animal out of here by the time I return from Italy.”
Chapter 9
A D OUBLE -C ROSSING
T he sea was not so rough as to debilitate the voyagers, and Arabella was by all accounts only slightly bilious. She was just sick enough to be rendered peevish, in fact, and the Reverend Kendrick was attempting to divert her, during one of the sun’s rare appearances, by reading aloud. Under happier circumstances, she would have enjoyed this, for the tome he’d selected was a history of the ancient world, comprised entirely of the writings of persons who had lived in it.
“‘ . . . and forthwith, he banished Zeno to Cinaria,’” read Mr. Kendrick, “‘home of the artichoke.’ Is that not wonderful, Miss Beaumont? I can fairly picture the hapless Zeno!”
“And I can picture the artichoke,” Arabella replied. But Mr. Kendrick smiled, as though her sarcasm were contributing to the general joy of the moment.
“Suetonius was not the only one who wrote in that fashion,” he said. “This is what Juvenal says of the many-storied city dwellings in Rome’s residential section: ‘When a fire burns one of these buildings down, the last to die are the poorest, who cannot get out, living as they do in the cheapest rooms beneath the eaves, where the gentle doves lay their eggs.’
“Do you see how cunningly the thing is done? The sentence begins by discussing something of great import, and then suddenly finishes with an engaging irrelevance. I should give anything to be able to write like that!”
“But you do write like that, Mr. Kendrick,” said Arabella. She stretched herself beneath the heavy blanket and yawned. It pleased her, in this mood, to be insulting. “There is nothing in all the world so dull as a sea voyage,” she said when she had finished her yawn, “unless one has the good luck to be violently ill, or swept overboard in a storm.”
“ . . . or carried away by pirates,” added Belinda brightly. Her hands were buried in a muff the size of her own head plus two more, and the ends of her shawl flapped wildly in the stiff breeze.
“Yes. I am sure you could become quite carried away by pirates, Bunny,” said Arabella, “but we are not likely to see any on this trip. The British Navy has the area too well secured.”
“Pirates would never be dull,” said Belinda dreamily. “Imagine! An entire crew! All those lusty Spaniards . . . and Africans . . . and Arabs . . . and oneself a helpless captive!” A seraphic smile stole across her features.
“The state of being dull is subjective, you see,” Charles explained to Arabella. “You should have said, ‘there is nothing in the world so dull as a sea voyage . . . to my way of thinking. ’” He had secured his top hat to his head with a scarf tied under his chin, and looked a perfect prat. “Belinda finds fantasizing about her pirates anything but dull, and old Kendrick is invariably content, provided you are close by. As for me, there is always a lively game of knucklebones on offer between meals in the mess. Which brings me to the point rather nicely. Could you lend me some blunt? If you don’t, I shall have nothing to do, and become as dull as you are.”
Charles was never dull so long as there was gambling in the vicinity. He would bet on anything at all: the number of times Penderel Skeen would say “piffle” in a given conversation, what color shoes Miss Worthington was likely to wear with her badly cut puce-colored gown, and whether Cuthbert Savory-Pratt, observed from across the street, would turn to his right or his left after exiting from his hairdresser’s.
None of this would have mattered, were Charles’s luck not so infernally consistent, but the fellow nearly always lost. Consequently, he was a damned nuisance, eternally plaguing his sisters for money. Arabella had once observed that Charles seemed to have substituted one vice for another.
“You must have noticed it,” she said to Belinda. “His behavior is fixed in
Chapter 9
A D OUBLE -C ROSSING
T he sea was not so rough as to debilitate the voyagers, and Arabella was by all accounts only slightly bilious. She was just sick enough to be rendered peevish, in fact, and the Reverend Kendrick was attempting to divert her, during one of the sun’s rare appearances, by reading aloud. Under happier circumstances, she would have enjoyed this, for the tome he’d selected was a history of the ancient world, comprised entirely of the writings of persons who had lived in it.
“‘ . . . and forthwith, he banished Zeno to Cinaria,’” read Mr. Kendrick, “‘home of the artichoke.’ Is that not wonderful, Miss Beaumont? I can fairly picture the hapless Zeno!”
“And I can picture the artichoke,” Arabella replied. But Mr. Kendrick smiled, as though her sarcasm were contributing to the general joy of the moment.
“Suetonius was not the only one who wrote in that fashion,” he said. “This is what Juvenal says of the many-storied city dwellings in Rome’s residential section: ‘When a fire burns one of these buildings down, the last to die are the poorest, who cannot get out, living as they do in the cheapest rooms beneath the eaves, where the gentle doves lay their eggs.’
“Do you see how cunningly the thing is done? The sentence begins by discussing something of great import, and then suddenly finishes with an engaging irrelevance. I should give anything to be able to write like that!”
“But you do write like that, Mr. Kendrick,” said Arabella. She stretched herself beneath the heavy blanket and yawned. It pleased her, in this mood, to be insulting. “There is nothing in all the world so dull as a sea voyage,” she said when she had finished her yawn, “unless one has the good luck to be violently ill, or swept overboard in a storm.”
“ . . . or carried away by pirates,” added Belinda brightly. Her hands were buried in a muff the size of her own head plus two more, and the ends of her shawl flapped wildly in the stiff breeze.
“Yes. I am sure you could become quite carried away by pirates, Bunny,” said Arabella, “but we are not likely to see any on this trip. The British Navy has the area too well secured.”
“Pirates would never be dull,” said Belinda dreamily. “Imagine! An entire crew! All those lusty Spaniards . . . and Africans . . . and Arabs . . . and oneself a helpless captive!” A seraphic smile stole across her features.
“The state of being dull is subjective, you see,” Charles explained to Arabella. “You should have said, ‘there is nothing in the world so dull as a sea voyage . . . to my way of thinking. ’” He had secured his top hat to his head with a scarf tied under his chin, and looked a perfect prat. “Belinda finds fantasizing about her pirates anything but dull, and old Kendrick is invariably content, provided you are close by. As for me, there is always a lively game of knucklebones on offer between meals in the mess. Which brings me to the point rather nicely. Could you lend me some blunt? If you don’t, I shall have nothing to do, and become as dull as you are.”
Charles was never dull so long as there was gambling in the vicinity. He would bet on anything at all: the number of times Penderel Skeen would say “piffle” in a given conversation, what color shoes Miss Worthington was likely to wear with her badly cut puce-colored gown, and whether Cuthbert Savory-Pratt, observed from across the street, would turn to his right or his left after exiting from his hairdresser’s.
None of this would have mattered, were Charles’s luck not so infernally consistent, but the fellow nearly always lost. Consequently, he was a damned nuisance, eternally plaguing his sisters for money. Arabella had once observed that Charles seemed to have substituted one vice for another.
“You must have noticed it,” she said to Belinda. “His behavior is fixed in
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