“She’s beautiful,” Maggie said, as indignant as Clorinda when Fred the peacock managed to sneak up on her and get in a free peck. “She just needed a bit of adjusting, that’s all. Certainly she doesn’t look like a trollop. That’s very unfair of you, James.”
“She doesn’t look like herself. At least I knew what to expect when she looked like herself, but no longer. She shouldn’t have been adjusted, she didn’t need it, I didn’t need it. Just the other day I was noticing that even with her hair in a braid, it’s not all slicked back as tight as stretched material the way it used to be. You’ve taught her to have those silly little female curls dangling down on either side of her face. She couldn’t strut around in her breeches and race with those silly little curls.”
“I call them streamers,” Maggie said.
Spears said, “We’ve gotten far afield here. You will marry her, James. It’s imperative. Do you want her to remain an employee of his lordship and the Duchess for the rest of her life? It would be a blight on your good name. It isn’t fair that his lordship and the Duchess be responsible for her until she becomes an old woman and passes on. She deserves much more. She has wit and spice and good sound common sense. Marry her.”
“Aye, do it.”
“Hear, hear.”
“How about next week? The Duchess and I can manage it. Ah, I know just the wedding gown for her. I’ve pictured it in my mind. You will be immensely pleased, James.”
“I’m sure it’s a treat, love,” Sampson said, and kissed his wife’s soft white hand
.
Badger ate one of the dainty cucumber sandwiches. This time he frowned ever so slightly.
James threw his teacup at the wall.
Jessie walked into the nursery, Charles in her arms, tickling him and telling him he would break female hearts when he gained but another year to his ticket, telling him that little females would find his gnawing on anything that didn’t move fast enough quite charming. She nearly ran into James, who was standing just inside the doorway, staring at her with acute dislike.
“James! What are you doing here?”
“Where have you been?”
“Charles wanted to see his mama’s roses. They’re beautiful, particularly the red ones, just like velvet—”
“Shut up, Jessie. You know very well why I’m here, damn you.”
Charles looked at James then back at Jessie. His chin trembled. “Don’t raise your voice,” she said, bouncing Charles up and down in her arms. “There, little love, it’s all right. Your cousin James is just a bit like a volcano. He blows up, then cools. The cooling part is all right, but the other—”
“Shut up, Jessie,” he said, this time in a near whisper. He held out his arms to Charles. That insensitive little tot gurgled in delight and went right to him.
“It isn’t fair. Have you ever burped him? Has he ever wet on your shirt?”
“Once he did,” James said, rocking Charles. “Wet on me, that is. My little godson recognizes I’m a man. He knows men should be in charge of their lives, should make their own decisions. He knows that I can’t, thus he feels sorry for me and he’s comforting me in the only way he knows how. He’s pulling my hair and drooling on my neck.”
“What do you mean you’re not in charge of your life? You’ve got Candlethorpe and Marathon both. What more do you want or need? You probably even have a Connie Maxwell over here in England. It’s true, isn’t it, James? What’s her name? Stop shaking your head—I’ll never believe you. My mother always said that men are driven to seek out all sorts of females because their natures are unsteady. What are you talking about, James?”
“That gown you’re wearing should make you look more like the old Jessie, but it doesn’t.”
“That’s because it fits me. It isn’t too short nor is it baggy in the bosom.”
“I like the color on you. I wouldn’t have thought you’d look decent in gray, but you do. You look modest, at least from the neck down. As for those streamers all around your face—”
“You’ve been speaking to Maggie.”
“Yes, she corrected me. She said they aren’t curls, they’re streamers.”
“What about them?”
It was at that instant he knew she was afraid he was going to insult her streamers, call them ridiculous. He wanted to. He wanted to tell her she was a blight, that he didn’t want to marry her, that he just wished he’d never met her. Because if he hadn’t seen her striding beside a quarter horse some six years before at the Weymouth racecourse, then lost to her in the third bloody race, she would never have been in that blasted tree to fall on him and ruin herself. She would never have run off to England.
Instead, he said, “The streamers are charming. But when you race, the wind will blow them into your eyes. You will have to be careful.”
“You really like them, James?”