The Flaming Corsage Read Free Page A

she’s not yet my bride.”
    They walked past the Taylors without a glance. After they’d been seated beside a thicket of ported palms, Edward walked back and greeted Katrina, Geraldine, and Jacob Taylor. He stared at
Katrina, her golden hair swept into an almost luminous soft corona, and was about to bend and kiss her hand; but then he thought of his mouth on Rose’s body, and only bent and nodded and
smiled his love toward her.
    “Your friend Giles Fitzroy won two gold medals today at the Fair, for his saddle horses,” Edward said to her.
    “The Fitzroys do breed champions,” Jacob Taylor said.
    “I’ve been reading what you write about the Fair,” Katrina said. “You make it so exciting. I want to see it.”
    The sound of her voice, the cadence of her speech, seemed musical to Edward, a fragment of a Mozart aria. Everything about her had the aura of perfection. He knew his perception must be awry,
and he thought he should try to find flaws in the woman. But to what end? Is it so wrong to embrace perfection? Am I a dunce to believe in it?
    “Come tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll give you an insider’s tour. You come with her, Geraldine; you, too, Jake.”
    “I think not,” Geraldine Taylor said. “I’m told it’s overrun with a vulgar crowd.”
    “There are some of those,” Edward said, and he understood that Geraldine could accept no generosity, not even a meaningless invitation, if it came from beneath her station.
    “People like the Fitzroys and the Parkers and the Cornings are exhibitors,” Edward said, “and they’re frequently around. I’ll stop by in the morning, Katrina, and
see what you decide.” He nodded farewell and went back to Maginn, who was buttering a biscuit as a waiter poured his wine.
    “I sit here and look at these good burghers with their gold watch chains dangling over their pus bellies,” Maginn said, “and I all but drown in my loathing.”
    “That’s juvenile,” said Edward. “They’re only people who’ve found a way to make some money.”
    “Come on now, Edward. They’re another breed. With them and us it’s like thoroughbreds and swine. Those mosquito-loving Irish canal diggers in your novel are sewer rats to them.
But I loathe them just as much as they loathe me. Is there one of them in this dining room who’d invite you home if they knew you drink in a saloon that has an encampment of whores in
the backyard? Or me—if they found out my old man salvages hides and bones of dead horses and sells their flesh to pig farmers?”
    “I would,” said Edward.
    “You’re a rare specimen,” said Maginn, “and I drink to whatever makes you say that.” He sipped his wine, put down the glass. “But then you still tote the
baggage of the sentimental mick, offering alms to forlorn souls. You’re really not that long out of the bog yourself, are you?”
    “Long enough that I’m at home in this room, no matter what company I keep.”
    “Touché. Yet you wouldn’t introduce me to Katrina. Too obvious a bogtrotter, is that my problem?”
    “It’s a family situation. Let’s move on to something else, shall we?”
    Edward imagined Maginn unloosing his gutter candor in the presence of Katrina and her parents, and he winced. Just what Geraldine expects from the Irish. Maginn, you’re great company, and
you own a fine mind, but you are a problem.
    “You keep complaining about your editor at The Journal ,” Edward said. “How do you get along with him?”
    “Like a tree gets along with a dog.”
    “If you’re interested, I’ll put in a word at The Argus. I know my editor would like to have your lively style in our pages. He’s said as much.”
    “My present editor loathes my lively style.”
    “There’s a lot of loathing in your life, Maginn.”
    “You connect me at The Argus , my loathing will dissipate like warm sunshine lifting fog off a bog.”
    “I’ll do what I can.”
    “You’re a princely fellow, Daugherty, a princely fellow, for a