Winning the Wallflower

  “Neither have I,” Lord Sundon said. “Are you trying to match Linnet off with a stripling, Zenobia? It’ll never work.”

  “He’s no stripling. He must be over thirty. Thirty-five at least. Surely you remember the story, Cornelius?”

  “I pay no attention to stories,” the viscount said testily. “It was the only way to survive under the same roof with your sister.”

  “You need to do a treatment to clean out your spleen,” Zenobia said, putting down her crumpet. “You are letting bile ferment in your system, Cornelius, and it’s a very powerful emotion. Rosalyn is dead. Let her be dead, if you please!”

  Linnet decided it was time to speak. “Aunt Zenobia, why would you think that the duke would be interested in matching me with his son? If indeed that’s what you were thinking?”

  “He’s desperate,” her aunt said. “Heard it from Mrs. Nemble, and she’s bosom friends with Lady Grymes, and you know that her husband is Windebank’s half brother.”

  “No, I don’t know,” the viscount said. “And I don’t care either. Why is Windebank desperate? Is his son simpleminded? I can’t recall seeing any sons around Lords or in Boodle’s.”

  “Not simpleminded,” Zenobia said triumphantly. “Even better!”

  There was a moment of silence as both Linnet and her father thought about what that could mean.

  “He hasn’t got what it takes,” her aunt clarified.

  “He hasn’t?” Sundon asked blankly.

  “Minus a digit,” Zenobia added.

  “A finger?” Linnet ventured.

  “For goodness’ sake,” Zenobia said, licking a bit of honey off one finger. “I always have to spell everything out in this house. The man suffered an accident as a young man. He walks with a cane. And that accident left him impotent, to call a stone a stone. No heir now, and none in the future either.”

  “In fact, in this particular case,” her father said with distinct satisfaction, “a stone isn’t a stone.”

  “Impotent?” Linnet asked. “What does that mean?”

  There was a moment’s silence while her two closest relatives examined her closely, as if she were a rare species of beetle they’d found under the carpet.

  “That’s for you to explain,” her father said, turning to Zenobia.

  “Not in front of you,” Zenobia said.

  Linnet waited.

  “All you need to know at the moment is that he can’t father a child,” her aunt added. “That’s the crucial point.”

  Linnet put that fact together with various comments her mother had made over the years, and found she had absolutely no inclination to inquire further. “How is that better than simpleminded?” she asked. “In a husband, I mean.”

  “Simpleminded could mean drool at the dinner table and Lord knows what,” her aunt explained.

  “You’re talking about the Beast!” her father suddenly exclaimed. “I’ve heard all about him. Just didn’t put it together at first.”

  “Marchant is no beast,” Zenobia scoffed. “That’s rank gossip, Cornelius, and I would think it beneath you.”

  “Everyone calls him that,” the viscount pointed out. “The man’s got a terrible temper. Brilliant doctor—or so everyone says—but the temper of a fiend.”

  “A tantrum here or there is part of marriage,” Zenobia said, shrugging. “Wait until he sees how beautiful Linnet is. He’ll be shocked and delighted that fate blessed him with such a lovely bride.”

  “Must I really choose between simpleminded and beastly?” Linnet inquired.

  “No, between simpleminded and incapable,” her aunt said impatiently. “Your new husband will be grateful for that child you’re supposedly carrying, and I can tell you that your new father-in-law will be ecstatic.”

  “He will?” Lord Sundon asked.

  “Don’t you understand yet?” Zenobia said, jumping to her feet. She walked a few steps, and then twirled around in a fine gesture. “On the one side, we have a lonely duke, with one son. Just one. And that duke is obsessed with royalty, mind. He considers himself a bosom friend of the king, or at least he did before the king turned batty as a . . . as a bat.”

  “Got that,” the viscount said.

  “Hush,” Zenobia said impatiently. She hated being interrupted. “On the one side, the lonely, desperate duke. On the other, the wounded, incapable son. In the balance . . . a kingdom.”

  “A kingdom?” the viscount repeated, his eyes bulging.

  “She means it metaphorically,” Linnet said, taking another crumpet. She had seen rather more of her aunt than her father had, and she was familiar with her love of rhetorical flourishes.

  “A kingdom without a future, because there is no child to carry on the family name,” Zenobia said, opening her eyes wide.

  “Is the duke—” Lord Sundon began.

  “Hush,” she snapped. “I ask you, what does this desperately unhappy family need?”

  Neither Linnet nor her father dared to answer.

  Which was fine, because she had only paused for effect. “I ask you again, what does this desperately unhappy family need? They need . . . an heir!”

  “Don’t we all,” the viscount said, sighing.

  Linnet reached out and patted her father’s hand. It was one of the rather unkind facts of life that her mama had been extremely free with her favors, and yet she had given her husband only one child, a daughter, who could not inherit the major part of her father’s estate.

  “They need,” Zenobia said, raising her voice so as to regain her audience, “they need a prince!”

  After a minute or so, Linnet ventured to say, “A prince, Aunt Zenobia?”

  That gained her the beatific smile of an actress receiving accolades, if not armfuls of roses, from her audience. “A prince, my dear. And you, lucky girl, have exactly what he needs. He’s looking for a heir, and you have that heir, and what’s more, you’re offering royal bloodlines.”

  “I see what you mean,” the viscount said slowly. “It’s not a terrible idea, Zenobia.”

  She got a little pink in the face. “None of my ideas are terrible. Ever.”

  “But I don’t have a prince,” Linnet said. “If I understand you correctly, the Duke of Windebank is looking for a pregnant woman—”

  Her father growled and she amended her statement. “That is, the duke would perhaps acquiesce to a woman in my unfortunate situation because that way his son would have a son—”

  “Not just a son,” Zenobia said, her voice still triumphant. “A prince. Windebank isn’t going to take just any lightskirt into his family. He’s frightfully haughty, you know. He’d rather die. But a prince’s son? He’ll fall for that.”

  “But—”

  “You’re right about that, Zenobia. Be gad, you’re a canny old woman!” her father roared.

  Zenobia’s back snapped straight. “What did you say to me, Cornelius?”

  He waved his hand. “Didn’t mean it that way, didn’t mean it that way. Pure admiration. Pure unmitigated admiration. Pure—”

  “I agree,” she said in a conciliatory tone, patting her hair. “It’s a perfect plan. You’d better go to him this afternoon, though. You have to get her all the way to Wales for the marriage. Marchant lives up there.”

  “Marriage,” Linnet said. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  They both looked at her and said simultaneously, “What?”

  “I’m not carrying a prince!” she shouted. “I never slept with Augustus. Inside my belly I have nothing but a chewed-up crumpet.”

  “That is a disgusting comment,” her aunt said with a shudder.

  “I agree,” her father chimed in. “Quite distasteful. You sound like a city wife, talking of food in that manner.”

  “Distasteful is the fact that you are planning to sell off my unborn child to a duke with a penchant for royalty—when I don’t even have an unborn child!”

  “I said this would all have to happen quite quickly,” her aunt said.

&
nbsp; “What do you mean?”

  “Well, let’s say that your father goes to Windebank’s house this very afternoon, and let’s say that Windebank takes the bait, because he will. As I said, the man is desperate, and besides, he would love to meld his line with royal blood.”

  “That doesn’t solve the problem,” Linnet said.

  “Well, of course not,” Zenobia said, giving her a kindly smile. “We can’t do everything for you. The next part is up to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her father got up, obviously not listening. “I’ll put on my Jean de Bry coat and Hessians,” he said to himself.

  “Not the de Bry,” Zenobia called after him.

  He paused at the door. “Why not?”

  “The shoulders are a trifle anxious. You mustn’t seem anxious. You’re offering to save the man’s line, after all.”

  “Sage-green court coat with a scalloped edge,” her father said, nodding, and disappeared through the door.

  “Aunt Zenobia,” Linnet said, showing infinite patience, to her mind. “Just how am I supposed to get a child of royal blood to offer to the husband I’ve never met?”

  Zenobia smiled. “My dear, you aren’t a woman of my family if you have to ask that.”

  Linnet’s mouth fell open. “You don’t mean—”

  “Of course, darling. As soon as your father signs those papers, you have . . . oh . . . twelve hours before you really should leave for Wales.”

  “Twelve hours,” Linnet echoed, hoping she was mistaken in what she was thinking. “You can’t possibly mean—”

  “Augustus has been following you about like a child with a string toy,” her aunt said. “Shouldn’t take more than a come-hither glance and a cheerful smile. Goodness’ sake, dear, didn’t you learn anything from your mother?”

  “No,” Linnet said flatly.

  “Actually, with your bosom you don’t even need to smile,” Zenobia said.

  “So you really mean—” Linnet stopped. “I—I—”

  “You. Augustus. Seduction. Bed,” her aunt said helpfully. “Twelve hours and only one prince . . . should be quite easy.”

  “I—”

  “You are Rosalyn’s daughter,” her aunt said. “And my niece. Seduction, especially when it comes to royalty, is bred in your bones. In your very bloodline.”

  “I don’t know how,” Linnet said flatly. “I may look naughty, but I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are,” her aunt said brightly. She rose. “Just get yourself a child, Linnet. Think how many young women manage to do it and they haven’t nearly your advantages, to wit, your body, your face, your smile.”

  “My entire education has been directed at chastity,” Linnet pointed out. “I had a governess a good five years longer than other girls, just so I wouldn’t learn such things.”

  “Your father’s fault. He was frightened by Rosalyn’s indiscretions.”

  There must have been something about Linnet’s face, because Zenobia sighed with the air of a woman supporting the weight of the world. “I suppose I could find you a willing man if you really can’t bring yourself to approach the prince. It’s most unconventional, but of course one knows, one cannot help but know, of establishments that might help.”

  “What sort of establishments?”

  “Brothels catering to women, of course,” Zenobia said. “I do believe there’s one near Covent Garden that I was just told about . . . men of substance, that’s what I heard. They come for the sport of it, I suppose.”

  “Aunt, you can’t possibly mean—”

  “If you can’t seduce the prince, we’ll have to approach the problem from another angle,” she said, coming over and patting Linnet’s arm. “I’ll take you to the brothel. As I understand it, a lady can stand behind a curtain and pick out the man she wants. We’d better choose one with a resemblance to Augustus. I wonder if we could just send a message to that effect and have the man delivered in a carriage?”

  Linnet groaned.

  “I don’t want you to think that I would ever desert you in your hour of need,” her aunt said. “I feel all the burden of a mother’s love, now that darling Rosalyn is gone.”

  It was amazing how her aunt had managed to ignore that burden during the season and indeed for years before that, but Linnet couldn’t bring herself to point it out. “I am not going to a brothel,” she stated.

  “In that case,” Zenobia said cheerily, “I suggest you sit down and write that naughty prince a little note. You’re wise to choose him over the brothel, truly. One hates to start marriage with a fib involving babies. Marriage leads one into fibs by the very nature of it: all those temptations. One always orders too many gowns, and overspends one’s allowance. Not to mention men.” She kissed the tips of her fingers.

  “But I wanted—”

  “I am so pleased not to be married at the moment,” Zenobia said. “Not that I’m happy Etheridge died, of course. Ah well . . .”

  Zenobia was gone.

  And what Linnet wanted from marriage was clearly no longer a question worth discussion.

  PROLOGUE

  Once upon a time, not so very long ago . . .

  (or, to be exact, March 1812)

  . . . there was a girl who was destined to be a princess. Though to be absolutely precise, there was no prince in the offing. But she was betrothed to a duke’s heir, and from the point of view of minor gentry, a coronet was as good as a crown.

  This story begins with that girl, and continues through a stormy night, and a series of tests, and if there’s no pea in the tale, all I can say is that if you read on, you will encounter a surprise in that bed: a key, a flea—or perhaps a marquess, for that matter.

  In fairy tales, the ability to perceive an obtrusion as tiny as a pea under the mattress is enough to prove that a strange girl who arrives on a stormy night is indeed a princess. In the real world, of course, it’s a bit more complicated. In order to prepare for the rank of duchess, Miss Olivia Mayfield Lytton had learned something from virtually every branch of human knowledge. She was prepared to dine with a king, or a fool, or Socrates himself, conversing on subjects as far-flung as Italian comic opera and the new spinning machines.

  But, just as a single dried pea was all that was needed to determine the authenticity of the princess, one crucial fact determined Olivia’s eligibility for the rank of duchess: she was betrothed to the heir to the Canterwick dukedom.

  Less important were the facts that when this tale begins Olivia was twenty-three and still unmarried, that her father had no title, and that she had never been given a compliment such as a diamond of the first water. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  None of that mattered.

  CHAPTER ONE

  In Which We Are Introduced to a Future Duchess

  41 Clarges Street, Mayfair

  London

  The residence of Mr. Lytton, Esq.

  Most betrothals spring from one of two fierce emotions: greed or love. But Olivia Lytton’s was fueled neither by an exchange of assets between like-minded aristocrats, nor by a potent mixture of desire, propinquity, and Cupid’s arrows.

  In fact, the bride-to-be was liable, in moments of despair, to attribute her engagement to a curse. “Perhaps our parents forgot to ask a powerful fairy to my christening,” she told her sister Georgiana on their way home from a ball given by the Earl of Micklethwait, at which Olivia had spent generous swaths of time with her betrothed. “The curse, it hardly needs to be said, is Rupert’s hand in marriage. I would rather sleep for a hundred years.”

  “Sleeping has its attractions,” her sister agreed, descending from their parents’ carriage before the house. Georgiana did not pair the positive comment with its opposite: sleep had attractions . . . but Rupert had few.

  Olivia actually had to swallow hard, and sit in the dark carriage by herself a moment, before she was able to pull herself together and follow her sister. She had always known that she would be Duchess of Canterwick someday, so it made no s
ense to feel so keenly miserable. But there it was. An evening spent with her future husband made her feel half cracked.

  It didn’t help that most of London, her mother included, considered her the luckiest of young women. Her mother would be horrified—though unsurprised—by Olivia’s lame jest linking the dukedom with a curse. To her parents, it was manifestly clear that their daughter’s ascension of the social ranks was a piece of singular good fortune. In short, a blessing.

  “Thank God,” Mr. Lytton had said, oh, five thousand times since Olivia was born. “If I hadn’t gone to Eton . . .”

  It was a story that Olivia and her twin sister Georgiana had loved when they were little. They would perch on their papa’s knees and listen to the thrilling tale of how he—plain, unremarkable (albeit connected to an earl on one side, as well as a bishop and a marquess on the other) Mr. Lytton—had gone to Eton and become best friends with the Duke of Canterwick, who had inherited his grand title at the tender age of five. At some point, the boys had sworn a blood oath that Mr. Lytton’s eldest daughter would become a duchess by marrying the Duke of Canterwick’s eldest son.

  Mr. Lytton showed giddy enthusiasm in doing his part to ensure this eventuality, producing not one but two daughters within a year of marriage. The Duke of Canterwick, for his part, produced only one son, and that after a few years of marriage, but obviously one son was sufficient for the task at hand. Most importantly, His Grace kept his word, and regularly reassured Mr. Lytton about the destined betrothal.

  Consequently, the proud parents of the duchess-to-be did everything in their power to prepare their firstborn daughter (the elder by a good seven minutes) for the title that was to be bestowed upon her, sparing no expense in shaping the future Duchess of Canterwick. Olivia was tutored from the moment she left the cradle. By ten years of age, she was expert in the finer points of etiquette, the management of country estates (including double-entry accounting), playing the harpsichord and the spinet, greeting people in various languages, including Latin (useful for visiting bishops, if no one else), and even in French cooking, though her knowledge of the last was intellectual rather than practical. Duchesses never actually touched food, except to eat it.