London Broil

by Linnet Moss

  “Do you like music, Phoebe?” she asked as Emily began to bring dishes and set them in the center of the table. Laura felt relieved that they would be passing the food around themselves rather than having it served to them by liveried footmen.

  “I play the piano a little,” answered Phoebe with shy smile. “I’m learning Pathétique and the Moonlight Sonata.” Although she was no child, her girlish voice and manner together with her small frame made her seem very young, especially compared to Nolly. Laura inwardly cringed at the thought of Nolly falling onto her like a tall, heavy wardrobe. On the other hand, she thought, his peculiar bedroom habits might be a compensation.

  Nolly fixed a fond gaze on Phoebe. “She loves Beethoven,” he said. “We’re looking out for a good piano; the one she has now is rubbish. And I found a little Continental place in Kensington with a regular pianist who plays Brahms, Schumann— very romantic indeed. The food is quite passable,” he added, though he sounded less enthusiastic about this.

  “Oh yes, Oliver is so good to me,” sighed Phoebe.

  Laura noticed that Rodney Belmont-Speck, who had been gazing at Phoebe with an unmistakable expression of longing, now turned a glowering eye on Nolly. “He’d do well not to conduct himself as anything other than a gentleman,” he growled.

  “Why, so I do,” said Nolly mildly. “The ancient ideals of our green and pleasant land are always uppermost in my mind.”

  “Oliver believes in everything old-fashioned,” said Phoebe happily.

  “God save little shops, china cups and virginity,” quoted Laura.

  She’d meant it to be ironic, but Phoebe looked at her as though she’d just announced the cure for cancer. “Oh, yes, that’s exactly how I feel,” she said. “Papa made Amelia and me take an abstinence pledge to save ourselves for our husbands, just like the Vestal Virgins of Rome.”

  Laura saw that Nolly was looking disconcerted, as though this was the first he’d heard of the abstinence pledge, and James was trying, with only partial success, to stifle a laugh. Rodney, meanwhile, had fixed Phoebe again with his burning, deep set eyes, which now held an approving and almost triumphant look.

  “The Vestals are so interesting,” said Laura. “But I wonder whether they were as innocent as everyone thinks. They kept a model phallus in their temple to use in rituals, you know. And just the other day I was reading in Plutarch’s Life of Numa that if one of them was guilty of a minor infraction, the Pontifex Maximus would chastise her, with a curtain between them for modesty’s sake.”

  Laura noticed that everyone at the table was staring at her. Phoebe looked crestfallen, and the Baron looked confused, while Nolly and Angela were beaming at her, and James was regarding her with a frankly speculative look on his face. Rodney was furious, his face flushing a deep red color.

  During this exchange, they had been passing the serving dishes around while Emily poured claret into each of the wine glasses. The first dish held slices of rare roast beef, the second baked potatoes with a curried cream cheese topping, and the third, overcooked green beans. Emily appeared at Laura’s right and set down a plate containing a mushroom omelette. Nolly caught her eye and winked. He must have had a word with the cook.

  “Miss Livingston,” said Rodney in his deep voice, “I see that you have failed to partake of our good English beef and that you have instead requested an omelette.” He spoke this last word with a sneer. “Am I to understand that you refuse to eat meat?”

  Laura sighed inwardly. She had been confronted like this many times. “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “May I ask your reasons?”

  Laura put down her fork and said calmly, “I am a vegetarian. I have not tasted either meat or fish for twenty years. I have good reasons, but they are not appropriate for discussion at the table. Now, I hope that all of you will enjoy your meal. Lord Belmont-Speck, before we came in, I believe you had some fascinating things to say about the merits of Cyclamen hederifolium for dry shade?”

  The Baron opened his mouth to speak, but Rodney cut him off. “It’s people like you who are undermining our way of life,” he said bitterly. “You and the Pakis and the wogs. And sick pervs, who ought to be beaten to a miserable jelly.” He glared at Nolly as he said this. There was a pause during which Laura stared blankly at Rodney, unable to form a response.

  The Baron coughed, and then said, “Laura, please excuse my son and heir. We occasionally have protesters on our land who disrupt the grouse shooting, and he takes it all to heart. Roddy, you owe my guest an apology,” he added in a surprisingly steely voice. “Sorry,” said Rodney sulkily. He looked as though he would have liked to storm out of the room. Then Nolly asked about a new restaurant in York, and the conversation flowed relatively smoothly after that, with very little input from Roddy.

  After the salad and cheese, Laura gratefully retired to her room to recover from the long day. Her chamber faced the front lawn of Belmont Hall, where earlier she had noticed sheep grazing in the green grass. She finished arranging her few clothes in the wardrobe and went to the ladies’ bath to brush her teeth and use the toilet, which she figured out how to flush by a process of trial and error. Then she changed into her stretchy pink pajamas. Like the Red Drawing Room and all the other rooms in the house, her bedroom was very chilly. There was a serious draft from the window, so she drew the curtains and switched on the bedside lamp. The bed, an antique four-poster, was so high that she had to make use of a little wooden step-stool beside the bed in order to climb into it. The bedding seemed damp and cold; she could only hope that sooner or later her body heat would warm it. She settled down to continue her reading of The Heart of Midlothian.

  About an hour later, she decided she wanted a different book and rose to retrieve her Kindle from her suitcase. The door handle turned and James came into the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. He was wearing pajamas and a wool flannel robe. He came straight to her and kissed her enthusiastically. “I’ve missed you, Livingston,” he said. “Want to play Vestals and Pontiffs?”

  “Only if you dress up like Julius Caesar, with one of those bronze breastplates that has nipples and sixpack abs. Oh, and one of those kilts of little leather strips with metal studs on them. Caesar was Pontifex Maximus, you know.” She giggled, thinking of James in a Caesar costume. “If you go to that much trouble, I’ll let you chastise me. But only through a curtain, mind you.”

  “Mmm. You could wear one of those virginal white robes.” His hands crept down to rub her behind and press her hips against his. “You’d have to bend over a cushioned footstool and pull up your robe to show your bottom, and I’d turn it all rosy for you.”

  “In your dreams, Whelan. Speaking of overbearing males, what is wrong with Roddy? Obviously he’s a racist, but there seems to be something happening between him and Phoebe.”

  With his hands still on her behind, he walked her closer to the bed. “Yes. Apparently Phoebe used to date Roddy and they broke up for some reason. Now he’s violently jealous.”

  “Is she really a virgin, or is this some kind of ploy to get Nolly to pop the question?”

  James laughed softly. “If you ask me, she’s for real, but she’s also dead set on becoming a countess. Nolly’s smitten, but he’ll get nowhere near her lady bits until the wedding vows are spoken. And even then, I doubt Phoebe’s the type to enjoy his particular… tastes. No, poor Nolly would be far happier with someone else, someone like you, as a matter of fact. Luckily for me, I have you and he doesn’t.”

  She pressed herself against him from head to toe, trying to absorb his warmth. In the process, she felt a delicious shiver of lust pass through the length of her body. It had a warming effect, but she was still chilled. He boosted her onto the bed and stood between her legs. “You’re cold.” He took off his robe and draped it around her shoulders as she put her arms in and pulled it about her. This was much better. His navy blue pajamas were thin, but had a sheen to them as though they were made of silk. As she embraced him, his warm hands mas
saged her, first her outer thighs in long, firm strokes; then his fingers skimmed along her inner thighs, summoning heat from the rest of her body to pool in the delicate tissue between her legs.

  “Lift your bum,” he said, and she braced her feet on the frame of the mattress and raised her pelvis so that he could step back and pull off her pajama bottoms. He laid hold of her hips, sliding her to the edge of the mattress and spreading her legs until her crotch was firmly in contact with the stiff flesh straining against his silky pajamas. He grinned at her. “Perfect, isn’t it? Now I know why they used to make beds this high.” And placing the index finger of his left hand on her breastbone, he gently but inexorably pressed her backwards onto the bed.

  22.

  The Nymph of Belmont Hall

  On Saturday morning she awoke early, but James and his body heat were already long gone from her bed, and when she went down to find some breakfast, dressed in corduroys and two sweaters, she discovered that the grouse party had left for their shoot. They would take luncheon on the moor, and the morning’s bag was to be carted back to Belmont Hall and converted into a sumptuous dinner while the shooters carried on until late afternoon. Angela found her in the Red Drawing Room, finishing some cold toast with jam and scrambled eggs, the only available non-meat choices left from the shooters’ breakfast.

  “They’ve all gone, haven’t they?” Laura asked.

  “Yes, even Gerald tore himself away from the garden long enough for a shoot. I wish it was walked up instead of driven grouse. Older men need the exercise, poor dears. It’s good for their circulation,” said Angela, and gave Laura a smile that could only be described as naughty. “I’ll show you the library,” she went on. “And I really must apologize for my son’s behavior last night.” Her face took on a look of exasperation as she recalled the scene at the dinner table. “I cannot imagine how I came to give birth to such a pratt as Roddy. Perhaps he was a changeling.”

  “He does seem very different from you and the Baron,” Laura said cautiously.

  “I have a maternal fondness for whatever is small and ugly. Roddy fails to meet the former criterion, but he certainly fulfills the latter. I sometimes fancy that he’s a genetic throwback. He is rather gorilla-like, don’t you agree?”

  They had now reached the library. Instead of answering the question truthfully, which she knew would be rude, Laura exclaimed over the beauty of the room. It was spacious, with a large fireplace. All four walls were clad in shelves of dark wood with intricate carvings. The books themselves would have been ornament enough, but over the mantel hung a large picture that took Laura’s breath away. It depicted a slender young woman with long reddish hair that flowed down her back. She was seated on a rocky shore before a green lagoon, with tide pools and massive outcroppings of sea-sculpted stone about her. The girl was nude, and absorbed in the contemplation of a large conch shell. The outer part of the shell was white and tan, but the lip and the interior were a rosy, vivid red, spread over a calcareous white background.

  “Lovely, isn’t she?” said Angela. “She’s a Waterhouse, acquired by Charles, the seventh Baron. When I first came here, I was as much in love with Charles as I was with his son. He was a war hero with the RAF. Flew a Spitfire during the Battle of Britain. But such a mild and gentle man. He saw how I felt, and we used to have wonderful talks right here, beside this fireplace, but no more than that. His heart was with his books, always. When I learned that you wanted to see the books, I knew I would like you.”

  “Thank you for letting me come here. This nymph, she was special to him. That’s why he hung the picture here, where he would see it every day from his desk,” said Laura.

  “Yes. I never learned the significance, but I always suspected that she resembled a girl he knew before the war, before he married. But let’s get you sorted. You said you’re interested in a group of books that he purchased in 1981?”

  “Yes, is there a catalogue of the collection?”

  “I’m afraid not, but he organized his books by the year, and if they were the same year, then alphabetically. The collection starts with the incunables over there—” she pointed to a few shelves full of largish books bound in heavy pigskin bindings with clasps, “—and continues on clockwise through the room, year by year.”

  “That ought to be good enough, since I have a list of all the books that were in the lots,” Laura said.

  “If you’d like a sandwich, pop into the kitchen, or you can wait until tea is served in the Red Drawing Room at half past three.”

  Laura began by locating and removing all the books in the Patterson lots from the shelves. She checked each one against her sale catalogue to make sure it was the same copy. The books in the lots belonged mainly to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, with a few stragglers; most were published well within Pope’s lifetime. The titles included French authors such as Voiture, La Fontaine and Perrault, but also essays by Addison and Steele, and some books on gardens. Very promising given Pope’s interests, she thought.

  She felt a slight tremor in her hand as she picked up the next volume. It was the second edition of Pope’s masterpiece, The Rape of the Lock, published in 1714. Her excitement increased when she saw the signature “Martha Blount” on the back flyleaf: at least one of the books had been owned by Pope’s dearest friend. But as far as she could tell, the book had no other marks; there was no proof that it had belonged to Pope. The poem told the story of a beautiful heroine named Belinda, who suffered the dastardly theft of a lock of hair, won by a lustful, scissors-wielding Baron. The mock-epic was enlivened by a host of guardian sylphs, gnomes and sprites attending the fair virgin Belinda, who was by no means innocent of sexual desire, and well aware of her own powers of attraction. She turned to the dedication, a letter addressed to Arabella Fermor, the model for Belinda:

  Madam, it will be in vain to deny that I have some value for this piece, since I dedicate it to you.

  Pope had written the poem at the request of a friend in order to heal a rift between two English Catholic families, a quarrel that resulted from the unauthorized snatching of a lustrous curl from Belle Fermor’s pretty head. The critics said that Pope had never met Arabella Fermor. Re-reading the dedication, Laura found this difficult to believe. Sighing happily, she checked the volume off her list. She worked methodically through several more volumes, searching for marginalia with little luck. Whoever had owned these books did not write in them, though there was another book, Eliza Haywood’s romantic novel Love in Excess, with “M. Blount” written on the flyleaf. Consulting her watch, she realized it was already past noon, but she could spare no time to eat until she had checked all the books. Now she had reached the least interesting volumes on the list, those published after the lifetimes of both Pope and “Patty,” the name for Martha used by her family and intimate friends. She opened the next book in the stack and read the title page: The Lyricks of Horace, comprising his odes, epodes, and secular ode, in English verse with the Latin text revised, and subjoined. London: Printed by T. Bensley for J. White, 1803. Some loose pages printed in a smaller format fell out of the back of the book; they obviously didn’t belong.

  Laura stilled, and her heart began to pound painfully within her chest as she looked at the beautiful engraving, clearly the work of John Pine, and the unmistakable, meticulous handwriting on the blank flyleaf, both recto and verso. Her mouth felt dry. At the top of the page he had written Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera; after this a series of letters and numbers was followed by textual notes and corrections. Pope was a great compiler of indexes and handwritten notes, and other such examples of notation systems were known from his surviving books. She spent the next hour carefully copying out everything he had written, and then fell into a reverie, gazing at the marks his hand had left.

  At half past three she went to the Red Drawing Room for tea, bringing the Lyricks, and shared her discovery with the Baroness, explaining that the missing pages from Pine’s Horace had somehow been slipped into the Bensley
edition. Angela was delighted. “I wonder if Charles suspected, or even knew about this,” she said. “He loved Pope, and I remember him reading The Rape of the Lock in the armchair by the fireplace, smoking his pipe. That poem was a particular favorite of his.” Laura felt ravenous but limited herself to a quick cup of tea and a half scone. She had to continue her work, as they were to leave tomorrow morning. She asked permission to take photographs of of the handwritten pages, to which the Baroness readily agreed. Around five o’clock, she gradually became aware that James was standing beside her as she finished up her notes. He was gazing up at the Waterhouse nymph. “Isn’t she beautiful?” said Laura. “I wish I could hang her in my study.”

  “Angela said I should ask you what you found,” he said, as she stood up to put her arms around him. “It must be good. I’ve never seen you smile like that before.”

  The banquet was held in the dining room, which had a long table laid for sixteen with a white tablecloth, china, and heavy silver candlesticks. The grouse shooters looked tired but excited, and had dressed in their best clothes. They were almost all men, though one hardy wife had joined her spouse on the moor. They made appreciative oohs and aahs as the plated grouse were brought to table, but Laura was not impressed. Each bird provided a meager amount of meat, and it was a greyish brown color, with a not unpleasant but gamey aroma. She and James sat across from Nolly, who was in disgrace. It seemed that he and Roddy had unluckily drawn places beside each other in the shooting line.

  “He had the infernal nerve to call me a dough boy,” said Nolly, “so what was I to do? I responded in kind.”

  “Nolly was pulling his punches at that point,” said James. “He merely mouthed the word ‘philistine.’”

  “But Roddy saw it, and called me a pervy fat bastard,” said Nolly. “Therefore I was forced to inform him that he is a grunting troglodyte.”

  “So he is,” agreed James, nodding his head for emphasis and extending his glass of claret in Nolly’s direction.