Mrs Redwood and Mr Follet had together laid out a scheme for the courtship. For the first three days, James visited Grace every morning promptly at eleven-thirty and left by twelve o'clock. On the fourth day, Sunday, Grace walked home with him from church, ten feet in front of her giggling sisters. By the next Wednesday, Mrs Redwood considered it appropriate for the Follets to dine at their house and for Grace and James to spend interminable hours afterwards playing cribbage. Cribbage, James explained to Grace, was exactly a game suited to courtship because only two people could play it at once. But as James proved incapable of counting his points accurately, it became more as though Grace was playing against herself with two unhelpful commentators on her choices (for Alice, of course, insisted upon watching).

On Thursday morning, it began to rain during James's visit, and he became stranded at the Follets' on account of not wanting to get his new boots wet. This meant he spent two and a half hours regaling Grace with a detailed history of the commission and purchase of the boots. The history was still not finished when Mrs Follet's usual visiting hours began and the first callers arrived. It was Mrs Dalton and her daughter Eliza, old friends of the family. Upon their entrance, James found the manners to swing his boots off the couch and stand up.

"Why, it's young Mister Redwood," Mrs Dalton said, raising her fine dark eyebrows. "No, you needn't introduce us, Mrs Follet; we know him already."

"Of course," Mrs Follet said. "And how is Mr Dalton?"

"Fair, though his gout is troubling him again. How is Mr Follet?"

"Very well, as usual. Nothing ever seems to ail him."

There followed a minute discussion of the health of various friends and relations. Grace sat down with Eliza and James on a sofa some distance from her mother and Mrs Dalton. Eliza's dark, clever eyes ran over James like ants swarming a nest. Even James seemed uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat and rubbed the heel of one new boot over the toe of the other.

"Those are new boots, Mr Redwood?" Eliza said.

"Yes. They are. How did you know?"

"Your feet are too wide for them. The leather is straining, but it is not yet stretched. I do not think your cobbler did a good job."

The polite, blank look on James's face lit up with comprehension. "The Tempest!" he said.

"Indeed," Eliza said. "That was where we last encountered each other. How kind of you to remember."

"You are very hard to forget."

"You know you shouldn't flirt with me, Mr Redwood, not now that you're engaged to Grace."

"He's not flirting with you," Grace said.

James leaned admiringly forward in his chair. "I'm not. How did you know we are engaged?"

Eliza twisted a corkscrew curl around her index finger and looked very superior. "One need only be observant."

"Yes, yes, yes. But what did you observe?" James turned for a moment to Grace. "Your friend fascinates me."

"You must stop him this habit of flirting," Eliza said.

"He's not flirting," said Grace. "How did you know? We haven't really let it get about yet."

Eliza gave a one-sided shrug. "It was obvious. Mr Redwood's reputation is at current very black. I told myself when the gossip came out, 'Now, Mr Redwood will marry or he will go somewhere boring and out of sight like Tunbridge Wells until everybody has forgotten about him.' As he is not in Tunbridge Wells, but in your drawing room, he must be getting married. And as it is your drawing room, it can only be you he is getting married to. The waistcoat and new shoes confirm my suspicions. Only a courting man would dare wear such a waistcoat. Oh. I forgot. My felicitations on your engagement."

"Thank you," said James. "Though it might be Emma or Alice I'm marrying, you know."

Eliza looked around the room. "Emma and Alice are not here. I suppose Alice got annoyed at James's love-making and ran off in a huff, and Emma followed her."

"I don't know how she does it," James said. "What an intelligence to behold."

"He's not flirting," Grace said, before Eliza could say it once more. She was beginning to see she would need a distraction. One ridiculous person she could suffer, but not two, not at the same time. "I think we have time for a game of chess, Eliza."

"That won't do," Eliza objected. "It would leave Mr Redwood out. Besides, it's no fun playing someone who always loses." She smiled. "But I do know a new riddle. A very easy one that I think you might get."

Eliza had a fascination with riddles. Grace resigned herself to ten minutes' polite suffering. "Go on then."

Eliza sat up straight. "My first is endowed with the power, to give both a relish and a zest; my second's connected with flour; my whole for my first is a nest."

"Ah, well. Obviously it's something to do with food," Grace said.

"Yes, yes, keep going!"

"Limebread," James said. "It's obvious."

Eliza's shoulders slumped. "There's no such thing as limebread."

"Gingerbread then."

"That's three syllables. The whole thing can only be two. Besides, how is gingerbread a nest for ginger?"

"The ginger is in the bread."

"And I've never heard of ginger relish."

"I'm sure I've had orange and ginger relish."

"That's not the same... the answer was saltbox, Mr Redwood. Saltbox."

"Now that's just silly. Salt is no more a relish than ginger is. And how is box connected with flour?"

"It's a box for keeping bread flour in."

"Why not a box for hairpins or buttons or false teeth?"

"Because they don't rhyme with power!"

"I think it's a very bad riddle. I know much cleverer ones."

"Oh, do you?" The light of battle entered Eliza's clever eyes. "Go on then?"

James frowned and thought for a moment. "What's something that has two hands and a face, and it... does not walk..."

"A clock," Eliza said contemptuously. "Everybody knows that one. And you said it wrong. It's—"

"In which month do women talk the least?" James said.

Eliza faltered. "I beg your pardon?"

"In which month do women talk the least?"

"It doesn't rhyme."

"It doesn't have to."

There was silence then, while Eliza tried to puzzle it through. Grace could see that riddles had been a bad idea. She wondered if it was too late to insist on chess.

In a cold, distant voice, Eliza said, "February."

James clapped. "Very well done."

"I do not like that riddle."

"I've another that you'll like better. Why is an umbrella like a woman?"

"I don't think I'm going to like this one either." Eliza sucked her teeth. "Why don't you just tell me, Mr Redwood?"

"Because her best use is in being handled."

It took a moment for Grace to understand, and when she did a steely dislike came over her.

Eliza remained frowning. "I don't understand."

"You see—" James stopped, his expression clouding with sudden chagrin. Grace understood the expression very well: he could not explain such a joke to a young, unmarried woman, particularly not one as obviously naive as Eliza.

"But do explain, James," Grace said sweetly. "I don't understand either. What does it mean?"

James's cheeks were turning pink. "You see... handling a woman..."

"I'm not sure what you mean by handling," Grace said. "Managing? Ordering about?"

"Ah... yes."

"Do you order your umbrellas about?"

"W-we manage them."

"How, exactly?"

"We... we fold them in and out."

"And you manage women the same way?"

The tips of James's ears were now red. "We-well... not exactly."

"The riddle doesn't make any sense," Grace said. "I imagine it's the sort of thing you gentlemen say in your clubs over far too many cups of ale. In that state of mind, everything seems clever."

"Perhaps." James rubbed his ears and rose to look out the window. "You know, I think it's dry enough to walk back now."

It was, in fact, still raining, but Grace was not going to stop him if he wished to leave. She stood up while he said his goodbyes and then moved with Eliza to the table by the window, where they could talk with more privacy from their mothers. Eliza seemed disgruntled.

"I did not like those riddles," she said. "They were very rude."

"Yes, James sometimes is," Grace said.

"I fancy he's not very bright."

The suspicion had occurred not infrequently to Grace over the past week, but she shook her head now. "You mustn't judge everybody by your own standards."

"I mean, that wasn't even a riddle you know."

"It wasn't a very good one."

"No, it wasn't one at all. It was a conundrum. A riddle rhymes and has verses."

"I'll tell him that."

"And it didn't even make sense — handle a wom—oh." Eliza's pale cheeks burned scarlet. "Oh."

"Indeed," Grace said dryly.

The blood slowly drained from Eliza's face until she was her normal pallid tone again. "It seems Mr Redwood has earned his reputation."

"I don't wish to encourage gossip about him. I am to marry him."

"It was merely an observation. A man who can make that kind of joke could quite easily do the other things Mr Redwood has been rumoured to do."

Grace bit back a smile. "All men can make that kind of joke. It's only men like Mr Redwood who are fool enough to do it in the company of women. But I think it is a habit I can break him of."

"Hm." Eliza narrowed her eyes. "You're not in love with him. It's a marriage of convenience, through and through."

There was something about the way she said it that offended Grace. "Is there something wrong in being motivated by practical concerns?"

"Not at all. In fact, I think you have done very well for yourself. He is an only child, and I believe his father is very wealthy. You will be rich one day."

"I am not marrying him for his money."

"Not alone, I am sure. There is, after all, his looks. I am not as affected by these things as other women are, but I do believe most would find him handsome. Perhaps you do."

"He's not unbearable to look at," Grace said.

Eliza laughed. "There. You have looks that please you, and a rich husband. The burdens of marriage cannot sit too heavily on you."

"You make it sound like I am utterly mercenary."

"No, no. I am impressed. Few women could be as clear-headed as you are being when it comes to the matter of their marriage. So many are moved by their hearts — and our hearts can lead us so falsely. It's far better to not let them be involved."

There were many things on which Grace recognized Eliza was something of an expert. Things like the history of Greece, or the use of a telescope, or the conjugation of French verbs. But when it came to personal relationships and love, Grace suspected that Eliza was something less than even an amateur. To be told that she was doing the right thing by Eliza made her wonder if she really was.

"There are other reasons," she said. "I have no desire to end up a spinster and be a burden on my sisters or mother. And James and I do, I believe, get on tolerably well."

"But of course you do. There is no one in the world with whom you do not get on tolerably well, Grace. You have such a patient nature, such phlegm. Even a man like Mr Redwood could not disturb it. I must say, where most women are bound for unhappiness in marriage eventually, I do believe that you, at least, will be happy. You ask so little."

It was not high praise for either James or Grace, but the earnest, approving look on Eliza's face showed she meant it to be.

Grace smiled weakly. "Thank you."

__

A/N 2021-05-30: The riddle in this chapter is a real one from a real book of the time, and James's two dirty little conundrums are from a book that was published in I think the mid-Victorian era but they probably would have been around in the Regency too. I have to confess, though, that I couldn't find any real evidence for connecting 'flour' with 'box' in any logical way. I'm not quite sure how the riddle was meant to be worked out. I would never have guessed it if the answers weren't listed in the back.