Circus begin in Spring.'
'Well, shall we all have tea?' Lord Peter suggested, simply oozing innocent charm.
'I be delighted,' from Eudoxia.
'Nyet,' from her papa, looking like he wished to spit.
'I should toddle along,' from Lewrie, locking eyes with him.
'Nonsense,' from Lord Peter.
'Capital idea!' Clotworthy exclaimed.
'Pooh, Kapitan Lewrie!' Eudoxia coaxed. 'Is perfect raw day for hot tea. We see so little of you,' she added with a lovely moue.
'As have we,' from Lord Peter. 'Seen so little of him, haw! I insist, Alan old son. Come along!'
'Well… ''
'Grr,' from Papa Durschenko, and the sound of irregular yellow teeth grinding.
'Now, isn't this lovely,' Lord Peter Rushton enthused once they were all seated round a large table near the fireplace of a fashionable tea-and coffee-house a block down from their mutual encounter. Unlike most coffee- houses that catered strictly to men and their newspapers, this one canted more to sticky buns, pies, puddings, duffs, trifles, and jam cakes. It was warm, dry, filled with several delicious aromas of baking goodies… and positively awash in ladies and children out and about their shopping.
'Uhmm, tea is good!' Eudoxia commented, amazing everyone by stirring a large spoonful of jam into her cup. 'Is very Russian, far sweet in tea,' she perkily explained, 'sugar not always av… available, so use honey or jam. In Russia, tea brewed in big samovar, and served in glasses with metal holders. Very strong, very hot.'
'How fascinating,' Lord Peter remarked, causing even Clotworthy Chute to discreetly roll his eyes. 'So tell me-'
'Brave Kapitan Lewrie soon go to Russia, he brings back proper tea glasses, yes?' Eudoxia asked, turning to Lewrie.
'Don't know as I'll take part,' Lewrie had to admit, shrugging as if it really didn't matter to him. 'I still need appointment to a ship.'
'Oh, pooh, you will get,' Eudoxia assured him, blithely confident, and at her most captivating. 'You go fight the Tsar, though, you will need warm furs. Ochyen kalodni! Very cold, the winter. And not warm 'til late in Spring. Not have furs, could catch your death.'
'Freeze solid as tree, da!' Papa Durschenko added with a nasty grin, happily contemplating such a fate.
'Should we order some cakes?' Lord Peter suggested. 'My treat.'
'Would that make up for all the 'tatties' you cadged off me at school, my lord?' Lewrie teased. Both Rushton and Chute ever had been 'skint,' no matter their families' reputed wealth, while at Harrow, so Lewrie had learned to be leery of their appetites. Even after inheriting the title, rents, and acres once his elder brother had been carried off by an unfortunate mayonnaise-based 'made dish' gone bad, that the proper heir's fiancйe had cobbled together, there hadn't been all that much real income… not after Lord Peter, and Clotworthy, had squandered a respectable pile of 'tin' on their ill-timed Grand Tour of the Continent (right in the middle of the war!), and Lewrie had heard some rumours that Lady Draywick, Peter's wife, was the daughter of an incredibly wealthy wool merchant with Army contracts, one of those 'new-made' commoner families with aspirations to the peerage. These days, though, wealth made in Trade was everywhere, and, like most marriages, it was a canny arrangement for both sides.
'I doubt a year o' suppers would make recompence, hey, Clotworthy?' Peter guffawed. 'Here, waiter.'
The bell suspended over the door tinkled, and another party entered the coffee-house. Lewrie looked up and blanched.
Christ! he thought; Ye gonna walk out, why pick this place, and why right bloody now!
Mrs. Batson, the 'Mother Abbess,' in company with a brace of her whores, with Bob the bully-buck waiter and former boxer playing a role as escort and package bearer, came bustling in, chirping gay as magpies… and one of them was Tess!
A million people in London, they tell me, and yet…! he gawped.
He had not, in point of fact, visited Mrs. Batson's brothel in almost a week, hadn't seen Tess in much more than a dressing gown and some slinky stuff… or the altogether!… and the transformation was nigh-blinding. Her hair had been styled by a dresser into springy ringlets to frame her face, the centre part now gone, replaced with girlish bangs upon her forehead, and its colour enhanced more toward strawberry blond, with a wee bonnet perched atop her upswept hair.
A puff-sleeved and high-waisted gown, with a very low-cut dйcolletage, very stylish and striking, with a modest muslin overskirt and an embroidered silk stole… to a casual observer, Tess was gowned as fine as an heiress, yet as respectable as a bishop's daughter. They'd done something with her toilet, too, the wee-est hint of rouge or paint, the faintest enhancement of her lips… Why, she was delectably pretty!
She nodded to him, could not restrain a fond, excited, yet shy, smile as a servant took their outer coats and led them to a table.
'Ah-hmm,' Lord Peter faintly croaked.
'Hmm,' Clotworthy commented over the rim of his tea cup, as if making an appreciative 'yummy.'
'Aah…,' Lewrie let slip, discreetly nodding and smiling back.
'Kraseevi,' even Papa Durschenko whispered.
'Papa!' Eudoxia chid him. 'At your age! Da, she is beautiful, but much too young for you.'
'Nyeh malyenkee byelakoori, dyevachka,' Arslan Artimovich growled back good-naturedly. 'Bolshoi krasni galava,' he said, winking and lifting his hands as if hefting something. Lewrie took a second look, and deduced, though he knew very little Russian, that the old devil was more taken by a slightly older red-head, with an impressively hefty set of 'cat-heads' and a seductive leer on her face.
'Papa!' Eudoxia tittered, a trifle embarrassed.
Bolshoi, that's 'big,' Lewrie puzzled out; and I know krasni is 'red',… galava must mean red-head, together? Nyeh is 'not'… what?
'Mal-yenk-ee byel…?' he asked Eudoxia.
'Means 'little blonde,' ' Eudoxia explained as the waiter returned to take their orders.
'Only nat'ral,' Lord Peter tut-tutted, hoisting his tea cup in salute to her father.
'You think little blonde is pretty?' Eudoxia asked with a sweet smile on her face, yet with one brow arched.
'Well, I s'pose,' Lewrie said, with a shrug. 'If one likes that sort.' He tried very hard not to squirm under her knowing gaze.
'Poor thing is ryebyonak,' Eudoxia said with a sniff, turning to take a quick squint at the other table. 'Little more than child… shesnatsat eelee syemnatsat, uhm… sixteen or seventeen?'
'Grack!' Lewrie commented, strangling on a sip of tea, and nigh to spewing a mouthful on the cheery tablecloth. 'Indeed? Sorry. Must have gone down the wrong hawse pipe.'
'Girls look like, ah…,' Eudoxia told him, leaning close so she could whisper close to Lewrie's ear. 'Prostitukas. Girls of evening?'
'Really!' Lewrie exclaimed, pretending to be shocked.
'London is fill with… such,' Eudoxia said, struggling for the proper word allowed in public. 'We go to pleasure gardens, theatres… walk down street, they are everywhere in bolshoi number.'
'Godless city,' Papa Durschenko said with distaste; though his eyes were glued to the Rubenesque red-head's bosom. 'Godless country. Not like Russia.'
'In a respectable coffee-house?' Lord Peter feigned outrage, as well. 'What is the world comin' to?'
From such a source, such primness was so unimaginable that Lewrie almost brayed out loud; though he did note that Lord Peter's attention was torn 'twixt Eudoxia and Tess in equal measure. He was all but fingering his crutch, could he have got away with it before children!
'Furs, d'ye say,' Lewrie piped up, swivelling to face Eudoxia. 'I note you and your father are very well garbed. Did you bring them from Russia, or did you find them here in London?'
'Oh, furs from Russia very old, now,' she said, smiling again. 'Circus and comedies so suc… successful, we find new. A furrier in Hudson Bay Company, in Haymarket, has beautiful furs! I help you shop for them, yes Kapitan Alan?'
'Gryazni tarakan,' her father growled. Lewrie knew that'un by heart; 'filthy cockroach!' he meant. The one-
