Duchess by Night Page 4

  Jem blinked. “With me?”

  “I think she has seen too many plays. She was convinced that you would discover her and I would stop being a motherless child. She’s always saying that I’m a motherless child, and no matter how many times I point out that not having known a mother, I feel no lack of one, she doesn’t understand.”

  Jem could sympathize with the governess. Eugenia’s practical nature had deflated many a dream, including that of a spectacular false floor.

  “But she finally realized that you weren’t going to notice her.”

  “I do notice her,” Jem protested. “Don’t I?”

  “Well, you didn’t notice when she left for ten days, Papa. What color is her hair?”

  “Miss Warren’s hair?” He paused.

  “I don’t think you’ve ever really seen her, Papa.”

  “Of course I have, Eugenia!” She was making him feel guilty now. “I hired her, didn’t I? And we’ve had several conversations about your progress in French and mathematics.”

  “She hates mathematics. She has to learn it with me, you know. And she’s not very good at it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that she left for ten days?”

  “I thought I could use a rest from schooling,” Eugenia said serenely. “I would have told you eventually, Papa, but she came back again. And now she is in love with a footman.”

  “A much more suitable choice than myself,” Jem said. “Which footman?”

  “The one with beetling back brows,” Eugenia said, leaning against his shoulder.

  Jem pulled her onto his lap and she sat there, long legs dangling almost to the floor, but still as light as a feather. When she was a baby, she seemed so frail that he had been afraid her bones were like a bird’s, with air in the middle.

  “Will you ever fall in love, Papa?” Eugenia asked, resting her head back against his shoulder so she could look up at him.

  “I’m in love with you, poppet,” he said. “That’s enough for one man.”

  “The house is full of beautiful women,” she observed.

  “I suppose so.”

  “Many of them would like it if you fell in love with them.”

  “Unfortunately, these kinds of things can’t be arranged on demand.”

  “Mama would have liked it if you fell in love.”

  He snorted. “How could you possibly know, given that your mother died before you knew her?”

  “She and I are very similar,” Eugenia said without hesitation. “She would like precisely what I like. And I think you would be happier if you had someone of your own, Papa.”

  “Falling in love is merely a way of getting something you desire,” Jem told her. “Like a silver box. If I want an ornament, I’ll buy it.”

  “Mrs. Mahon probably can’t afford to buy silver boxes,” Eugenia observed. “She has a beautiful muff, but her shoes are quite shabby.”

  “A perfect case in point. She falls in love in order to get herself silver boxes. Luckily, I can afford all the silver boxes I want.”

  “There’s more to love than that,” Eugenia said, wiggling happily. There was nothing that Eugenia Strange loved more than a lively discussion in which she bent her wits and argumentative skills against those of her papa. “You are focusing on finances, which is a weakness of yours.”

  “What should I focus on?” Jem asked cautiously. While he had early on established his child-rearing practices as promoting a clear-headed sensibility in his daughter, he wasn’t sure that he wanted her clarity to include bedroom matters. Not at this age. And certainly not if he had to explain them.

  “Love is a matter of the heart,” Eugenia said. “Shakespeare says that nothing should stand between true lovers.”

  “We agreed that you wouldn’t quote Shakespeare to me for at least a month,” Jem pointed out.

  “I didn’t quote. I merely condensed.”

  “I’m not certain that Mrs. Mahon is talking about that kind of love,” he said, more cautiously still.

  “Well, of course, Mrs. Mahon is a concubine. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that she occasionally plays the concubine,” Eugenia said promptly.

  “Waa—”

  “I see her as a character in a play. There’s an old play called Cupid’s Revenge in the library, and a very naughty woman named Bacha says in Act One that she means to ‘embrace sin as it were a friend, and run to meet it.’”

  Jem started thinking about some suggestions he might give Eugenia’s governess as regards reading materials the next time he saw her.

  But Eugenia didn’t even pause for breath. “Mrs. Mahon is embracing sin as a friend. Because really, what else can she do? She must eat.”

  “And get more silver boxes,” Jem said, unable to resist.

  “Love is not about sin, precisely,” Eugenia told him. “And it’s definitely not about silver boxes. To think about love, we need to consider my governess, in love with the beetle-browed footman. Because love is blind, Papa.”

  “That’s a quote! We said no quotes.”

  “It’s an aphorism,” she corrected him. “It happens to have been repeated in many plays, but its provenance is unknown.”

  The good news was that the governess was obviously earning her salary, since his daughter was nimbly using words like provenance. The bad news…“The only time I ever fell in love was with your mother, poppet. And that only occurred because my parents forced the marriage. So you’ll have to discard the idea of dancing at my wedding.”

  “You simply haven’t met the right woman,” his daughter told him.

  “As you said, the house is full of beautiful women. Loads of them.”

  “Beauty is not everything, Papa.”

  Jem looked down at his daughter’s oddly angular little face. “But I don’t want to fall in love. It is my observation that only people who wish to fall in love do so. A case in point: your governess developed an affection for me, but transferred it promptly to a hairy footman when the opportunity presented itself.”

  “That makes a great deal of sense,” his daughter said, after a moment.

  It was a sad reflection on his life, Jem thought, that he was most thrilled by praise from an eight-year-old.

  “However,” Eugenia said, rallying, “perhaps you simply don’t know what you want. That’s a common state of mankind. While the playwright George Chapman—”

  “Don’t,” Jem said.

  “I wasn’t going to quote him,” she complained. “I was merely summarizing his argument.”

  Jem shuddered. Who would have thought that his household would be invaded by a child whose prodigious memory had nothing better to do than memorize large swaths of drama? Obviously it was his fault for inviting actors to rehearse their plays at Fonthill. Parenthood was full of these traps, it seemed to him. An obvious decision—have the actors out to Fonthill so he needn’t travel to London for their performances—became fraught with complications once it intersected with Eugenia.

  Meanwhile she hopped off his knee. “I shall devote myself to finding you a mate,” she said.

  “What?”

  “A mate!” She paused at the door and looked back at him, a beloved, enchanting, awkward little combination of himself and Sally. “Unless you would like to reconsider the question of my governess?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I don’t want a wife at all, Eugenia.”

  But she was gone.

  Chapter Five

  In Which Masculinity is Described and Detailed

  January 7, 1784

  The Country Seat of the Duke of Beaumont

  Overheard at Tea

  “The key to being male,” the Duke of Villiers said, “is to think like a male. It’s really quite simple.”

  “That’s exactly how I would have described it,” Isidore said, laughing. “Simple.”

  Villiers cast her a look. “Ribaldry aside, if a person looks male, everyone assumes he is male. If a bystander appears doubtful, say you’re going to take a piss. M
en never expect women to know that word. Or say something about your pole.”

  “My what?” Harriet asked, and then felt herself turn pink. “Oh, of course. I can do that.”

  “You’d better stuff your breeches in front,” Villiers said.

  “Thereby aligning yourself with the larger part of English males,” Jemma put in.

  “This is all so vulgar,” Harriet complained.

  “Men are vulgar,” Villiers said. “If you are naturally rarefied and delicate in your thinking, then do not put on a pair of breeches.”

  “I can be vulgar,” Harriet said instantly.

  “If you can manage vulgarity, you’re half way to being male. Men are direct while discussing bedroom matters. We never say that a couple dances in the sheets, or any of those euphemisms women employ. Good old Anglo-Saxon words prevail.”

  “Talk about yourself most of the time,” Jemma suggested. “For a man there is no nobler topic than himself.”

  “But,” Harriet said confusedly, “there won’t really be a myself, if you see what I mean.”

  Villiers eyed her. “Lived your life in the country. You’d better be my second nephew Cope. He’s an odd duck who is never seen in town. He has a doting mother: that explains the effeminacy.”

  “I’m not—” Harriet began and realized the absurdity of what she was saying. “I suppose I will be a trifle effeminate.”

  “You’ll have to figure out how to walk like a man. I can get you fitted up with clothes,” Villiers said, “but walking is important. Can you smoke?”

  “Absolutely not. But I shall enjoy the clothing. I loathe wearing panniers. I’m always bumping into doorways, not to mention people.”

  “What about your hair?” Isidore asked. “If you cut your hair now, you’ll never be able to wear it high again.”

  Harriet smiled. “I don’t wear it high now.” She gestured toward her modest arrangement of curls and puffs. “Most of this was added by my maid this morning. My own hair barely reaches my shoulders.”

  “Very clever,” Jemma said. “I keep meaning to try a hair piece.”

  “I doubt you could do it successfully,” Harriet said. “Your hair is such a beautiful gold color. But mine is dull brown, and it’s easy to match.”

  “Your hair is not dull!”

  Harriet shrugged. “Who would know, what with the hot iron and crimping and powdering? I shall positively relish being male if it means I could stop trying to straighten my hair.”

  “Men do not straighten nor curl their hair,” Villiers stated.

  “Some do,” Isidore put in. “I am quite certain that Saint Albans curls his hair. And he wears lip color as well.”

  “I shan’t,” Harriet said.

  “I wouldn’t let you,” Villiers said. “If you’re going to do this, you’re going to do it right. And that means you’ll be my creation.”

  Jemma laughed. “Created in Villiers’s image: you’re going to be a huge success, Harriet!”

  Harriet bit her lip. The idea of being Villiers’s creation, after the time when she tried to seduce him and he rejected her, was mortifying.

  She wasn’t the only one remembering that night. In the depths of his black eyes there was a mocking spark that said: you can’t do it. After all, when she kissed him in the carriage, he had done something so shocking that she actually slapped him. He knew her to be a conservative, tiresome country woman.

  “There’s no need to go to these extremes,” he said now. “We could simply dress you as Isidore’s elderly aunt from the country. You’d make a fine chaperone and no one would question you.”

  The anger in Harriet’s chest felt like fire. She had played the fool when she tried to seduce Villiers, and he had been right to scorn her. Benjamin had been his closest friend, and she had kissed him in a misguided impulse to make Benjamin notice his wife.

  But she was no elderly aunt from the country.

  “I shouldn’t think I’ll have the slightest problem playing a man,” she said. “I shall merely remember to rearrange my breeches in front at least once an hour, thereby drawing attention to the padding I carefully placed there in the morning, and I’ll blend in perfectly.” She let her eyes slide below his waist.

  “A low blow,” Villiers said.

  “Low indeed!” Isidore crowed.

  “Lucky I brought my tailor with me,” Villiers said. “You need everything from boots to periwigs.”

  “You can be measured for boots and I’ll send to London for them,” Jemma said.

  “I must return to Berrow for quarter sessions before I can travel to Fonthill,” Harriet said with a frown.

  Villiers raised an eyebrow.

  “A sot rules the shire court in my village,” Harriet told him. “So we abide by the old customs. He sleeps off the brandy of the night before and I make the rulings. Otherwise he simply gives everyone hard labor, no matter the offense or the truth of it.”

  “Who’s the current duke?”

  “He’s eleven years old, and at Eton,” Harriet said.

  “You must know of his mother, Lady Brewyn,” Jemma put in. “She is currently living in Paris with a man twenty years her junior. A cheerful woman, by all accounts.”

  “I’m taking care of the estate for my nephew,” Harriet said, “and that includes the shire court, at least until he is of age or the current judge is replaced.”

  “I shall wait for you to return from the quarter sessions,” Isidore said. “Meanwhile, I’ll send a letter to my husband declaring my visit to Strange. I’m sure it takes a while to return from Africa.”

  “I am immensely amused by this scheme,” Villiers said.

  “There’s nothing better than an occasional act of folly,” Jemma said. “You would be the better for it yourself, Villiers.”

  “The fact that His Grace lies there recovering from a duel suggests that acts of folly are second nature,” Harriet said gently.

  Then she smiled at the narrowed eyes of Villiers—and the amused eyes of Jemma.

  She felt like a new Harriet.

  Not a widow.

  Not tedious.

  A wild Harriet, a Harriet who engaged in folly, a Harriet who saw life as a challenge, not a failure.

  Chapter Six

  Justice By Duchess, Part Two

  February 1, 1784

  Shire Court

  The Duchy of Berrow

  Honorable Reginald Truder, presiding

  “If I understand you correctly, Mr. Burch, the defendant pretended to be a barber.”

  “And then he stole my fish!” Mr. Burch said, keeping his eyes imploringly on the duchess. He’d heard as how she was the only one who saw to it that justice was done.

  “Your fish,” the duchess said.

  “What fish? What fish?” barked the judge. He had deeply flushed cheeks and a beak of a nose. He looked more like a convict with a headache rather than a judge.

  “It was the fish that he pretended the haberdasher sent to my wife,” Mr. Burch said. He skewed his eyes toward the duchess again. Anyone could tell that she was the only one really listening; the judge was swilling out of a flask again. “It wasn’t just the fish,” Mr. Burch continued. “First he pretended to be a barber and gained entrance to my house. Then he stole a silver cup that my wife had sent over from the silversmith, by pretending that he’d come to deliver the fish.”

  “So it wasn’t your fish?”

  “Well, it was—I suppose it was his fish. He came back and took the fish anyway, telling my wife that—”

  “Hard labor,” the judge stated, glaring around the court.

  The duchess put a hand on his arm. She spoke quietly, but Tom Burch still heard her. “I’m just getting to the bottom of it, Reginald.”

  “I don’t like fish,” he said.

  She patted him again and said, “So we can discount the theft of the fish, Mr. Burch, because the defendant sent you the fish, and then took it back again. But that was a stratagem to allow him to gain access to your house
and steal your silver cup.”

  “He was caught with it!” Mr. Burch said triumphantly. “Caught red-handed! In the deed! With the cup!”

  “The defendant claims that you asked him to carry the cup back to the silversmith and have it engraved.”

  “If that’s the case—and it isn’t—why was it under his bed?”

  “Hard labor,” the judge said after another swallow. “I insist this time, Yer Grace. The man’s a fish-stealer.”

  The duchess sighed and turned to the dock. “Oscar Sibble, this is your third appearance before this court, all three of which were for rather creative escapades involving stolen objects.”

  Burch noticed that Sibble didn’t even hang his head, the way any proper man would. He grinned instead. “No one was hurt,” he said. “The cup’s back home with Burch.”

  The judge’s eyes narrowed. “Transport him!” he suddenly bellowed.

  The duchess patted his arm again. “We can’t do that, Reginald. The colonies are at war, remember? We don’t transport people there anymore.”

  “Then drop him in the sea offshore,” the judge said. “He can swim over to them tarnishing Americans, most of ’em transported from this county anyway.”

  “Two weeks hard labor,” the duchess said. “And Mr. Sibble, the only reason you’re not facing imprisonment this time is because the cup was recovered. You appear to have had a merry time of it, delivering the fish, stealing the fish again, pretending to be a barber, ending up with a silver cup. But life is not a game, Mr. Sibble.”

  There was a moment of silence in the court.

  “If you appear again in this shire court, you will face imprisonment.”

  “For life,” the judge added thirstily.

  The constable hauled Sibble away, and the duchess turned to Mr. Burch. “It sounds as if you’ve had a distressing time of it, Mr. Burch. I want to commend you on your restraint in the face of these indignities.”

  Tom Burch stood up taller. Everyone had been hooting, saying he was a fool because of losing his silver cup due to a fish. But the Duchess of Berrow thought he’d showed restraint.