“No,” Jasper said. “Always together, Rog. And one has teeth that stick out and the other a chin that sticks in.”
“Marvelous!” Roger said. “I can see I’m going to have a wonderful time.”
“What did you do?” Jasper asked. “Grandmama said you wouldn’t have come here at this time of year if you didn’t have to. Was it over some female?”
“Never you mind,” his cousin said. “So it’s the Traviss sisters or the octogenarians, is it?”
“There is the Langtree woman,” Jasper said, “but everyone’s after her, Rog. Men swarm around her like bees around a flower. I can’t see why. She must be thirty at the very least. She does have one asset, though. She has great big ...” His hands made expressive cupping gestures a few inches from his chest.
“Does she, by Jove?” Roger said.
“You wouldn’t want to be part of a crowd, though, Rog,” Jasper said.
His cousin raised one eyebrow. “No, I certainly would not,” he said. “If I like what I see, Jasper, I’ll roust the opposition.”
“Send her a valentine,” Jasper said.
Roger frowned.
“It’s going to be all the rage here,” Jasper said. “Masked ball, secret valentines, special favors, and all that nonsense. What a bore! I’m not going to be so silly when I grow up, I can safely promise.” He settled into giving an interested Roger full details of the approaching ball.
“Great!” Roger said. “All the trappings of intrigue and high romance and no women below the age of eighty except one virtuous woman, two horsey females, and a queen bee—with a bosom. I can just see myself having such a grand time that I’ll never want to go home.”
“You wouldn’t care to take me to a confectioner’s for cakes, would you, Rog?” Jasper asked half-hopefully.
“Why not?” Roger said. “It sounds as if that might be the closest I’ll get to excitement during this particular sojourn in Bath.”
“Super!” Jasper said with some enthusiasm. “You go and tell Grandmama. And it was your suggestion, mind. I’m too sickly even to think of food.”
“Quite so,” Roger said, looking at the sturdy build and moon face of the boy. “I can quite see why she thinks you might be consumptive, Jas. I’ll have to make her a present of a pair of spectacles before I leave here. Wait here, then. I’ll be back in a trice.”
It lacked a few minutes of half-past seven when Roger strolled into the Pump Room the following morning. He paused in the doorway to look about him. The long, high room was fairly crowded despite the season and the drizzling rain outside. And Jasper’s comment of the day before that there was scarce a soul there below the age of eighty seemed not much exaggerated.
Roger sighed and wondered what on earth he was doing there. It was true that his father had advised flight in that blustering way of his that took no account of the fact that his son was now seven-and-twenty and no longer seventeen. It was even more true that he himself had thought discretion the better part of valor. He had not known that Ruby was married until she had shrieked out the dramatic words “My husband!” while he was still too busily occupied with his pleasure to have noticed the third person in the room. For honor’s sake he had waited one day in case the injured husband wanted to challenge him. Then he had left.
But why Bath? Of all places in England, Wales, or Scotland that he might have chosen, why had he come to Bath? Just because Aunt Adeline and Uncle Stanley were there and his father had suggested it as a destination? Or for some other reason? Because he had been unconsciously reaching out for something quite new and different, perhaps? Something a little more meaningful than the life he had been living for the past seven or eight years? Ach, what nonsense. Roger sighed again.
His uncle was conversing with two other men as portly as he. All three of them held glasses of the waters. One of them was drinking and showing by his facial contortions that he did so more for his health than for pleasure.
His aunt was talking with a gentleman who must be almost the infant of the gathering. It was possible he had not yet reached his fortieth year. As Roger watched, the man turned and bowed to Emily Richmond, offered his arm, and went promenading off about the room with her.
She was still dressed in gray. She probably wore it always. Her nightgowns were probably gray and enveloped her from her chin to her longest toenail. She probably covered that golden hair with a gray nightcap. Perhaps sometimes she made a daring switch to a different color—brown.
What a waste, Roger thought, his eyes following her as she moved down the room away from him. She had a neat little figure, one that would feel sweet pressed between a man and a mattress. Her hair was the color of sunshine and would doubtless dazzle the eyes of the beholder if it were allowed to appear from beneath the gray bonnet and to be released from that ruthless knot at her neck. Her eyes were thickly lashed and large and an interesting shade of hazel. They were the sort of eyes one could drown in if one allowed oneself to. And her mouth—well, her mouth was eminently kissable.
But she was a virtuous woman. What a dreadful waste! It was not as if she lacked sexuality. There had been a definite something when he had kissed her the day before, a something that he had felt in his loins. But of course it was unvirtuous to show passion, especially with a stranger beneath the stairs. When she finally married, she would probably deny herself all pleasure and lie quite decorously still for her husband.
Well, if she were his, she would not be allowed to get away with it, he thought.
“Psst!”
Confound it, where was the boy?
“Good Lord, Jasper,” Roger said, raising his quizzing glass to his eye and turning to the shadowy corner to his left, “What are you doing up at this unholy hour? Does your grandmother drag you here kicking and protesting every day?”
“No, no,” Jasper said, “but it is by far the most entertaining part of the day, Rog. I like to see ’em drinking the water, and I like to see ’em sitting in it up to their necks.” He indicated the long windows down the left side of the room, which overlooked the King’s Bath and the few brave souls whose health demanded more drastic measures than a mere glass of the waters.
“Interesting,” Roger said, sounding anything but interested.
