“And will you take the gamble, my lass?” Her smirk extended to both ears which I immediately wanted to take and give a sound boxing to, but she did need her ears for cues, didn't she? I therefore checked my felonious intent, put on a mask of extravagant indifference and shrugged the shoulder Sylvia had dubbed. She pinched up her skirts, seeing I wasn't going to make any comment whatsoever, and flounced off angrily. The girls who played minor roles and who doubled in the crowd scenes, regarded me with fresh admiration and chorused me with naive glosses. “Suppose he's fake, Victoria-what would you do?”
“How wonderful to be loved by the nobility!” “I dreamed of my white knight in a coach-and-four…” “He could be an old man, Victoria.” “I wouldn't accept him on his first advances, but on his second he could advance all over me! Oh, la!” By that point I was sans makeup and ready to go. I had not decided whether I ought to go out with the Baronet or no. I should have to see him first and observe what I could in the twilight before making up my mind.
And there he was as I stepped out of the stage door-lounging gracefully, for all his heft, against the door of his coach-and-four.
Seeing me, he slouched to my side. “Miss Collins,” he said. He had one of those rich bassos that banished all care in the listener.
And his basso, of course, was suitable to his physique, which was extraordinarily broad-shouldered and slim-hipped. He stood some six feet seven inches. But what was so immediately strange was not that Sir Lawrence had iron-gray hair and amber eyes, nor even the impression that his eyes might glow in the twilight-but that his eyes were feral… As for his skin, it had that leathery aspect difficult to ascribe years to. His cheekbones were high and prominent, and his chin had a hard thrust. The whole picture of the man was that of boniness, boyishness, power and enormous tensions held in reserve. And he had those long sinewy hands equally facile with a skillet or gun or the nipples of a woman's breasts. His age, I judged, was somewhere between forty-five and fifty, with a tip toward fifty. “Yes,” I said inanely, “I am Victoria Collins. You, I take it, are Sir Lawrence Terstyke.” “Quite, Now then, Miss Collins, are you hungry after your performances?” He said this with an air of the most tender concern, as if his waiting upon me would be enough to give him the most exquisite delight. I looked at him a long time. Not for a moment did his solicitous ambiance change. But what could one really tell?
There were the feral amber eyes, the broad shoulders, the slim hips, the long legs tightly tailored. Doubtless he would be more than competent in bed, but that was not the question. The question was, would he have the unique competence requisite toward ending my mourning over Hugh Kinsteares, so that my membranes could once again react ardently to caresses, to strokings, to gentle or savage penetrations, and that my glaciality be altogether dissipated? I decided to take the gamble of finding out. What, really, could be dangerous about that? Sir Lawrence's manners were impeccable-there was no doubt he was a gentleman born. I smiled wickedly. “I am terribly hungry after performances, Sir Lawrence.” “Ah,” he said.
He gave me a small smile, not as if he were restraining himself or that he had no more to give, but that the small smile was proper in the circumstances. “In that case,” he continued, “would you prefer the Boar and Bramble, most suitable in these parts for dining and modest drinking, or would you rather incline toward the less public virtues of my own manse, Merlin House? I must point out that the Boar and Bramble has a most unparalleled view of the sea, while all Merlin House can offer you is the pleasance of looking out over one of the serenest valleys in Sussex. My coach-and-four are at your service, Miss Collins.” “Merlin House, Sir Lawrence.” “I am indeed honored, Miss Collins.” As he handed me into the coach-and-four, I said, “I should be much more at my ease if you simply called me Victoria.” “Thank you, Victoria. And I should be happier-and more honored-by the use of my Christian name alone.” The baronet picked up the reins and we were off in his coach-and-four. It was perhaps a twenty-minute ride at a vigorous pace to Merlin House, but the baronet did not neglect me for his horses. Quite the contrary.
Since one could still see how nature preened itself even during the hour of dusk, Sir Lawrence pointed out to me some of the more vivid historical aspects of this part of Sussex. There, for example, was Marcy's Oak, a vastness of a tree, from one of whose sturdy limbs Raymond Marcy had been hanged in 1723 when the outraged citizenry of the district whom Marcy represented in Parliament discovered he was additionally lining his pockets with a moonlit and nonmoonlit career as a highwayman in Essex. The brief bridge they were crossing over at the moment, Sir Lawrence commented, was tarried at by no less a personage than Chaucer, on his journey from Brighton to London, who had written immortal couplets about it-rendered somewhat more mortal by the fact that the manuscript, titled Henry-the-Ghost's Navigaunt Crossing, had been irretrievably lost because one of his mistresses, a Lady Surcom, leaving London for a visit to Edinburgh, had been incensed that Chaucer refused to accompany her, and she had thereupon torn to unidentifiable pieces the very manuscript Chaucer had presented her with after returning from Brighton. “I suppose that taught Chaucer a lesson,” I said. “Well,” Sir Lawrence said, “we have no record of the poet thereafter giving any of his manuscripts to his succeeding mistresses.” “I suggest that the good Lady Surcom was not incensed because Chaucer refused to go with her so much as she might have been angered over the years that other mistresses had preceded her and that she would be superseded herself.” “I would venture to say,” the baronet told me, “that you, Victoria, would not be such a stickler for what, by a euphemism, might be called the pseudovirtuous.” One of Sir Lawrence's gray locks fell over his forehead and thereby enchanted me-the presumably open-faced boyishness of the baronet's countenance mingling with the subtlety and power showing there as well, would have, before the advent of Hugh Kinsteares, shaken me to my figurative balls-which I had released to Hugh. Now I was not shaken in the slightest, but there was, encouragingly, the faintest tingle at my fingertips which was, discouragingly, something of a distance from my heart. “I am not a stickler for virtue, Lawrence, pseudo or otherwise. On the other hand, if I am enticed to a scene of passion and happen to change my mind, I do not expect my escort to restrain me if I choose noninvolvement.” “Indeed,” the baronet said flatly.
“Indeed,” I said quite firmly. “One should not dream of behaving otherwise,” Sir Lawrence said. “It would be an insult redeemable only on the field of honor. Who-I speak entirely theoretically-would seek to create a duel to settle the matter?”
“My brother James,” I said dryly. “Oh,” he said. “I don't at all feel brotherly, Victoria. Well, then,” he continued, “perhaps I had best return you to Brighton. There's no telling how I would behave with so beautiful a woman as you after night fell-” “No,” I interrupted desperately, “I really don't want to go back, Lawrence.