-sills weren’t covered with snow. “You are right, of course. The parents would find her most unsuitable. She is… She is…”

  Not for me.

  She had sparkled, had shone like a beacon of light in the darkness, calling to him in some way he could not explain.

  But in the end, she was not for him.

  He had a duty to perform. A guilt to assuage.

  And so he would turn his back on her and find a girl more suited to become his viscountess.

  Chapter 4

  in which our heroine upholds

  the spirit of St. Cuthbert’s

  Miss Carlotta Stanton to Miss Emma-Louise Brockwin by Two-penny Post

  My dear Emma-Lee,

  I have had the most exciting evening & made a pleasant acquaintance, too. The Ball was as splendid as you can imagine, though the Room was very full—it was the most frightful crush! There were what seemed like legions of couples of Dancers. I spent the first half hour gaping until my Cousin complained to my Aunt that I looked like a fish or a dimwit. That was not very nicely done of her, was it?—I danced with a great many number of gentlemen & enjoyed myself immensely, but it seems they did not. I overheard 2 gentlemen later on & they remarked upon my figure in a rather disparaging manner. It appears your friend is not deemed a Beauty by the Beaux of Society. Yet my spirit was not crushed because I had made a most interesting acquaintance by then. Poor Lady Isabella sits in a wheeling chair & could not dance. She is dashingly nice & has invited me to a drive around the Park. I then saved her from having to drink a glass of lemonade as the ladies’ retiring room was on the first floor, which I call very discourteous.—Are there any rules I need to know about Invitations to Drives around the Park?

  Yours affectionally, C.

  ~*~

  Miss Emma-Louise Brockwin to Miss Carlotta Stanton by Two-penny Post, returned the same evening

  Thank you for your message, dear Charlie. I have only a moment before the post goes out so please excuse the shortness of this note.—I should hope your first Ball was as splendid as you ever wished for & I also hope that you did not Damage the two disparaging gentlemen. This is NOT DONE in London and w’d cause the most frightful Scandal! (Even if they deserved it.)—I am most curious to hear more about your new acquaintance. I c’d not find out about any rules about Invitations to Drives around the Park, but I w’d deem it best that you w’d not mention things like Removing Bloodstains from Delicate Fabrics, the Correct Way of Gutting Fish, or the Incident on our way south. You must remember that Lady Isabella is a Delicately Reared Young Lady!

  Yours very affectionally, E.-L. Brockwin

  P.S. I understand that it is Not Done in Polite Society to address the groom on the box seat, except for giving him directions. So you better not ask him about the horses!

  ~*~

  Gravel crunched under the wheels of the pretty landau as it rolled through Hyde Park on this sunny morning. Its two passengers had wrapped themselves in woollen pelisses and thick blankets so the two sides of the roof could be safely folded down in order to enable the young ladies to enjoy the feeble morning sunshine even at this most unfashionable early hour.

  Charlie, of course, didn’t know that it was a most unfashionable hour. Indeed, if truth to be told, she had not yet fully grasped the concept of fashionable and unfashionable time. The only thing she was aware of was that it had been ridiculously easy to slip out of the house as her aunt and cousin were still in bed, and that the Park was, for once, gloriously empty.

  No gazillions of people and horses milling around.

  For somebody who had spent the majority of her life in a small Scottish village, the hordes of London became rather fatiguing after a while—not that Charlie would have ever admitted this even to herself. Instead, she ascribed her cheerful mood to the lovely weather, the crisp spring air, the prettiness of the carriage (and in tip-top shape it was, too!), and the very nice company. Lady Isabella, she found, was a thoroughly sweet girl, even if she was somewhat ignorant in regard to the mechanisms of the family’s landau and to questi
ons like from where they got new wheels, whether the carriage had one of those new band brakes, and whether that was in any way effective.

  Charlie suspected that the young groom on the box seat could have answered her questions. But Emma-Lee had impressed upon her that it would be vastly improper to address the groom, hence Charlie hadn’t, though she badly wanted to. The ins and outs of London society still remained a bit of a mystery to her, whereas Emma-Lee, who did not even go to balls and other such lofty things, seemed to have a much better grasp on them. Charlie wondered whether this had anything to do with the knitting. Knitting formed the mind in a different way than embroidery did. Thus, Charlie’s mind was inquisitive and sharply piercing.

  At the moment it pierced the mystery surrounding Lady Isabella’s unfortunate affliction. “So you can walk, after all!” she said, eying the crutches that had been stuffed under Lady Isabella’s seat with interest. At the back of her mind she was somewhat guiltily aware that her aunt would have deemed such inquisitiveness highly improper. Apparently, gently bred ladies were not meant to ask questions. All they had to do was to smile prettily.

  But then Charlie didn’t possess Emma-Lee’s dimples, and her smile was probably only adequate. Besides, Aunt Dolmore was not here to chastise her. And just look at what had happened due to Perceval’s lack of inquisitiveness! The poor Grail King had to suffer for many more months, when just the merest mention of his illness could have cured him! Over-polite behaviour was definitely misplaced in situations such as this one.

  Lady Isabella blushed prettily. Charlie had to admit that she didn’t have much similarity with the Grail King and that her affliction probably could not be cured simply by talking about it. Yet surely it was the thought that counted, was it not?

  “I can still walk… a little,” Lady Isabella said haltingly and lowered her head to stare at her intertwined hands on her lap.

  Charlie squirmed a little on her seat. Perhaps her question had been too impertinent, after all. She had just taken a deep breath to apologise, when the other girl continued, “The bones in my legs have been… smashed. Most of them anyway. So even with the crutches there is much…” She licked her lips, then turned her head to stare at the trees where the first green had begun to show. “There is much pain. Most of the times.”