Page 35

“A re you sure about this?” James asked Gunnilde as they filed arm in arm into the small chamber for the afternoon’s poetry reading. “Last chance to flee.”

She nodded, looking resolute. “I am quite determined,” she said bravely. James knew she had been disappointed to have had only a couple of minutes conversation with the Queen that morning. Queen Armenal had been far too occupied catching up with Countess Vawdrey to give his wife much attention.

His wife . The phrase echoed in his mind.

It was surprising how easy it was to think of her now in such terms. She was wearing one of her dresses with the slits all over the bodices again, showing the substance of her undergown.

He supposed he must be getting used to her strange clothing choices by now for it barely gave him pause.

They found a bench toward the back of the room and settled there side by side, ensuring there was space enough between them and the next cluster of courtiers. He found he did not mind at all when Gunnilde shuffled up the bench to sit as close to him as possible.

“Your friends are here,” Gunnilde murmured, nodding discreetly in the direction of the other side of the room. “Lord Sniffington and Sir Puffed Up with His Own Consequence.”

He smirked. “They are not my friends,” he answered, lowering his head and matching her low tone. “No more than Harriet Portstanley is yours.”

She tipped her head to one side. “It turns out I am fonder of Harriet than I first realized,” she confessed in a whisper. “And of Winifred Hawes. I should have listened to Eden and given them a fair chance. I mean to make it up to them, now I am in the position to.”

“Oh? Does that mean you are inviting them to our banquet?” She nodded. “Well, I am not fond of Sniffington and Puffed Up,” he whispered back. “I do not care for their society, and I shall extend them no invite.” She laughed, and James noticed several heads turning their way.

He decided to ignore them. Let them stare, if they had nothing better to do.

The first poet stood up and made his way to the middle of the room.

Unfurling his scroll, he launched into his verse which told of a pair of seabirds, who hovered over calm oceans some days and choppy, turbulent waters another.

Verse after verse labored the metaphor as the pair of birds withstood the elements, always keeping the other in their sights and building their nest high up on the cliffs away from harm.

James cast several glances at Gunnilde as the verses went on, for she wore a ferocious frown of concentration upon her face.

Finally, the poet concluded, “Oh, that we in our endeavors had the resilience of these poor creatures, buffeted as we are by life’s storms, then lulled with its blue skies.

” A smattering of polite applause greeted his closing line, and James found Gunnilde regarding him expectantly.

“Well?” she hissed, jabbing him in the ribs. “What does he mean by all that?”

James was slightly taken aback. She had not been exaggerating; Gunnilde, it seemed, struggled with even the simplest of poetry. “The last line gave away the poet’s true intent,” he replied quietly. “He compares the struggle of man with the habits of seabirds.”

She nodded. “And what is the significance of them being a pair? He said they built a nest. Is he speaking, then, of married life?”

“Quite possibly.”

“So then, what does he recommend we do? Live next to the sea? Remain ever vigilant of the daily movements of our spouse?”

James considered this. “I do not know that he purports to have any answers. He merely reflects that in some respect, dumb creatures have better instincts than we.”

Gunnilde looked dissatisfied. “If he does not have any wisdom to impart, then what pray was the point of his poem?”

“Maybe he just likes seabirds.”

Gunnilde beheld him suspiciously. “Are you laughing at me?”

The next speaker was introduced as a Mr. Shadbolt, and Gunnilde gave a gasp, catching hold of James’s sleeve and shaking it. “I’ve heard of him!” she said excitedly. “Do you remember my saying about him? I am sure this must be the poet that poor Sir Douglas hired by mistake?”

“Sir Douglas?” James repeated, an unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“You know, the—” She broke off and gazed around furtively. “The lewd one!” she whispered. “I am sure I am not mistaken! Constance said his work was most improper!”

James turned back to face front and turned a disapproving eye on a large-looking man with a suspiciously purple nose and untidy whiskers shuffling to the center of the room.

“Oh, faithless rose!” he rumbled richly.

Despite his disreputable appearance, he had an impressive deeply timbred voice.

“Thy dewy petals should conceal naught, but purest beauty! Instead, thou hast allowed a lusty worm to burrow into the very heart of you and corrupt your tender bud with his insatiable appetite!”

James’s eyebrows shot up as the poem continued, a ranting diatribe against the perfidy of roses who do not maintain their bloom, despite their caretakers toiling and tending so tirelessly to their upkeep.

By the end of it, the poet was practically shaking with emotion, flecks of spit around the corners of his lips, and fist upraised as he released one final stanza condemning the duplicity of roses.

At the close, the room sat in an uncomfortable, shocked silence. Mr. Shadbolt looked around, gave a satisfied nod at their reaction, and then shuffled back to his seat. A smattering of delayed applause followed him, and Gunnilde turned to James helplessly.

“Am I to take it that Mr. Shadbolt really does not enjoy the cultivating of roses?” she ventured. When James sat silent, she continued plaintively. “In any case, it makes no sense for I am fairly certain flowers are not worm food.”

“He was not really speaking of roses,” James admitted.

“Oh? What pray was he speaking of?”

“I’ll explain it to you later.”

Gunnilde’s eyes widened. “Was it rude?” she breathed. James’s hesitation seemed to be answer enough, for she drew in an excited breath. “Did everyone else understand it?” she asked, scanning the room.

James shrugged. “Some certainly,” he answered, seeing a mixture of embarrassed, mystified, and shocked expressions in the room.

“Shall I look disapproving too, to seem as though I understood it?”

James hesitated. He was not really fulfilling the role he had sworn to play. “Shadbolt was railing against infidelity in wives,” he admitted in a murmur. “Of ladies not remaining chaste.”

“How do you know he was speaking exclusively of ladies?” she whispered back.

“Women are typically likened to flowers in poetry.”

“Oh. I see.” She nodded.

“Then, too, there was the metaphor of the ‘insatiable worm,’” he explained woodenly.

“Yes, the worm he found in the rose’s bud,” Gunnilde remembered, and James flushed. She paused. “Why do you look like that?”

“The worm is...representing the masculine,” he explained reluctantly. “And the rose, the feminine.” His throat closed over the words, and he coughed.

Gunnilde’s frown intensified. “Yes, the rose is the lady and the worm the man,” she reasoned aloud. “So, then the rose is at fault because—?” She cast a look of appeal his way.

“Because she allowed the worm to penetrate her petals and corrupt her,” James explained in a strangled voice.

Gunnilde sat up a little straighter in her seat. “ Oh! ” She sat perfectly still for a moment, then shook her head. “No, you must have that wrong, James. Mr. Shadbolt could not possibly have stood up before polite company and started speaking of men’s...worms!”

He regarded her solemnly. “Yet he did, I assure you.”

“It would be most unseemly,” she argued.

“Over there is the Dowager Duchess of Rand. She would not sit there calmly while a man spoke of such indecent things! No, you must have misunderstood it.” She cast an uneasy look about the room.

“There are several respectable ladies here still looking quite serene.”

“Mayhap they did not understand it,” James conceded. “But you have to admit there are others who look quite flustered.”

“Maybe they have dirty minds like yourself,” Gunnilde said so earnestly that James was quite taken aback.

“I do not have a dirty mind!”

“Well...” She bit her lip. “It must be a little or you would not have leaped to such an interpretation.”

She looked so apologetic that James had the strangest impulse to laugh. “Did not someone else tell you that Mr. Shadbolt’s poetry was lewd?” he enquired reasonably. “Do they also have a dirty mind?”

“Who, Constance ?” Doubt had clearly crept into her mind at so unlikely a possibility. “I hardly think so. Unless...” She looked down and started absently pleating her skirts.

“Unless what?” he asked, nudging her foot with his.

“Well, unless highly respectable people have secretly unwholesome minds,” she said primly, rendering James quite speechless.