Chapter 17
ROLLO THRELFALL WAS having an excellent day.
Rollo did often have excellent days. The youngest son of an indulgent father, he was never burdened by any graver responsibility than that of making up numbers at ambitious hostesses’ dinners, or deciding whether to purchase a likely piece of horseflesh.
The unclouded skies of this particular day were rendered all the bluer by the reflection that if not for the nobility of his friends, he would at that very moment be at his aunt Georgiana’s, providing an account of the speech he had given at her friend’s school.
As he had not, after all, given the speech, he had been not been called upon to visit his aunt, for Aunt Georgiana’s affection for her nephew was as moderate as his fear of her was acute.
Rollo had passed the previous evening at the Theurgist’s instead, winding up an excellent dinner with wine and pleasantries, and he had awoken in the morning to a throbbing head the approximate size of the Stone of Scone.
By noon, however, Rollo was out of bed, as lively as the day he was born, and swathed within a neckcloth whose points could not be faulted by the most exacting Pink of the ton.
He was in great good humour as he sallied forth to meet Damerell at the Theurgist’s, and his mood was only improved by the sight of Zacharias Wythe, sitting with Damerell at their accustomed table.
“Halloa! This is a piece of good luck!” said Rollo.
“I had not thought to see you so soon, Zacharias. I must congratulate you upon your success. I had a letter from my aunt last week, and it seems you went down a treat. Mrs. Daubeney was excessively obliged—said the handsomest things about your speech.”
“I am happy to have given satisfaction,” said Zacharias. Mrs. Daubeney’s letter had clearly withheld more than it disclosed, he reflected.
“Not half so happy as I am,” Rollo assured him. “Of course it was nothing to a clever chap like you, giving a speech to a pack of ravening schoolgirls, but if I had had to do it I expect I would have jumped into the river before the week was out.”
“It will be a source of unending gratification to me, that I should have been instrumental in averting that fate,” said Zacharias gravely.
He inspected his cup of coffee, apparently lost in thought.
“However, it was not an unrewarding visit. I encountered a few interesting characters at the school.”
“Oh?” said Rollo. “I thought it was only girls.”
“Yes. But even girls may be characters, you know,” said Zacharias. “Still, I cannot say I enjoyed the experience. I nearly turned tail and fled when I mounted the stage before all those eyes. What is the Queen of Elfland to an assembly of schoolgirls? At least she is not given to giggling.”
Rollo shuddered. “Giggling!”
“Such devotion on my part, I think, merits some recompense.”
“It is beyond anything,” said Rollo fervently. “If there is any service I can render, Zacharias, you have only to say the word!”
Zacharias nodded, as if this was what he had been waiting to hear.
“Very good. You will be pleased to know I have hit upon the very thing,” he said. His entire manner changed: he sat up, steepled his hands and continued, in a crisp, schoolmaster-ish voice:
“You will oblige me by prevailing upon your aunt Georgiana—and indeed upon any and all of the respectable women you know—to introduce Miss Prunella Gentleman to unmarried gentlemen of eligible prospects, so that she may find a husband.”
Rollo goggled. Damerell was apparently seized by a fit, but when a footman rushed up, desiring to assist, Damerell waved him away.
“Have some sense, man!” he gasped. “Don’t interrupt!”
“What can you mean?” said Rollo.
“I gave a speech at a girls’ school in your stead, and in consequence I find myself burdened with a new apprentice, a female of overweening ambition,” said Zacharias.
“We have agreed that I shall facilitate her introduction into society, in return for which she will apply herself to the study of magic. I have nothing to do with the beau monde, but you do. It seems only just that you should take over the task.”
Rollo gazed at Zacharias in wild surmise, before turning piteous eyes upon Damerell.
“Why, Robert, it is clear as daylight,” said Damerell. “A girl has followed Zacharias to London, and she wishes to find a husband. Zacharias desires you to manage the business. And I must say, Rollo, it would only be gentlemanly to step up, considering what he’s done for you.”
“But, dash it—”
“I don’t desire you to marry her yourself,” said Zacharias reassuringly. “I gather she hopes for something better than a younger son, though I confess I have no clear notion of the income she seeks. You should certainly speak to her about her requirements, however.”
“It is best to be clear on these points,” Damerell agreed.
“Dash it, Zacharias,” Rollo burst out. “I am amazed! I never would have thought it of you, of all people. I can’t introduce your barque of frailty into society. Why, it is out of all reason—it is—I don’t know what it is!” He paused, choked with emotion.
“What Rollo means to say is that he thinks the proceeding unprincipled in the extreme,” translated Damerell.
Rollo nodded. Breath returning to him, he added, “And what’s more, it just ain’t the thing!”
“There is nothing of that sort between me and Miss Gentleman,” said Zacharias sternly.
“I propose to tutor her—there is nothing more to our connection. Lady Wythe has agreed to have Miss Gentleman to stay with her, and to lend her countenance. But as you know, Lady Wythe has not been much in society of late, and I would spare her what I could. She has never been very fond of crowds.”
“She is staying with Lady Wythe?” said Rollo. “I must say, it seems a dashed racketing way of going on. Lady Wythe always strikes one as being such a model of propriety!”
“How many times must I tell you that Miss Gentleman is a perfectly respectable young lady?” said Zacharias in a terrible voice. “Will you or will you not do it, Rollo?”
“My dear fellow, anything to oblige, but—but anything decent, you know!” begged Rollo. “Anything plausible!”
“I fail to see what is either indecent or implausible about my request,” said Zacharias freezingly.
“Zacharias, with the best will in the world—!”
Damerell dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief and put it away. He seemed to feel that Rollo had suffered enough.
“It’s no good, my lad,” he said to Zacharias. “Rollo’s aunt ain’t good ton. She’s not a maternal aunt, you know. She is connected to the other side of the family. Haven’t you ever met her?”
Zacharias, still rather wooden, said, “No. But I had understood she was received by all the best families.”
“Oh yes. When Rollo’s aunt Georgiana knocks on one’s door, one doesn’t bar it and hope she goes away,” said Damerell.
“Doesn’t do any good,” said Rollo morosely, with the conviction of one who had tried.
“Quite. Rollo is of the best sort of family on his mother’s side, but his paternal relations are a different affair altogether,” said Damerell.
“For your real influencers you must look elsewhere. I know them—and they owe me a favour or two. But first I must know what lies I am to tell them. Who is this girl? Tell your uncle Damerell.”
Zacharias explained something of Prunella’s history, and the position she had occupied at Mrs. Daubeney’s school.
“I gather that her father was a gentleman, though he seems to have been an elusive character,” he said.
“Of her mother Mrs. Daubeney knew nothing. Mr. Gentleman spent time in India, and it seems likely that the mother was a native of that country. There is no suggestion that there was any irregularity in the connection, however. Miss Gentleman speaks as prettily as any fineborn girl, and she has as much education as any of Mrs. Daubeney’s gentlewitches. ”
“Well, the mother need not be an insuperable obstacle,” said Damerell, considering the matter. “There is no other family in England? That is all to the good. We need not fear the appearance of disreputable relations upon the scene. Is the girl pretty?”
Zacharias spilt his coffee, and was too busy mopping up the result to meet Damerell’s eyes.
“Quite astonishingly so,” he said.
Damerell governed his features with his habitual composure, but his delight was evident to one who knew him as well as Zacharias did. The damnable thing about Damerell, thought Zacharias, was that he never failed to observe precisely what you would conceal.
“Very good,” said Damerell. “But why is it necessary to help Miss Gentleman to a husband?”
“I intend training her in the thaumaturgy, and she has promised to apply herself if I arrange for her to be introduced into society,” said Zacharias. “She seems confident that she will be able to obtain a husband of means, if she can only contrive to gain access to the right people.”
“She sounds a female of considerable resource. I admire her already. But now we come to the vital point: why is she to be trained?”
Zacharias was prepared for this.
“It has become clear to me that it is necessary to reform the thaumaturgical education of women,” he said.
“The system that currently obtains is injurious to those women and girls who must do violence to their own natures to conform to it. Mrs. Daubeney’s school supplied ample proof of that.
It proved, too, that there is a store of magical ability among women, which we would be foolish to disregard.
A number of her students have obvious talent—talent that will otherwise be wasted in clandestine enchantments in the drawing room and kitchen, in charms to beautify a table or amuse an infant. ”
“Miss Gentleman is to be your first example of what may be done with feminine magic, then,” said Damerell.
Zacharias bowed. “Even without training, her abilities are striking. With instruction, what might she not achieve?”