An Indecent Gambit

Chapter Six: Being Handled

Mrs Redwood and Mr Follet had together laid out a scheme for the courtship. For the first three days, James visited Grace every morning promptly at eleven-thirty and left by twelve o'clock. On the fourth day, Sunday, Grace walked home with him from church, ten feet in front of her giggling sisters. By the next Wednesday, Mrs Redwood considered it appropriate for the Follets to dine at their house and for Grace and James to spend interminable hours afterwards playing cribbage. Cribbage, James explained to Grace, was exactly a game suited to courtship because only two people could play it at once. But as James proved incapable of counting his points accurately, it became more as though Grace was playing against herself with two unhelpful commentators on her choices (for Alice, of course, insisted upon watching).

On Thursday morning, it began to rain during James's visit, and he became stranded at the Follets' on account of not wanting to get his new boots wet. This meant he spent two and a half hours regaling Grace with a detailed history of the commission and purchase of the boots. The history was still not finished when Mrs Follet's usual visiting hours began and the first callers arrived. It was Mrs Dalton and her daughter Eliza, old friends of the family. Upon their entrance, James found the manners to swing his boots off the couch and stand up.

"Why, it's young Mister Redwood," Mrs Dalton said, raising her fine dark eyebrows. "No, you needn't introduce us, Mrs Follet; we know him already."

"Of course," Mrs Follet said. "And how is Mr Dalton?"

"Fair, though his gout is troubling him again. How is Mr Follet?"

"Very well, as usual. Nothing ever seems to ail him."

There followed a minute discussion of the health of various friends and relations. Grace sat down with Eliza and James on a sofa some distance from her mother and Mrs Dalton. Eliza's dark, clever eyes ran over James like ants swarming a nest. Even James seemed uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat and rubbed the heel of one new boot over the toe of the other.

"Those are new boots, Mr Redwood?" Eliza said.

"Yes. They are. How did you know?"

"Your feet are too wide for them. The leather is straining, but it is not yet stretched. I do not think your cobbler did a good job."

The polite, blank look on James's face lit up with comprehension. "The Tempest!" he said.

"Indeed," Eliza said. "That was where we last encountered each other. How kind of you to remember."

"You are very hard to forget."

"You know you shouldn't flirt with me, Mr Redwood, not now that you're engaged to Grace."

"He's not flirting with you," Grace said.

James leaned admiringly forward in his chair. "I'm not. How did you know we are engaged?"

Eliza twisted a corkscrew curl around her index finger and looked very superior. "One need only be observant."

"Yes, yes, yes. But what did you observe?" James turned for a moment to Grace. "Your friend fascinates me."

"You must stop him this habit of flirting," Eliza said.

"He's not flirting," said Grace. "How did you know? We haven't really let it get about yet."

Eliza gave a one-sided shrug. "It was obvious. Mr Redwood's reputation is at current very black. I told myself when the gossip came out, 'Now, Mr Redwood will marry or he will go somewhere boring and out of sight like Tunbridge Wells until everybody has forgotten about him.' As he is not in Tunbridge Wells, but in your drawing room, he must be getting married. And as it is your drawing room, it can only be you he is getting married to. The waistcoat and new shoes confirm my suspicions. Only a courting man would dare wear such a waistcoat. Oh. I forgot. My felicitations on your engagement."