Either way, there was nothing to be done now but accept the setback gracefully.
“How do you do,” said Mary, putting out a hand.
“Incredibly relieved,” said Mr. St. George, bowing over it with evident relish. “I don’t know if I could bear another evening with only the faithful for company. You’re not, are you? If so, I’m most terribly sorry—for multiple reasons.”
“Not so bad as that, at any rate,” said Mary laughingly, nodding towards Mr. Rathbone’s stiff back. “This is only my first meeting.”
“I’ve been to at least twenty,” confessed Mr. St. George glumly. “It’s m’sister. Never been quite the same since her husband stuck his spoon in the wall. She’s taken to causes.”
So that explained the woman in the black bonnet. Tilting her head in sympathetic understanding, Mary’s tone warmed considerably. “And you are forced to escort her?”
St. George squared his shoulders. “Someone has to.”
They both jumped as the gavel resounded against the wooden table, calling the meeting to order.
“Gentlemen!” called Farnham breathlessly from his perch next to the framed engraving of Paine. “Ladies! I hereby call this meeting of the Common Sense Society to order. If the secretary would rise and read the minutes from last week’s meeting?”
A shabbily dressed man shuffled to his feet next to the table, pieces of paper drifting to the floor as he rose. “Th-thank you, Mr. Chairman…,” he began.
St. George lowered his voice to a whisper as he and Mary, in silent accord, melted back towards the far wall, as far away from the gavel as they could get. “At least this lot is better than my sister’s last go. All August it was homes for aged governesses.”
Mary cast a doubtful glance at the stuttering secretary, who was being harangued by hecklers who disagreed with his rendition of their speeches from the previous week. “Somewhat more decorous than this lot, surely?”
Propping a shoulder against the wall, Sr. George said darkly, “You don’t know what true horror is until an aging harridan tells you you’re not to have any sticky toffee pudding until you recite all your multiplication tables. Brought me out in hives. I couldn’t remember a thing after the sevens. And before that it was the Society for the Protection of Turtles.”
“Turtles?”
“Saving them being put into soup, that sort of thing.” Mr. St. George looked like a man who knew all too much about that sort of thing for his own liking. “I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned: French chefs have a deuced annoying habit of carrying very large knives. It’s not sporting.”
“I’m sure you’ve earned your place in heaven—with the path all paved with turtle shells.”
“It’s felt more like that other location, especially when one chap dumped boiling broth on me. I tell you, in that moment, I felt myself in genuine sympathy with the turtle.”
“Enough to give up turtle soup?” inquired Mary archly.
“There’s no need to be extreme,” St. George hastily assured her. “I just close my eyes and think of the governesses.”
“Have you any notion what your sister will choose next?”
“She seems to be pretty well stuck into this at the moment. Can’t move half a foot without tripping over a pile of prosy treatises.”
“Don’t you mean informative pamphlets?”
St. George grinned at her. “Just so.”
Behind them, the gavel clattered down. “If those in the back would care to pay attention…,” squawked Mr. Farnham. Mary and St. George exchanged guilty smirks, united in delinquency.
Even as she smiled, Mary was figuring sums of her own. His clothes weren’t at the height of fashion, but they were of good fabric and decently made. The cameo stickpin in his cravat was Italian, unless she missed her guess, and worth a pretty penny. That sort of complexion generally betokened time spent outdoors, and time spent outdoors generally happened on an estate. From the outward indicia, she would reckon his income at about five thousand pounds a year, perhaps slightly more. A widowed sister might be a liability, but not if, as it seemed, she had her own income. He was not unattractive, appeared good-natured, and was most definitely flirting. Given her current lack of prospects, she could do much worse.
A life spent watching Letty and Geoffrey holding hands beneath the breakfast table, for example.
After all, Lord Vaughn had advised her to set her cap at a gentleman of a reforming nature. From far away she could hear Vaughn’s voice echoing in mocking memory. You and I? No, no, and no again.
He needn’t have bothered with three nos. One would have been enough to get the point across.
In that case, he could have no objections to her cultivating the interest of Mr. St. George. As long as it didn’t interfere with their business arrangement.
Mary’s lips curved in the beatific smile that made her admirers weak at the knees and her family distinctly nervous.
“…a special treat,” Farnham was saying in his high-pitched voice. “A letter all the way from Pennsylvania from our revered brother in exile, Dr. Priestley.” The announcement was greeted with applause from some and loud hisses from others.
“Who?” whispered Mary to St. George.
“One of the founders of the old Constitution Society,” St. George whispered back. His breath smelled of cloves, like a country kitchen at Christmastime. Pleasant enough, if one liked that sort of thing. Which, Mary assured herself, she most definitely could. It was simply a matter of acquiring a taste. Like brandy or olives. “That was before my time. At least, before my sister’s time, which amounts to the same thing.”
As Mary watched, Mr. Rathbone stalked up to the podium, a rolled piece of paper tucked beneath one arm.
St. George groaned. “That’s torn it. If Rathbone’s going to read one of old Gunpowder Priestley’s letters, we could be here till next week.”
“Gunpowder?” Mary asked, diverted. “I assume his parents didn’t christen him that.”
“No. It’s something dull and biblical. Joseph or Joshua…The gunpowder bit was entirely his own doing, from what I understand. You know about the Gunpowder Plot, don’t you? Guy Fawkes crouching under the House of Lords and all that?”
Tilting her head, Mary quoted the old nursery rhyme, “‘Remember remember the fifth of November; Gunpowder, treason and plot…’”
Adding his voice to hers, St. George finished with relish, “‘I see no reason why gunpowder, treason should ever be forgot’! Brilliant rhyme, that. Sticks in one’s head, you know.”
Mary wasn’t particularly interested in treason two centuries old. That had been a different world, a world of religious wars and dynastic squabbles. It was hard to believe that only half a century before, men had fought and died to try to restore a Stuart king to the throne in place of a Hanoverian one. Compared with the tumult of revolution across the Channel, the quibbles over which royal brow should bear the Crown seemed rather quaint and entirely irrelevant.
Tilting her head up at St. George, she firmly steered the conversation back to the present. “But the Gunpowder Plot was two hundred years ago. Surely, your Dr. Priestley can’t be quite that old.”
“Well,” continued St. George, visibly expanding under her attention, “in one of his political rants, old Priestley started thundering on about blowing up ‘the old building of error and superstition.’ Some chaps got the notion that Priestley was referring to a literal building. Like the Gunpowder Plot, do you see? The poor old duffer had no idea—he was just speaking metaphorically—but it got about, and the man was pretty much run out of the country. Before he could light the match, as it were.”
“Metaphorically or literally?”
“I doubt the rioters stopped to inquire. It didn’t help that he dabbled in natural philosophy. It was something to do with air and fire—the sorts of things that go bang in the laboratory. So he might have been coming up with infernal machines, for all his neighbors knew.” St. George waggled his eyebrows. “It was a combust
ible combination.”
Mary cast him a chiding glance. “That was too bad of you, Mr. St. George.”
“You can’t fault a chap for trying.”
“It’s the results I object to,” replied Mary, with an arch glance that took the sting out of the words. Before they could wander further off the topic, she donned her best expression of melting confusion, the one designed to make men feel big and strong and completely miss the fact that they were being led about by the nose. “But what of Mr. Rathbone? What does he have to do with this gunpowder fellow? I fear I’ve lost the thread of the story.”
Lord Vaughn would undeniably have said something cutting, but St. George hastened to explain, “Rathbone was one of Gunpowder Priestley’s disciples back in the old days. Assisted in his laboratory, sharpened his quills, beat off the maddened hordes, that sort of thing. The old boy was quite cheesed off when Priestley had to scurry off to Pennsylvania just ahead of the authorities. It was quite some time ago, too,” St. George added reflectively. “You’d think Rathbone would be over it by now.”
“How long ago was it?” asked Mary.
“Thirty years, give or take.” St. George laughed at Mary’s horrified expression. “I know! The man is in want of a wife. Only not,” he added hastily, “my sister, please God.”
“I couldn’t imagine having to face that across the breakfast table every morning,” commented Mary, salting away the information about Rathbone for future consideration. Philosophical convictions and chemical knowledge could, in her companion’s flippant phrase, make for a combustible combination. Vaughn had mentioned something earlier in the week, about the Black Tulip’s use of explosive materials in a recent rebellion in Ireland…. “I believe your sister ought to be safe.”
“I’m afraid old Agatha isn’t as discriminating as you. You should have seen the first husband.”
“Not exactly the beau ideal?” she asked, although her focus was elsewhere. Where was Vaughn? Mary spotted Aunt Imogen holding forth to an entirely unappreciative audience about her latest theatrical production, but there was no sign of her escort.
St. George leaned forward confidingly. “He looked just like a turtle!”
“At least that explains the soup,” teased Mary mechanically. Had Vaughn just gone off and left her in a room of fanatics with incendiary tendencies?
Turning slightly to scan the room for her erstwhile escort, the strap of her reticule caught on something that abruptly gave. Mary caught the gleam of gold as it tumbled to the ground with a small, reproachful ping, spinning several times before toppling over onto one side.
“Oh dear!” Mary hastily stooped to retrieve it, nearly bumping heads with Mr. St. George, who had dived forward at the same time. Straightening, Mary held out the golden disc in one palm.
“I’m afraid I’ve broken off your watch fob,” she said remorsefully. “I’m sorry.”
St. George waved away her apologies. “Don’t even think of it. The chain wanted repairing.”
It wasn’t a coin, but a medal, engraved on both sides, the glitter of the gold dulled with time and frequent handling. The surface of the disc was so worn that Mary could barely make out the picture that had been incised on the front. Beneath a film of grime, she could just distinguish the form of a man—at least, she thought it was a man, since it appeared to be wearing armor. A spear held jauntily in one hand jutted diagonally across the coin. One foot was slightly elevated, poised atop an oblong lump that might have been any number of things. Around the sides, capital letters spelled out an unfamiliar Latin phrase.
“Spes tamen est una?” Mary relinquished the medal into St. George’s outstretched palm. “I’m afraid I have no Latin.” Her father’s scholarly inclinations hadn’t extended to engaging a proper governess for his daughters.
“‘There is still one hope,’” translated St. George. He traced the letters that ran around the circumference of the disc. “A father’s admonition to his son. He gave me the medal on my tenth birthday. The figure in the middle is a play on our name. St. George, you know,” he explained unnecessarily.
That explained the lump, at least: a recently slain dragon acting as footstool. Mary watched as St. George tucked the medal into his waistcoat pocket. “What does your father think of your sister’s causes?”
She knew the answer almost as soon as she had spoken, for a shadow darkened his face.
“Oh,” said Mary. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“No, no.” Unconsciously, St. George’s hand closed over the small lump in his waistcoat pocket. “Quite all right. It was some time ago.”
“You must have been very fond of him.”
“He was a king among men,” St. George said simply.
In the face of such uncompromising devotion, Mary’s wiles and platitudes failed her. She quite simply did not know what to say.
Nobility just didn’t come into her own family. Her father needled her mother; her mother scolded her sister; her sister badgered her brother; and so on, all around the twisted circle of familial relations. She wondered what it must be like to feel that sort of uncomplicated affection, without stings and barbs and hidden meanings to complicate matters.
Uncomfortable in the face of emotion, Mary retreated to commonplaces, “Do tell me about the rest of your family. Do you have only the one sister?”
She had asked such questions a dozen times before, delicately probing into a gentleman’s means and circumstances. With very little effort, she rapidly ascertained that Mr. St. George had a respectable estate in Wiltshire, an aging mother in Bath, and only the one sister.
“For which I thank God on my knees fasting,” he finished, with a feeling glance at the black-bonneted figure in conversation with Mr. Rathbone.
For lack of a fan, Mary fluttered her lashes coyly instead. “Surely sisters can’t be all that bad.”
“It wouldn’t be if any of them were anything like you,” averred Mr. St. George engagingly.
“My little brother wouldn’t agree with you.”
“How old is he?”
It took Mary some time to remember. “Eight.”
“Too young to know a good thing when he sees it.”
“Or just old enough to be wise,” drawled a new voice, just behind Mary’s ear.
Chapter Eight
Exit, pursued by a bear.
—William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, III, iii
The hairs on Mary’s neck prickled as she recognized the speaker, and the mingled rush of irritation and anticipation that inevitably attended his appearance.
Turning, Mary dipped into an exaggerated curtsy. “My lord Vaughn,” she intoned. “Might I have the great honor of presenting to you Mr. St. George?”
Vaughn inspected and dismissed Mr. St. George with two quick sweeps of the quizzing glass before bending his glass on Mary. “I trust you are enjoying yourself,” he said, in a voice like cut glass.
Clearly, the only acceptable answer was an emphatic negative.
Mary put her chin up. “Yes. Quite.”
“How very pleasant for you,” clipped Vaughn. “Alas, I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to break up this happy colloquy. Your aunt wishes to depart.”
Across the room, Aunt Imogen had wrested the podium from Rathbone and was giving a spirited, if incomprehensible, rendition of the Prologue from A Rhyming Historie of Britain.
“Does she?” asked Mary caustically.
“She was quite emphatic about it,” Vaughn drawled. “Insistent, even.”
“It runs in the family,” returned Mary, a dangerous glint in her deep blue eyes. “Insistence, that is.”
“And here I thought you referred to her dramatic tendencies.” Flipping open the lid of his snuffbox with a practiced gesture, Vaughn scattered a few grains on the side of his wrist. “A fascinating thing, heredity.”
Mary’s eyes narrowed as Vaughn raised his wrist gracefully to his nose and essayed a delicate sniff. “Particularly inbreeding,” she re
torted.
Before Lord Vaughn could reply, St. George intervened. Possessing himself of Mary’s gloved hand, he said winningly, “I’m sure it wouldn’t do to keep your aunt waiting. I have a few of those myself,” he added with a smile, “and I know they mustn’t be kept from their naps.”
“You’re very good,” said Mary warmly.
“Positively saintlike,” murmured Lord Vaughn, snapping shut the lid of his snuffbox. “Pity there aren’t any dragons in the vicinity.”
Mary silenced him with an elbow to the ribs. “Are you in London long, Mr. St. George?”
“I have business concerns that will keep me in town at least till the opening of Parliament. And then, of course, there is my sister.”
“And her turtles,” twinkled Mary, favoring him with a private smile designed to irritate Lord Vaughn. Its effect on Lord Vaughn was unclear, but it caused St. George to blink rapidly and forget whatever it was he had been about to say.
“And you, Miss Alsworthy?” stammered St. George, recollecting himself with visible effort. “Will you be staying in town?”
Mary kept her head tilted away from Lord Vaughn, an angle that gave him an excellent view of her profile. “Yes, at least for the present. With so few people in town this time of year, I’m sure our paths must cross again.”
St. George swallowed hard and squared his shoulders. “I shall make sure of it, Miss Alsworthy, and that you may be sure of.”
“Surely?” echoed Vaughn in saccharine falsetto.
St. George flushed, a deep mauve creeping up beneath the browned skin of his cheeks. “I meant…that is to say…”
He was saved from disgrace by Aunt Imogen, who swept grandly into their midst, her entrance only slightly marred by her hat flopping forwards. Pushing it back with one crooked hand, she smiled coquettishly up at St. George as Mary performed the necessary introductions.
Aunt Imogen clutched at St. George’s arm, uttering a series of sounds that resolved themselves into, “What did you say your name was, young man?”