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mercyrobotSorting Out the Dance Card
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3. A Little Flutter
I hadn't known the piano needed tuning, but apparently it was one of those oversights Jeeves had spoken of, and it needed a good deal more than tuning if all the banging-about below me was anything to go by. Jeeves had to rush back and forth between my bathing and dressing and the tuner chappies, so I had no chance to ask him what he'd been about to say.
By the time there was a chance, I found I couldn't screw up the courage, because Jeeves was acting as though there was nothing out of the ordinary. So there must've been nothing. Just the Wooster imagination running rampant under the influence of what was likely vain hope to see any hint of what I wished would be there.
"I chanced to meet an acquaintance of yours while at the market, sir," Jeeves informed me once I'd given the piano-tuning my seal of approval. "Miss Marion Wardour."
"Marion? What's she doing here?" Marion, if you remember, was the singer pal of mine who'd once been the unfortunate object of my cousins Claude and Eustace's courtship attempts and only escaped them through Jeeves's cunning.
"She gave me to understand that she has taken an engagement at the Petit George, sir."
"Well, good for her!" I said with enthusiasm I did not truly feel, but Jeeves was looking standoffish and clearly issuing a silent nolle prosequi on continuing our earlier discussion. "Did she say where she was lodging?"
"No, sir, but she indicated an intention to call here this evening. She intimated that she had some problem on which she was hoping for advice."
"You mean she's really coming to see you." I wasn't troubled by it; I'm well used to such things. "No matter, I'll be glad to see her anyway. She's a good egg, Marion. Hasn't got her head full of mad notions like most females." Meaning she'd spent a great deal of time in my company without mistaking my friendly overtures for romantic ones.
"Indeed, sir. She seems a sensible young lady."
"And I dare say we'll get a good table at the Petit George out of the deal. I've never heard of it, but I'm sure it's positively dripping with Parisian culture."
"So I have heard, sir." Jeeves sounded as though I'd just suggested strolling about town in a yellow hat.
"It sounds as though you don't like whatever you've heard, Jeeves," I said, a trifle put out. I'd been counting on Jeeves's company for these sorts of things and looking forward to the prospect. "You haven't got to come if you think it beneath you, but I thought you enjoyed going out on the town in New York."
"I did, sir, very much so. I am simply concerned that you might find the particular...culture at the establishment in question displeasing."
"What rot, Jeeves. I'm sure I've seen worse than whatever they've got there."
"Very good, sir." But it sounded rather more like 'it's your funeral, sir.'
Marion actually said the same sort of thing when I suggested taking in her performance, while exchanging a significant glance with Jeeves, no less! "I think you'd have a better time if you came to the party I'm performing at on Friday, Bertie," she said hedgily.
"Here, now!" I protested. "That makes two votes against Bertram stepping foot in this place, plus one significant glance. What on earth am I going to find so horrible?"
"It's in Montmartre, Bertie," Marion said. "I'm not sure you understand—"
"I'm not some babe in the woods, you know," I rather snapped. "I do have some idea of what I can expect to find. It's as though the both of you think a bit of depravity will have me fainting on sofas. I do only live about three hops from Piccadilly, which I've walked through at some rather odd hours. I have seen a thing or two, and seeing another thing or two will not kill me. I will attend this performance with bells on, this very evening, and that's the final word."
Marion shrugged and Jeeves looked soupy, but neither protested further. Marion's problem, by the by, was one I've often had. To wit, somebody wanted to marry her, and she wanted none of it. The chap apparently didn't think 'no' or even 'not if you were the last chap on earth' satisfactory answers. Jeeves promised to give it his best consideration, but I saw a bally obvious solution staring us right in the face.
"Why can't you just pretend to be engaged to someone else?" I asked.
"Well, that might work," she said. "But who? I can't just make somebody up; he won't take my word for it."
"I suppose I could do it," I said warily.
"That's really sweet of you, Bertie, but Renaud's a big man. If it came to blows he'd snap you in half. It'd have to be someone more Jeeves's size."
And well, Jeeves was precisely Jeeves's size, and the conclusion was eventually reached that it should be Jeeves himself, since his playing the part removed the danger that she might just end up with another chap trying to marry her. We were assured there was no danger of meeting him in the night club, as he frowned on such things and wanted to 'take her away from all that.' Instead we would go in a few days to a dinner at his house she'd been vainly attempting to oil out of.
Jeeves in eveningwear is a rare privilege and a sight to behold, and I couldn't help smiling at him in the mirror as he gave a few last brushes to my jacket. "Not very bohemian, but I think we cut a nice figure, what?" I said, because I couldn't very well tell him he looked the knee-jellying variety of dashing.
"One hopes, sir," he said, with the slightest of smiles in return.
I took a deep breath and screwed my courage to the sticking place. "Jeeves," I said, leaning forwards and picking at my hair a bit to disguise the bout of nerves threatening to shut me up. "This morning, before the bell rang. You were about to say something." I chanced a look at his reflection, which had turned its back and was straightening the wardrobe.
"I cannot recall, sir," he said.
"I think you were about to say 'perhaps' something?" I pressed, despite knowing I shouldn't.
"If I happen to remember it, sir, I shall make certain to inform you."
"Oh. All right." Either he honestly didn't remember or he'd thought better of it. Neither boded very well for me, but there was nothing for it.
I'll have to admit that despite all my argument to the contrary, I hadn't been entirely prepared for the particular section of Montmartre we were visiting. Garishly dressed folk of all descriptions milled about in the streets and poured out of bars, in every possible combination. If it had been merely witnessing some unconventional couples and a few chaps in dresses, I could indeed have stood it fine. It was the outrageously forward leering and commentary that put me off, though what little French I have does not include much of that sort of vocabulary.
"I say!" I exclaimed when what I was fairly certain was a man impersonating a woman impersonating a man called me something I think translates to 'kitten.' He only retreated when Jeeves gave him a withering glare and said something that, from what I understood of it, he would never have said in English in my hearing.
"If you would not find it troubling to take my arm, sir, I believe the worst of it will stop," Jeeves said quietly when the interloper had been dispensed.
The heart skipped a few thousand beats when I realised he meant to present the illusion that we were...well, what I wished we were. I latched on with aplomb and found myself rather sorry when it turned out there wasn't very much farther to walk.
Marion did no worse than smirk, as if to 'I-told-you-so' me, when she spied the arm-entanglement. Inside was much the same as outside, though most of the more colourful characters seemed to prefer to lend their custom elsewhere. Still, there were chaps with chaps, girls with girls, and I was stuck with a hard twist of jealousy in the gut. Here I was stepping into one of the few parts of the world where nobody would bat an eyelash at my singular attachment to my most singular man, and still powerless to betray one whit of it. If only!
But I had a more practical worry, too. "I say, is this sort of thing legal?"
"It isn't illegal," Marion said. "They don't put you away here for what you are."
"Or for where you are, I hope?"
"It's safe, Bertie," she said. I had to wonder why, of all the places in Paris where she could sing, she'd chosen this one, but I fancied it might pay rather better since not everyone might be so keen to be advertised on its stage. Marion led us to a table right in front of said stage, from which a fashionable little slip of a girl had been watching our approach, soon introduced as Lisette Monteforte. She seemed happy enough to meet me, but was a trifle cool towards Jeeves for some reason. It made a bit more sense when she asked, and he confirmed, that Jeeves was the one Marion was pretending to be engaged to. At least, it was obviously the reason; I couldn't think why she didn't like it. Perhaps she had scruples about that sort of subterfuge.
The band struck back up and dancers crowded the floor. It shouldn't have surprised me, given who appeared to be coupled with whom, that the general rules of dancing partners had gone quite merrily out the window, but I'd never seen the like and couldn't help gaping a bit.
Lisette gave me a rough poke in the arm. "Don't stare so," she said, and other than a hint of an accent, her English was probably better than mine. "It is also a sin to eat lobster."
"No, no," I assured her. "I was just thinking what a good time they were all having. You know, places like this in England, you could get two years just for going inside. But it's bally stupid. Who does it hurt, really? Nobody can help who they love."
Lisette laughed in an 'oh, bless' sort of way. "I don't think they are all in love."
"I didn't think they were," I defended. "I spoke in the broader sense of the thing. And anyway, how else do you fall in love if not by dancing and keeping company? There's the odd bit of luck when you clap eyes on somebody and say 'there, that's the one,' but I think for most it comes on rather more gradually."
This did not appear to convince her that I was not entirely dim. "If everyone saw the world as you do, Monsieur Wooster—"
"Bertie, please."
"Bertie. It would be a beautiful place." Which I think actually translated to, 'oh, you're a frightful gawd-help-us, aren't you?' given her next words. "I hate to break your illusion, but well half of the people here have not the slightest interest in each other beyond tonight, maybe tomorrow morning if it goes very well."
I blushed—how could I not—catching her meaning. "Oh. Well. I suppose you can't help who you want to...do that with either." Because, dash it, if I could, I would have put all this Jeeves business directly from my mind.
Speaking of Jeeves, through all this talk he had been sipping at his champagne and looking pensively into the middle distance, in a direction that contained nothing more interesting than a side-door and a wall. I got the rather fearful notion that perhaps his sensibilities had been the ones offended after all his concern for mine. Lisette excused herself to wish luck to Marion, and I took my opportunity.
"Jeeves," I said, and waited till he turned towards me and yes-sirred. "I don't want you to stay just because you think you ought to or I need looking after. If it's too much for you I'm sure I can get home in one piece."
"Not at all, sir," he said. "I was merely attempting to discern what I might have done to offend Miss Monteforte."
Really, that was all? "Nothing, so far as I can tell. Who knows with women? Who knows with the French? And French women? Well, I wouldn't concern yourself with it. I think she disapproves of this engagement ruse for some reason, but that's her problem. Just try to have a good time, will you, if this place really doesn't bother you? Having you staring off like that's bound to make a chap feel like inadequate company."
"You are more than adequate, sir," he said, and just for a second I thought I saw a faint inkling of a very wished-for something pass across his map, but it was gone instantly or, more likely, entirely imagined. "But if you would rather I not stay—"
"Of course I want you to stay. I wouldn't have asked you along if I was just going to send you straight back home."
At this moment, a curly-headed youth ankled up. To my surprise, he made a rather enthusiastic request to have Jeeves as a dancing partner.
Jeeves, whether he was surprised or not, missed not one beat. He rattled off a very polite refusal in French, and if hearing him speak the langue d'amour so beautifully wasn't enough to cause all manner of flipping stomachs and stopping hearts, he reached over and placed his hand atop mine. The youth begged my pardon and biffed off.
Possibly Jeeves took my elated shock for the ordinary sort. "My apologies, sir," he said, but did not remove his hand, warm and large and demanding every bit of willpower I had not to turn mine over and grasp it properly. "I thought it the simplest way to prevent a stream of similar and possibly less polite requests throughout the evening."
"Oh, not at all," I said weakly, loath to point out that he was still holding my hand, but I was going to have to in a moment if I didn't want to have some sort of apoplexy.
"That young man is now informing his friends that we are not likely prospects, sir. It might help matters, if it would not offend you to do so, to demonstrate some small gesture of affection rather than continue to look quite so shocked, sir."
You could've knocked me down with an f. Jeeves had just given me carte blanche to take liberties with his person. Even so, I was sure beyond a doubt that kissing him would go over none too well and only make my troubles worse— or in fact, by opposing end them. Instead, I slid a bit closer and laid my trembling free hand upon his cheek, and it was no great feat of acting to look moony about it. "Will this do?" I asked, hoping he'd put the thickness of my voice down to the smoky environs.
His eyes fluttered closed for a moment, or perhaps he just blinked. Judgment of these things rather fails when you're hoping for any sign of what you want to see. His skin was smooth, probably shaved just before we'd gone out, and I'd had to move close enough so that all the marvelous scents of him serenaded the nostrils. He caught my hand and didn't quite press it to his lips, but near enough that I could feel the near brush of them as he said, "I believe so, sir," and possibly I was a bit hoarse from all the smoke, because he sounded the same way.
I thought I would surely die, whimper, melt into a puddle, or all of the above. He couldn't have missed that my breath was coming faster and I'd probably gone scarlet, but he remained cool as a cucumber and slowly returned us to a more usual distance, which was rather a wrench for me. I hadn't even begun to recover when Lisette returned, and thanked my lucky stars that she waved us both back down before I'd stood all the way up, as I'm not sure my legs would have held me, and even if Jeeves had missed the other signs, there was one that would be irrefutable. He, however, continued to his feet. And that was my answer, wasn't it? He'd been entirely unaffected.
"I will endeavour to discover what has become of the waiter, sir," he said, indicating the empty bottle and nearly-empty glasses.
"Right ho, Jeeves," I said miserably.
Lisette blinked at me. "He calls you sir?"
"Well, yes," I said, trying to recover some crumb of my customary cheer. "It's rather the done thing. Jeeves is my valet, you see, and a bally good one at that." Only my valet, and only ever, I reminded myself, staring after him glumly. "Though I doubt I'd protest if he spent the rest of his days calling me 'oi, stupid.'"
"You are in love with him," she said. She did not ask, she did not accuse; she simply said.
The swift denial died on my lips at the rather pointed look of a girl who knows she's hit the thing on the head. Given where we were, it was rather pointless in any case. "He doesn't know, so I'll thank you to keep it to yourself."
"But of course," she said. "I have kept secrets far more dangerous."
"Thanks awfully," I sighed, but then a frightening thought struck me. "I say, it's not horribly obvious, is it?"
"Just then it was, the way you stared after him, but I would guess you don't look him in the face that way."
"I hope not."
"Men never see these things unless they want to. I would not worry."
It was cold comfort, since it meant if he wanted to see it, he would have done. "Well, good, I suppose. While we're on the subj., Lisette, don't be too hard on him about this engagement wheeze. It was really my idea to start, and we're only trying to help Marion."
"I understand that now," she said. "Marie explained to me a bit more when I was with her just now. I feared he had his own designs and we would simply exchange one Renaud for another."
"No, no, no, not at all. Jeeves seems to spend half his time getting people out of engagements. Ordinarily he'd have had some friend of mine play the part, but I barely know anyone in Paris, and certainly no one I'd leave a thing like that up to. Out of the two of us he's the less likely to be beaten to a jelly if this Renaud menace gets angry."
"He does us a great kindness."
Some things fell together just then, the way they do sometimes, though probably less often than for others: where we were, Lisette's coolness to Jeeves when she thought he might have matrimonial intentions, the 'us,' the disturbing speed with which she'd worked me out.
I goggled a bit. Lisette smiled. "I see you have arrived at the true reason for my upset. It is no secret among our friends."
"But why not just tell Renaud that?"
"We have tried. He said such depravities are exactly why she needs a good husband."
"The blighter."
"Yes." She eyed me a moment, and I could practically see a light come on over her head. "You are helping us. I am going to help you."
"Help? Help what? Help how?"
"Sh! Here he comes. Go along with whatever I say."
"What do you mean?" I asked, but Jeeves arrived, followed closely by the champagne-bearing waiter.
"I mean you're a coward!" Lisette exclaimed suddenly.
"I say!"
"I have bet Bertie fifty pounds that he has not the courage to dance with a man," Lisette informed Jeeves, looking like the cat who'd got the cream.
Good lord. She meant to give the appearance of goading me into dancing with Jeeves as a matter of honour! "It isn't that!" I said, because I had to say something to the raised Jeevesian eyebrow. "Just...it's one thing among one's friends and all in good tipsy fun, for a joke, but these chaps here? Well, I'd be leading them on, wouldn't I? I think I'd rather be out the fifty quid than have to explain that."
"Surely Monsieur Jeeves would be safe enough," said Lisette, delivering the coup de grace, and I was rather torn between kissing her or throwing her out a window, had there been a window.
"Really, Lisette, that's just beyond the pale. You can't ask such a thing of a chap who might not feel he's at liberty to refuse. Which," I said, turning to Jeeves, who was looking his stuffed-froggiest, "you would be if I were asking, which I am not."
"You English," Lisette said with a haughty toss of her bob. "All so prudish. Wouldn't it be in good fun, as you say?"
"A Wooster never backs down from a challenge, but I fear I must buck the Code just this once," I said, pulling out the required notes and smacking them down before Lisette. I couldn't force Jeeves to dance with me, I just couldn't, no matter how I wanted it.
But to my surprise, Jeeves scooped the sterling right back up and shoved it in his pocket. He held his hand out to me. "As a matter of honour, sir, and all in good fun," he said, his expression absolutely unreadable.
I did a creditable impression of a fish out of water, gaping and spluttering. "Jeeves, really, you needn't—"
"I assume you can follow if I lead, sir?"
A bit stunned, a bit dazed, heart pounding, I took the proffered hand and let myself be escorted to the floor. "I feel like a bally girl," I muttered, even as I took up the much-desired spot in Jeeves's arms, because I did.
"I assure you, sir, you are nothing of the sort," Jeeves said, still perfectly inscrutable.
It couldn't have been a Charleston or something, where you're not obliged to stick very close, oh no. It was a slowish foxtrot and incidentally Marion's opening number, rather fittingly about somebody who's a fool to be pining the whole day through. Bingo had once told me he'd seen Jeeves dance very well indeed. I'd yet to experience it first-hand, and I'd never dreamed it would be quite this first-hand, but he really was a corking dancer. I didn't even have to think about what I was doing, which was dashed fortunate because all my energy was going to remembering how to breathe and issuing stern warnings to my anatomy to behave itself.
"I'm sorry to drag you into this, Jeeves," I said, congratulating myself on not sounding too awfully breathless.
"Not at all, sir," he said, giving me an efficient little spin. "I would not see you bested by Miss Monteforte simply to avoid causing some perceived discomfort to myself."
"You...really don't mind, then?" That came out less not-too-awfully-breathless.
"I enjoy dancing, sir, and all the more for having a talented partner."
"I think that's more a compliment to you, Jeeves. I'm barely doing anything."
As if in argument he led us through a rather fancy bit of footwork. "I would have feared for my shoes had I attempted that in most cases, sir."
It was more or less the best five minutes of my life up to that point, especially the moment where I dared to fully look at him and it looked as though he was honestly enjoying himself. I would have liked to stay for six or seven more, but now that the 'bet' was dispensed, I didn't think he'd want to, and I certainly didn't want to hear that he didn't want to.
"I will have to owe you the forfeit," Lisette said when a slightly-giddy Bertram was led back to the table. "I must admit I did not think you would do it." When Jeeves wasn't looking, she winked at me, and I mouthed a silent 'thank you.'
"Mere extortion, was it?" I said cheerily, for even if that dance was all I would ever have, at least I'd had it. "Don't worry, I never let a lady pay for anything." Maybe Jeeves would see that for what it claimed to be, or maybe he'd catch the hint that I'd dance with him for nothing, but I found other places to look for several minutes after I said it in case it was the latter and he wasn't pleased.
I offered Marion the congratulatory attagirl when she came off the stage. "Shouldn't I be saying that to you?" she asked under her breath, with a sly grin that told me the goings-on had in no way escaped her.
"Blame your conniving copine for that, old thing," I said, glancing over to make sure Jeeves was still out of earshot even for our lowered voices. "She's got a funny idea of 'helping.'"
"It got you a dance, didn't it?"
"Oh, good lord. You know too, don't you?"
"I know you, Bertie. Oh, don't look like that. It's nothing to be ashamed of."
"A whole load of chaps in wigs and robes would beg to differ."
"Well, they're asses. I think you're perfectly gorgeous together."
"Doesn't matter," I sighed. "This was a unique event, not to be repeated."
"Oh, Bertie," she said, folding me against her voluminous bosom. "Anyone lucky enough to be loved by you is a complete fool not to return it."
"Sometimes one just can't," I said, thinking of poor Stinker.
"I know that." She patted my cheek. "You think I hung around you for weeks just because you're such great fun?"
"Well. Er, yes?"
She laughed. "The one time I wished a man would try to look down my dress and you never even had to try not to."
"I say! Do you mean—"
"I mean," she said with a wistful s. "I thought, I could marry him, shut my mother up, and he wouldn't make me give up my career."
"I never knew. I'm sorry."
"It's all right. Sad at the time, but I never would've found—" she stopped herself.
"Lisette already told me. Well, I sort of worked it out, and she told me I was right. She makes you happy?"
"Of course I do," said a third voice. I wheeled round to see Lisette, Jeeves a few steps behind her. I moved aside to cede her rightful place.
Another happy couple, and I didn't really think I could stand it just now. "Well, I think we'll leave you ladies to it. Best be off home before I get egged into any more bets, eh, Jeeves?"
"Indeed, sir," he said, handing me the old hat and stick and betraying not one morsel of what he might be thinking.
I followed him out and into a cab, as the trains were no longer running, removing the question I'd been pondering of whether I ought to take his arm again. I had to pause at the door to allow a few gaily dressed ladies (at least I think they were ladies) past, and turning as I did so, I caught sight of the curly-haired youth who'd wanted to dance with Jeeves, latched in the close embrace of a dance with none other than the oddish Alec Cartwright of yestereen. I didn't precisely have it in me to be surprised, but I hastened out before he could see me.
"Did you know," I asked en route, lacking for any better conversation, "that Marion once held matrimonial hopes for me?"
"I confess I did, sir, but as you seemed both oblivious to and unmoved by her advances, I thought informing you would only cause distress," Jeeves said.
"And right you were, Jeeves. I only regret any pain I might've caused." I seemed to be learning about a fair bit of it lately.
"I dare say the lady thinks of it but little, sir, given her present happiness in love."
"I might've known you'd work it out."
"I eventually concluded that Miss Monteforte's initial coolness toward me could have but one motivation."
"Quite right. She warmed right up when I told her you had no real designs."
We fetched up at the house and adjourned within. Away from prying eyes and ears, I felt rather uneasy, fearing I might come to know Jeeves's true opinion on this dancing business, and that it would not be good. But he acted as though there was nothing amiss, so I gave the old college at same.
I was pyjamaed and bedded down when I realised I was feeling a bit peckish. No reason to trouble Jeeves, I thought as I noted the closed door across the hall, particularly after the evening's events. I certainly possessed skill enough to slap some cheese onto a bit of bread.
Thinking Jeeves was asleep, it was a bit startling to find him seated at the kitchen table, still in eveningwear minus the jacket. I let forth a not-unmanly 'gaaah,' hand on heart as I jumped out of my skin. "I thought you'd gone to bed," I gasped, waving him back to his seat.
"I found myself rather alert, sir, so I thought to make use of the time." He got up anyway and stopped my rummaging through the pantry just as I'd laid hands on a baguette. "Allow me, sir."
"Really, Jeeves, I think I can whack a sandwich together. Don't trouble yourself."
"As you are so fond of saying when I have been absent, sir, they are better when I make them for you."
Thus outwitted, I sat down. He'd been writing something but had covered whatever it was with a blotter. "Writing to someone?" I asked casually.
"In a manner of speaking, sir. It is a love letter."
Had I been drinking anything, I would have choked on it. "A love letter? Whomever to?"
"Miss Wardour, sir. I thought it would lend verisimilitude if when her suitor paid his daily call tomorrow, it could be found lying about."
I let out a relieved breath as he set my sandwich in front of me. "Thank you. Well, sit down, sit down, let's hear the thing." I was pathetically eager to hear these sorts of things in his voice even if they weren't meant for me.
"Very good, sir." He reclaimed his seat and took up the paper. "My dearest," he read, "I think I must have loved you before I ever knew you."
"Oh, that's clever," I intercepted, or perhaps interjected. "You'd have had to with what we're claiming."
"Yes, sir," Jeeves said, I thought a trifle annoyed at the interruption. I belted up for the remainder. "I must have always envisioned your eyes when looking upon a sky or a sapphire, without knowing for what I truly yearned. Your voice is that of the music which has been forever in my soul. Your sweet regard raises me above my station to the richest man alive. With bated breath I await the day that your longed-for kiss will be mine to take for as long as I do breathe."
It went on a while with something about charming freckles and that bit of somebody's about 'the pilgrim soul in you,' and I realised when he'd stopped that I hadn't actually been breathing myself. "Bally good stuff, Jeeves," I managed. As he didn't know her very well, the thing was vague enough that it could've been to anyone, even me. But oh, it wasn't, despite the blue eyes referred to. Actually— "You'd better change that bit about skies and sapphires, though. Make it meadows and emeralds or something. Marion's eyes are green."
"Ah. I must have...misremembered. Thank you, sir."
"You'd better put another note in with it, too, by way of explanation. We don't want Lisette getting the wrong idea again."
"No, sir."
"Do you know, Jeeves," I said after chewing a thoughtful bit of (yes, better than I would've made) sandwich, "with all the girls I've been engaged to, I've never once got a love letter? A 'Dear Bertram' or two, as it were, but never soppy words penned in devotion. I'd think it sad indeed if I'd ever much cared for any of them beyond at most the brotherly. Or perhaps it's sad anyway." I felt the late hour entitled me to wax a bit melancholic, even if I couldn't tell Jeeves the real reason. "Imagining myself withered and old, my dying regret that nobody ever loved me enough to write about it."
"Sir..."
Oh, I had to be making him dashed uncomfortable. "Sorry, Jeeves, ignore me. I daresay Madeline Bassett would've obliged me given enough encouragement." And who knew, with all the hearts I was learning I'd unwittingly broken lately, perhaps someone or other had been moved to letter-writing. Sandwich finished and lacking an excuse to linger, I bid Jeeves goodnight again.
"Sir?" Jeeves called as I made my exit. I turned back, and got the distinct impression that it was one of those moments when someone's about to say one thing, but thinks better of it and covers it up with something else. But as it surely wasn't 'I love you enough to write you letters, sir,' I didn't concern myself overmuch. "Are you still agreeable to visiting the exhibition tomorrow?"
"Of course, of course. I suppose you'll want me up and about at some unholy hour?"
"Perhaps a trifle earlier than usual, sir. I would like to precede the afternoon crowd if possible."
"Then precede we shall. But if it's before eight I'll not be responsible for my actions."
"Very good, sir."
He gave me till half-past eight, in fact, before he roused me, looking entirely too crisp for someone who'd had even less sleep than I'd been allowed.
"Don't you ever have a lie-in, Jeeves?" I grumbled into my pillow before wrenching myself upwards toward the promise of tea.
"Only when ill or on holiday, sir." I thought of Jeeves drowsing leisurely awake with nowhere to be, a thing I'd rather like to witness. "Some letters came, sir, forwarded from London."
"Oh? Who from?"
"One from your aunt Mrs Travers, sir, and one from the Reverend Pinker."
"It can't be very urgent or they'd have sent telegrams." I wasn't keen on having Jeeves set eyes on anything from Stinker, for who knew what it might contain. I hoped the man would have more sense than that, but one never knew. "I'll read them later. No sense piling on obligations when I'm barely awake."
We spent a very enjoyable day poking through the lauded exhibish, and though there was no holding of arms, there were a few bits we were obliged to crush in rather closely for, despite all the plans of crowd-preceding. It included a bit of a comedy of errors related to my cufflink getting caught on one of Jeeves's buttons and a witty, 'Well, Jeeves, it seems I've become rather attached to you,' from self. While it didn't make him really laugh, it earned half a chuckle or so as he disengaged the offending articles in a manner that required the brief holding of my hand, causing me to sigh at what a sad case I'd become.
By the time we returned home, it was well past teatime and my feet were crying out piteously—or would have been if feet could cry—in fatigue and pain, and I was absolutely certain that if I had to see one more jug or screen I might just hurl the thing into the Seine. I threw myself post-haste onto the nearest bit of furniture and put in a beseechment for one of those hot basins Jeeves prepares when les pieds are complaining or there's some danger of my catching cold.
Jeeves came up with the goods and removed the offending footwear for me, which I'd lacked the energy to do. "It may sting, sir," he warned. "You have developed a few blisters." I shoved the aching feet in the water anyway. Sting it did, but I gritted my teeth and it gave way to relief that outweighed the slight burning. "I wish you had told me your feet were hurting, sir," Jeeves said. "We could have departed sooner."
"It wasn't really as bad as all that till right at the end. Besides, you were enjoying yourself. If I won't agree to Japan, I thought the least I could do was let you view its artifacts to your heart's content." But mostly, he'd been enjoying himself. I'd have been bored to tears an hour in, but watching him be so clever and interested had made it positively riveting.
"A kind consideration, sir, but unnecessary. I could have returned another day, and likely will in any case."
"Well, no sense belabouring it. Spilt milk and all that."
I lounged about for the remainder of the afternoon, reading my letters at last. Aunt Dahlia was hosting some gala for Angela's birthday and wanted to make certain I'd be back, and Stinker thankfully only wanted to see if I'd be averse to wearing a kilt.
"Oh, Jeeves, I'm glad I didn't have you read me Stinker's letter," I told him as he passed by in the course of some task or other. "It would have given you nightmares. A kilt! Honestly. He's seen my legs, what on earth makes him think that's a good idea?"
"I presume you refer to your role in the Reverend Pinker's upcoming nuptials and not some curious fad, sir?"
"Of course I mean the wedding. Here, take down a telegram. 'Stinker, in re kilt, cannot comply. Jeeves will disown me.'"
He'd got the joke and stopped writing, favouring me with a fractional smirk. "Surely you do not believe I would hold you responsible, sir."
"No, but you'd be unbearable about it for weeks. I can hear the skirt remarks now."
"I have the utmost respect for traditional Highland dress when worn by someone of that extraction, sir. It is perfectly appropriate for the groom to be thus attired while his attendants are clothed in the usual manner."
"Well, thank goodness for small favours. But that's too long for a telegram." I yawned. "I'll write back later."
I hobbled my way over to the piano. I didn't really feel much like playing it, but as Jeeves had gone to the trouble of having the thing tuned, I thought it shouldn't be for nothing, and I was feeling a bit too idle even for my own taste. It wasn't until I'd wrung a few mindless bars out of the thing that I realised I was playing the song I'd danced to with Jeeves, which probably accounted for the decidedly rummy look he was giving me from the doorway.
"Sorry," I muttered. "That's probably the last thing you want to hear." It must have been, for he turned and walked away without a word. I cursed myself for a fool.
The rest of the evening and well past the next morning were marked by a decided tension. It wasn't the same sort that cropped up from time to time over a jacket or a hat; it was far worse than that. Jeeves avoided being anywhere near me for any longer than absolutely necessary, and when he expressed a stiff wish to return for more antiquity-viewing, I bid him go with some relief.
This, I feared, was the bitter end, unless matters improved drastically, and soon. But the one person whose counsel I usually turned to in these things was, for obvious reasons, not to be consulted. I could, I supposed, ask Marion for advice, but what good could it do? What was done couldn't be undone.
Feeling very sorry for myself indeed, I ankled down to the Pomme d'Or with the intention of getting blindingly shuttered.
There I found a shoeless Alec, wearing a fez and seated on the floor in front of a perfectly serviceable chair, smoking a hookah as he wrote in his book. "Bertie!" he exclaimed, a great strawberry cloud coming out along with the greeting. At least someone was happy to see me.
"What ho, Alec," I said, trying and failing to muster a bit of spirit.
"You seem not in the gayest of humours," he said.
"I'm not, I'm afraid."
"Well, pull up a bit of rug. It's impossible to be sad while smoking strawberry shisha." Actually, it wasn't, I found, but it was nice stuff nonetheless. Sort of like inhaling dessert. "You, Bertie Wooster, have got a face like a slapped arse," he informed me some minutes later. "What on earth vexes you so?"
"I'm in love with someone who doesn't love me," I said.
"Oh, bad luck. Bad luck. Not that tall-dark-and-glowering chap I saw you with at the P'tit G.?"
"Shh! Are you mad?" I tried to calm myself. He certainly couldn't tell anybody he'd seen me there without saying he'd been there himself.
"Oh, come. No one here cares, and no one's here to care." He gestured round, and the room was indeed empty.
"It doesn't matter who it is. You asked the reason for my less-than-cheery demeanour and I gave it. And as it happens I was at that club because the girl singing there is a friend of mine."
"Did I ask?"
"There were insinuations."
"And what do you suppose I was doing there?" He blew out a line of three perfect rings.
"It's none of my business."
"This isn't bloody Britain, you know. You won't be put to hard labour for an inverted thought."
Whatever inverted thoughts were. I supposed they were the sorts I was having. "So I've been told." I popped up. "Thanks for the smoke. I'll just be—"
Alec popped up after me. "Oh, don't go. I promise I'll behave. We can...play cards or something."
"I'm afraid I'm not very good company."
"You're perfectly lovely company. I'll hazard a guess you're here because you don't want to be home alone and unloved." He pointed a stern finger at me. "Stay put." I stay-putted, since he had rather the right of it and going home truly wasn't that fair a prospect. My host, such as he was, returned bearing a bottle and a deck of cards. He set the supplies down on the floor and tugged me back down, placing the fez atop my head and giving the cards a shuffle. "Now, then. What'll it be? Two-handed bridge?"
"You can't play two-handed bridge."
"Spoilsport. All right, then, gin? Bugger-My-Neighbour?"
"I beg your pardon!"
"What? You've never heard of Beggar-My-Neighbour?"
"Oh. I thought you said something else."
"And who knows, I might've done. Let's make it interesting, though. However many cards you lay down for a penalty, you have to take that many drinks."
It sounded like a way to get perfectly blotto in five seconds flat, and I questioned the wisdom, but it was, after all, why I'd come here. The drowning of sorrows, I mean, not the corrupting of children's card games. Seemed a good a method as any for getting the stuff for the troops down the gullet, so I agreed. They weren't drinks as such, as Alec hadn't got any glasses, but four swallows in a row of unadulterated whiskey is still a fair bit, and he had all the bally aces. I had all the kings, though, so we were neither of us too well off by the time the deck was won. Or possibly we were very well off, depending how you looked at it.
However you looked at it, I lacked the sense or the strength to protest when I was hauled up off the floor and told, "Come round to my houshe and I'll make you some toasht."
I'm sure the pair of us looked a sight, self still be-fezzed and draped over Alec, whose shoes had not been invited on the excursion, both of us singing 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips' in various and sundry keys. Our destination proved to be not so much a house as a garret, up interminable dark rickety staircases that seemed to swing back and forth. At last I was deposited onto a scratchy settee whose cushions all but swallowed me.
"Toasted marmalade, just the thing!" Alec cried. "Oh, arsing fuck, I've forgot my shoes."
"They'll wait for you," I said sagely, then laughed myself practically to tears at the notion.
Toast (burnt) with too much marmalade was served to me either in a matter of minutes or hours. I couldn't be sure which, only that I opened my eyes after some interval of woozy drifting to find a slice of the stuff in question being shoved between my lips, followed when I'd finished by something it took me a moment to realise was a tongue.
"What are you doing?" I said, but due to the sloppy labial press it came out more to the tune of a lot of mmph-ing. I tried to shove Alec back so I could make myself understood, but my whiskey-weakened limbs plus the condition of being rather sat on rendered my effort bootless. And something in me just said 'Oh, what's the use?' and I joined in. 'Maybe,' it said, 'maybe this is just what you need. Surely it's better than being alone.'
And for one half of one moment, it was. But then it wasn't. It was all wrong. He felt all wrong, smelt all wrong, even tasted all wrong. The hand that dove down my trousers before I could stop it was too small, too cold, and the thing that had been telling me to go along with it was drowned out by something shouting, 'No no no no no!' I gave a mighty shove with all my strength, and Alec toppled to the floor with a cry. So, too, did a box that had been on a side table, spilling out a cascade of photographs. Not just any photographs, I saw with rising horror. Photographs of boys, men, twos, threes, fours, doing the most— "Good lord!" I exclaimed.
The Alec demon got out no more than, "It's not—" before I ran. Out of the flat, down the dark and swinging stairs, stumbling and tripping all the way out into the street, and down it, ignoring the cries of old ladies with their shopping and fashionable Parisians out for a stroll, round a corner and another, until I staggered into an alley just in time to be violently sick in somebody's dustbin. And then I sank down upon the grimy cobbles as shivers and sobs wracked through me.
I don't know how long I stayed that way before, the drink out of me and the danger past, I managed to breathe without wheezing and the stinging tears dried. Wiser men, after such an ordeal, would likely have had some spark of perfect clarity come over them, some 'what it all really means' of some sort, but not I. I simply wanted to go home.
New fear seized me at the thought of Jeeves. What would he say, to see me in this state? Would the debauchery I'd clearly been up to be the final nail in the coffin? Or would he feel so terribly sorry for me that he'd forget this rift and let us go on as before?
Whatever the music to be faced, I had to face it, for I certainly could not become a permanent resident of this alley. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, righted the clothes as best I could and got a cab home.
I crept in, tail between my legs, and realised after a few shouts and knocks that I was blessedly, mercifully alone. Jeeves was still out with the antiquities. I had a stay of execution. I would have to explain what had happened to the suit, but perhaps I could just let on about the overindulgence and stumbling. I wouldn't be forced to face him in this sorry state. I hurried up to the bath and scrubbed like I'd never scrubbed before, wanting every trace of the disastrous afternoon gone.
Sadly, I could not scrub the memories from my mind, and despite being respectably attired and clean by the time Jeeves returned, I was still in a right state. The photographs haunted me. I think Alec had been about to tell me it wasn't what I thought, but what was it, then? Had he taken those? Bought them? Did he know those men? Were they his collection? A bit of the shame ballooned itself into anger, and also relief that I had escaped with my virtue more or less intact and my person unphotographed. The worm had got himself an advantage and proceeded to press it. But for that one all-wrong moment, I had been an innocent bystander in the proceedings, hadn't I? I tried to believe it.
"Poets!" I spat when Jeeves noticed the very obvious agitation and deposited his parcels to ask after my health. "Poets!" I could say no more.
Jeeves had the good sense not to try and make me, but he brandished a petit bleu at me. "This arrived just as I did, sir."
I took one look at the direction on the thing and thrust it back at him. "Build a fire and throw it on," I said.
"Had you better not read it first, sir?"
"No, Jeeves, I hadn't better. Take down the following." I paused to collect myself as he readied his pencil and form. "'Message burnt unread. Nothing more to say to you. Leave me alone,'" I dictated. "Don't sign it." There was more than a slight raising of eyebrows, but he took it faithfully down. "I'm sorry to send you back out again straight away, but I want that despatched post-haste."
"Very good, sir," Jeeves said with a cryptic air. He reapplied his hat and shimmered out.
There. My hands were washed of the Cartwright scourge. I went and shut myself in my room, in no humour to be spoken to or even looked at.
Jeeves left me to it for a time, but right around six there was a cautious knock at my door, presumably to see if he'd be delivering the customary p.m. refreshment. I pulled a pillow over my face and didn't answer.
More tapping. "Are you awake, sir?"
"No," I called irritably.
"May I enter, sir?"
I sighed. This wasn't Jeeves's fault. If I didn't want the last nail driven into the coffin I shouldn't be horrid to him. "If you must," I groaned.
In he came, depositing the drink on the bedside table as though this were nothing out of the usual run of things. He knelt down next to the bed and silently removed my shoes, which I'd been dangling over the edge to keep them off the bedclothes. I gratefully curled my feet up under me. "Will you be wanting dinner, sir?" He used the sort of tone one might with a horse likely to kick.
"No, I don't think I will." I didn't even want the drink, and the stomach organ recoiled at the mere mention of food. "Have the night off if you like, Jeeves. I don't think I'll be needing anything."
"If something is troubling you, sir—"
"Today is troubling me, Jeeves. I'd like it to be over as soon as possible."
"Very good, sir." And if it weren't Jeeves saying those words, I'd have thought them said a bit sadly. General weariness at the young master's moodiness was far more likely. He was acting very charitable towards me under the circs, and I ought to have fostered it, but I was in such a frightful stew over it all that any effort would likely have made it worse.
I drifted off into a nightmarish sort of half-awakeness, the darkness behind my eyelids some carnival freakshow of teeming limbs and drunken laughter, visions of Jeeves shoving me away and saying he hated me before returning his attentions to some writhing sepia form.
I don't know what time it was—late, for it was fully dark—that the bell and the raised voices crept their way into my consciousness. They blended in with the nightmare at first and didn't rouse me immediately, but then I bolted upright. Alec was here.
I crept on trembling pins to the door and cracked it open just a smidge. I couldn't see them, of course, but I could hear them.
"...not in the habit of admitting persons to the household who have been expressly told by Mr Wooster to impose on him no further," Jeeves said in an arctic manner. It was dire indeed if he'd dispensed with the regrettably-not-at-home and honorifics.
"Oh, you're his bodyguard as well, are you?" There was a mad sort of slurring to his tone that told me the effects of the drink had not quite worn off, or had been renewed.
"If needs must," Jeeves said.
"But it's all just a misunderstanding! Here, if you'd just move the hell aside and let me go and explain—"
"I do not presume to judge what is and is not a misunderstanding. If it be so, then I daresay a resolution will come about absent my intervention." Generally the opposite of how Jeeves operated, actually, but I was ever so grateful for it. "But at present, Mr Cartwright, you are trespassing, and if you do not find yourself several streets away in the next minute, I shall send for the police."
The scourge sort of cackled in a mad and unhinged way. "You bloody well deserve each other," he called what must've been over his shoulder, for it faded. As things for him to say went, it wasn't good, but there was a whole list of far worse ones, and hopefully Jeeves would dismiss it as mad ramblings.
I sank down onto the bed in relief. I'd be fine tomorrow, I told—nay, commanded—myself as I donned proper nightwear. I'd be the very soul of fine and bright cheer, and do something nice for Jeeves by way of apology.
I must've got off to the dreamless at some point. Mid convincing-of-self not to be such a blasted pill on the morrow, the morrow was here, as was Jeeves with the tea. The discarded clothes had already disappeared, and in place of my normal dressing-gown at the foot of the bed, there was a curiosity. A kimono, in fact, with fish and birds in about fourteen shades of blue (give or take).
At my unasked what's-all-this-then, Jeeves stated, "Had you not expressed a wish to own such a garment, sir? I assumed your failure to purchase one to be an oversight. I apologise if I misapprehended—"
"No, Jeeves, it's really corking. I love it." Oh, how I loved it. I had indeed sung its praises in the souvenir shop. I'd restrained myself in the end, thinking the thing wouldn't last a day in the household before meeting some sorry end, but Jeeves had noticed and gone and got me one just because he thought I'd like it. I was touched, to say the least. "But it's— I certainly don't deserve it. I've been an absolute trial of late."
"I had not formed that opinion in this particular case, sir." Meaning that in other particular cases, he rather had, but was too polite to say so. "I am gratified it meets with your approval."
"Decidedly, Jeeves. Decidedly. But I wouldn't have thought it would meet with yours."
"If I can bear the red pyjamas, sir, I can bear anything," he said with that put-upon valet-y stoicism I'd come to know and love as his brand of humour. "Only I would request that you not wear them both at once, sir, out of consideration for my nerves."
I laughed, and it felt so bally good to be doing so. For I'd had it all wrong, hadn't I? I'd been fretting over coffins and nails therein, and all the while Jeeves had been apparently scheming to cheer me up, not to give his notice. "What care I for red pyjamas when there are blue kimonos in the world? Make curtains out of them for all I care." I downed the tea and scrambled rather childishly over the bed to drape the prize about me. "Well?" I asked, holding out my arms and doing a bit of a turn.
"Very becoming, sir." I knew Jeeves was giving it his best, and it must've taken everything he had not to tell me what he really thought.
I'm sure I looked a perfect idiot, grinning and swooping the sleeves about, but if he'd done this to please me I wasn't going to jolly well hide the light under a bushel.
It was the finest morning in the history of fine mornings, and the weather was very nice on top of it, so I breakfasted at the little table on the back terrace, kimono and all. Jeeves came out somewhere during the proceedings with a freshening spot of tea and I held out a section of my paper in invitation. He didn't take it, floating instead back indoors, and for a moment I thought the morning not so nice after all, but then he reappeared with a second teacup and took the other chair. Thusly, there we sat, reading away in companionable quietude.
The garden had high walls bordered by a small army of pear trees, and surely among it all there was a snail on a thorn. One could almost imagine oneself in an idyllic country meadow. Which, come to think of it, didn't sound half bad. I waited till Jeeves seemed to be between bits of news before springing the idea. "Still fancy that jaunt up to Brittany, Jeeves?"
"Indeed, sir. I look forward to it."
"Well, don't look too far forward. How does this this very weekend suit you?"
"It suits me very well, sir, though there may be some difficulty procuring lodgings at such late notice."
"Ah, yes. There is that. Well, give it a go. Fine mornings in gardens make me itch for a bit of country air." It was true I was craving something a bit more pastoral, but it was also a good deal to do with locales lacking in Cartwrights.
"I shall see to it directly, sir."
Of course, this did result in Jeeves biffing off to make telephone calls, but that wasn't all bad either, as I ambled back in to the privilege of his French. After about the fifth 'oui, monsieur, je comprends, merci,' though, it began to lose its charm in the face of aubergements (or perhaps hébergements) looking a bit less likely. But just when I was sure the bloom was off the rose, Jeeves came through with a burst of energy at the finish with an 'on vous verra jeudi, monsieur,' that was, absolument, music to my ears. Only three days and it would be just Jeeves and self in a cosy country cottage.
Hélas, there was still the matter of the Fleecing of Renaud to be tended to before we could feel the wind in our hair— that very evening, in fact, so we donned the evening clothes in due course.
"I may be obliged to demonstrate some show of affection towards Miss Wardour, sir," Jeeves said with rather the air of a chap facing a firing squad.
Though my heart sank to the vicinity of my knees, I was all encouragement. "Stiff upper lip, Jeeves." And stiff upper lip, Bertram, while we're at it, I thought. "I know you'll carry it off. Though if you keep calling her Miss Wardour, you're bound to blow our cover."
"I shall manage when the time comes, sir." His u. l. was very stiff indeed.
Calling the event 'dinner' would have been far too charitable, as we barely got a foot in the door. This Renaud blighter glowering in the background, Marion greeted Jeeves with an effusive or effervescent (or something like) 'darling!' and, with a whispered 'forgive me' so quick and quiet only he and I heard it, proceeded to lay an extremely impressive and far too convincing kiss upon the not-so-stiff-any-longer lips of Jeeves.
Lisette and I exchanged rueful glances over their shoulders, and Renaud's glowering gave way to a great deal of shouting. I couldn't quite catch it all, but the gist of the thing was that he wanted us out of his house, and vite. He took a swing at Jeeves before we could leg it, but Jeeves skilfully blocked it and left the red-faced giant sprawled on his backside as we made good our escape. Happily, the cab in which Jeeves and I had arrived was still there, and the getaway was swift.
Safely on the road, Marion thought it all a very good joke. Jeeves was pink-cheeked and avoiding eyes. I myself was feeling rather green around the eyes and gills. Lisette was furious.
"See how you like it!" she exclaimed, and to my utter shock bestowed a great smacker of a smooch upon yours truly.
"I say!" I cried when I had the use of my lips again.
It fell on deaf ears, as the ladies began bickering in rapid French I couldn't follow. I was afraid to look at Jeeves, for to see he hadn't minded at all would have been rather a blow.
Someone, presumably Jeeves, had told the cabbie to hie us to the Wooster res. Marion and Lisette continued to argue without breaking stride, and I escaped into the kitchen on Jeeves's heels as soon as I could get round them.
"Lovers' tiff, what?" I said nervously. "I didn't think I'd be causing anything like that when I came up with the scheme."
"No, sir. Miss Wardour's...display was entirely her own contrivance." Well, nice to know they hadn't planned it in advance, but it didn't make me like it any better. "I thought some small quantity of fond gazing might have sufficed."
"Got it over with quickly, though. 'Twere well it were done and all that. I'm not sure I could've stuck that Renaud fellow through four courses. Positively Spode-like, if Spode were taller."
"Indeed, sir."
He passed me a drink and I knocked it back. Arguing sorts of sounds could still be heard. "Can you believe Lisette being jealous? You and Marion barely know each other." It wasn't the ideal topic, but there wasn't much else to hand just now.
"Seeing the object of one's affection in the arms of another can move one to irrational thought, sir," Jeeves said sagely.
"I suppose it can, at that." I decided that was too telling and soldiered on with, "When Tuppy was sure Angela had been charmed away from him, he even suspected me, saw the worst in every little thing." The rather more recent occurrence not for mentioning, of course.
"Suspicion is not always required, sir." Before I could puzzle out this particular species of stuffed-frog, he lifted up a finger as though to say 'tweet-tweet, shush-shush,' but in actual fact said, "I believe they have stopped."
Sure enough, there was no more shouting. I poked my head out the door and poked it straight back in with cheeks aflame, having found them locked in an e. most passionate. "Think we should give them a minute yet."
Jeeves caught my meaning with a 'lord, what fools these mortals be' sort of half-smirking sigh and sauntered out with a tea tray and an allow-me-sir as though he wasn't about to walk right into the thick of it. I suppose in Jeeves's line of work, one must see enough that not much is all that fazing.
When I stepped a cautious toe out after a minute or two, both females were a proper distance apart, sipping tea and dabbing handkerchiefs dantily at their eyes. Jeeves had already biffed off to parts unknown, possibly to change his collar for one without lipstick on.
"I'm so sorry, Bertie," Marion said in that high sobbish just-done-crying way only a woman can manage. "It was thoughtless of me to do that with no warning."
"You have my apologies as well," Lisette said, though she looked less sorry. "I do not generally kiss men."
"What's done is done," I said, "and all's well that ends well. I believe you're well shut of Renaud."
"At last." Marion's smile was beatific.
"Tell me, did he see the letter?" I asked. "How did it go over?"
"What letter?" asked Marion.
"Jeeves's, of course."
"I didn't get any letter. Lisette?"
"None came that I saw."
"No? I suppose you'd have remembered, at that. It was a right corker of a lettre d'amour meant to be left lying about for Renaud to find. What a thing to go astray in the post." It was odd, but one never knows with Parisian postmen. Oofy once sent me a postcard from Paris that didn't turn up for two months.
I thought no more on the business of the letter until the next day when I happened to mention it in passing while handing Jeeves my overdue replies to Aunt Dahlia and Stinker. "Don't send them however you sent that love letter, Jeeves. Marion never got it."
"Indeed, sir? Most disturbing. It is fortunate that it was not an essential communication."
"Oh, well. Perhaps it'll turn up yet. Or else some poor lady's husband will be very cross with her."
"Doubtful, sir, unless the lady's name also happens to be Marion Wardour. Nevertheless, I will do my best to see that these arrive safely."
I'll admit I was a trifle put out; I'd been going to ask Marion to let me have the thing, odes to green eyes or no. I wondered if Jeeves still had the original blue-eyed version, but there was no way to ask him for it and I wasn't going to stoop to pawing through his private papers. On reflection, wanting a love letter badly enough that you'd take one not even written to you was a bit sad, so perhaps it was well enough.
{Next: Part 4: Playing To the Audience}
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3. A Little Flutter
I hadn't known the piano needed tuning, but apparently it was one of those oversights Jeeves had spoken of, and it needed a good deal more than tuning if all the banging-about below me was anything to go by. Jeeves had to rush back and forth between my bathing and dressing and the tuner chappies, so I had no chance to ask him what he'd been about to say.
By the time there was a chance, I found I couldn't screw up the courage, because Jeeves was acting as though there was nothing out of the ordinary. So there must've been nothing. Just the Wooster imagination running rampant under the influence of what was likely vain hope to see any hint of what I wished would be there.
"I chanced to meet an acquaintance of yours while at the market, sir," Jeeves informed me once I'd given the piano-tuning my seal of approval. "Miss Marion Wardour."
"Marion? What's she doing here?" Marion, if you remember, was the singer pal of mine who'd once been the unfortunate object of my cousins Claude and Eustace's courtship attempts and only escaped them through Jeeves's cunning.
"She gave me to understand that she has taken an engagement at the Petit George, sir."
"Well, good for her!" I said with enthusiasm I did not truly feel, but Jeeves was looking standoffish and clearly issuing a silent nolle prosequi on continuing our earlier discussion. "Did she say where she was lodging?"
"No, sir, but she indicated an intention to call here this evening. She intimated that she had some problem on which she was hoping for advice."
"You mean she's really coming to see you." I wasn't troubled by it; I'm well used to such things. "No matter, I'll be glad to see her anyway. She's a good egg, Marion. Hasn't got her head full of mad notions like most females." Meaning she'd spent a great deal of time in my company without mistaking my friendly overtures for romantic ones.
"Indeed, sir. She seems a sensible young lady."
"And I dare say we'll get a good table at the Petit George out of the deal. I've never heard of it, but I'm sure it's positively dripping with Parisian culture."
"So I have heard, sir." Jeeves sounded as though I'd just suggested strolling about town in a yellow hat.
"It sounds as though you don't like whatever you've heard, Jeeves," I said, a trifle put out. I'd been counting on Jeeves's company for these sorts of things and looking forward to the prospect. "You haven't got to come if you think it beneath you, but I thought you enjoyed going out on the town in New York."
"I did, sir, very much so. I am simply concerned that you might find the particular...culture at the establishment in question displeasing."
"What rot, Jeeves. I'm sure I've seen worse than whatever they've got there."
"Very good, sir." But it sounded rather more like 'it's your funeral, sir.'
Marion actually said the same sort of thing when I suggested taking in her performance, while exchanging a significant glance with Jeeves, no less! "I think you'd have a better time if you came to the party I'm performing at on Friday, Bertie," she said hedgily.
"Here, now!" I protested. "That makes two votes against Bertram stepping foot in this place, plus one significant glance. What on earth am I going to find so horrible?"
"It's in Montmartre, Bertie," Marion said. "I'm not sure you understand—"
"I'm not some babe in the woods, you know," I rather snapped. "I do have some idea of what I can expect to find. It's as though the both of you think a bit of depravity will have me fainting on sofas. I do only live about three hops from Piccadilly, which I've walked through at some rather odd hours. I have seen a thing or two, and seeing another thing or two will not kill me. I will attend this performance with bells on, this very evening, and that's the final word."
Marion shrugged and Jeeves looked soupy, but neither protested further. Marion's problem, by the by, was one I've often had. To wit, somebody wanted to marry her, and she wanted none of it. The chap apparently didn't think 'no' or even 'not if you were the last chap on earth' satisfactory answers. Jeeves promised to give it his best consideration, but I saw a bally obvious solution staring us right in the face.
"Why can't you just pretend to be engaged to someone else?" I asked.
"Well, that might work," she said. "But who? I can't just make somebody up; he won't take my word for it."
"I suppose I could do it," I said warily.
"That's really sweet of you, Bertie, but Renaud's a big man. If it came to blows he'd snap you in half. It'd have to be someone more Jeeves's size."
And well, Jeeves was precisely Jeeves's size, and the conclusion was eventually reached that it should be Jeeves himself, since his playing the part removed the danger that she might just end up with another chap trying to marry her. We were assured there was no danger of meeting him in the night club, as he frowned on such things and wanted to 'take her away from all that.' Instead we would go in a few days to a dinner at his house she'd been vainly attempting to oil out of.
Jeeves in eveningwear is a rare privilege and a sight to behold, and I couldn't help smiling at him in the mirror as he gave a few last brushes to my jacket. "Not very bohemian, but I think we cut a nice figure, what?" I said, because I couldn't very well tell him he looked the knee-jellying variety of dashing.
"One hopes, sir," he said, with the slightest of smiles in return.
I took a deep breath and screwed my courage to the sticking place. "Jeeves," I said, leaning forwards and picking at my hair a bit to disguise the bout of nerves threatening to shut me up. "This morning, before the bell rang. You were about to say something." I chanced a look at his reflection, which had turned its back and was straightening the wardrobe.
"I cannot recall, sir," he said.
"I think you were about to say 'perhaps' something?" I pressed, despite knowing I shouldn't.
"If I happen to remember it, sir, I shall make certain to inform you."
"Oh. All right." Either he honestly didn't remember or he'd thought better of it. Neither boded very well for me, but there was nothing for it.
I'll have to admit that despite all my argument to the contrary, I hadn't been entirely prepared for the particular section of Montmartre we were visiting. Garishly dressed folk of all descriptions milled about in the streets and poured out of bars, in every possible combination. If it had been merely witnessing some unconventional couples and a few chaps in dresses, I could indeed have stood it fine. It was the outrageously forward leering and commentary that put me off, though what little French I have does not include much of that sort of vocabulary.
"I say!" I exclaimed when what I was fairly certain was a man impersonating a woman impersonating a man called me something I think translates to 'kitten.' He only retreated when Jeeves gave him a withering glare and said something that, from what I understood of it, he would never have said in English in my hearing.
"If you would not find it troubling to take my arm, sir, I believe the worst of it will stop," Jeeves said quietly when the interloper had been dispensed.
The heart skipped a few thousand beats when I realised he meant to present the illusion that we were...well, what I wished we were. I latched on with aplomb and found myself rather sorry when it turned out there wasn't very much farther to walk.
Marion did no worse than smirk, as if to 'I-told-you-so' me, when she spied the arm-entanglement. Inside was much the same as outside, though most of the more colourful characters seemed to prefer to lend their custom elsewhere. Still, there were chaps with chaps, girls with girls, and I was stuck with a hard twist of jealousy in the gut. Here I was stepping into one of the few parts of the world where nobody would bat an eyelash at my singular attachment to my most singular man, and still powerless to betray one whit of it. If only!
But I had a more practical worry, too. "I say, is this sort of thing legal?"
"It isn't illegal," Marion said. "They don't put you away here for what you are."
"Or for where you are, I hope?"
"It's safe, Bertie," she said. I had to wonder why, of all the places in Paris where she could sing, she'd chosen this one, but I fancied it might pay rather better since not everyone might be so keen to be advertised on its stage. Marion led us to a table right in front of said stage, from which a fashionable little slip of a girl had been watching our approach, soon introduced as Lisette Monteforte. She seemed happy enough to meet me, but was a trifle cool towards Jeeves for some reason. It made a bit more sense when she asked, and he confirmed, that Jeeves was the one Marion was pretending to be engaged to. At least, it was obviously the reason; I couldn't think why she didn't like it. Perhaps she had scruples about that sort of subterfuge.
The band struck back up and dancers crowded the floor. It shouldn't have surprised me, given who appeared to be coupled with whom, that the general rules of dancing partners had gone quite merrily out the window, but I'd never seen the like and couldn't help gaping a bit.
Lisette gave me a rough poke in the arm. "Don't stare so," she said, and other than a hint of an accent, her English was probably better than mine. "It is also a sin to eat lobster."
"No, no," I assured her. "I was just thinking what a good time they were all having. You know, places like this in England, you could get two years just for going inside. But it's bally stupid. Who does it hurt, really? Nobody can help who they love."
Lisette laughed in an 'oh, bless' sort of way. "I don't think they are all in love."
"I didn't think they were," I defended. "I spoke in the broader sense of the thing. And anyway, how else do you fall in love if not by dancing and keeping company? There's the odd bit of luck when you clap eyes on somebody and say 'there, that's the one,' but I think for most it comes on rather more gradually."
This did not appear to convince her that I was not entirely dim. "If everyone saw the world as you do, Monsieur Wooster—"
"Bertie, please."
"Bertie. It would be a beautiful place." Which I think actually translated to, 'oh, you're a frightful gawd-help-us, aren't you?' given her next words. "I hate to break your illusion, but well half of the people here have not the slightest interest in each other beyond tonight, maybe tomorrow morning if it goes very well."
I blushed—how could I not—catching her meaning. "Oh. Well. I suppose you can't help who you want to...do that with either." Because, dash it, if I could, I would have put all this Jeeves business directly from my mind.
Speaking of Jeeves, through all this talk he had been sipping at his champagne and looking pensively into the middle distance, in a direction that contained nothing more interesting than a side-door and a wall. I got the rather fearful notion that perhaps his sensibilities had been the ones offended after all his concern for mine. Lisette excused herself to wish luck to Marion, and I took my opportunity.
"Jeeves," I said, and waited till he turned towards me and yes-sirred. "I don't want you to stay just because you think you ought to or I need looking after. If it's too much for you I'm sure I can get home in one piece."
"Not at all, sir," he said. "I was merely attempting to discern what I might have done to offend Miss Monteforte."
Really, that was all? "Nothing, so far as I can tell. Who knows with women? Who knows with the French? And French women? Well, I wouldn't concern yourself with it. I think she disapproves of this engagement ruse for some reason, but that's her problem. Just try to have a good time, will you, if this place really doesn't bother you? Having you staring off like that's bound to make a chap feel like inadequate company."
"You are more than adequate, sir," he said, and just for a second I thought I saw a faint inkling of a very wished-for something pass across his map, but it was gone instantly or, more likely, entirely imagined. "But if you would rather I not stay—"
"Of course I want you to stay. I wouldn't have asked you along if I was just going to send you straight back home."
At this moment, a curly-headed youth ankled up. To my surprise, he made a rather enthusiastic request to have Jeeves as a dancing partner.
Jeeves, whether he was surprised or not, missed not one beat. He rattled off a very polite refusal in French, and if hearing him speak the langue d'amour so beautifully wasn't enough to cause all manner of flipping stomachs and stopping hearts, he reached over and placed his hand atop mine. The youth begged my pardon and biffed off.
Possibly Jeeves took my elated shock for the ordinary sort. "My apologies, sir," he said, but did not remove his hand, warm and large and demanding every bit of willpower I had not to turn mine over and grasp it properly. "I thought it the simplest way to prevent a stream of similar and possibly less polite requests throughout the evening."
"Oh, not at all," I said weakly, loath to point out that he was still holding my hand, but I was going to have to in a moment if I didn't want to have some sort of apoplexy.
"That young man is now informing his friends that we are not likely prospects, sir. It might help matters, if it would not offend you to do so, to demonstrate some small gesture of affection rather than continue to look quite so shocked, sir."
You could've knocked me down with an f. Jeeves had just given me carte blanche to take liberties with his person. Even so, I was sure beyond a doubt that kissing him would go over none too well and only make my troubles worse— or in fact, by opposing end them. Instead, I slid a bit closer and laid my trembling free hand upon his cheek, and it was no great feat of acting to look moony about it. "Will this do?" I asked, hoping he'd put the thickness of my voice down to the smoky environs.
His eyes fluttered closed for a moment, or perhaps he just blinked. Judgment of these things rather fails when you're hoping for any sign of what you want to see. His skin was smooth, probably shaved just before we'd gone out, and I'd had to move close enough so that all the marvelous scents of him serenaded the nostrils. He caught my hand and didn't quite press it to his lips, but near enough that I could feel the near brush of them as he said, "I believe so, sir," and possibly I was a bit hoarse from all the smoke, because he sounded the same way.
I thought I would surely die, whimper, melt into a puddle, or all of the above. He couldn't have missed that my breath was coming faster and I'd probably gone scarlet, but he remained cool as a cucumber and slowly returned us to a more usual distance, which was rather a wrench for me. I hadn't even begun to recover when Lisette returned, and thanked my lucky stars that she waved us both back down before I'd stood all the way up, as I'm not sure my legs would have held me, and even if Jeeves had missed the other signs, there was one that would be irrefutable. He, however, continued to his feet. And that was my answer, wasn't it? He'd been entirely unaffected.
"I will endeavour to discover what has become of the waiter, sir," he said, indicating the empty bottle and nearly-empty glasses.
"Right ho, Jeeves," I said miserably.
Lisette blinked at me. "He calls you sir?"
"Well, yes," I said, trying to recover some crumb of my customary cheer. "It's rather the done thing. Jeeves is my valet, you see, and a bally good one at that." Only my valet, and only ever, I reminded myself, staring after him glumly. "Though I doubt I'd protest if he spent the rest of his days calling me 'oi, stupid.'"
"You are in love with him," she said. She did not ask, she did not accuse; she simply said.
The swift denial died on my lips at the rather pointed look of a girl who knows she's hit the thing on the head. Given where we were, it was rather pointless in any case. "He doesn't know, so I'll thank you to keep it to yourself."
"But of course," she said. "I have kept secrets far more dangerous."
"Thanks awfully," I sighed, but then a frightening thought struck me. "I say, it's not horribly obvious, is it?"
"Just then it was, the way you stared after him, but I would guess you don't look him in the face that way."
"I hope not."
"Men never see these things unless they want to. I would not worry."
It was cold comfort, since it meant if he wanted to see it, he would have done. "Well, good, I suppose. While we're on the subj., Lisette, don't be too hard on him about this engagement wheeze. It was really my idea to start, and we're only trying to help Marion."
"I understand that now," she said. "Marie explained to me a bit more when I was with her just now. I feared he had his own designs and we would simply exchange one Renaud for another."
"No, no, no, not at all. Jeeves seems to spend half his time getting people out of engagements. Ordinarily he'd have had some friend of mine play the part, but I barely know anyone in Paris, and certainly no one I'd leave a thing like that up to. Out of the two of us he's the less likely to be beaten to a jelly if this Renaud menace gets angry."
"He does us a great kindness."
Some things fell together just then, the way they do sometimes, though probably less often than for others: where we were, Lisette's coolness to Jeeves when she thought he might have matrimonial intentions, the 'us,' the disturbing speed with which she'd worked me out.
I goggled a bit. Lisette smiled. "I see you have arrived at the true reason for my upset. It is no secret among our friends."
"But why not just tell Renaud that?"
"We have tried. He said such depravities are exactly why she needs a good husband."
"The blighter."
"Yes." She eyed me a moment, and I could practically see a light come on over her head. "You are helping us. I am going to help you."
"Help? Help what? Help how?"
"Sh! Here he comes. Go along with whatever I say."
"What do you mean?" I asked, but Jeeves arrived, followed closely by the champagne-bearing waiter.
"I mean you're a coward!" Lisette exclaimed suddenly.
"I say!"
"I have bet Bertie fifty pounds that he has not the courage to dance with a man," Lisette informed Jeeves, looking like the cat who'd got the cream.
Good lord. She meant to give the appearance of goading me into dancing with Jeeves as a matter of honour! "It isn't that!" I said, because I had to say something to the raised Jeevesian eyebrow. "Just...it's one thing among one's friends and all in good tipsy fun, for a joke, but these chaps here? Well, I'd be leading them on, wouldn't I? I think I'd rather be out the fifty quid than have to explain that."
"Surely Monsieur Jeeves would be safe enough," said Lisette, delivering the coup de grace, and I was rather torn between kissing her or throwing her out a window, had there been a window.
"Really, Lisette, that's just beyond the pale. You can't ask such a thing of a chap who might not feel he's at liberty to refuse. Which," I said, turning to Jeeves, who was looking his stuffed-froggiest, "you would be if I were asking, which I am not."
"You English," Lisette said with a haughty toss of her bob. "All so prudish. Wouldn't it be in good fun, as you say?"
"A Wooster never backs down from a challenge, but I fear I must buck the Code just this once," I said, pulling out the required notes and smacking them down before Lisette. I couldn't force Jeeves to dance with me, I just couldn't, no matter how I wanted it.
But to my surprise, Jeeves scooped the sterling right back up and shoved it in his pocket. He held his hand out to me. "As a matter of honour, sir, and all in good fun," he said, his expression absolutely unreadable.
I did a creditable impression of a fish out of water, gaping and spluttering. "Jeeves, really, you needn't—"
"I assume you can follow if I lead, sir?"
A bit stunned, a bit dazed, heart pounding, I took the proffered hand and let myself be escorted to the floor. "I feel like a bally girl," I muttered, even as I took up the much-desired spot in Jeeves's arms, because I did.
"I assure you, sir, you are nothing of the sort," Jeeves said, still perfectly inscrutable.
It couldn't have been a Charleston or something, where you're not obliged to stick very close, oh no. It was a slowish foxtrot and incidentally Marion's opening number, rather fittingly about somebody who's a fool to be pining the whole day through. Bingo had once told me he'd seen Jeeves dance very well indeed. I'd yet to experience it first-hand, and I'd never dreamed it would be quite this first-hand, but he really was a corking dancer. I didn't even have to think about what I was doing, which was dashed fortunate because all my energy was going to remembering how to breathe and issuing stern warnings to my anatomy to behave itself.
"I'm sorry to drag you into this, Jeeves," I said, congratulating myself on not sounding too awfully breathless.
"Not at all, sir," he said, giving me an efficient little spin. "I would not see you bested by Miss Monteforte simply to avoid causing some perceived discomfort to myself."
"You...really don't mind, then?" That came out less not-too-awfully-breathless.
"I enjoy dancing, sir, and all the more for having a talented partner."
"I think that's more a compliment to you, Jeeves. I'm barely doing anything."
As if in argument he led us through a rather fancy bit of footwork. "I would have feared for my shoes had I attempted that in most cases, sir."
It was more or less the best five minutes of my life up to that point, especially the moment where I dared to fully look at him and it looked as though he was honestly enjoying himself. I would have liked to stay for six or seven more, but now that the 'bet' was dispensed, I didn't think he'd want to, and I certainly didn't want to hear that he didn't want to.
"I will have to owe you the forfeit," Lisette said when a slightly-giddy Bertram was led back to the table. "I must admit I did not think you would do it." When Jeeves wasn't looking, she winked at me, and I mouthed a silent 'thank you.'
"Mere extortion, was it?" I said cheerily, for even if that dance was all I would ever have, at least I'd had it. "Don't worry, I never let a lady pay for anything." Maybe Jeeves would see that for what it claimed to be, or maybe he'd catch the hint that I'd dance with him for nothing, but I found other places to look for several minutes after I said it in case it was the latter and he wasn't pleased.
I offered Marion the congratulatory attagirl when she came off the stage. "Shouldn't I be saying that to you?" she asked under her breath, with a sly grin that told me the goings-on had in no way escaped her.
"Blame your conniving copine for that, old thing," I said, glancing over to make sure Jeeves was still out of earshot even for our lowered voices. "She's got a funny idea of 'helping.'"
"It got you a dance, didn't it?"
"Oh, good lord. You know too, don't you?"
"I know you, Bertie. Oh, don't look like that. It's nothing to be ashamed of."
"A whole load of chaps in wigs and robes would beg to differ."
"Well, they're asses. I think you're perfectly gorgeous together."
"Doesn't matter," I sighed. "This was a unique event, not to be repeated."
"Oh, Bertie," she said, folding me against her voluminous bosom. "Anyone lucky enough to be loved by you is a complete fool not to return it."
"Sometimes one just can't," I said, thinking of poor Stinker.
"I know that." She patted my cheek. "You think I hung around you for weeks just because you're such great fun?"
"Well. Er, yes?"
She laughed. "The one time I wished a man would try to look down my dress and you never even had to try not to."
"I say! Do you mean—"
"I mean," she said with a wistful s. "I thought, I could marry him, shut my mother up, and he wouldn't make me give up my career."
"I never knew. I'm sorry."
"It's all right. Sad at the time, but I never would've found—" she stopped herself.
"Lisette already told me. Well, I sort of worked it out, and she told me I was right. She makes you happy?"
"Of course I do," said a third voice. I wheeled round to see Lisette, Jeeves a few steps behind her. I moved aside to cede her rightful place.
Another happy couple, and I didn't really think I could stand it just now. "Well, I think we'll leave you ladies to it. Best be off home before I get egged into any more bets, eh, Jeeves?"
"Indeed, sir," he said, handing me the old hat and stick and betraying not one morsel of what he might be thinking.
I followed him out and into a cab, as the trains were no longer running, removing the question I'd been pondering of whether I ought to take his arm again. I had to pause at the door to allow a few gaily dressed ladies (at least I think they were ladies) past, and turning as I did so, I caught sight of the curly-haired youth who'd wanted to dance with Jeeves, latched in the close embrace of a dance with none other than the oddish Alec Cartwright of yestereen. I didn't precisely have it in me to be surprised, but I hastened out before he could see me.
"Did you know," I asked en route, lacking for any better conversation, "that Marion once held matrimonial hopes for me?"
"I confess I did, sir, but as you seemed both oblivious to and unmoved by her advances, I thought informing you would only cause distress," Jeeves said.
"And right you were, Jeeves. I only regret any pain I might've caused." I seemed to be learning about a fair bit of it lately.
"I dare say the lady thinks of it but little, sir, given her present happiness in love."
"I might've known you'd work it out."
"I eventually concluded that Miss Monteforte's initial coolness toward me could have but one motivation."
"Quite right. She warmed right up when I told her you had no real designs."
We fetched up at the house and adjourned within. Away from prying eyes and ears, I felt rather uneasy, fearing I might come to know Jeeves's true opinion on this dancing business, and that it would not be good. But he acted as though there was nothing amiss, so I gave the old college at same.
I was pyjamaed and bedded down when I realised I was feeling a bit peckish. No reason to trouble Jeeves, I thought as I noted the closed door across the hall, particularly after the evening's events. I certainly possessed skill enough to slap some cheese onto a bit of bread.
Thinking Jeeves was asleep, it was a bit startling to find him seated at the kitchen table, still in eveningwear minus the jacket. I let forth a not-unmanly 'gaaah,' hand on heart as I jumped out of my skin. "I thought you'd gone to bed," I gasped, waving him back to his seat.
"I found myself rather alert, sir, so I thought to make use of the time." He got up anyway and stopped my rummaging through the pantry just as I'd laid hands on a baguette. "Allow me, sir."
"Really, Jeeves, I think I can whack a sandwich together. Don't trouble yourself."
"As you are so fond of saying when I have been absent, sir, they are better when I make them for you."
Thus outwitted, I sat down. He'd been writing something but had covered whatever it was with a blotter. "Writing to someone?" I asked casually.
"In a manner of speaking, sir. It is a love letter."
Had I been drinking anything, I would have choked on it. "A love letter? Whomever to?"
"Miss Wardour, sir. I thought it would lend verisimilitude if when her suitor paid his daily call tomorrow, it could be found lying about."
I let out a relieved breath as he set my sandwich in front of me. "Thank you. Well, sit down, sit down, let's hear the thing." I was pathetically eager to hear these sorts of things in his voice even if they weren't meant for me.
"Very good, sir." He reclaimed his seat and took up the paper. "My dearest," he read, "I think I must have loved you before I ever knew you."
"Oh, that's clever," I intercepted, or perhaps interjected. "You'd have had to with what we're claiming."
"Yes, sir," Jeeves said, I thought a trifle annoyed at the interruption. I belted up for the remainder. "I must have always envisioned your eyes when looking upon a sky or a sapphire, without knowing for what I truly yearned. Your voice is that of the music which has been forever in my soul. Your sweet regard raises me above my station to the richest man alive. With bated breath I await the day that your longed-for kiss will be mine to take for as long as I do breathe."
It went on a while with something about charming freckles and that bit of somebody's about 'the pilgrim soul in you,' and I realised when he'd stopped that I hadn't actually been breathing myself. "Bally good stuff, Jeeves," I managed. As he didn't know her very well, the thing was vague enough that it could've been to anyone, even me. But oh, it wasn't, despite the blue eyes referred to. Actually— "You'd better change that bit about skies and sapphires, though. Make it meadows and emeralds or something. Marion's eyes are green."
"Ah. I must have...misremembered. Thank you, sir."
"You'd better put another note in with it, too, by way of explanation. We don't want Lisette getting the wrong idea again."
"No, sir."
"Do you know, Jeeves," I said after chewing a thoughtful bit of (yes, better than I would've made) sandwich, "with all the girls I've been engaged to, I've never once got a love letter? A 'Dear Bertram' or two, as it were, but never soppy words penned in devotion. I'd think it sad indeed if I'd ever much cared for any of them beyond at most the brotherly. Or perhaps it's sad anyway." I felt the late hour entitled me to wax a bit melancholic, even if I couldn't tell Jeeves the real reason. "Imagining myself withered and old, my dying regret that nobody ever loved me enough to write about it."
"Sir..."
Oh, I had to be making him dashed uncomfortable. "Sorry, Jeeves, ignore me. I daresay Madeline Bassett would've obliged me given enough encouragement." And who knew, with all the hearts I was learning I'd unwittingly broken lately, perhaps someone or other had been moved to letter-writing. Sandwich finished and lacking an excuse to linger, I bid Jeeves goodnight again.
"Sir?" Jeeves called as I made my exit. I turned back, and got the distinct impression that it was one of those moments when someone's about to say one thing, but thinks better of it and covers it up with something else. But as it surely wasn't 'I love you enough to write you letters, sir,' I didn't concern myself overmuch. "Are you still agreeable to visiting the exhibition tomorrow?"
"Of course, of course. I suppose you'll want me up and about at some unholy hour?"
"Perhaps a trifle earlier than usual, sir. I would like to precede the afternoon crowd if possible."
"Then precede we shall. But if it's before eight I'll not be responsible for my actions."
"Very good, sir."
He gave me till half-past eight, in fact, before he roused me, looking entirely too crisp for someone who'd had even less sleep than I'd been allowed.
"Don't you ever have a lie-in, Jeeves?" I grumbled into my pillow before wrenching myself upwards toward the promise of tea.
"Only when ill or on holiday, sir." I thought of Jeeves drowsing leisurely awake with nowhere to be, a thing I'd rather like to witness. "Some letters came, sir, forwarded from London."
"Oh? Who from?"
"One from your aunt Mrs Travers, sir, and one from the Reverend Pinker."
"It can't be very urgent or they'd have sent telegrams." I wasn't keen on having Jeeves set eyes on anything from Stinker, for who knew what it might contain. I hoped the man would have more sense than that, but one never knew. "I'll read them later. No sense piling on obligations when I'm barely awake."
We spent a very enjoyable day poking through the lauded exhibish, and though there was no holding of arms, there were a few bits we were obliged to crush in rather closely for, despite all the plans of crowd-preceding. It included a bit of a comedy of errors related to my cufflink getting caught on one of Jeeves's buttons and a witty, 'Well, Jeeves, it seems I've become rather attached to you,' from self. While it didn't make him really laugh, it earned half a chuckle or so as he disengaged the offending articles in a manner that required the brief holding of my hand, causing me to sigh at what a sad case I'd become.
By the time we returned home, it was well past teatime and my feet were crying out piteously—or would have been if feet could cry—in fatigue and pain, and I was absolutely certain that if I had to see one more jug or screen I might just hurl the thing into the Seine. I threw myself post-haste onto the nearest bit of furniture and put in a beseechment for one of those hot basins Jeeves prepares when les pieds are complaining or there's some danger of my catching cold.
Jeeves came up with the goods and removed the offending footwear for me, which I'd lacked the energy to do. "It may sting, sir," he warned. "You have developed a few blisters." I shoved the aching feet in the water anyway. Sting it did, but I gritted my teeth and it gave way to relief that outweighed the slight burning. "I wish you had told me your feet were hurting, sir," Jeeves said. "We could have departed sooner."
"It wasn't really as bad as all that till right at the end. Besides, you were enjoying yourself. If I won't agree to Japan, I thought the least I could do was let you view its artifacts to your heart's content." But mostly, he'd been enjoying himself. I'd have been bored to tears an hour in, but watching him be so clever and interested had made it positively riveting.
"A kind consideration, sir, but unnecessary. I could have returned another day, and likely will in any case."
"Well, no sense belabouring it. Spilt milk and all that."
I lounged about for the remainder of the afternoon, reading my letters at last. Aunt Dahlia was hosting some gala for Angela's birthday and wanted to make certain I'd be back, and Stinker thankfully only wanted to see if I'd be averse to wearing a kilt.
"Oh, Jeeves, I'm glad I didn't have you read me Stinker's letter," I told him as he passed by in the course of some task or other. "It would have given you nightmares. A kilt! Honestly. He's seen my legs, what on earth makes him think that's a good idea?"
"I presume you refer to your role in the Reverend Pinker's upcoming nuptials and not some curious fad, sir?"
"Of course I mean the wedding. Here, take down a telegram. 'Stinker, in re kilt, cannot comply. Jeeves will disown me.'"
He'd got the joke and stopped writing, favouring me with a fractional smirk. "Surely you do not believe I would hold you responsible, sir."
"No, but you'd be unbearable about it for weeks. I can hear the skirt remarks now."
"I have the utmost respect for traditional Highland dress when worn by someone of that extraction, sir. It is perfectly appropriate for the groom to be thus attired while his attendants are clothed in the usual manner."
"Well, thank goodness for small favours. But that's too long for a telegram." I yawned. "I'll write back later."
I hobbled my way over to the piano. I didn't really feel much like playing it, but as Jeeves had gone to the trouble of having the thing tuned, I thought it shouldn't be for nothing, and I was feeling a bit too idle even for my own taste. It wasn't until I'd wrung a few mindless bars out of the thing that I realised I was playing the song I'd danced to with Jeeves, which probably accounted for the decidedly rummy look he was giving me from the doorway.
"Sorry," I muttered. "That's probably the last thing you want to hear." It must have been, for he turned and walked away without a word. I cursed myself for a fool.
The rest of the evening and well past the next morning were marked by a decided tension. It wasn't the same sort that cropped up from time to time over a jacket or a hat; it was far worse than that. Jeeves avoided being anywhere near me for any longer than absolutely necessary, and when he expressed a stiff wish to return for more antiquity-viewing, I bid him go with some relief.
This, I feared, was the bitter end, unless matters improved drastically, and soon. But the one person whose counsel I usually turned to in these things was, for obvious reasons, not to be consulted. I could, I supposed, ask Marion for advice, but what good could it do? What was done couldn't be undone.
Feeling very sorry for myself indeed, I ankled down to the Pomme d'Or with the intention of getting blindingly shuttered.
There I found a shoeless Alec, wearing a fez and seated on the floor in front of a perfectly serviceable chair, smoking a hookah as he wrote in his book. "Bertie!" he exclaimed, a great strawberry cloud coming out along with the greeting. At least someone was happy to see me.
"What ho, Alec," I said, trying and failing to muster a bit of spirit.
"You seem not in the gayest of humours," he said.
"I'm not, I'm afraid."
"Well, pull up a bit of rug. It's impossible to be sad while smoking strawberry shisha." Actually, it wasn't, I found, but it was nice stuff nonetheless. Sort of like inhaling dessert. "You, Bertie Wooster, have got a face like a slapped arse," he informed me some minutes later. "What on earth vexes you so?"
"I'm in love with someone who doesn't love me," I said.
"Oh, bad luck. Bad luck. Not that tall-dark-and-glowering chap I saw you with at the P'tit G.?"
"Shh! Are you mad?" I tried to calm myself. He certainly couldn't tell anybody he'd seen me there without saying he'd been there himself.
"Oh, come. No one here cares, and no one's here to care." He gestured round, and the room was indeed empty.
"It doesn't matter who it is. You asked the reason for my less-than-cheery demeanour and I gave it. And as it happens I was at that club because the girl singing there is a friend of mine."
"Did I ask?"
"There were insinuations."
"And what do you suppose I was doing there?" He blew out a line of three perfect rings.
"It's none of my business."
"This isn't bloody Britain, you know. You won't be put to hard labour for an inverted thought."
Whatever inverted thoughts were. I supposed they were the sorts I was having. "So I've been told." I popped up. "Thanks for the smoke. I'll just be—"
Alec popped up after me. "Oh, don't go. I promise I'll behave. We can...play cards or something."
"I'm afraid I'm not very good company."
"You're perfectly lovely company. I'll hazard a guess you're here because you don't want to be home alone and unloved." He pointed a stern finger at me. "Stay put." I stay-putted, since he had rather the right of it and going home truly wasn't that fair a prospect. My host, such as he was, returned bearing a bottle and a deck of cards. He set the supplies down on the floor and tugged me back down, placing the fez atop my head and giving the cards a shuffle. "Now, then. What'll it be? Two-handed bridge?"
"You can't play two-handed bridge."
"Spoilsport. All right, then, gin? Bugger-My-Neighbour?"
"I beg your pardon!"
"What? You've never heard of Beggar-My-Neighbour?"
"Oh. I thought you said something else."
"And who knows, I might've done. Let's make it interesting, though. However many cards you lay down for a penalty, you have to take that many drinks."
It sounded like a way to get perfectly blotto in five seconds flat, and I questioned the wisdom, but it was, after all, why I'd come here. The drowning of sorrows, I mean, not the corrupting of children's card games. Seemed a good a method as any for getting the stuff for the troops down the gullet, so I agreed. They weren't drinks as such, as Alec hadn't got any glasses, but four swallows in a row of unadulterated whiskey is still a fair bit, and he had all the bally aces. I had all the kings, though, so we were neither of us too well off by the time the deck was won. Or possibly we were very well off, depending how you looked at it.
However you looked at it, I lacked the sense or the strength to protest when I was hauled up off the floor and told, "Come round to my houshe and I'll make you some toasht."
I'm sure the pair of us looked a sight, self still be-fezzed and draped over Alec, whose shoes had not been invited on the excursion, both of us singing 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips' in various and sundry keys. Our destination proved to be not so much a house as a garret, up interminable dark rickety staircases that seemed to swing back and forth. At last I was deposited onto a scratchy settee whose cushions all but swallowed me.
"Toasted marmalade, just the thing!" Alec cried. "Oh, arsing fuck, I've forgot my shoes."
"They'll wait for you," I said sagely, then laughed myself practically to tears at the notion.
Toast (burnt) with too much marmalade was served to me either in a matter of minutes or hours. I couldn't be sure which, only that I opened my eyes after some interval of woozy drifting to find a slice of the stuff in question being shoved between my lips, followed when I'd finished by something it took me a moment to realise was a tongue.
"What are you doing?" I said, but due to the sloppy labial press it came out more to the tune of a lot of mmph-ing. I tried to shove Alec back so I could make myself understood, but my whiskey-weakened limbs plus the condition of being rather sat on rendered my effort bootless. And something in me just said 'Oh, what's the use?' and I joined in. 'Maybe,' it said, 'maybe this is just what you need. Surely it's better than being alone.'
And for one half of one moment, it was. But then it wasn't. It was all wrong. He felt all wrong, smelt all wrong, even tasted all wrong. The hand that dove down my trousers before I could stop it was too small, too cold, and the thing that had been telling me to go along with it was drowned out by something shouting, 'No no no no no!' I gave a mighty shove with all my strength, and Alec toppled to the floor with a cry. So, too, did a box that had been on a side table, spilling out a cascade of photographs. Not just any photographs, I saw with rising horror. Photographs of boys, men, twos, threes, fours, doing the most— "Good lord!" I exclaimed.
The Alec demon got out no more than, "It's not—" before I ran. Out of the flat, down the dark and swinging stairs, stumbling and tripping all the way out into the street, and down it, ignoring the cries of old ladies with their shopping and fashionable Parisians out for a stroll, round a corner and another, until I staggered into an alley just in time to be violently sick in somebody's dustbin. And then I sank down upon the grimy cobbles as shivers and sobs wracked through me.
I don't know how long I stayed that way before, the drink out of me and the danger past, I managed to breathe without wheezing and the stinging tears dried. Wiser men, after such an ordeal, would likely have had some spark of perfect clarity come over them, some 'what it all really means' of some sort, but not I. I simply wanted to go home.
New fear seized me at the thought of Jeeves. What would he say, to see me in this state? Would the debauchery I'd clearly been up to be the final nail in the coffin? Or would he feel so terribly sorry for me that he'd forget this rift and let us go on as before?
Whatever the music to be faced, I had to face it, for I certainly could not become a permanent resident of this alley. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, righted the clothes as best I could and got a cab home.
I crept in, tail between my legs, and realised after a few shouts and knocks that I was blessedly, mercifully alone. Jeeves was still out with the antiquities. I had a stay of execution. I would have to explain what had happened to the suit, but perhaps I could just let on about the overindulgence and stumbling. I wouldn't be forced to face him in this sorry state. I hurried up to the bath and scrubbed like I'd never scrubbed before, wanting every trace of the disastrous afternoon gone.
Sadly, I could not scrub the memories from my mind, and despite being respectably attired and clean by the time Jeeves returned, I was still in a right state. The photographs haunted me. I think Alec had been about to tell me it wasn't what I thought, but what was it, then? Had he taken those? Bought them? Did he know those men? Were they his collection? A bit of the shame ballooned itself into anger, and also relief that I had escaped with my virtue more or less intact and my person unphotographed. The worm had got himself an advantage and proceeded to press it. But for that one all-wrong moment, I had been an innocent bystander in the proceedings, hadn't I? I tried to believe it.
"Poets!" I spat when Jeeves noticed the very obvious agitation and deposited his parcels to ask after my health. "Poets!" I could say no more.
Jeeves had the good sense not to try and make me, but he brandished a petit bleu at me. "This arrived just as I did, sir."
I took one look at the direction on the thing and thrust it back at him. "Build a fire and throw it on," I said.
"Had you better not read it first, sir?"
"No, Jeeves, I hadn't better. Take down the following." I paused to collect myself as he readied his pencil and form. "'Message burnt unread. Nothing more to say to you. Leave me alone,'" I dictated. "Don't sign it." There was more than a slight raising of eyebrows, but he took it faithfully down. "I'm sorry to send you back out again straight away, but I want that despatched post-haste."
"Very good, sir," Jeeves said with a cryptic air. He reapplied his hat and shimmered out.
There. My hands were washed of the Cartwright scourge. I went and shut myself in my room, in no humour to be spoken to or even looked at.
Jeeves left me to it for a time, but right around six there was a cautious knock at my door, presumably to see if he'd be delivering the customary p.m. refreshment. I pulled a pillow over my face and didn't answer.
More tapping. "Are you awake, sir?"
"No," I called irritably.
"May I enter, sir?"
I sighed. This wasn't Jeeves's fault. If I didn't want the last nail driven into the coffin I shouldn't be horrid to him. "If you must," I groaned.
In he came, depositing the drink on the bedside table as though this were nothing out of the usual run of things. He knelt down next to the bed and silently removed my shoes, which I'd been dangling over the edge to keep them off the bedclothes. I gratefully curled my feet up under me. "Will you be wanting dinner, sir?" He used the sort of tone one might with a horse likely to kick.
"No, I don't think I will." I didn't even want the drink, and the stomach organ recoiled at the mere mention of food. "Have the night off if you like, Jeeves. I don't think I'll be needing anything."
"If something is troubling you, sir—"
"Today is troubling me, Jeeves. I'd like it to be over as soon as possible."
"Very good, sir." And if it weren't Jeeves saying those words, I'd have thought them said a bit sadly. General weariness at the young master's moodiness was far more likely. He was acting very charitable towards me under the circs, and I ought to have fostered it, but I was in such a frightful stew over it all that any effort would likely have made it worse.
I drifted off into a nightmarish sort of half-awakeness, the darkness behind my eyelids some carnival freakshow of teeming limbs and drunken laughter, visions of Jeeves shoving me away and saying he hated me before returning his attentions to some writhing sepia form.
I don't know what time it was—late, for it was fully dark—that the bell and the raised voices crept their way into my consciousness. They blended in with the nightmare at first and didn't rouse me immediately, but then I bolted upright. Alec was here.
I crept on trembling pins to the door and cracked it open just a smidge. I couldn't see them, of course, but I could hear them.
"...not in the habit of admitting persons to the household who have been expressly told by Mr Wooster to impose on him no further," Jeeves said in an arctic manner. It was dire indeed if he'd dispensed with the regrettably-not-at-home and honorifics.
"Oh, you're his bodyguard as well, are you?" There was a mad sort of slurring to his tone that told me the effects of the drink had not quite worn off, or had been renewed.
"If needs must," Jeeves said.
"But it's all just a misunderstanding! Here, if you'd just move the hell aside and let me go and explain—"
"I do not presume to judge what is and is not a misunderstanding. If it be so, then I daresay a resolution will come about absent my intervention." Generally the opposite of how Jeeves operated, actually, but I was ever so grateful for it. "But at present, Mr Cartwright, you are trespassing, and if you do not find yourself several streets away in the next minute, I shall send for the police."
The scourge sort of cackled in a mad and unhinged way. "You bloody well deserve each other," he called what must've been over his shoulder, for it faded. As things for him to say went, it wasn't good, but there was a whole list of far worse ones, and hopefully Jeeves would dismiss it as mad ramblings.
I sank down onto the bed in relief. I'd be fine tomorrow, I told—nay, commanded—myself as I donned proper nightwear. I'd be the very soul of fine and bright cheer, and do something nice for Jeeves by way of apology.
I must've got off to the dreamless at some point. Mid convincing-of-self not to be such a blasted pill on the morrow, the morrow was here, as was Jeeves with the tea. The discarded clothes had already disappeared, and in place of my normal dressing-gown at the foot of the bed, there was a curiosity. A kimono, in fact, with fish and birds in about fourteen shades of blue (give or take).
At my unasked what's-all-this-then, Jeeves stated, "Had you not expressed a wish to own such a garment, sir? I assumed your failure to purchase one to be an oversight. I apologise if I misapprehended—"
"No, Jeeves, it's really corking. I love it." Oh, how I loved it. I had indeed sung its praises in the souvenir shop. I'd restrained myself in the end, thinking the thing wouldn't last a day in the household before meeting some sorry end, but Jeeves had noticed and gone and got me one just because he thought I'd like it. I was touched, to say the least. "But it's— I certainly don't deserve it. I've been an absolute trial of late."
"I had not formed that opinion in this particular case, sir." Meaning that in other particular cases, he rather had, but was too polite to say so. "I am gratified it meets with your approval."
"Decidedly, Jeeves. Decidedly. But I wouldn't have thought it would meet with yours."
"If I can bear the red pyjamas, sir, I can bear anything," he said with that put-upon valet-y stoicism I'd come to know and love as his brand of humour. "Only I would request that you not wear them both at once, sir, out of consideration for my nerves."
I laughed, and it felt so bally good to be doing so. For I'd had it all wrong, hadn't I? I'd been fretting over coffins and nails therein, and all the while Jeeves had been apparently scheming to cheer me up, not to give his notice. "What care I for red pyjamas when there are blue kimonos in the world? Make curtains out of them for all I care." I downed the tea and scrambled rather childishly over the bed to drape the prize about me. "Well?" I asked, holding out my arms and doing a bit of a turn.
"Very becoming, sir." I knew Jeeves was giving it his best, and it must've taken everything he had not to tell me what he really thought.
I'm sure I looked a perfect idiot, grinning and swooping the sleeves about, but if he'd done this to please me I wasn't going to jolly well hide the light under a bushel.
It was the finest morning in the history of fine mornings, and the weather was very nice on top of it, so I breakfasted at the little table on the back terrace, kimono and all. Jeeves came out somewhere during the proceedings with a freshening spot of tea and I held out a section of my paper in invitation. He didn't take it, floating instead back indoors, and for a moment I thought the morning not so nice after all, but then he reappeared with a second teacup and took the other chair. Thusly, there we sat, reading away in companionable quietude.
The garden had high walls bordered by a small army of pear trees, and surely among it all there was a snail on a thorn. One could almost imagine oneself in an idyllic country meadow. Which, come to think of it, didn't sound half bad. I waited till Jeeves seemed to be between bits of news before springing the idea. "Still fancy that jaunt up to Brittany, Jeeves?"
"Indeed, sir. I look forward to it."
"Well, don't look too far forward. How does this this very weekend suit you?"
"It suits me very well, sir, though there may be some difficulty procuring lodgings at such late notice."
"Ah, yes. There is that. Well, give it a go. Fine mornings in gardens make me itch for a bit of country air." It was true I was craving something a bit more pastoral, but it was also a good deal to do with locales lacking in Cartwrights.
"I shall see to it directly, sir."
Of course, this did result in Jeeves biffing off to make telephone calls, but that wasn't all bad either, as I ambled back in to the privilege of his French. After about the fifth 'oui, monsieur, je comprends, merci,' though, it began to lose its charm in the face of aubergements (or perhaps hébergements) looking a bit less likely. But just when I was sure the bloom was off the rose, Jeeves came through with a burst of energy at the finish with an 'on vous verra jeudi, monsieur,' that was, absolument, music to my ears. Only three days and it would be just Jeeves and self in a cosy country cottage.
Hélas, there was still the matter of the Fleecing of Renaud to be tended to before we could feel the wind in our hair— that very evening, in fact, so we donned the evening clothes in due course.
"I may be obliged to demonstrate some show of affection towards Miss Wardour, sir," Jeeves said with rather the air of a chap facing a firing squad.
Though my heart sank to the vicinity of my knees, I was all encouragement. "Stiff upper lip, Jeeves." And stiff upper lip, Bertram, while we're at it, I thought. "I know you'll carry it off. Though if you keep calling her Miss Wardour, you're bound to blow our cover."
"I shall manage when the time comes, sir." His u. l. was very stiff indeed.
Calling the event 'dinner' would have been far too charitable, as we barely got a foot in the door. This Renaud blighter glowering in the background, Marion greeted Jeeves with an effusive or effervescent (or something like) 'darling!' and, with a whispered 'forgive me' so quick and quiet only he and I heard it, proceeded to lay an extremely impressive and far too convincing kiss upon the not-so-stiff-any-longer lips of Jeeves.
Lisette and I exchanged rueful glances over their shoulders, and Renaud's glowering gave way to a great deal of shouting. I couldn't quite catch it all, but the gist of the thing was that he wanted us out of his house, and vite. He took a swing at Jeeves before we could leg it, but Jeeves skilfully blocked it and left the red-faced giant sprawled on his backside as we made good our escape. Happily, the cab in which Jeeves and I had arrived was still there, and the getaway was swift.
Safely on the road, Marion thought it all a very good joke. Jeeves was pink-cheeked and avoiding eyes. I myself was feeling rather green around the eyes and gills. Lisette was furious.
"See how you like it!" she exclaimed, and to my utter shock bestowed a great smacker of a smooch upon yours truly.
"I say!" I cried when I had the use of my lips again.
It fell on deaf ears, as the ladies began bickering in rapid French I couldn't follow. I was afraid to look at Jeeves, for to see he hadn't minded at all would have been rather a blow.
Someone, presumably Jeeves, had told the cabbie to hie us to the Wooster res. Marion and Lisette continued to argue without breaking stride, and I escaped into the kitchen on Jeeves's heels as soon as I could get round them.
"Lovers' tiff, what?" I said nervously. "I didn't think I'd be causing anything like that when I came up with the scheme."
"No, sir. Miss Wardour's...display was entirely her own contrivance." Well, nice to know they hadn't planned it in advance, but it didn't make me like it any better. "I thought some small quantity of fond gazing might have sufficed."
"Got it over with quickly, though. 'Twere well it were done and all that. I'm not sure I could've stuck that Renaud fellow through four courses. Positively Spode-like, if Spode were taller."
"Indeed, sir."
He passed me a drink and I knocked it back. Arguing sorts of sounds could still be heard. "Can you believe Lisette being jealous? You and Marion barely know each other." It wasn't the ideal topic, but there wasn't much else to hand just now.
"Seeing the object of one's affection in the arms of another can move one to irrational thought, sir," Jeeves said sagely.
"I suppose it can, at that." I decided that was too telling and soldiered on with, "When Tuppy was sure Angela had been charmed away from him, he even suspected me, saw the worst in every little thing." The rather more recent occurrence not for mentioning, of course.
"Suspicion is not always required, sir." Before I could puzzle out this particular species of stuffed-frog, he lifted up a finger as though to say 'tweet-tweet, shush-shush,' but in actual fact said, "I believe they have stopped."
Sure enough, there was no more shouting. I poked my head out the door and poked it straight back in with cheeks aflame, having found them locked in an e. most passionate. "Think we should give them a minute yet."
Jeeves caught my meaning with a 'lord, what fools these mortals be' sort of half-smirking sigh and sauntered out with a tea tray and an allow-me-sir as though he wasn't about to walk right into the thick of it. I suppose in Jeeves's line of work, one must see enough that not much is all that fazing.
When I stepped a cautious toe out after a minute or two, both females were a proper distance apart, sipping tea and dabbing handkerchiefs dantily at their eyes. Jeeves had already biffed off to parts unknown, possibly to change his collar for one without lipstick on.
"I'm so sorry, Bertie," Marion said in that high sobbish just-done-crying way only a woman can manage. "It was thoughtless of me to do that with no warning."
"You have my apologies as well," Lisette said, though she looked less sorry. "I do not generally kiss men."
"What's done is done," I said, "and all's well that ends well. I believe you're well shut of Renaud."
"At last." Marion's smile was beatific.
"Tell me, did he see the letter?" I asked. "How did it go over?"
"What letter?" asked Marion.
"Jeeves's, of course."
"I didn't get any letter. Lisette?"
"None came that I saw."
"No? I suppose you'd have remembered, at that. It was a right corker of a lettre d'amour meant to be left lying about for Renaud to find. What a thing to go astray in the post." It was odd, but one never knows with Parisian postmen. Oofy once sent me a postcard from Paris that didn't turn up for two months.
I thought no more on the business of the letter until the next day when I happened to mention it in passing while handing Jeeves my overdue replies to Aunt Dahlia and Stinker. "Don't send them however you sent that love letter, Jeeves. Marion never got it."
"Indeed, sir? Most disturbing. It is fortunate that it was not an essential communication."
"Oh, well. Perhaps it'll turn up yet. Or else some poor lady's husband will be very cross with her."
"Doubtful, sir, unless the lady's name also happens to be Marion Wardour. Nevertheless, I will do my best to see that these arrive safely."
I'll admit I was a trifle put out; I'd been going to ask Marion to let me have the thing, odes to green eyes or no. I wondered if Jeeves still had the original blue-eyed version, but there was no way to ask him for it and I wasn't going to stoop to pawing through his private papers. On reflection, wanting a love letter badly enough that you'd take one not even written to you was a bit sad, so perhaps it was well enough.
{Next: Part 4: Playing To the Audience}
