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“Well, Jeeves, I daresay it seems strange to be heading back to Brinkley Court after so brief a sojourn in the metrop,” I said as Jeeves and I tootled along the country backroads side by side in the two-seater.
“Indeed, sir,” Jeeves replied. I had observed there was something rather short in the fellow’s tone, something flat and dull and lacking the usual sparkle that so colors my regular conversations with my man.
I chalked the distinct lack of oomph up to the fact that Jeeves himself was the reason that the Wooster GHQ had packed up shop and relocated back to Brinkley Court, even though Jeeves and self had just wished the B.C. crew a fond and cheery farewell a few days prior.
The reason for our retreat from the metrop was a fiery conflagration in the kitchen caused by Jeeves’s attempt at an apparently rather tricky new supper recipe had left the kitchen in no fit state for use, and seeing as both myself and Jeeves required thrice daily sustenance, there seemed to no other recourse than to gracefully bow out while the workman got everything spic and span once more.
Jeeves, used to being the sort of fellow to pull me out of the stickiest soup with not more than a quirk of an eyebrow, seemed particularly miffed at himself for such a blunder. I felt no such miffy feelings. I had left the kitchen in much worse a state when I had attempted to make myself a cup of tea while Jeeves had been off on his holiday, and I felt that was much more a simpler task to bungle than whatever Jeeves had been attempting to flambe or fricassee or whatnot when the place had gone up in smoke.
“It may not have all the diversions of the metrop, but I daresay there are worse places to spend the summer than Brinkley Court,” I chirped, attempting to lighten the sullen mood that had fallen over the two-seater, “There’s plenty of silver lining this particular storm cloud. I mean to say, take the absolute abundance of fresh air, for one. Lungfulls of pristine atmosphere abound.”
“Indeed, sir.”
Jeeves continued to be rather listless. I forged onwards, feeling there must be something there to strike his fancy.
“The stars ought to be out each night, quiring as they are wont to do. Patines of gold upon the heavens and all that.”
“Indeed, sir.”
Jeeves’s tone was as dreary and somber as the ruins of an old country church at midnight. I felt now was the time to pull out the ace up my sleeve, the one thing I knew ought to perk him up.
“And Anatole’s cooking, of course. Gosh, the mouth salivates merely thinking about that sorcerer of the scullery, that miracle worker of meals.”
Jeeves was completely silent at this, not even deigning to bequeath me with an ‘indeed, sir.’ His head was turned away, staring out at the passing scenery with a rather pensive look on his face.
I would have found it less strange if the motorcar itself had started speaking. Jeeves had never before failed to give me some sort of reply, and on such marvelous topics such as the cooking of one monsieur Anatole, Jeeves had a decidedly poetical streak. He had once composed something bordering on a sonnet about a particular lemon tart made by the fellow last Christmastide, a piece of work whose sentiments I had wholeheartedly echoed.
I would have inquired further on the matter, but at that moment a marauding phalanx of pheasants streamed onto the motorway, requiring my utmost attention if both pheasants and motorcar were to survive the encounter.
***
It was not long after we arrived that the trouble began. Trouble was no stranger to Brinkley Court, in fact I daresay it probably had permanent lodgings in one of the nicer rooms that faced the gardens, for all the times I encountered it. The Court had been the sight of numerous of my inadvertent engagements, not to mention several aunt-demanded pilferings, and multiple threats to my life, usually due to the aforementioned engagements or pilferings. Jeeves had been by my side through all of it, helping me dodge bobbies and fiancés alike. And now the trouble was that Jeeves seemed to be dodging me.
Jeeves, you see, is in possession of the skill where he can shimmer into existence at the mere thought of him. Even with some matter as trivial as a needing a stiff refreshment, I need only think about my desire for a b. and s. and Jeeves shimmers in mere moments later with the thing on a tray.
There had been a distinct lack of shimmering during this trip. No matter how much or how hard I thought about the fellow, the message didn’t seem to be making its way across the ether into the man’s great big gobs of grey matter. I though perhaps this was due to the factor of range, these country estates giving much vaster rambling space than our cozy flat in the metrop, but it seemed to me I’d summoned Jeeves via this telepathy wheeze over much further distances than the confines of Brinkley Court.
The fact of the matter was I rather missed the fellow. I had become rather used to Jeeves shimmering in and out with one of those poetical gags of his and a twinkle in his eye. Without said gags and twinkling eyes, the afternoons felt like they stretched onwards bally endlessly. I had taken to shaking my pocket watch in case the blasted thing had gotten stuck, but to my disappointment it was functioning perfectly.
Things came to a head one night when Jeeves was late to dress me for dinner. Such an occurrence was unheard of in the Wooster abode. I had never arrived at my room to not find Jeeves patiently waiting with that evening’s choice of vestments laid out upon the bed. Jeeves was a paragon of all sorts of things, punctuality being chief among them.
Arriving to my rooms to find Jeeves not there had the Wooster heart falling somewhere in the vicinity of my knees with a sick sort of fear. It was as if all the blood in my veins had been replaced with ice water. I felt rather instantly that something was deeply wrong.
All sorts of ghastly scenarios were bunged into the old bean, straight from the pages of my most sordid spine-tinglers. Perhaps Jeeves had been kidnapped by a gang of roving ruffians, being held at knifepoint and forced to give the gang his best sartorial advice. Or some loose arsenic had found its way into Jeeves’s afternoon tea and the fellow was lying cold in his rooms. Or a wild panther, set loose on the property in some sort of ingenious plot, had come across him having a gasper in the garden. Or –
My grisly musings were cut short by a small, polite cough from somewhere behind me. I whirled round, and found myself face to face with Jeeves, whole and safe and sound.
“Jeeves!” I yelped with relief.
“My apologies for the delay, sir. My assistance was required in the kitchen,” Jeeves said, sweeping into the room with all his usual aplomb. Within a moment my heather gray suit with the light stripe was lying out, ready for one Bertram W. Wooster to slither into it.
“In the kitchen?” I inquired.
“Yes, sir. In the kitchen.”
“This kitchen? The kitchen here? At Brinkley Court? The Brinkley Court kitchen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whatever were you doing there?”
“Assisting, sir.”
I was about to continue my line of questioning, something in the vein of what he had been assisting with, but just then the dinner gong rang. Jeeves adjusted the final stud in my shirt and looked over his handiwork, sending me on my way with an approving nod. It seemed our interview had come to a close, but I was left with rather more questions than answers.
***
“And to top it all off… oh, what’s the word I want?” I glanced over my shoulder, expecting Jeeves to be hovering somewhere in the vicinity with just the word I was searching for, but once more the area was entirely bereft of Jeeveses. My mouth fell open with surprise. Each time Jeeves failed to appear was like a hammer strike upon my splodgy heart. All my yearning for a vanished hand could not summon it.
“Bertie, are you quite alright? You look like a sheep that's suffered a conk on the head with your tongue lolling out like that,” my cousin Angela said. She had been my conversational partner when I had once again been struck by the appalling lack of Jeeves on hand, and I felt I rather owed her an explanation.
“It’s Jeeves, you see. The fellow’s been disappearing on me like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat. And when I asked him about it last night, the chap said he’d been in the kitchen. He can’t be in the kitchen all the time, can he? I mean to say, why would anyone spend so long in the kitchen? What, I say, what, could keep a fellow there for hours and hours?”
Angela contemplated this for a moment, and what she came up with hit me upside the head with the force of a cricket bat at full swing. “Love?”
“Great Scott! You really think so?”
“Could be. There’s lots of pretty maids down there, and Jeeves is rather pretty himself.”
I leaned back in my chair, steepling my fingers and leaning them against my nose in a way that I hoped would marshal all the runaway thoughts stampeding through my melon. Jeeves was quite dashing, as anyone with eyes could see, and I daresay most of the downstairs staff were graced with the gift of sight. Could it be that someone in the servant’s hall had caught Jeeves’s eye in turn?
The game, as the great detective Sherlock Holmes would say, was afoot. One BW Wooster was on the case.
***
My investigation began at the scene of the crime, or the scene of the suspected infatuation I suppose, viz. the kitchen. I was clinging to the wall of the kitchen garden, attempting to remain unobserved as I observed the occupants of the Brinkley Court servant’s hall through the big glass window. I felt that for the first leg of my inquiry it was imperative for myself to remain incognito, to not let on that I had sniffed out any strange happenings. All the better to peep the potential suspects in their natural state.
My eyes swept the scene, taking in every little detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Beneath the copper pots and pans hanging above the magnificent stove was one little detail that was by no means insignificant. It was Jeeves himself, huddled up with Anatole over something warm and steaming on the hob. Jeeves seemed quite chummy with our resident chef, pressed up against his side, heads bowed close together as they watched the progress of whatever was bubbling in the pan before them. Anatole gave the mixture a stir with a wooden spoon and as Jeeves reached out to give it a stir himself, I saw their fingers brush with what looked to the discerning Wooster eye as wistfulness, or perhaps even longing.
Admittedly Anatole had not been in the running for first place on my list of suspects, but as I watched Jeeves lean into his shoulder, all of the pieces clicked into place. While Jeeves was never one to bandy about names or in fact any relevant details of his previous paramours, I had certain reasons to believe that he may be of the sort who fancies colts instead of fillies, if you catch my meaning.
You see, one particular past evening I had been returning home from a rather riotous revel at the Drones Club, it being the sort of night where merriment had abounded and the bartender had a rather more generous pour than usual. I was absolutely sozzled, tighter than an owl, and when Jeeves popped into the entrance hall expecting to take my coat and hat, he instead found me in the middle of snogging Ginger Winship to boot.
“Oh! Jeeves!” I’d yelped, “Ginger was just gingering me! I mean, thinging me, I mean he was just-“
“I was just going,” Ginger said, already backpedaling towards the door.
“He was just going!”
Ginger ducked out the door faster than a rabbit realizing he was late for his appointment to be pulled out of a magician’s hat. I was left standing in the hallway, my face the vibrant red of a summer-ripe tomato. Jeeves took my hat and coat with his typical stuffed frog expression. The stuffed frog betrayed none of his thoughts viz. witnessing the sort of thing that could land a chap two years of hard labor.
I slunk from the hall as quickly as I could, given the shaky quality of the Wooster pins. I made it to the bedroom and plopped down heavily onto the bed. I felt clammy and cold, as if I’d been unexpectedly plunged into the North Sea, and my stomach roiled like I’d swallowed a certain quantity of saltwater on top of all that.
What was I to do if Jeeves called the constabulary? Or worse, my Aunt Agatha? Before I could brood too extensively on the topic, a light cough came from the doorway. I glanced upwards to see Jeeves standing in the doorway, luckily without the telephone receiver in hand.
“Sir, you have my assurances that I will speak to no one about what I have witnessed.”
“What! I say, really?” A warm feeling of relief pooled in my belly. I wasn’t going to be marched down to the Old Bailey, or Aunt Agatha’s sitting room.
“Indeed, sir. I am accustomed to acting with the utmost discretion regarding my employer’s activities. You may trust me completely.”
“But, er, why, Jeeves? Not that I’m not grateful, which I am in absolute spades, but this sort of thing…. Well, it tends to induce shock and horror from the members of the British general public, in my experience.”
“I may have some… understanding and sympathy in regards to your situation, sir.”
“Thanks awfully, Jeeves.”
And with that the fellow nodded once and shimmered out of view.
Now Wooster, you may be thinking, this is all dithering rot. You’ve taken us on a tangent, a wild goose chase down the corridors of memory. But I am here to tell you that is not so. The scene I had just related had left a powerful impression on the old bean that Jeeves might share in the same sort of proclivities that I did. Not that he had said so in as many words, but the Wooster mind is powerful enough to make these sorts of deductions. Especially when said chap is cozying up to a certain French chef in the bowels of Brinkley Court.
Back in the present moment, Jeeves was currently listening very intently to whatever Anatole was saying. There was an intense sort of look in his eye that one could reasonably describe as lovelight. I had the dearest wish to hear what words were being exchanged between them. I pressed my ear up to the glass with some urgency, and as I did so I’m afraid I leaned too far out, so instead of peering sneakily through the glass I was rather plainly on display for any wandering maid to spy, and a wandering maid did spy me rather instantly.
My cover was blown. I could no longer continue my incognito reconnaissance unimpeded. But I would not allow this minor hiccough to throw me off the trail. I did as any seasoned investigator would do and turned the situation to my advantage. This was my opportunity to dig deeper into the little vignette before me, to root about and see what truths could be unearthed regarding the nature of the relationship between Jeeves and Anatole.
I stole into the kitchen, attempting to remain as covert as possible in an effort to overhear a few snatches of the conversation occurring over the cooking pot before my entrance was noted. Unfortunately this was made impossible by my immediate collision with the maid who had spotted me at the window, sending self, maid, and the pile of laundry in her arms straight to the floor with a rather resounding crash.
Jeeves broke away from the stove and was at my side in an instant. Before I knew which way was up, Jeeves had me back on my feet and the laundry restored to the maid’s arms, more well-folded that it had been before the fall.
Any chance of being a fly on the wall for their little tete-a-tete was gone. The jig was well and truly up. But a Wooster never gives up, even when the jig is.
“Sir, may I inquire as to what you are doing in this part of the house?” Jeeves asked, a rather quizzical expression on his brow.
“I just thought I’d pop down and borrow Anatole for a mo’,” I said, pretending to examine a non-existent speck of dust on my cuff to give the statement a bit of a causal air.
“In what capacity do you require him, sir?” Jeeves replied, his quizzical brow furrowing even more.
“Just feeling a bit peckish. Thought I might rustle up some grub, as the Americans say.”
“I would be happy to procure you something, sir. Would you like to dine on the terrace, or perhaps in the conservatory?”
Jeeves all but corralled me out of the kitchen, shepherding me up and away from Anatole and any other secrets the fellow might be keeping down in the depths of Brinkley Court.
But one BW Wooster had caught the scent, and I wouldn’t be shaken off so easily.
***
“So, what do we think of Anatole?” I sprung the question on Jeeves as the fellow was laying out that evening’s pajamas, a subdued soft blue number. It did not escape my notice that Jeeves had once again failed to pack either my heliotrope or chartreuse pajamas, but I let the matter drop. The fish I had to fry were rather larger than matters of sleepwear.
“His cuisine appears to provide sufficient satisfaction to the diners at Brinkley court.” Jeeves answered with all of his usual sangfroid, but it seemed to me that the fellow answered rather slowly, like he was weighing each word carefully.
“Yes, yes, of course we all know he’s something of a wizard with a whisk, but I’m more interested in the artist behind the art. The man behind the magician, as it were.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Yes indeed, Jeeves. So, what do you think of the chap?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.”
“Surely you must see something of each other down in the servants’ quarters? You’re all so tightly packed together down there. Nice and cozy and all that.”
“I assure you there’s ample space, sir. The living arrangements are quite satisfactory.” The list of things Jeeves was a master of was rather extensive, but I made a note to add ‘dodging the question’ to the very top of the list.
“But you must notice him around the place?” I pressed. I was like a dog with a bone, and I refused to let anything stop my gnawing at the problem.
“What about him would attract notice, sir?”
“Well, he’s rather dishy. Something of a pipperino, I mean to say.”
“Would we say that, sir?”
“Would we?” I inquired, batting the rather weighty question right back at my man.
Jeeves cleared his throat with one of those meaningful little coughs of his, like a mountain goat on a distant hillock about to tell all. But instead Jeeves merely turned back the coverlet.
“Will that be all for tonight, sir?” Jeeves asked. I glanced about the room. Everything was perfectly in place for self to slip into the dreamless, from the pajamas now gracing my frame down to the glass of water on the bedside table.
“I suppose so, Jeeves.” I could hardly ask the fellow to stay to simply keep peppering him with questions that he would doubtlessly find a way to dodge like my Uncle Tom with the local tax collectors.
“Thank you, sir. Good night, sir,” Jeeves said as he shimmered towards the door.
“Good night, Jeeves,” I said as the fellow disappeared for the night.
***
Sleep felt about as distant for this Wooster as the summit of Mount Everest. I had spent serval restless moments tossing and turning beneath the coverlet, the contents of my little interview with Jeeves similarly tossing and turning within the old bean. Though Jeeves had expertly avoided giving any actual answers to my questions regarding Anatole, I felt there was rather something important in the fact that Jeeves had refused to say anything at all. The valet doth protest too much, methinks.
I hopped up from the bed, pacing about the room in tune to the frantic racing of my mind. Jeeves had been as tightlipped as a clam that didn’t want to give up its pearl. Of course Jeeves wouldn't want to spill the beans so openly. He was a man who played things close to the vest. Not one to wear his heart on his sleeve, he kept it securely locked up within his ribcage.
Or perhaps Jeeves had said nothing because there was nothing to say? Had I taken this investigation in entirely the wrong direction? One huddle above a hot stove does not a clandestine relationship make, after all. It was entirely possible that Anatole was nothing more than a red herring, or a wild goose that I had spent my day chasing.
I was considering scrapping all my Anatole-based theories and going back to the drawing board when my pacing brought me to the window. Aunt Dahlia had tucked me away in one of the rooms in the back of the house, meaning I had a rather a clear view of the kitchen garden. And there, far below me in the moonlight, did I once again spy Jeeves and Anatole shoulder to shoulder.
They were leaning against the wall of the kitchen. A gasper hung from Jeeves’s lips and I watched as the fellow leaned in to light a similar gasper hanging from Anatole’s. I gulped. The way Jeeves was leaning over the chap felt much too chummy to simply be between chums, if you catch my meaning. Factor in the way that the moonlight was making Jeeves positively glow, the warmth of the English summer evening, and all the heady scents of the flowers wafting in the garden, I felt it all added up to a decidedly romantic scene.
My stomach churned uncomfortably, as if I’d swallowed a nest of particularly angry hornets. I had to get to the bottom of this particular mystery as quickly as possible.
***
As quickly as possible resolved itself to be the next evening, somewhere after the dinner rush so to speak. I had snuck off after the desserts had been demolished and the company was shuffling off in various directions for card games and cigars and other sorts of amusements. I felt quite strongly that the time for subtly and subterfuge lay in the past, and now was the time to throw a wrench into the machine and see what sort of thing would shake out of it. I was heading straight for the source, viz. monsieur Anatole himself.
Fortune appeared to be smiling upon me. As I descended into the depths of the Brinkley Court kitchens, I found Anatole blessedly alone giving some very serious attentions to a copper pot. He was glaring at it much like my old schoolmaster would glare at young Bertram before smacking me across the knuckles with a ruler or other such blunt object at hand. Anatole attacked the pot with some sort of scrubbing agent and considerable vitriol.
Not wanting to find myself in the same position as the old cat in the adage, letting I dare not wait upon I would, I charged onwards. Sleep had eluded me for much of the previous night, as every time I closed my lids my mind flashed back to images of Jeeves and Anatole side-by-side in the garden and the angry hornets returned to plague the gut of one BW Wooster. I had to know if my theory was the real mashed potatoes before the hornets trundled me off into an early grave. Why I was suffering so intensely from bouts of hornet-related agony, I wasn’t entirely certain, but I did have the suspicion that was tied up in this mystery business somehow.
“What ho, Anatole, old chap!” I what ho’d with all of the cheer I could muster.
Anatole didn’t cease his campaign on the pot, only giving me a sharp nod of acknowledgement before attacking from another front.
“So,” I said, leaning up against the kitchen counter in what I hoped was an assertive and confident manner, like the sort a Scotland Yard detective might employ on confronting the ringleader of a particularly troublesome gang, “you’ve been seeing a lot of Jeeves recently, I understand?”
“Yes, he is very attentive,” Anatole said. I perked my ears up like a hound that had heard the tell-tale pitter-pattering of little fox feet in front of him in the wood. Attentive was the sort of phrase I heard frequent before words like ‘lover’ or ‘beau’ from my pals that had left the single life behind, and I felt I had hit upon a vital clue.
“Attentive. Yes, course,” I said, ploughing ahead with the investigation, “but would you say he’s dishy?”
“He is a fine specimen.”
“The finest,” I agreed wholeheartedly.
Anatole finally set down the pot, calling a truce, or at the very least a brief armistice, and turned his full attention to the subject at hand.
“Most of you Englishmen are the color of spoiled milk. Or curdled cream that has sat too long in the sun. Jeeves, he is not this. He is finely sculpted like a blancmange.”
I nodded along at Anatole’s statement. This was pretty fruity stuff, and all going in the right sort of vein to support my theory viz. Anatole being the thief who had stolen away Jeeves’s heart. It was his next confession that sent me reeling, sealing the whole thing rather definitively, I thought.
“He has a – how you say – nice arse.”
Heat bloomed under my collar and across my map. I was fully aware of how nice Jeeves’s arse was, having examined it a multitude of times myself, but I blushed to hear someone else say it. Only someone intimately involved with a chap would talk so openly about his arse, I felt.
The case had been cracked wide open, the culprit revealed. But that was far from the end of the matter. My keen deductive mind, having reasoned its way to the first puzzle’s solution, simply couldn’t stop making connections, assembling all the facts together and drawing them towards their inevitable conclusion.
Jeeves, being in love with Anatole as he was, would of course desire to spend more time with him than the occasional visits that the Wooster GHQ took to Brinkley. It was only a matter of time before Jeeves handed in his portfolio and biffed off for more Anatole-filled climes. Perhaps he’d get a job at Brinkley, or Anatole would whisk him away to some horrendously romantic spot in the south of France. And I’d never see the fellow again.
Suddenly the walls closed in around me, my breath squeezed from my lungs. My vision flickered and everything before me was cast into shadow. The hornets were back in full force. The only thing for it was a spot of fresh air, and I made a dash for the kitchen door without so much as a toodle-pip.
I stumbled outside like I had been shot through the heart, which in a way I had been. Jeeves, my trusty and faithful Jeeves, was going to leave me to be with the man be loved. And why shouldn’t he? But I couldn’t help but feel like a table setting under which a magician has just yanked away the tablecloth. I was to be set adrift in a vast ocean without hope of ever again encountering a friendly face in a safe port. There was to be no more firm and capable hands tying up my tie, or quotings of Shakespeare with the morning tea. This was, without exception, the worst day of my life.
I collapsed onto a bench, or perhaps my knees gave out, it was rather difficult to say which happened first. The first stars of the evening were twinkling to life above me in the dusky firmament. I squeezed my lids shut, attempting to hold back the tears brewing there. Jeeves did so love the stars. I was resolved to keep the stiff upper lip, but it was a short order before the upper lip trembled, then quivered, and I buried my head in my hands as a manly sob escaped from my throat and the tears began to flow.
The tears flowed freely and fast, giving a rather good impression of Niagara Falls. I was sobbing like one of those chappies in a particularly dreary poem of Edgar Allan Poe might weep for their lost Lenore or Annabelle Lee, but I doubted any of those fillies could hold a candle to Jeeves. My chest felt hollow, as if some fellow had come along with a spoon and scraped all of my inner workings out rather efficiently and methodically.
There came from over my shoulder a polite cough of the sort a mountain goat on a distant hillock might give to signal his entrance to a particularly ghastly scene. I whirled my head round, and standing over me was Jeeves. The fellow had a look of utmost concern upon his map the likes of which I had never before seen. His brow was slightly furrowed, and his lips pursed together with distress.
“Sir?” Jeeves murmured, hardly louder than a whisper.
I hiccoughed and sputtered like a chap who had swallowed an entire kidney pie whole. What was the fellow doing here? By all rights he should be tucked away in the kitchen, canoodling with the love of his life.
Jeeves reached into his breast pocket and handed me his handkerchief. I took it, promptly filling the thing with snot and tears and any other various fluids currently oozing out of my facial orifices.
“Thank you, Jeeves,” I snuffled. I buried my face in the handkerchief, once more flooding the thing with fresh tears at the thought that this might be the final time I ever uttered the phrase that had become so common to the Wooster tongue.
When I finally re-introduced my face to the night air, I found that Jeeves had lowered himself onto one knee beside me, so our faces were now somewhat level with one another’s. Jeeves’s dial was veritably glowing in the twilight, his chiseled features awash with the soft yellows and blues presently lighting up the sky. His eyes gleamed with worriment. I was certain my own map most closely resembled the color of pickled beets after my tearful exertions.
“Sir, may I inquire as to what troubles you?” Jeeves asked gently, his voice soft as a pair of cashmere socks.
There was no point delaying the inevitable, I feared. I would tell Jeeves that I knew all. I would congratulate the fellow on finding his one true love and wish him the best in all future endeavors. I would be happy for the man, dash it! It was the only preux chevalier thing to do, after all.
“I was just chewing the fat with Anatole and-“ I sputtered once more as another sob heaved from my throat. The tears refused to stop falling with all the determination of the most stubborn of leaky spigots. It was dashed embarrassing, and I felt Jeeves must be relieved to know he was handing in his portfolio after witnessing such a scene.
Jeeves reached out and gently laid his hand over mine. It was a warm and comforting balm against the chill that had settled over the Wooster corpus. “Sir, you can do better than him.”
“What?!” I gurgled. I could make neither heads nor tails of Jeeves’s latest declaration.
“He is nothing more than a flitting, sipping butterfly. He has pressed his suit with half the staff, sir.”
“What? Rot,” I blubbered.
“I must assure you of the veracity of my statement, sir. I implore you to shed no more tears over him. You are deserving of someone stalwart and true, a personage who will not abuse your heart so wantonly.”
“Why would you say such a thing, I mean to say, where would you get such an idea! Me and Anatole, pish! And tosh!”
“Sir, I witnessed your arrival to the kitchen the other evening when you were searching for him. There was also the instance where you insisted on telling me rather unprompted how dishy you thought he was.”
“What, I say, what!” I couldn’t believe the fellow had things so twisted. “I’m not in love with Anatole, you’re in love with Anatole!”
“I assure you I am not, sir,” Jeeves said after a moment of pure bafflement, by which I mean the fellow blinked several times.
“But I saw you in the kitchen with Anatole- that’s where you’ve scarpered off to all these afternoons when I’ve needed you! You’ve been cuddled up in the kitchen with the chap, whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears over steaming pots of bouillabaisse and the like.”
Jeeves blanched, his chiseled features transforming into a ghostly pallor.
“You noticed my absence, sir?”
“Of course I noticed, Jeeves! I may be somewhat daft, if aunts and certain nerve specialists are to be believed, but I’m not quite that mentally negligible. I can tell when my usually so dependable and constant personal gentleman is preoccupied with something else. And it had to have been something dashed important, like love’s tender pash, to take up so much of your grey matter.”
Jeeves shook his head, as if clearing the cobwebs from the attic of his mind palace. He gave my hand a light squeeze.
“Sir, I was receiving cooking lessons from Monsieur Anatole.”
“Cooking lessons?”
“Cooking lessons. Sir, I can promise you the sessions were purely academic, with none of the canoodling, cuddling, or whisperings of sweet nothings that you have speculated upon.”
Now was my turn to shake the old bean. I had to shift all of my old theories, hunches, conjectures, and wild surmises and toss them right out the window. It seemed I had strayed off the mark from the get-go and wandered off in completely the wrong direction.
“Good heavens. Cooking lessons! But why? You’re a marvelous chef, Jeeves.”
“I regret that I am merely average in regard to the culinary arts, sir. I am aware that you greatly value the quality of the cuisine in your life, as you frequently praise Monsieur Anatole’s cooking… I feared you would become weary of my meager offerings and seek another chef in my stead.”
Jeeves dropped my gaze and a distinctly shaky twang had entered that usually unflappable voice of his. My heart ached to see the fellow so distraught.
“Jeeves! I’d never do such a thing!” I gave his hand back the same sort of light squeeze he had given me moments before.
“You’d be perfectly within your rights to do so, sir. If I could not provide satisfaction, why would you not hesitate to replace me?”
“Jeeves,” I said with all the steely determination I could muster, “you could turn my socks into a stew and I would still want you to stay.”
Jeeves’s brow furrowed once more with bewilderment.
“But why, sir?”
“Because I love you, dash it all!” I cried.
It was a revelation I’d come to over the course of this very conversation. I had been puzzling over the fact that the mere idea of Jeeves leaving me had reduced me to a sniveling, slovenly mess. By all rights when your valet finds his other half, I ought to have been popping bottles of champagne and sending the chap on his way with a merry wink. But not so had been my reaction.
But now the clouds had parted and all had become clear. How could I be happy for Jeeves to be with another man when my heart belonged to him already? The clues had been right under my nose from the very beginning and I had been too blind to see them. Why had I been missing the fellow so dreadfully on those sunny summer afternoons? Because when Jeeves disappeared, he took my heart right along with him.
“Oh, sir…”
Jeeves’s face had slipped into a stony mask. There was a touch of the stuffed frog about him, if someone had smoothed out the wrinkles of the stuffed frog’s face so you couldn’t tell what the aforementioned s. f. was thinking.
Before I could brood too long on whether I had just thrown myself headlong into the soup with my confession, Jeeves had pulled me in for a kiss. It was gentle brush of lips, as if Jeeves was just going in for a brief taste. A Wooster hors d’oeuvre, if you catch my meaning.
“Oh! I mean to say, oh!” I yelped as Jeeves pulled away.
The corner of Jeeves’s lip curled upwards as he brushed my hair away from my face. I leaned into his touch, wishing it hadn’t been as brief as it was.
“I was taking the cooking lessons, sir, because I did not know how to make my own confession. I hoped I could express my affection with a gesture, an elegant meal worthy of you.”
“I quite liked the gesture you just made,” I replied. My heart had soared at his words and was buoyed ever higher by the delicious sort of gleam in his dark eyes as he leaned in to kiss me once more.
Jeeves kissed me with quite a bit more gusto this time around. His hands grasped my jacket, pulling me closer to him and into his waiting arms. I kissed him back with equal ferocity. Jeeves was hungry for me, licking his way into my eager mouth. I quivered under his touch like a soft-boiled egg tapped with a spoon. Jeeves was doing things with his tongue I was previously unaware a tongue could do. It was knowledge probably only soft-boiled eggs were acquainted with, and it made me rather jealous of all those eggs Jeeves had had for breakfast over the years.
Every sensation was positively scrumptious. I wanted to fill myself up with him, to make a feast of Jeeves. He was more delectable than any serving of Anatole’s cooking. Anything I’d previously eaten was ashes in my mouth compared to Jeeves.
Jeeves nibbled at my earlobe, his teeth nipping at the tender skin.
“I wish you’d eat me up, Jeeves,” I gasped breathlessly as that magnificent tongue of his began descending down my neck.
“I shall endeavor to satisfy, sir,” Jeeves purred.
There were worse ways to spend the summer at Brinkley court, indeed.