Page 69 of A Devilish Element
After a moment of mincing vacillation, Linfield mutinously charged past George with his head held high and a bitter sneer on his narrow lips. Cluett swung at once to follow him, and the two disappeared into the west wing, presumably to negotiate matters in a manner satisfactory to them both. Henrietta watched them leave with a calculating expression, if ever Jem had seen one.
“Well, I suppose it saves me the bother,” she muttered. “It wasn’t as if he was readily upstanding.”
She was speaking to herself rather than them, but her utterance still sent Jem into gloom. If one experienced in the arts of pleasure could not get Linfield to rise, then it was unlikely Linfield would be upstanding even after partaking of the laughing gas. The frightening possibility of his lordship hauling Jem directly into his wife’s boudoir loomed larger.
That was assuming this afternoon’s activities hadn’t put a blight on the whole notion of fornicating. Jane would hardly be receptive to Linfield’s advances after catching him with his breeches down and one of their guests sucking on his knob.
Henrietta left a moment later. Jem turned to Bell and found the cadaver carver arranging the suit of mail on the floor. “What just happened?” he asked.
Ludlow gave him a bony shrug. “Damned if I know, but it may have bought you a reprieve for a night or two. Be thankful for that and don’t question it. I’m sure your mind is better applied to other matters.”
On both points, that remained to be seen. It was equally likely that Linfield would use the discord as an excuse to hasten matters. He liked nothing better than to fuck after a bout of drama. As to the application of his brain, he wasn’t of a mood to fathom equations, and there was hardly a rush to do so since he would have no time to apply himself to building his puffing devil until Linfield had passed the Oxford exam.
“Pass me that cuisse,” Bell waved him at a piece of the fallen knight, which Jem dutifully retrieved. They spent the next half hour or so reassembling the metal skeleton on its stand. At the end of which, Bell remarked, “You’re playing with fire, dallying with that lass, and before you mutter anything nonsensical about love and future commitments, I’ll remind you of your current circumstances.”
Of those Jem remained painfully aware.
“I’ll also thank you not to use my surgery as your trysting place. If he discovers you, there’ll be hell to pay, and I don’t intend to be tangled up in your folly. He might be as thick as clarts, but his patronage is well worth the bother of tolerating his whims. Perhaps you ought to remind yourself of that.”
He reminded himself upwards of a dozen times a day. “Being coerced into acts I find distasteful rather puts a blight on things.”
“You did not always find them so distasteful,” Bell correctly observed.
The knight properly restored to the stand, they both ambled towards the basement surgery again.
“There was something in it for both of us at the start.” Escapism, primarily, but it’d been something. “That is no longer the case. He has me cornered, Ludlow. I can wish it otherwise, but it is not. These events of this afternoon will not have changed a thing. Henrietta’s testament reached my ears even if it didn’t reach yours. She couldn’t get a rise out of him. Thus, he will destroy whatever future I imagine, whether it was ever anything more than idle fancy or otherwise.” Only when Bell’s brows almost vanished under his wig did he add, “She’ll not want me after she hears of me buggering him in her devoted friend’s marriage bed.”
His friend’s naturally stern face softened around the eyes. “True enough. He has you by the bollocks. I suppose he has threatened to ruin her if you don’t comply.”
“Ha, it is almost as if you know the man.”
They both of them shook their heads.
“What he lacks in genuine intelligence he makes up for in raw cunning and cruelty,” Bell expanded. “’Tis a pity there is no examination for that, for he would excel, and the earl would be delighted to learn his son is in fact a wit and not a twit.”
Jem laughed despite the churning in his guts. He supposed black humour was what he ought to expect from a fellow who cut up bodies for fun.
“I could share my collection of pickled scrotums with you to lift your spirits if you like.”
Jem pinched the base of his nose. Bell was an odd fellow, but he was learning to appreciate him. “I pray you jest.”
Bell treated him to a rictus grin in return, leaving him still in doubt.
“I think I will spare myself the joy, though I will come and attend to the gases I have bubbling. I think there is probably more than enough now to send every person in the place into raptures.”
“Then I will attend my leeches. I’ve a batch newly hatched this morning, and eager for a meal.”
“Well don’t look at me.”
“No?” Bell flashed him another of those death grins. “Very well, I will ask Cook for some liver. Anon.” He turned to the kitchen, leaving Jem to trudge back along the rat-run alone.
-21-
Eliza
If there was one thing Eliza truly despised it was to sit idle, particularly when there were tasks to be done that she was itching to apply herself to. She had tried to entertain her mind with a book as Jane sat at her lacemaking—it was clear that her friend wasn’t so much unknotting her thoughts as avoiding them—but she could not focus on the pages. Afore long she began strolling, taking turn after turn about the lady’s parlour, and thence a little further into the neighbouring room where she came upon a game of peg solitaire to occupy herself with.
She was in this adjoining room, perusing the artworks there, some of Cedarton in its former grandeur, having tired of the game when Linfield presented himself to his wife.
