Jeeves/Wooster Dictionary Fraglet 9/20
Just one, and a bit overdue at that. I've been doing a great deal of running around out in the world and been afforded very little writing time. I'm off to visit my mother tomorrow-- taking the laptop but I don't know what kind of time or internet access I'll have or even what I'm sleeping on.
Pithy tweets from the GA boonies may be the best you can expect. But if nothing else I'll have pen and paper and will hopefully have something to show for it come Tuesday. But if I don't reply to comments right away it's not because I'm an ingrate!
Previous efforts || Table of doom
9. R, 1580 words
In which the precipitating events of Blister are explained, and the author wonders why she keeps setting fics in bathrooms:
Gamble
It may come as a bit of a shock to hear three days at Brinkley Court described as three days of torture, but that's what it bally well was. Oh, the roses bloomed, the birds twittered, and Anatole was in topmost form, but to be honest it all left me distinctly pale. More than pale-- distressed, desperate, and possibly a bit deranged.
It wasn't just that Aunt Dahlia had lured her favourite nephew from the metrop. only to bung him directly into a great whopping frying pan of a scheme related to the pinching of some ghastly vase of Uncle Tom's, though that certainly did little to improve the greyishness of the prospect.
The main problem-- which may also come as a bit of a shock to those of delicate constitution-- was that Jeeves had bamboozled me into agreeing it would be strictly business between us for the duration. None of the fond embracing, soppy gazing, or impromptu tumbling onto the nearest bit of furniture, just to name a few of many things to which I'd become so happily accustomed over the past month or so and from which I was now barred.
When Jeeves first sprung the suggestion, I admit I thought it a pearl of wisdom. These country houses have walls full of ears and a great deal of bursting-through of doors besides. One never knew when one might find a Fink-Nottle beneath the bed or a Glossop in the wardrobe. It had just seemed the sensible thing to do.
What I had failed to consider was the really quite jarring effect of going from several weeks shut up in the flat and making free of any rosebuds to be gathered, to the very next day embarking upon a cold-turkey regimen of monkishness where there was not so much as a wilted twig for the taking.
It was a Bertram thusly jarred, I might even say jangled and jittery, who was now embroiled in a whispered argument with our other hero. I mean Jeeves, of course, who had just issued a cold nolle prosequi on the subj. of doing anything with the young master's lips other than possibly applying a razor above them.
"On the cheek, then," I said, or rather whispered, heatedly.
"No, sir."
"The forehead."
"No, sir."
"The back of the hand."
"No, s--"
"And dash it, stop with the 'sir!'"
"It would not be advisable, sir." At least this time he sounded more in the way of regretful than along 'go and boil your head' lines.
The thing of it was, I was about to get into the bath. Even the most urgent sorts of barging teneded to stop at the door of the salle de bain, and there was nowhere within to hide unless one happened to be a towel or toothbrush of some sort. "Two locked doors and everyone knows I'm having my bath," I implored beseechingly. "One little kiss, who would know?"
For my step forward, Jeeves took a step back. "If I believed either of us capable of stopping at one--"
Well, now, that was the spirit. "I'll be very quiet," I interrupted, advancing. "I was very quiet last night." It isn't normally the sort of thing I'd go about mentioning, even to Jeeves, but if there ever was a time for the pulling-out of all stops, it was now. "I imagined you were watching." He's got a bit of a thing about that, watching me. Heaven knows why, but I used it to full advantage and parted the dressing gown for a peek at what the main attraction might be if he'd only step up and buy a ticket.
Of course, I was more than passingly hot and bothered by this point and found that my hand had no intention of stopping whatever the circs. "I'm doing this whether you--"
Jeeves must not have cared whether or not what, exactly, or else had already worked out that the end of the phrase was to have been 'join in or not.' Whatever the reasoning, he joined in with alacrity, or perhaps aplomb, and even if his highly skilled lips had not removed my ability to speak, his equally talented hands would have.
Possibly with a view to extra assurance that the door would remain shut, he pinned me up against it and proceeded with what might've been called ravishment. While I'll grant that the very best part of Jeeves is his marvellous brain, there are other ones that I like very much indeed, especially when they're shoved up against the matching bits of me. Really any bit of Jeeves touching any bit of the Wooster corpus beats more or less anything mere mortals-- or those who love mere mortals, at least-- can fathom.
We'd had some fairly adventuresome adventures in the past few weeks, running the whole range from heartfelt-most of sop to the giddily hilarious, but this business against the door was simply two starving chaps who'd stumbled into a banquet, and the general order was ''twere well it were done quickly.' We did not part to so much as breathe, and I've no idea how I arrived at skin from scratchy trouser wool, or at times whose hands were whose, but it all fell into place and then swiftly over the proverbial edge. For my part, I nearly melted to the floor as the kneecaps turned to jelly, but Jeeves caught me as he does in all things.
"I say," I I-sayed breathlessly when my lips were once again my own, "just the stuff for the troops, what?"
It is a testament to his intelligence that Jeeves understood me despite my declamation being muffled into the side of his neck. "His Majesty's army does not generally condone such activities." he said in that dry way of his that only the most practised scholars of Jeevesian tones and expressions can identify as joking, and I am happy to say I took a glowing first in the subj.
He kissed me once more, rather one for the road, I think, and herded me towards the waiting tub. It did not escape my notice that he was once again unrumpled and spotless, though how he'd managed to get that way certainly had. "You must bathe quickly, sir," he said, so nearly sotto voce that if anyone had happened to be near enough to hear it, there would be much deeper soup than the q. of honorifics. "An extended amout of time--"
"Yes, yes," I grouched, planting myself amongst the bubbles. "Eyebrows will rise, risk of discovery, I know. You could allow me three or so seconds to bask, you know. We weren't discovered and I'd say offhand the odds of it were pretty steep begin with."
No one had heard, just as I'd thought, though Aunt Dahlia gave me something of a fright after dinner when she glared at me and said, "I hope you're satisfied, Attila." But before my heart had to be crammed back where it belonged, she added, "Thanks to your ham-handed bungling of last night, Tom has moved the blasted vase into one of the locked cases."
"My bungling was not ham-handed!" I exclaimed, nearly fainting with relief, not that I am the sort to faint. "What's more, it wasn't my bungling! If Bonzo hadn't left that wheelie whatsit in the hall for all and sundry to break their necks on, the thing would've gone off without a hitch. It's your darling son you ought to be giving an earful to, or else your housemaids."
The aged relation was not swayed. "I should have left it to Jeeves in the first place. Have you seen him?"
I couldn't help a bit of rosiness creeping into the cheeks as I remembered where I'd seen him last. "I'd imagine he's dusting off the pyjamas and stirring up a nightcap by this time."
"Hrmph. Don't get too comfortable. I'll come up in a few minutes once I've pinched the key off your uncle."
Up I went to be shoved into the nightwear, sorrier than ever that whatever sleep I might be allowed after this latest vase caper concluded would be solitary.
It was the work of a moment. One silly, stupid unthinking moment and all my earlier talk of steep odds left me looking as though said talk had been through my hat. When I was reunited with Jeeves, it came to my attention that I'd been a bit rougher on his bottom lip than it might've liked, and without a thought I reached out to touch it as he passed me the nightly restorative.
"Oh, I've bruised you," I said.
I'd barely got the last word out before Aunt Dahlia barrelled through the door. "I've got the--" She blinked at the tableau before her, and I wasn't quick enough to snatch my hand away. "Well! Never mind!" She exited as though pursued by a bear.
I could only stare at Jeeves in frozen horror. "Oh, God," I croaked.
He did not look beatific and wise, or not any more than he ordinarily does just by his natural composition. He looked, in a word, just as horror-frozen as I myself was. "I believe we should depart as quickly as possible," he said, and snapped to it without waiting for my agreement.
I have never doubted Jeeves for a moment, but this, I feared, was a pot of stew so thick and deep that it might be beyond even him.
///
Before you strangle me, this precedes Blister! If you still haven't read that, you probably should.