Page 60 of A Most Forgettable Girl

Gunnilde beheld him suspiciously. “Are you laughing at me?”

The next speaker was introduced as a Mr. Shadbolt, and Gunnilde gave a gasp, catching hold of James’s sleeve and shaking it. “I’ve heard of him!” she said excitedly. “Do you remember my saying about him? I am sure this must be the poet that poor Sir Douglas hired by mistake?”

“Sir Douglas?” James repeated, an unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“You know, the—” She broke off and gazed around furtively. “The lewd one!” she whispered. “I am sure I am not mistaken! Constance said his work was most improper!”

James turned back to face front and turned a disapproving eye on a large-looking man with a suspiciously purple nose and untidy whiskers shuffling to the center of the room.

“Oh, faithless rose!” he rumbled richly. Despite his disreputable appearance, he had an impressive deeply timbred voice. “Thy dewy petals should conceal naught, but purest beauty! Instead, thou hast allowed a lusty worm to burrow into the very heart of you and corrupt your tender bud with his insatiable appetite!”

James’s eyebrows shot up as the poem continued, a ranting diatribe against the perfidy of roses who do not maintain their bloom, despite their caretakers toiling and tending so tirelessly to their upkeep. By the end of it, the poet was practically shaking with emotion, flecks of spit around the corners of his lips, and fist upraised as he released one final stanza condemning the duplicity of roses.

At the close, the room sat in an uncomfortable, shocked silence. Mr. Shadbolt looked around, gave a satisfied nod at their reaction, and then shuffled back to his seat. A smattering of delayed applause followed him, and Gunnilde turned to James helplessly.

“Am I to take it that Mr. Shadbolt really does not enjoy the cultivating of roses?” she ventured. When James sat silent, she continued plaintively. “In any case, it makes no sense for I am fairly certain flowers are not worm food.”

“He was not really speaking of roses,” James admitted.

“Oh? What pray was he speaking of?”

“I’ll explain it to you later.”

Gunnilde’s eyes widened. “Was it rude?” she breathed. James’s hesitation seemed to be answer enough, for she drew in an excited breath. “Did everyone else understand it?” she asked, scanning the room.

James shrugged. “Some certainly,” he answered, seeing a mixture of embarrassed, mystified, and shocked expressions in the room.

“Shall I look disapproving too, to seem as though I understood it?”

James hesitated. He was not really fulfilling the role he had sworn to play. “Shadbolt was railing against infidelity in wives,” he admitted in a murmur. “Of ladies not remaining chaste.”

“How do you know he was speaking exclusively of ladies?” she whispered back.

“Women are typically likened to flowers in poetry.”

“Oh. I see.” She nodded.

“Then, too, there was the metaphor of the ‘insatiable worm,’” he explained woodenly.

“Yes, the worm he found in the rose’s bud,” Gunnilde remembered, and James flushed. She paused. “Why do you look like that?”

“The worm is...representing the masculine,” he explained reluctantly. “And the rose, the feminine.” His throat closed over the words, and he coughed.

Gunnilde’s frown intensified. “Yes, the rose is the lady and the worm the man,” she reasoned aloud. “So, then the rose is at fault because—?” She cast a look of appeal his way.

“Because she allowed the worm to penetrate her petals and corrupt her,” James explained in a strangled voice.

Gunnilde sat up a little straighter in her seat. “Oh!” She sat perfectly still for a moment, then shook her head. “No, you must have that wrong, James. Mr. Shadbolt could not possibly have stood up before polite company and started speaking of men’s...worms!”

He regarded her solemnly. “Yet he did, I assure you.”

“It would be most unseemly,” she argued. “Over there is the Dowager Duchess of Rand. She would not sit there calmly while a man spoke of such indecent things! No, you must have misunderstood it.” She cast an uneasy look about the room. “There are several respectable ladies here still looking quite serene.”

“Mayhap they did not understand it,” James conceded. “But you have to admit there are others who look quite flustered.”

“Maybe they have dirty minds like yourself,” Gunnilde said so earnestly that James was quite taken aback.

“I do not have a dirty mind!”