Duchess in Love

  He tossed the book again. Was there a point to lying to himself? He wanted more of Gina. More of her surprised kiss, soft lip, sweet curve, silky hair. The way she melted into his arms just before she remembered who he was and pushed him away. Next time…Next time she’d remember who he was and stay exactly where she belonged.

  In his arms.

  He didn’t bother to follow the logic of that thought. After all, men are known for thinking with their loins rather than their brains, and Camden Serrard, Duke of Girton, had just succumbed to a common male complaint.

  Edmund Rounton was having no trouble arranging the Duke of Girton’s annulment. In fact, he was a little appalled at how easy the business was. Everyone he consulted seemed to nod and instantly agree that annulment was by far the best solution and should be effected as rapidly as possible.

  “Used to be difficult,” Howard Colvin, Esq., commented. Colvin was England’s leading authority on annulment.

  “Dear me, yes, I remember when we desperately needed to put through an annulment—that would be the Duchess of Hinton from her husband. Man was absolutely incapable. Couldn’t even piss in the proper direction, if you catch my meaning. Took us months, and she finally had to undergo a virginity trial!” He looked outraged. “Of course, that was back in ’89.”

  “I trust that particular ordeal is no longer in use?”

  “Of course not. We’re much more humane these days. The Regent is partial to annulments. Thinks it saves on the scandal of a divorce, and of course it does. I got one for the Meade-Featherstonehaughs last year. Did you hear of it?”

  Rounton shook his head.

  “We kept it quiet, and for good reason,” Colvin said. “Meade-Featherstonehaugh had taken three wives! Mad as a hatter, he is. Most men wish they didn’t have the one, and the featherbrain brought two more into the house.”

  Rounton blinked. “How’d he do that?”

  “Took ’em to Scotland. One at a time, of course. The second and third had no idea until they returned to the house. Of course, it was the first, the only legal one, who annulled.” He hoisted himself out of the low leather chair. “Shouldn’t think there’ll be any trouble with the Girton marriage. Although I have heard that the duchess is a bit of a wild one, isn’t she?”

  Rounton looked him steadily in the eye. “Her reputation is much exaggerated by jealousy, sir. She is a beautiful young woman.”

  “She’ll have to be, to get married again. Must be getting long in the tooth by now.”

  “I believe that she has many suitors,” Rounton said stiffly.

  “No offense! You’d think she was a relative of yours,” the old man chortled. “Just send the papers over to my office, boy, and I’ll have it all sewed up tight as a jug of malmsey. Talk to the Regent myself. I expect under the circumstances we can waive the parliamentary approval business.”

  Rounton bowed. “Thank you very much.”

  “Not at all, not at all.” And England’s leading authority on annulment tottered out of the club to his waiting carriage.

  Rounton walked back to his legal chambers in a dark mood. Annulment shouldn’t just be another case of divorce, to his mind. If a man takes three wives, then he should be jailed, and that’s the end of it.

  He pushed open the door and called for his junior, Finkbottle, without noticing that Finkbottle was sitting just before him. The man jumped several inches in the air. His hair stood on end as if it were caught in a brushfire. Rum thing, having that color hair, Rounton thought.

  “Now,” he said briskly, “I’m sending you down to Kent today. I have the first bunch of annulment papers here for the Girtons, and the rest should be along in a few days. But your job, Finkbottle, is to delay. Delay. Do you understand?”

  A familiar look of panicked confusion spread across Phineas Finkbottle’s face.

  “Pretend you don’t have the papers. Pretend a rainstorm sent the messenger off the road. Use finesse.” Rounton lowered his voice.

  “I have a particular task for you during your stay in Kent.”

  10

  The Fruits of Regret

  Carola Perwinkle, sometime wife to Tuppy Perwinkle, was near to tears. She sat at her dressing table, her hair tied back with a ribbon. It was the same room she had slept in for a week; the same rather weary face looked back at her from the glass; the same empty bed loomed behind her in the faint shadows.

  She had, in essence, spent the previous evening dancing with Neville. They danced the ridotto, they danced the quadrille, they danced the waltz three times. No need for her to have worried about encountering Tuppy. He was there: she glimpsed him at the far end of the room. But he hadn’t even bothered to greet her. She bit her lip, and tears gathered in her eyes, not for the first time that afternoon.

  She bit her lip, hard, until the sting made the burning pressure behind her eyes recede. She was going to be twenty-five next week. And every year she realized with a keener and keener sense just what a fool she had been. Soon she’d be a thirty-year-old fool and, in a matter of minutes, a forty-year-old fool. Fifty—she might as well be dead by then. Fifty-year-old women don’t gallivant around the ballroom dancing the waltz. They sit at tables and watch their daughters, or sit at the edges of rooms and whisper tales of their sons’ extravagance—except she wouldn’t have any children to talk about.

  There was a soft scratch at the door, and her maid appeared. “My lady, the Duchess of Girton’s maid would like to know whether Her Grace might visit for a moment.”

  “Of course,” Carola said tonelessly. She pulled the ribbon from her hair and began brushing. Her maid automatically moved toward her, but she waved her from the room.

  It wasn’t the best of cures, she thought, seeing her oh-so-perfect friend the duchess. Gina had a husband and a fiancé, and unless she was much mistaken, they both wanted Gina. Lucky woman. No one wanted Carola. Tears mounted with her self-pity, and she swallowed hard.

  Gina entered the room looking quite as delectable as someone so lucky ought to be. She also had an air of slight hesitation that Carola thought was very nice of her. Gina was probably the most beautifully behaved woman in the ton.

  “Are you feeling terribly ill? Is there anything I can do?”

  “Actually, no. I simply couldn’t face leaving the room,” Carola said flatly.

  Gina sat down in a chair to the left of the dressing table. “I felt that way as well, but since then I have been to a picnic and had yet another quarrel with my betrothed, and now I am almost myself.”

  Carola smiled at that, just a lift of her lips. “What did you fight with Lord Bonnington about?”

  “Whether he is a stick in the mud,” Gina said gaily.

  “And—wonder of wonders!—he agreed. And so we are to act in a less than absolutely proper Shakespeare play, as recompense.”

  “He must truly love you,” Carola said, startled. “Because it is very difficult to imagine Lord Bonnington engaged in something as dashing as a theatrical.”

  “Yes, of course,” Gina said, wishing she could affirm Sebastian’s love more enthusiastically. It wasn’t his love that she worried about.

  “Don’t mind me,” Carola said with an apologetic smile, mopping up tears. “It’s been happening all day.”

  “Are you crying because of your husband’s arrival?”

  There was a moment’s silence while Gina wondered if she should have phrased the question more tactfully.

  “Yes,” Carola said, finally. “Yes and no.”

  Gina waited.

  “Every year it grows worse. Every year I regret more and more. And every year the possibility of reconciliation is further in the past.”

  “Well, why don’t you speak—”

  “Impossible. You don’t understand, Gina. There you are with a betrothed who looks at you as if you were a goddess, and now your husband arrives in the country and looks at you the same way.”

  “That isn’t true!”

  “Of course it is.” Her voice was sharp. ?
??I’m a grown woman, who was a wife, once.” She sniffed disconsolately.

  “I recognize the look in a man’s eyes. Tup—Tup—Tuppy used to look at me that way!” And now she broke out into true sobs.

  Gina sat next to her on the padded bench and wound an arm around her shoulder. “Darling, if you still love your husband, then you must make amends with him. Court him, if you have to. That’s all there is to it.”

  Carola was struggling with tears and reaching blindly for her handkerchief, so Gina put it in her hand. “You don’t understand anything,” she said in a rather wavery, ungracious voice. “What you suggest is impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “It just is.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t understand!”

  Gina was starting to feel annoyed. “Why not? You’ll have to make yourself clear. It seems obvious to me that given that you left your husband rather than the other way around, it is your responsibility to approach him. In fact, to woo him back.”

  Carola took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “It’s not so easy. I made a mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake, and now I simply have to live with it, that’s all.” She kept talking, sensing that Gina was about to query her again. “I’m not crying because of Tuppy—well, not really. I’m crying because I can’t have back what I lost.” There was savage belief in every word she spoke. “You wouldn’t know about that, Gina, because you haven’t made any mistakes. Two men look at you—that way. You can choose either one. It doesn’t matter which; either way, you’ll be living with a man who loves you and desires you.”

  “How can you say that my husband loves me? I hardly know the man.”

  “Well, it’s clear to me that he wants you and Bonnington loves you. My husband doesn’t want me or love me.” She started to cry again.

  “I had no idea you felt this way about your husband,” Gina said, rocking her friend against her shoulder. “That you were still so much in love with him, I mean.”

  “I’m not!”

  “It certainly sounds as if you are.”

  Carola gulped and straightened again. “I’m not so in love. But I saw him last night, twice. He didn’t even bother to greet me. Usually, he…he takes my hand, and he asks me how I have been. And—and—this is so humiliating!”

  “Not humiliating,” Gina said. “Interesting. What on earth have you been doing, pretending that you enjoy living apart from your husband?”

  “I don’t pretend,” Carola said wretchedly. “I just go on, day after day. And honestly, in the beginning I didn’t care much. It was only when he didn’t come fetch me, and then I started watching for him on the street, and wishing I would meet him—so he would know how happy I was, you understand. And then somehow I never saw him enough, and I would end up thinking about him at home.”

  Gina handed her a fresh handkerchief. She had discovered a little pile of them.

  “When we were first married, I wasn’t in love with him at all. My mother made me marry him. He was the best offer I got. She didn’t want to fund another season, and there was my younger sister coming up. And then, just at the end of the season, Tuppy appeared,” Carola continued. “I’d hardly met him four times before he asked for my hand. In under a month, we were married.”

  “Was being married so objectionable?”

  “It wasn’t. But I never admitted it to myself, because that would mean that my mother was right. She said”—another sob fought its way up her chest—“she said that if I just lost some of my vanity, I would settle down nicely in the stable with Tuppy.”

  “Oh,” Gina said, rather nonplussed by the description.

  “I was so angry,” Carola said. “I had come to her after…after the first night.” She stopped. “Do you know what I mean, Gina?”

  “Of course.”

  “And all she said was a mingle-mangle of metaphors about horses and stables and settling down to my feed. She said he was an awkward rider, and I should try to be a docile mare. So I went home and fought again with Tuppy, and then before I hardly knew it, I had run back home to my mother’s and he never—he never came after me.”

  “Just like a man,” Gina said with exasperation. “Nary a one in ten has a sense of responsibility. Tuppy is just like Esme’s husband. If he had come after you, and demonstrated his constancy and faithfulness, you might have had a family by now.”

  Carola shrugged. “I don’t see where responsibility enters the picture.” She’d stopped crying and was just staring at her shadowed face in the mirror. “He doesn’t give a fig about me, Gina, and why should he? I was barely in his house and his bed before I fled screaming to my mother. All I did while I was with him was whine and yelp about how much it hurt. It did hurt, too,” she said suddenly. “But no one bothered to tell me that it would stop hurting eventually.”

  “How do you—” Gina broke off.

  “Oh, I haven’t broken my wedding vows,” Carola said.

  “Somehow I never really wanted to. I’ve heard other people talking, of course. Look at Esme. She wouldn’t risk her reputation if it wasn’t pleasurable, would she? And now…and now I only want to live with my husband, and he doesn’t even greet me.”

  “I’m sure he meant to. He probably couldn’t find you amid all your admirers.”

  “I saw him, last night, talking to that young red-haired snip who is suddenly so fashionable. The sullen-looking one.”

  “Penelope Deventosh?”

  Carola nodded. “He could divorce me on grounds of desertion, you know.”

  “He could have done that years ago, if he wished to.”

  “But perhaps Miss Deventosh will win his heart.”

  “Not if you do so first. You’re going to have to court him.”

  “Court him!”

  “Yes. It sounds to me as if you probably wounded his pride. Did you tell him that you had consulted your mother?”

  “You mean the bit about the awkward rider?”

  Gina nodded.

  “I’m afraid I embellished on my mother’s comment. You see, I really did find the whole business painful and messy. And marriage too.”

  “Even worse, then. Of course he didn’t go after you.”

  “I don’t know how to court someone.” She sniffed disconsolately.

  “It’s that or let him marry Miss Deventosh.”

  Carola was silent for a moment. “I’ll kill her first,” she said tensely. “I want him—even if he is too tall for dancing and cares only about fish.”

  “Did you tell him that as well?”

  Carola nodded. “And more.”

  “Goodness. I think we had better ask Esme for advice.”

  “Do you think that she knows how to court someone?”

  Gina thought about how her husband’s eyes brightened when Esme smiled at him. “I have no doubt about it.” Her tone was rather grim.

  “But I don’t want to be seductive,” Carola whispered. “I’d rather die than let my husband think I wanted to bed him. It would be such a victory for him. I’d rather die.”

  Gina felt her way cautiously into an answer. “I think you’re going to have to let him know. Why would a man want to live with a woman who—” But then she remembered Sebastian’s insistence on her innocence. It was more than a belief; Sebastian was convinced that she had no desire whatsoever, all evidence to the contrary.

  “You’re right,” Carola said dispiritedly. “Why would he want me back if he thinks that I’m just going to shriek like a peacock every time he tries to bed me?”

  Gina’s eyebrows went up as she met her friend’s eyes in the mirror. “That bad?”

  “I was young and stupid.”

  “Some men dislike the idea of marrying a desirous woman,” Gina offered. “Do you think Tuppy is one of those?”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Carola replied. “But I think the men who feel that way invariably don’t love the woman in question. I’ve seen it over and over. They marry a woman for her purity. Then they fall in l
ove with a woman who certainly isn’t innocent.”

  Gina swallowed. Surely it wouldn’t be that way with Sebastian.

  “I’ve heard women complaining about it,” Carola continued. “Make the smallest advance to a man of that stamp and they scold you because you’ve walked off your pedestal and stained your innocence. I don’t think Tuppy is that sort.”

  “I hope not,” Gina murmured. There was no avoiding the fact that Sebastian was that sort. It gave her a queer stifled feeling in her chest to think about it. “Here’s what we’ll do,” she said with sudden vigor. “How long do you think Tuppy will stay at the house party?”

  “He generally stays for at least three weeks. He has to, or Lady Troubridge threatens to disinherit him.”

  “Has she ever urged you to reconcile?”

  “She’s never said anything about it.”

  “First thing, we’ll speak to Lady Troubridge,” Gina said.

  “Because she is in charge of seating during meals.”

  “Oh yes,” Carola exclaimed. “I could sit next to Tuppy!”

  “And she assigns bedchambers,” Gina said, a wicked twinkle in her eye.

  Her friend gasped. “Bedchambers!”

  “Only as a matter of last resort.”

  Carola’s eyes were round. “That would be bolder than I feel capable. I couldn’t do it!”

  “Likely you won’t have to,” Gina said reassuringly. “After all, men court women all the time. How difficult can it be? And we have Esme for advice.”

  Carola blinked and whispered: “Bedchambers, Gina?”

  “Only if the man holds out beyond the point of reasonableness,” Gina promised.

  Had Lady Cranborne seen her daughter at that moment, she would have been quite proud: in Gina’s eyes shone the unmistakable stamp of a Girton.