When the Duke Returns Page 26

  “Rank gossip,” Villier replied.

  “How old were you when you had this child?” Jemma asked curiously. It fascinated her, the way men sprinkled illegitimate children around the countryside.

  “Something over two-and-twenty. A distasteful subject, and redolent of my many youthful stupidities,” Villiers said. “Please, may we speak of other subjects?”

  “Yes,” the marquise said. “You can tell me why the Duke of Cosway wishes to dissolve his marriage. After all, Lady Del’Fino is quite lovely. I cannot conceive of the man who would not wish to marry her.”

  “I’m not sure that Isidore wishes to marry Cosway either,” Jemma said, feeling that she should defend her side of the conundrum. “He picked up some disagreeable habits while living abroad.”

  The marquise wrinkled her nose. “Did he lose the inclination to bathe?”

  “No, but he trots around the countryside in a pair of short trousers,” Jemma said, “and no stockings.”

  “Does he display himself for a reason?” the marquise enquired.

  “I believe he considers himself to be taking something of a constitutional,” Jemma explained.

  “I look forward to seeing it,” Villiers put in.

  “At any rate, Cosway is being a fool. Of course he must consummate his marriage,” Jemma said. Her tea was cold and she put her cup down untouched.

  “I don’t agree,” Villiers replied. “If he feels no touch of partiality for the lady—and he has suggested to me that he does not—then it would be better for both of them if they seized the opportunity to dissolve their union, such as it is.”

  The marquise opened her mouth to say something and thought better of it.

  “He has no right to talk of love and such foolishnesses,” Jemma said, rather more vehemently than she intended. “He agreed to marry her years ago. She waited for him and very kindly did not create a scandal. He has no right to back out of the agreement now. None!”

  “It would not be the most honorable thing to do,” Villiers said. “But honor is not always the best criterion by which to judge a lifetime’s worth of happiness.”

  “If he does not honor his wife,” the marquise interjected, “the marriage will not be a happy one.”

  “Perhaps marriage is not meant to be a happy state,” Jemma said. “When did we all become so foolishly emotional, so childish in our thinking? Cosway has an obligation to marry Isidore and follow through with his promises.”

  “It is not as if Lady Del’Fino will lack for a spouse,” Villiers said. “She is both beautiful and rich. She will not be left at the wayside.”

  “That is hardly the point,” Jemma snapped. “Will she be a duchess? Will she regain the years that she spent waiting for him to return from his explorations?”

  “I agree absolutely,” the marquise said. “An arranged marriage, in which neither member feels an embarrassing excess of emotion, is a thing of beauty. Never will Cosway feel anxiety about her whereabouts. Or vice versa.”

  “But you were in love with Henri, Louise,” Villiers said, going on the attack. “I remember your wedding, and you were every inch the enchanted—and enchanting—bride. Would you tell Cosway that he has no right to that joy?”

  Jemma met Louise’s eyes over the table in perfect agreement. Never having married, Villiers had no idea what he was talking about. “We must wait until Villiers marries,” Jemma said to the marquise, ignoring his naïve question entirely.

  “Yes,” the marquise replied, her smile widening. “A perfect revenge! Perhaps there will be someone at Cosway’s wedding, if it takes place. My cousin will fall helplessly in love.”

  “Then, alack, she must wait for me,” Villiers said.

  Jemma raised an eyebrow.

  “I just remembered an appointment in London.”

  “How peculiar of you, Villiers,” Jemma said. “You remembered this appointment just now?”

  “He is afraid,” the marquise said, stirring her tea. “Afraid he’ll be overcome by sentiment during this touching reconsecration and end up married himself.”

  “I believe that it would take more than an idle threat to frighten the duke,” Jemma said. “Do tell, Villiers. What earth-shakingly important appointment slipped your mind until this very moment?”

  Leopold Dautry, Duke of Villiers, would have been the first to say that idle threats were not enough to frighten him. But he had just discovered, to his discomfort, that fear is part of the human condition.

  If Jemma were on her way to visit her sister-in-law, then Elijah would be alone tonight. And Villiers found that intolerable. It was foolishly emotional, and yet he was helpless to dismiss the feeling. Elijah would not die alone, not as long as his oldest friend could prevent it.

  “Nothing earth-shaking,” he said, putting his spoon precisely by his cup. “Nothing more than a game of chess promised to your husband, m’dear.”

  “To Elijah?”

  “Precisely.”

  “You’re turning back to London and ignoring the missive sent to you by the Duke of Cosway for fear of missing a game of chess with my husband?”

  “Ah, but I have known Beaumont nearly all the years of my life, and Cosway a mere dozen or so. I had no idea that you too were travelling and that Beaumont is alone. It behooves me to keep my appointments.”

  “Is it because the two of you were estranged for so long?” Jemma asked. She turned to the marquise. “I think it is hardly a secret; my husband and Villiers were boyhood friends and then fell out over some foolishness when they were striplings.”

  “Over a dog,” Villiers explained.

  “Exactly! The stupidity of men never ceases to amaze me,” Jemma said. “At any rate, they have only recently mended their fences.”

  “Naturally,” Villiers drawled, “I should hate to insult him in any fashion. Such a touchy fellow, your husband.”

  “Elijah? Nonsense! I don’t believe this tarradiddle, Villiers, not for a moment. There must be something else…”

  “Villiers remembered the sudden appointment after my question about his children,” the marquise said, raising an eyebrow.

  “There is nothing there to make me return to London,” Villiers said. “Although…”

  “I knew it,” Jemma said. “Out with it! What of those poor misbegotten children of yours, Villiers?”

  “I promised a young woman who nursed me during my illness that I would take a more fatherly role than merely pay for their maintenance,” Villiers said, offering up the story as bait to distract Jemma.

  “Goodness,” the marquise said. “She must have been a Puritan. What on earth did she expect you to do? Raise them yourself?”

  “I believe,” Villiers said, taking a final sip of his tea, “that she meant just that.”

  “An ill-bred notion,” the marquise said flatly. “Were you to take your bastards under your own roof, Villiers, you would have the greatest difficulty fixing an alliance with a respectable woman.”

  He looked at her with a little smile in his eyes. “Do you really think so?”

  “You’re challenging him,” Jemma said, laughing a bit. “Do go ahead, Villiers. Start your own orphanage and then announce your candidacy for marriage.”

  “Those of the highest blood can be remarkably vulgar,” the marquise said, in a tone that suggested she was thinking of her own spouse.

  “I suppose my vulgarity is evidenced by the existence of the children themselves,” Villiers said. “But I am giving serious thought to the question. An excessive regard for public opinion is not congenial to my sense of self.”

  “Naturally the children must be well cared for,” the marquise said. “If they were not, it would be morally reprehensible on your part. But I see no duty that requires you to admit children of a base union to your own household.”

  Villiers merely smiled.

  “I must be on my way,” the marquise said, coming to her feet. “I hope to make at least four hours in my journey before evening.”

  Th
ey parted at the door, the innkeeper having cleverly placed wooden rondels as stepping stones to the three carriages.

  “It’s too late for my boots,” Villiers said. He waited until the marquise was climbing into her carriage, and then leaned close to Jemma. “And I am sorry about that wooden pathway for other reasons as well.”

  His breath stirred the hair at her ear and he saw her turn faintly pink.

  “Goodbye,” she said, turning away. “Do give my best to Elijah.”

  “I shall,” Villiers said. “I shall.”

  He watched her all the way to her carriage door, but she didn’t look back.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Revels House

  March 5, 1784

  The house’s lack of odor was almost miraculous. Simeon walked through the front door taking deep breaths, and even opened the door to the downstairs water closet. The pit didn’t smell.

  “Are the Dead Watch gone?” Simeon asked Mr. Merkin, who was pointing out the sparkling nature of said pit. “I gather that Mr. Bartlebee is walking again.”

  “It will be a lesson to him,” Mr. Merkin said. As he would tell his wife later, it was none of his business how a duke of the realm protects his own property. “Now I’ve made a very pleasant discovery, Yer Grace.”

  Simeon raised an eyebrow.

  “The way your river runs down there,” Mr. Merkin explained, “I believe that we can simply divert a portion of it to flow continuously through the central pit. Revels House will have a drainage system like no other! Nary an odor, even on the rainiest of days!”

  “Where will the flow emerge?” Simeon asked cautiously.

  “We’ll dig a pit on the far side of the hill. In ten years, that will be the most fertile land in the duchy,” Mr. Merkin said, pulling down his waistcoat. “We’re replacing the rotten pipes with the very best, but I know that you and the duchess are of one mind on this, Yer Grace. Spare no expense, the duchess said to me. It may take a bit of an outlay, but this house will be odiferously pure!”

  An odd phrasing, but Simeon understood exactly what he meant.

  Honeydew walked into the study with a stack of Simeon’s papers, a footman at his heels with more papers. But Simeon froze on the threshold. The room had no furniture other than half-filled bookshelves. Honeydew was arranging stacks of bills and letters in neat piles on the empty shelves.

  “Where are my books?” he said, hearing the sharpness in his own voice. “Where is my father’s desk?”

  “The duchess had me send the desk straight to London the day you moved to the Dower House,” Honeydew said. “We are expecting all the furniture back in a matter of days. The duchess was quite right, and an offer of double payment in ready money has effected miracles.”

  Simeon digested that. “The books? Have they gone to London as well?”

  “Only the ones which were falling to pieces,” Honeydew said. He pointed to the ceiling. Simeon looked up and saw a dingy stain that stretched from one corner over approximately a third of the room. “I’m afraid that when the water closet pipes leaked, they inundated the study, causing the rot of a number of books. On the duchess’s instructions—”

  Simeon cut him off. “I see.” He felt that familiar swell of anger against his father. Some of those books were among the first books printed in England. He remembered an edition of John Donne’s poems signed by the poet himself…likely merely a moldering heap of pages now.

  “The duchess believes that the books can be restored,” Honeydew said. The consolation in his tone just made Simeon more irritated.

  “Of course,” he snapped.

  A footman appeared with the small desk from the Dower House and placed it precisely in the middle of the echoing study. Honeydew immediately lifted a pile of papers from the bookshelf and moved it to the desk. “There, Your Grace,” he said soothingly. “Peters will fetch a chair and you’ll be as comfortable as can be. At least that odor’s gone!”

  The demise of the odor had obviously made Honeydew giddy with pleasure.

  When the chair appeared, Simeon took a seat and began looking over the letters delivered the previous day. Four new bills had arrived, for various expenses incurred by the duchy in the last ten years, along with a letter from another woman who had apparently been promised riches by his father in exchange for access to her bed.

  Why did his father bother making huge promises to women, promises he obviously never meant to keep? There was something pitiful about the pattern of it. Invariably his father swore that he had fallen in love at first sight. Then he promised to support his “beloved” for the rest of her life, generally offering a small cottage as well as a cash payment. After, one must assume, enjoying himself, he would return home, thereafter ignoring all future communication.

  It didn’t sit well with Simeon. The truth of it soured in his stomach and made him…irritable.

  Honeydew appeared at the door. “Mr. Pegg would like to see you, Your Grace. Mr. Pegg is—”

  “I know who he is,” Simeon said. “I already directed that he should be paid for his smithy work.”

  “He is here about the cemetery,” Honeydew said. He advanced somewhat into the room, lowering his voice. “Her Grace seems to have effected a somewhat miraculous transformation in Mr. Pegg. He’s acting as the mayor of the village. The kitchen staff reported last night that on discovering that Mr. Mopser had been charging double to villagers living by the river, Pegg stormed into the shop and forced a promise that the practice would stop.”

  “Show him in,” Simeon said.

  Pegg looked sand-beaten, like a man who’d been driving a camel caravan for far too long. But his back was straight, and the spark in his eye was honest. Simeon got up and came around the table. Isidore was obviously a good judge of character.

  He felt less magnanimous toward his wife by a quarter of an hour later. Some repairs Pegg itemized for the village were acceptable: a widow needed a new roof, the church needed a new privy, etc. The village green was to be opened for use by the villagers, and six fowl provided to each cottage. Likewise, villagers were to be allowed to hunt rabbits and small fowl in the duke’s forest, without risking arrest from the gamekeeper. Not that there was a gamekeeper; his father dismissed him several years ago.

  But two hundred pounds to refurbish the cemetery? And another two hundred pounds to be given to Henry Wissner, thatcher, as a fee for accepting Martin Smith as an apprentice? Three hundreds pounds for John Phillipson and Christopher Sumerall to oversee the construction of a new spire for the village church?

  He and Pegg argued a bit, jostling back and forth over the steeple and the cemetery. At the end of another half hour they were both satisfied. Admittedly, Isidore had chosen well. Pegg cared for the village and its people. He would keep Mopser’s conniving nature under control. Simeon just wished that Isidore had consulted with him beforehand. Not that he would have disagreed with her, but…

  It was perhaps unfortunate that the next visitor Honeydew ushered into the study was another stranger. “Monsieur Antoine-Joseph Peyre,” Honeydew announced.

  Simeon had perfected a sympathetic smile, meant to defuse the frustration of those presenting bills older than their children. But Monsieur Peyre did not present himself with the abject mien of the duchy’s many creditors. He bowed with the poise of a man who enjoyed perfect self-confidence. He was attired in a coat of flaring orange, adorned with large buttons and embroidered with fleur-de-lis in silver thread. On straightening up, he pulled a small scent flacon from his pocket and sniffed loudly.

  “Monsieur Peyre,” Simeon said, bowing. “How may I help you?”

  Peyre lowered his eyes from the frieze-work surrounding the study and said, “The question, Your Grace, is not how you can help me, but how I can help you!” Without further ado, he began to stroll about the room, his open perfume bottle trailing a potent scent of flowers.

  Simeon waited, suppressing a grin. Monsieur Peyre resembled nothing so much as a bright orange rooster, proud of his
plumage and certain that his crowing alone made the sun rise. He felt rather less amused when it transpired that Peyre had arrived with nine plaster-workers in tow and fully expected to be working in Revels House for at least ten days, if not longer.

  “It depends, of course, on how elaborate you would like the walls,” Peyre said airily. “In the duchess’s abode in Venice, the formal rooms are covered with a perfect fantasy of gilded plants, blossoms, and the like. It is—” he kissed his fingertips—“exquisite! But here we are in the English countryside, and one does not feel the same exuberance, the same delightful sparkle. I think perhaps a more classical look might suit. I see this room with pale panels…”

  While Monsieur Peyre rattled on, Simeon brooded about Isidore summoning plaster-workers to redo his house without mentioning the fact to him.

  “Your Grace,” Peyre announced, “I do not find an objectionable smell here.”

  Simeon turned around to find that Peyre was recorking his little flacon of perfume. The bottle was surrounded by an absurdly elaborate golden cage worked with enamel flowers.

  “The water closets have been repaired,” Simeon explained.

  “The duchess’s missive warned me to be prepared for an odor,” Peyre said with a shudder. “I contemplated refusing her invitation. But—” he opened his eyes very wide—“who can refuse Her Grace anything?”

  “Indeed,” Simeon said. Then he heard an echo of his mother’s sour tone in that word and softened it with a smile. “Please continue as you see fit, Monsieur Peyre. We have the utmost trust in your judgment.”

  “Naturally,” Monsieur Peyre said. “Naturally!” But he was pleased.

  He left in a cloud of perfume, and Simeon turned to sit down at his desk, paused, and looked through the window at the garden. He had left Isidore in the Dower House. A good proponent of the Middle Way would surrender his anger, perhaps running an extra mile or two. He would center himself in the universe, remember that anger is a force for evil and that the waters of the ages washed against the pebbles of eternity.

  Simeon strode out the door and into the ballroom. Monsieur Peyre was in the center of a cluster of men, pointing to the frieze-work at the top of the room. He caught just a word or two, in French. The place would probably end up looking like Versailles, he thought.