The Last Suitor. A J McMahon
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there were even jokes being told in New Landern that Isabel’s rejected suitors should form a club whose membership criterion would be precisely this status.
Breckenridge and Hexton were now shaking hands and exchanging words. They were smiling at each other and discussing key points of the fight they had just had. What they were saying could not be heard as they were too far away, but it was obvious that neither could praise the honourable bravery of his opponent enough. They knew each other to talk to in passing, of course, but they had never been especially close up until now. They would very likely get drunk together tonight and remain fast friends for life from the looks of how happy they were with each other’s company.
All in all, Isabel reflected, everything had ended well.
THREE
The Rescue of Mr Taggart Longman
by Mr Nicholas Raspero
Madeleine’s father had died when she was eleven years old, but not before installing in her a sense of self-reliance by so often being away from home. The man in her life had always been away, and now he had departed for good, and the impression this left on her went deep into her soft and malleable feelings. Where the impression of her father should have been, there was only the impression of an absence. Her mother had thereafter managed to take care of them both by sacrificing her pride to the desire evoked in men by her beauty. By the time Madeleine was fifteen she had passed through the hands of no fewer than five “stepfathers”, and the unprotected girl had passed through the hands of two of these “stepfathers” in a quite literal sense. Tragedy struck and the beautiful fifteen-year old was left an orphan when her mother died after a lingering illness.
There had been eyes watching Madeleine for quite some time already, eyes that saw her beauty as a commodity, and the mouths that had directed Madame Marlene to befriend the young girl during her mother’s last days now directed Madame Marlene to adopt the girl unofficially and take her to her own home, a home which already had a number of women in residence. There she was apprenticed to the line of work which Madame Marlene had chosen for her, given the working name Hailee, and there she was tutored by Madame Marlene in the ways of the world.
‘You must be in the world but not of it,’ Madame Marlene told the trusting Madeleine. ‘That is the only way to be sure that the world does not eat you. Never give a man your heart, or the world will eat you, bite by bite, not all at once but in the end you will be gone. Give men what they can see while never giving your heart and you will be safe.’
Whatever softness remained in Madeleine’s feelings did not remain long; like clay baked hard by the fire, the repeated reception of the hot desire of a multitude of men coupled with the clear instructions of Madame Marlene that the world was her enemy hardened the young girl’s heart until it could truthfully be said that she was in the world but not of it.
By the time she was seventeen, Madeleine had graduated from her apprenticeship and Jolly himself, the ruler of the underworld of New Landern, took a hand in her future. He installed her in a private apartment as his mistress. She had two servants, Abbey and Hugo, and a life of luxury.
Madeleine turned her attention on Jolly’s orders to learning how to behave like a lady. She was instructed by tutors in how to speak and behave with decorum, in the importance of never behaving spontaneously, on the necessity of always keeping her smile in its proper place. She was educated in the literary classics, in the visual arts, in the maxims of philosophy and in all that was necessary to cultivate the appropriate appearance of gentility. She was not expected to understand any of this; she was only expected to reproduce the experience of having encountered it. What she did understand she kept to herself.
She was taught how to polish her natural beauty like a carefully cut jewel by hair-stylists, manicurists, make-up assistants, clothes advisors and fashion designers until she had achieved such a state of calculated attractiveness as for her beauty to appear as a spontaneous flourishing of this moment alone and none other.
The personal demands which Jolly made on her as his mistress were easily met and Madeleine settled into her new life like a weary traveller sinking into a hot bath. She had not realised how accustomed she had become to her life of luxury until one day Jolly threatened to take it all away from her.
8:30 PM, Tuesday 12 July 1539 A. F.
Jolly and Madeleine were sitting in the living room of Madeleine’s luxurious apartment; Jolly drinking whiskey with his feet stretched out on a footstool.
Madeleine was looking radiant in a light blue dress which was tied around her slender neck leaving her bare shoulders gleaming; her blue eyes glittered like sapphires; her blonde hair was artfully bound by jewel-encrusted hair-pins in waves that framed her head like a helmet; her delicate lips and nose and high cheekbones had an aesthetic precision that was like mathematics turned into poetry. Her blue dress was tied snugly around her narrow waist, her long legs crossed demurely at her shapely ankles. She was like a sculptor’s ideal of beauty.
She held a fan in her hands, and sat as straight-backed as any tutor could desire, her arms and legs collected together with such decorum as to form a living picture of how a young lady should sit.
‘Show me what you can do, girl,’ Jolly ordered her.
Madeleine looked down at her fan modestly, opened it and said gently, ‘But I am at a loss to understand you, Mr Jollison. You must surely think poorly of me for such a failure on my part.’
‘Not bad,’ Jolly said approvingly. ‘Keep going.’
‘It is kind of you to show such interest in me,’ Madeleine continued. ‘I can only thank you for such kindness.’
‘What else?’
‘A lady can say no more, Mr Jollison.’ Madeleine looked up at Jolly demurely and raised her fan to cover up the lower part of her face so that only her eyes showed.
Jolly nodded and considered the picture formed by Madeleine for a while. ‘It’s time for you to go back to Madame Marlene,’ he told her. ‘I’m done with you.’
Madeleine lowered her fan and looked down at it. ‘Have I displeased you, Mr Jollison?’ she asked softly.
‘I’m bored with you, Madeleine,’ Jolly told her. ‘I’ve had you enough times; what else you got to give me?’
The thought of returning to Madame Marlene filled Madeleine with a dismay tinged with panic. She had become accustomed to both a light workload and a life of luxury. There was neither at Madame Marlene’s establishment. ‘Jolly, I’m real sorry if I —’
‘I spent all that money on teaching you to be a lady and you talk like that!’ Jolly roared in a fury.
Madeleine collected herself immediately. ‘Naturally, Mr Jollison, I am only too regretful that I have disappointed you to plead my case any further. However, I am only too willing to provide you with any further services which you might be inclined to request from me. You have only to ask, like the kind benefactor that you have always been to me, and I will immediately seek to oblige you without any hesitation on my part.’
Having thrown a scare into her, Jolly could now allow himself to be merciful. ‘Well, now, that’s more like it,’ he told her approvingly. ‘Now you mention it, there’s another service you can provide for me. You interested?’
‘Very,’ Madeleine said as composedly as she could, still in a state of shock at the thought of becoming one of Madame Marlene’s girls again.
‘I’m a man of many interests,’ Jolly told her. ‘You get me?’
‘Naturally, I —’
‘Drop the act,’ Jolly said impatiently. ‘I want you to listen to me. You’re going to carry on doing what you’ve been doing for me. Just one client at a time. Got that?’
‘Yes,’ Madeleine said cautiously, not daring to say too much unless she said the wrong thing.
‘They will be wealthy men, big-shots in society. You don’t fool around with anyone I don’t