The Plain Old Man Read Online Free

was set to rehearse and the tiniest bit miffed when she found out they’d been able to manage without her. Charlie—magnanimously, considering the state of his big toe—said he wouldn’t mind running through their number again. Then Jack Tippleton arrived, ostensibly to pick up Jenicot. Gillian decided Charlie ought not to strain his gout any further today and started feeding cucumber sandwiches to Jack.
    Jenicot took a dim view, as daughters will. “Daddy, don’t eat that. You know what cucumber does to your gall bladder.”
    Brattishness pure and simple, yet Sarah found herself warming toward Jenicot. “Here, Jack,” she said, “have a ladyfinger and tell us about your gall bladder.”
    That had not been a clever move; Sarah had forgotten what a strange effect she was having on men now that she was happily married and decently dressed. If Jack had a mustache, he’d be twirling it. Gillian Bruges was noticing and resenting. Oh dear, surely she hadn’t been taking this posturing old goat seriously.
    It was possible, Sarah supposed, that Gillian didn’t see Jack as a posturing old goat. He was still handsome in an elder statesmanish sort of way and his technique, if one were susceptible to that sort of thing, must have acquired a high polish after so many years of practice. Maybe Gillian was into father figures, as Max’s nephew Mike would say. In any event Sarah decided she’d better keep a respectable distance from now on between herself and Jack Tippleton’s gall bladder. She could rather easily picture Gillian throwing up a second-best part, and there was no way Aunt Emma could sing Constance as well as Lady Sangazure.
    Luckily a diversion presented itself in the person of Guy Mannering, son of the English horn. Guy was an art student at Worcester. Lately he’d taken to rushing back to Pleasaunce after classes so he could paint scenery with Mrs. Bittersohn, she being a glamorous and sophisticated older woman who might reasonably be expected to sympathize with a young aesthete’s higher yearnings. Sarah was not at all sure she did, but she assuredly valued Guy’s height and muscles for juggling the flats around. She’d nail him for that later; right now he wanted to talk art.
    “What do you really think of the Romney?” he was asking her in a low, confiding tone meant to be suave but somewhat blurred by a bite of scone he hadn’t quite finished swallowing.
    Sarah looked up at the life-sized portrait over her aunt’s fireplace. Complete with birdbath and white dove, it depicted a strong-featured woman in her middle years costumed as Venus, albeit in a far more covered-up style than Venus is usually shown wearing. Roses being appropriate to the goddess and flattering to full-figured ladies, the artist had painted in a great many of them, some twining around the birdbath, some wreathed in her hair and pinned to her bosom, one apparently being fed to the dove. Her first thought was that she hoped to goodness Aunt Emma wasn’t intending to will the portrait to her. With its wide, gilded baroque frame, the thing must measure at least six feet by eight, and where on earth would she ever find room to hang it in the kind of house she and Max were planning? Her second was that she’d hate to have the responsibility for anything that valuable. Her third was that Romney must have had either a highly developed sense of humor or none whatsoever. Her fourth was that she adored it. It was the fourth that she offered to Guy.
    He looked at her in ill-disguised horror. “You do?”
    “Oh yes, it’s so much like Aunt Emma.”
    “Oh.” Guy chewed that over for a moment, along with the last of his scone. Then he gave her a kind, paternal nod. “Yes, I can see the resemblance. Was it her mother or somebody?”
    Art history evidently wasn’t one of Guy’s current subjects. It was as well Emma Kelling hadn’t heard his question.
    “Actually, no,” Sarah replied. “Romney died in 1802. This was Ernestina, the wife