Jago was indignant. “You have made a match for me expecting me to be beaten?”
She clapped her hands. “That is exactly it, Henry! Now wait one moment! Hear me, please. You are to fight Sylvanus this coming Saturday, and you will lose in the twenty-sixth round.”
“A fixed fight?” protested Jago, on his feet, twenty-two years of decent upbringing rebelling at the prospect.
“If you care to call it that, yes. Now sit down, Henry, and allow me to continue. Sylvanus at this stage of his career cannot afford to lose. One more good mill may earn him a fight with Charlie Mitchell, the best in England. But I am not so insensitive as to suggest that you should suffer a defeat. You will fight under another name, and suffer no loss of reputation.”
“My idea,” claimed Vibart proudly. “And they’re paying us three hundred, which isn’t bad for a bloody defeat, is it?”
“But I am known here. They saw me fight Judd.”
“The fight will be in Surrey,” explained Isabel, “and you will take the name of an ex-pugilist-a man we once trained here, who left the country.”
“Who was that?”
D’Estin intervened. “No small beer, Jago. A game fighter.
I’d exchange my moniker for his if I had two good fists.”
“Who was he, then?”
“Quinton,” said Isabel. “Thomas Quinton. You won’t have heard of him.”
¦ On the following afternoon Jago was allowed a training run. Since the arrival of Lydia’s letter, he had been supervised as rigidly as a workhouse inmate. Today, for some unfathomable reason, D’Estin tossed him a guernsey and told him to put it on and take a run through the grounds for an hour. He went at once.
Once he was sure nobody was following, the sensation of freedom was exhilarating. It was a severely limited freedom, of course; if he tried to escape over the wall, he would not get far in conspicuous running drawers. But there was joy of a kind in simply exercising as one liked, sprinting through glades where sunlight flashed intermittently on one’s limbs; stopping to watch a squirrel’s acrobatic performance; striking deep into shaded copses where the air was cool as a cellar.
During the run he reviewed the previous night’s conversation for perhaps the twelfth time and concluded that there ought to be nothing to fear. If the fight with the Ebony was worth three hundred to the loser, it was a first- class match.
As such it would be the talking point in every fighting pub in the East End. Cribb could not fail to hear of it through his numerous contacts. Even if he failed to guess the true identity of the Ebony’s opponent, he would certainly be there to watch developments. And once he recognized who it was squaring up to the huge Negro, he would undoubtedly intervene. Undoubtedly. The sequence of events was all so logical that Jago wondered why he found himself repeatedly going over it in his mind.
He returned to the house soon after three in a pleasant sweat and was met on the front lawn by Isabel, carrying a black parasol. His hand felt for his hat in an automatic gesture.
“You look well, Henry. Did you enjoy your run?”
“Certainly, ma’am. It’s a fine afternoon.”
“Are you going to bathe now? You look hot.”
“That was my intention.”
“When you have finished, I must see you. The men representing Sylvanus are coming tonight to make arrangements about the fight. You must be weighed and measured.”
“Is that necessary?” Jago asked dubiously. “I thought fist fighters could be matched at any weight.”
She smiled. “Yes, Henry dear, but the information has to be available for the gambling fraternity and the newspapers. We can use my dressmaker’s measure upstairs. When you have bathed, dress as you will for the fight and weigh yourself on the scales in the gymnasium. Then put on a bathrobe and come up to my rooms for measuring. By the look of you, you have added some muscle on your arms and chest in your short stay here.”
Jago took half a step backwards, more confused than embarrassed. Women simply did not make personal remarks or look at men in the way Isabel did. He muttered some acknowledgment and hurried away like a swimmer who had picked the wrong bathing machine.
An hour later, refreshed but still uncomfortable, Jago stood at the door of Isabel’s suite in bathrobe, drawers and canvas pumps. It was ajar, but he knocked.
“That must be you, Henry.” A voice from an inner room.
“Yes. Shall I come back later?”
No chance of that.
“No, silly man! Go into the sitting room. I shall not keep you waiting long.”
He entered a small tastefully furnished room, less exotic than he had anticipated. A box of mignonette stood at the centre of a mahogany table. Silhouetted miniatures in two groups hung on the cedarwood panelling. Twin recesses on either side of the hearth were screened by deep blue velvet curtaining.
“Well, then.”
He turned at the sound of her voice and blinked in surprise.
She was wearing white. A white sari.
“Have I startled you, Henry?”
Jago fumbled for words, “You usually dress in-”
“Black? I wear the colour of mourning, from respect for my late husband. And white is the mourning colour in the East. In the circumstances, it isn’t sacrilegious to wear a white sari, is it? What do you think?”
Jago could only think that Isabel should never wear anything but white. Light was refracted on her neck and the underside of her cheeks, the skin as luminous as procelain.
“It becomes you.”
She accepted the compliment with the slightest tilt of her eyebrows.
“I bought the material in Regent Street, and had my dressmaker put it together. It probably isn’t anything like the authentic Indian dress, but who knows in England? I find it infinitely less constricting than the European fashions.”
A statement he had no difficulty in believing. Isabel crossed the room to draw the curtains from one alcove, and it was evident to Jago’s inexpert eye that foundation garments formed no part of Indian fashion.
“This is where I must measure you,” she told him. “I call it my dressmaking closet. Take off your robe and come over, Henry.”
He obeyed, and when he pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the narrow recess, he had an unpleasant shock.
Isabel was there with a headless woman. In a moment he realized what it was-a dressmaker’s dummy with a dress over it-but the momentary surprise had registered.
“I sometimes startle myself,” Isabel said, smiling. “She’s very lifelike in my new cashmere gown, isn’t she? She was fashioned from the measurements of my own figure.
Underneath she is just wire and sawdust, poor thing-a terrible disappointment to her admirers, I should think.”
“It’s a pretty dress,” ventured Jago, vaguely conscious he was on the brink of a risque conversation.
“It is ready for the end of my year in mourning,” Isabel said. “Now will you stand against the vertical measure on that wall, please?”
This involved making a narrow passage between Isabel and her headless double. She made no attempt to stand back.
He faced the dummy and edged discreetly to the opposite wall. It was only a temporary reprieve from the agony of contact. Isabel was not a short woman, but Jago was over six feet in height. To adjust the sliding arm of the measure above his head, she had to stand almost toe to toe with him; from any farther away the attempt would have resulted in loss of balance and the meeting of unthinkable areas of anatomy.
There was no need to ask him to stand straight. He was braced like a guardsman.
“Six feet and half an inch,” she declared at length.
“Sylvanus will not have much advantage in height. What did you weigh?”
“Twelve stone six,” answered Jago.
