The image of Margaret McPhee, her face flushed with sensuality, her fair hair loosened, suddenly stared up from the glistening surface of a puddle.
Alistair reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out her card. To his astonishment he was just three streets away from her. With the urgency of a man seeking salvation, Alistair began to run.
It was a large redbrick terraced house, with a straggling cherry tree at the fr
ont. A modest dwelling in a prestigious street; a typical residence of the nouveau riche, the merchant class that had made their money through the manufacturing mills of the north. Alistair bounded up the granite steps and rang the bell.
“The mister and missus ain’t in.” A buxom housekeeper, one hand still grasping a feather duster, stood at the open door, glaring hostilely.
“I’m here to see the governess, Miss McPhee?”
“She don’t take gentlemen callers after six.”
“I am her cousin from the country. It’s urgent.”
“In that case, I suppose you could wait in the pantry.”
Staring aimlessly at a hock of ham that lay on a side table next to a cabinet of fine Dutch china, Alistair suddenly felt like a complete jackdaw. What presumption he had displayed. What if she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in his company? What if she had just been playing him for a fool? Crippled with self-consciousness, he noticed a smear of soot upon his jacket sleeve, which he was busy rubbing off when Margaret McPhee entered. “Coz!” she cried out, startling him.
Margaret turned to the corpulent housekeeper squeezed up behind her in the doorway. “That will be all, Mrs. Porter. I’m certain my cousin wishes for some private words with me.”
After a suspicious look at Alistair, the housekeeper nodded curtly and took her leave. Margaret softly closed the door.
She was more beautiful than he had remembered, but her beauty lay in her ordinariness. She did not have the refined aristocratic cheekbones, patrician nose, or full mouth of Lady Whistle, nor the lushness of her complexion; instead it was the neat symmetry of her form, the animation of her bright, green eyes, her enthusiasm that made her radiant. She smiled at him.
“Why, Mr. Sizzlehorn, you have displayed an ingenious audacity I would not have attributed to one previously so censorious.”
“I had to see you.” His words tumbled out in a clumsy rush.
“Are you ill? You look so pale.”
“I have to go away the day after tomorrow. I have an engagement…” he trailed off, wondering why the proximity of this young woman threw what had seemed so important into irrelevancy.
“An engagement—that sounds mysterious.”
“Just promise me you will come to the gallery tomorrow, to the exhibition you wished to see?”
He moved closer and stood inches from her, drinking in the fall of her hair, the emerald streak that was her eyes, the sheen of her pearl buttons, and found himself wondering if, sometime in the future, she would ever reach out to him naked, call him her own.
“Such urgency is unconventional. Are you here to court me, sir?”
Her sudden formality made him smile, it sat so uncomfortably upon her quaint figure. Seeing his smile, she frowned. He feared he had been misunderstood and took her hand.
“Forgive my impatience, Miss McPhee, but I find myself at a strange crossroads in my life, the outcome of which is uncertain. But to answer your question: yes, I believe I am.”
“In that case, Mr. Sizzlehorn, I shall meet you tomorrow at the doors of the National Gallery at two o’clock sharp. And now I must return to my wards. Good night to you, sir.”
Before he had a chance to respond she was out the door. He stared at a giant copper tureen, which mockingly reflected back his wan, confused face.
“Thank you, Margaret, thank you,” he whispered, drowning.
That night Alistair stoked the fire as high as he could, then dragged the looking glass over and propped it against the mantelpiece. After locking the door, he stripped off his garments and stood entirely naked before the glass.
Was he a well-made man?
His torso was long and pale, his shoulders a good width but already afflicted with the stoop of the scholar. He was slender, his legs tapered and muscled. A thick bush of golden hair crept across his loins and traveled up to his chest. His yard was of a decent size, he presumed, thinking back to the fellows he had seen naked at boarding school. There was still the shadow of boyhood upon his physique, as if his torso hadn’t yet thickened fully. His hips were slim, his buttocks high and firm, his waist strong. No other eye has seen my body, he thought, wondering whether he would be considered handsome or plain. It was a curious, furtive sensation to be examining himself so coldly.
Running his hands down his flanks he tried to imagine they were a stranger’s hands. How would he surrender himself? Would he surrender himself? He did not know how to behave in such a circumstance—or could he trust to instinct? And afterward, would she, Margaret, desire such debased leavings? His thickening sex answered all his queries. As he caught the shadow of his profile—the curve of his body, the arc of his organ, his hands resting defiantly on his hips—he could have sworn he saw the sinister silhouette of the twin horns of Pan rising up behind his head.