Authors: Bachelors Fare
Sir Malcolm’s various adventures had engendered in him no jadedness, and no lack of the ability to derive amusement from the situations in which he found himself. He took a closer look at Miss Bagshot, who had just delivered so sharp—and so obviously reluctant—a setdown. Her pelisse was shabby, her bonnet out of date, her expression glum. “Come out of the mops! I am not going to offer you a slip on the shoulder, you absurd child.”
Melly’s big brown eyes flew to his face. “You ain’t?”
“Certainly not! At least not on such short acquaintance. But you have not told me where you were going when I encountered you.”
“Bless my soul!” Melly clapped a glove, which had not benefited from exposure to her cherry tart, to her mouth. “I clean forgot! My aunt will be as cross as crabs, not that it signifies, because she almost always is!
I was going to the chandeler’s shop for a half-ounce of coffee and a quartern of sugar, and it slipped my mind altogether, which just goes to show I’m every bit as bird-witted as Aunt Hel claims.” She looked around her, puzzled. “And I don’t even know where we are!”
“Never mind, I do,” soothed Sir Malcolm, who had paid more attention than his companion to the direction in which they strolled. “There is a shop just around the corner where you may execute your aunt’s commissions—if you still wish to do so.”
Bird-like Melly cocked her pretty head. “I never
did
wish to do so, but I wanted to get out of that blasted showroom. Now Aunt He! will probably never let me out again because I have been gone so long. I daresay it don’t sound so terrible to you, but you ain’t penned up as if you was in jail.”
“Poor Melly.” Sir Malcolm grasped both her hands. “When you return you will simply tell your aunt that you lost your way—or I shall tell her so! You were lost and fortunately encountered me, and I returned you safely to your aunt, who will be excessively relieved that you escaped grave peril.”
Miss Bagshot was not so certain that Madame le Best would be the least bit grateful for the return of a scapegrace niece, but she was not inclined to quibble over so minor a point. “That’s all well and good!” she responded bluntly. “So long as you remember that I do
not
intend to form a lasting passion for you, sir!”
Never before had Sir Malcolm encountered a damsel so adverse to forming a lasting passion for himself. It was rather a pity, he reflected, as he studied the curve of her merry mouth. “So be it. We shall be two fugitives from justice this afternoon, and have all manner of adventures while our jailers’ backs are turned. And I shall not presume upon our friendship. How does that sound to you?”
Melly was somewhat disappointed that Sir Malcolm had not responded with just a little argument to her rebuff—not that she would have altered her position, but it would have been gratifying to be admired by so discerning a gentleman, far as he might be above her touch. “It’s a bargain!” She giggled. “What will we do?”
“First we will go and get my carriage, and then I will show you London. After that, we shall see.” Miss Bagshot having expressed wholehearted approval of Sir Malcolm’s plan of action, they resumed their progress down the street, Sir Malcolm enlivening their perambulations with the more diverting details of his travels from Lisbon to Toulouse, and Miss Bagshot responding with an account of the arrival in Madame le Best’s shop of an emissary of Bow Street, which in retrospect she thought good fun.
Miss Bagshot’s opinion of Bow Street might have altered somewhat, had she happened to glance behind her. Trailing down the street in her wake, skulking behind lampposts and lurking in doorways, was none other than Samson Puddiphat.
Chapter Eleven
Behind the rosy bricks of Davenant House lay a garden. No ordinary garden this, as might be expected of any realm where Lord Davenham’s imagination ruled. Despite the limitations imposed on his endeavors by available space, his lordship had transformed a lily pond flanked with perennial flower borders into an irregularly shaped lake fed by a stream issuing from a grotto in the Elysian Fields. Romantic graveled pathways wound through those erstwhile fields, picturesque vistas enhanced by weeping willows from China and tulip-poplars from America, as well as a stone Colossus, a miniature bridge, temple, and old mill. Rhododendrons, magnolias, camellias, and laburnum added color to the shrubberies. Set artistically amongst these delights were fruit trees in terracotta jardinières.
Lady Davenham evinced no delight for the lovely vistas spread out before her. Her expression, as she trod along one of the graveled pathways, was not that of a lady whose thoughts held any appreciation of either beauty or romance. The flyaway Davenant brows slanted downward; the lovely lips were tight. Not even one curl escaped its severe confines this day to nestle on her brow. In summation, Lady Davenham had very much the aspect of someone whose temper had been sorely strained.
Nor was Lady Davenham’s mood improved by her first glimpse of her spouse, on his knees, grubbing contentedly in his flowerbed. Nearby, Nimrod oversaw the proceedings from within a wicker basket. The hound saw Thea, and snarled. Lord Davenham glanced up, and smiled.
“Hullo, my dear!” said he. “Have you come to keep me company? I am tending to my flowerbeds, as you see.”
This was no time to uselessly wish that his lordship might someday be equally eager to tend to cultivation of a different order, Lady Davenham reminded herself; or to indulge in highly improper speculations upon dalliance as conducted in a potting shed. Ignoring Nimrod’s sharply expressed disapproval, she moved closer to Vivien. “Bachelor’s fare!” she said.
Why was Thea in a temper? Puzzled, Lord Davenham glanced from his flowerbeds to his wife. “No, no, my dear! Heartsease and candytuft. Low-growing perennials. I do not think there
is
a flower called bachelor’s fare.” He grasped a big-bellied copper watering pot.
Though she was ordinarily tolerant of her husband’s love for growing things, Lady Davenham was this day in no mood for a discussion thereof. Frowning even more severely, she yanked away the watering pot. “Vivien, I am quite in a temper!” she explained.
“Oh?” Lord Davenham’s own temper was not in the best frame, and not without good reason; as result of which he chose to be perverse. “Can it be that you do not
like
low-growing perennials?”
“The devil with perennials!” snapped Lady Davenham. “Vivien, it is most important that I talk with you.”
Carefully, as if to defend himself, Lord Davenham picked up a trowel. “We
are
talking,” he gently pointed out. “If you so dislike the perennials, I shall order them removed straightaway. What would you like put in their place?”
“Nothing!” snapped her ladyship. “Vivien, this is serious!”
“Piffle, my dear.” Having found it a trifle uncomfortable to engage in conversation with someone towering above his head. Lord Davenham arose from his knees. “It is not at all serious. I frequently order the flowers changed myself. The plants must frequently be rotated in order to maintain the bloom. We have a variety in the greenhouse. Come and choose the replacements yourself.”
Lady Davenham drew a deep breath, which culminated in a sneeze—Thea had been prone to sneezes and sniffles since the evening of her rout. Other ladies who publicly displayed themselves in dresses comprised of next to nothing above the waist, she thought, earned more for their efforts than head colds. “Vivien, sometimes I think you are deliberately obtuse. I do not wish to speak to you of plants, but Malcolm.”
“Malcolm dislikes my ageratum and verbena?” queried Lord Davenham as he tucked the trowel under one arm, the better to brush dirt and grass off his hands and knees. “I didn’t know he’d even been in the garden. Nor would I have expected him to know the difference between a French marigold and a snowdrop. But if he does not approve of the perennials, of course I will replace them. What would he prefer?”
Lady Davenham secured her husband’s attention by the simple expedient of reaching up and firmly grasping his chin. In response to this assault upon his person, her husband blinked. Nimrod’s protests were much more vocal, consisting of wheezes, yelps, and snarls.
“I do not wish to speak of gardens,” Thea enunciated very clearly. “I want to talk about Malcolm. Our cousin isn’t the least bit interested in gardens. He is very interested, however, in bachelor’s fare, which is not a plant, but a term applied to bits o’ muslin—and, in this instance, a chit from a milliner’s shop.”
“A milliner’s shop?” echoed Lord Davenham, his lady having made speech possible by releasing his chin. “What was Malcolm doing in a milliner’s shop?”
“Striking up an acquaintance, apparently!” retorted Thea.
“I wish you would not be so literal-minded,” complained his lordship. “I mean, what
took
him there?”
“I
did!” responded Thea ruefully, on another sneeze. “Although I would not have, had I foreseen this! Malcolm insisted on being present when I ordered the gown for our rout—indeed, he practically designed the garment himself. Our cousin, it would appear, has had no little familiarity with feminine attire. He threatened, if I refused to humor him in it, to forgo the rout.”
How personal an interest Sir Malcolm had in Lady Davenham, Lord Denham was beginning to unhappily comprehend. Pondering how best to deal with this enlightenment, he drew his wife into a rustic shelter fashioned from tree roots and branches. Thea sank down on a wooden bench. “How am I to find a wife for Malcolm when he is larking about the metropolis with a ... a dollymop on his arm?” she asked. “Any respectable female must be put off by the incurable irresponsibility of his conduct; no sooner do I introduce him to the
ton
than he flees the suitable ladies paraded before him in favor of a harum-scarum young woman who, if she isn’t already no better than she should be, will doubtless soon be
worse!
Oh, yes, I have met her. She is a sad romp. And somehow knowing the chit makes it that much more difficult to bear.”
Lord Davenham had, during these disclosures, moved Nimrod’s wicker basket into the shelter and placed it in a patch of sunlight. His habitual ill temper temporarily appeased by this display of concern, the hound settled back to worry at the fragment of blue kerseymere from which he had refused to be parted ever since Thea’s rout. “What has Malcolm done with this young female?” his lordship inquired, as he seated himself by Thea on the wooden bench.
“Heaven knows!” responded Thea gloomily. “One hesitates to venture a guess. Malcolm encountered her in Oxford Street, and nothing would satisfy him but that he must take her up in his carriage and point out to her the sights—London Bridge and the Tower, Carlton House and, for some inexplicable reason, Newgate! And then he took her to Astley’s! To shower such distinguishing attentions on a dab of a girl—I vow I am wholly out of charity with the wretch.”
Lord Davenham kept private his opinion that attentions showered by his reckless cousin on a milliner were much more fitting than attentions bestowed upon Thea herself. As result of their cousin’s new interest, Thea was naturally feeling a little out of sorts. “Dear me, how tiresome of Malcolm. He is incorrigibly fond of the ladies, I fear.”
“And he is
not
a marvel of discretion!” responded Thea. “I mean—Astley’s!”
In preference to his cousin Malcolm’s indiscretions, Lord Davenham cogitated upon Astley’s Royal Amphitheater, home of trick-riding and equestrian feats, situated in Westminster Bridge Road. “Did you wish to go to Astley’s, my dear? You should have said so. I will be pleased to take you there myself. I have always enjoyed the clowns.”
Upon the rustic garden shelter a brief silence descended, while Lady Davenham counted silently to one hundred—silence, that is, save for the sounds of Nimrod wheezing and drooling over his scrap of blue kerseymere—and Lord Davenham directed his thoughts to his own less personal concerns.
Of these, he had many, as befit the head of a large and adventurous family. Lord Davenham had obligations to his tenants, to his households and his lands. There were matters of the estate to be considered, draining land and making roads, improvements in stock; and when all those items were dealt with, there was that question most pressing in the mind of any farm-owning gentleman—the price of wheat.
Yet all these matters paled in significance beside the question of whether or not Vivien had somehow unwittingly alienated the affections of his wife. Lord Davenham knew he was not the most exciting of husbands, and that his thoughts dwelt all too often on the prosaic and mundane, but it was not easy to throw off an inbred sense of responsibility. More than Thea’s dragonish governess should be consigned to eternal hellfire. The Duke added several of his own preceptors to the score.
It was too late now, however, to lament that he was in thrall to his own properties; as it was too late to develop a flair for swashbuckling romance. Lord Davenham could only hope his wife would eventually come to realize that during their years together they had shared experiences more important and enduring than whispered compliments and flirtatious glances. “Thea,” he said.
“If you
dare
to talk to me of—of verbena or heartsease, Vivien, I may never speak to you again!” interrupted Lady Davenham, in tones so irritable that Nimrod elevated his dewlaps above the basket-rim and snarled. “I am concerned about our cousin’s future— and so, as head of the family, should you be! It is our duty to see him settled respectably.”
Since Lord Davenham had not intended to speak of his garden, had indeed spent the past several moments in contemplation not of his responsibilities, but of the recent erratic behavior of his wife, his own habitual good humor grew a trifle strained. “Perhaps Malcolm doesn’t wish to be settled,” he suggested reasonably. “Marriage does not suit everyone, my dear—and Davenants less than most! It has me in quite a puzzle why you are so set on weaning Malcolm away from a lifestyle which suits him very well.”
Thea wished Vivien had remained engrossed in his flower-beds. Not the inference that Malcolm would prefer to be fancy-free disturbed Thea; ambivalent as were her feelings toward her cousin, she recognized his inconstancy. However, the intimation that her own husband yearned to be equally inconstant caused her great distress. “Oh!” she gasped. “As if there were nothing wrong in—in foraging among the fleshpots!”