“It was the dress and the dowry. We all looked like ghosts, but not transparent. You, of course, were a willowy ghost, and I was a particularly solid one.”
Olivia and Georgiana had worn matching gowns of frail white silk, caught up under their bosoms with long ribbons trimmed with seed pearls and tasseled at the ends. The same streamers appeared on the sides and the backs of the gowns, rippling in the faintest breeze. On the page, in Madame Wellbrook’s pattern book, the design had looked exquisite.
There was a lesson there . . . a dismal one.
Just because fluttering ribbons look good on a stick-thin lady portrayed in a pattern book does not mean that they will be, when festooned around one’s hips.
“I caught sight of you dancing,” Olivia continued. “You looked like a bouncy maypole with all those ribbons trembling around you. Your ringlets were bouncing as well.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Georgiana said flatly. She brushed away a tear. “It’s the duchification, Olivia. No man wants to marry a prude who acts as if she’s a ninety-five-year-old dowager. And”—she gave a little sob—“I simply can’t seem to behave any differently. I don’t believe that anyone titters behind your back, unless from jealousy. But I’m like nursery gruel. I—I can see their eyes glaze over when they have to dance with me.”
Privately, Olivia agreed that the duchification program had much to answer for. But she wrapped her arm tighter around her sister and said, “Georgiana, you have a wonderful figure, you’re sweet as honey, and the fact that you know how to set a table for one hundred has nothing to do with it. Marriage is a contract, and contracts are about money. A woman has to have a dowry, or no man will even consider marrying her.”
Georgiana sniffed, which served to demonstrate how upset she was, as she normally would never countenance such an unrefined gesture.
“Your waist makes me positively sick with envy,” Olivia added. “I look like a butter churn, whereas you’re so slim that I could balance you on the head of a pin, like an angel.”
Most young ladies on the marriage market—Georgiana included—were indeed ethereally slim. They floated from room to room, diaphanous silk sweeping around their slender bodies.
Olivia was not one of them. It was the sad truth, the canker at the heart of the ducal flower, another source of stress for Mrs. Lytton. As she saw it, Olivia’s overindulgence in vulgar wit and buttered toast stemmed from the same character defects. Olivia did not disagree.
“You do not resemble a butter churn,” her sister stated, and wiped away a few more tears.
“I heard something interesting tonight,” Olivia cried. “Apparently the Duke of Sconce is going to take a wife. I suppose he needs an heir. Just imagine, Georgie. You could be daughter-in-law to the most stiff-rumped starch-bucket of them all. Do you suppose the duchess reads her Maggoty Mirror aloud at the dining table? She would adore you. In fact, you’re probably the only woman in the kingdom whom she would love.”
“Dowagers always love me,” Georgiana said with another sniff. “That doesn’t mean the duke will give me a second glance. Besides, I thought that Sconce was married.”
“If the duchess approved of bigamy, she would have put it in the Mirror; therefore, its absence suggests that he is need of a second wife. My only other, rather less exciting, news is that Mother was told of a lettuce diet tonight and has decided that I must try it immediately.”
“Lettuce?”
“One eats only lettuce between the hours of eight and eight.”
“That’s absurd. If you want to reduce, you should stop buying meat pies when Mama thinks you’re buying ribbons. Though, to be honest, Olivia, I think you should eat whatever you want. I want quite desperately to marry, and even so, the idea of marrying Rupert makes me want to eat a meat pie.”
“Four pies,” Olivia corrected. “At least.”
“What’s more, it wouldn’t matter how slim you became by eating lettuce,” Georgiana continued. “The FF has no choice but to marry you. If you grew rabbit ears, he would still have to marry you. Whereas no one can countenance the idea of marrying me, no matter what my waist looks like. I need money to—to bribe them.” Her voice wavered again.
“They’re all port-brained buffoons,” Olivia said, with another squeeze. “They haven’t noticed you, but they will, once Rupert dowers you.”
“I’ll likely be forty-eight by the time the two of you walk the aisle.”
“On that front, Rupert is coming over with his father to sign betrothal papers tomorrow evening. And apparently he is leaving directly thereafter for the wars in France.”
“For goodness’ sake,” Georgiana said, her eyes widening. “You really are going to become a duchess. The FF is about to become the BB!”
“Foolish fiancés are often killed on the battlefield,” Olivia pointed out. “I think the term is ‘cannon fodder.’ ”
Her sister gave a sudden laugh. “You could at least try to sound sad at the prospect.”
“I would be sad,” Olivia protested. “I think.”
“You’d have reason. Not only would you lose the prospect of being ‘Your Grace’d’ for the rest of your life, but our parents would hold hands as they jumped off Battersea Bridge to their watery deaths.”
“I can’t even imagine what Mama and Papa would do if the goose that promised golden eggs was turned into pâté de foie gras by the French,” Olivia said, a bit sadly.
“What happens if the FF dies before marrying you?” Georgiana asked. “Legal or not, a betrothal is not a wedding.”
“I gather these papers make the whole situation a good deal more solid. I’m certain most of the ton believes that he’ll cry off before we get to the altar, given my general lack of beauty, not to mention the fact that I don’t eat enough lettuce.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You are beautiful,” Georgiana said. “You have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen. I can’t think why I got plain brown eyes and you have those green ones.” She peered at her. “Pale green. The color of celery, really.”
“If my hips were like celery, then we’d have something to celebrate.”
“You’re luscious,” her sister insisted. “Like a sweet, juicy peach.”
“I don’t mind being a peach,” Olivia said. “Too bad celery is in fashion.”
Two
In Which We Are Introduced to a Duke
Littlebourne Manor
Kent
Seat of the Duke of Sconce
At the precise moment that Olivia and Georgiana were engaged in an agricultural wrangle over the relative merits of peaches and celery, the hero in this particular fairy story was certainly not behaving like the princes in most such tales. He wasn’t on bended knee, nor on a white horse, and he was nowhere near a beanstalk. Instead, he was sitting in his library, working on a knotty mathematical problem: specifically, Lagrange’s four-square theorem. To clarify my point, if this particular duke ever encountered a beanstalk of unusual size, it would doubtless have spurred a leap in early botanical knowledge regarding unusual plant growth—but certainly not a leap up said stalk.
It should be obvious from the above that the Duke of Sconce was the sort of man repulsed by the very idea of fairy tales. He neither read nor thought about them (let alone believed in them); the notion of playing a role in one would have been preposterous, and he would have rejected outright the notion that he resembled in any fashion the golden-haired, velvet-clad princes generally found in such tales.
Tarquin Brook-Chatfield, Duke of Sconce—known as Quin to his intimates, who numbered exactly two—was more like the villain in those stories than the hero, and he knew it.
He couldn’t have said at what age he’d discovered how profoundly he did not resemble a fairy tale prince. He might have been five, or seven, or even ten—but at some point he’d realized that coal-black hair with a shock of white over the forehead was neither customary nor celebrated. Perhaps it was the first time that his cousin Peregrine had called him a decrepit old man (a
remark that had led to a regrettable scuffle).
Yet it wasn’t only his hair that set him apart from other lads. Even at ten years of age, he’d had stern eyes, fiercely cut cheekbones, and a nose that screamed aristocrat. By thirty-two, there were no more laughter lines around his eyes than had been visible twenty years earlier, and for good reason.
He almost never laughed.
But Quin did have one major point of resemblance with the hero of The Princess and the Pea, whether he would have acknowledged it or no: his mother was in charge of choosing his wife, and he didn’t give a hang what criteria she applied to the task. If she thought a pea under a mattress—or under five mattresses—was the way to ascertain the suitability of his future duchess, Quin would agree, just as long as he didn’t have to bother about the question himself.
In this crucial fashion, he was as regal—as real—as the nameless prince in the fairy tale, as dukified as Georgiana was duchified. He rarely saw a doorway without advancing through it as if he owned it. Since he owned a good many doorways, he would have pointed out that this was a reasonable assumption. He looked down his nose because he was taller than most. It was there to look down, and arrogance was his birthright. He couldn’t conceive of any other way of behaving.
To be fair, Quin did acknowledge some personal failings. For example, he seldom knew what the people around him were feeling. He had a formidable intelligence and rarely found other people’s thought patterns very surprising. But their emotions? He greatly disliked the way people seemed to conceal their emotions, only to release them in a gassy burst of noise and a tearful exposition.
This antipathy to displays of feeling had led him to surround himself with people like his mother and himself: to wit, those who responded to a problem by formulating a plan, often involving experimentation designed to prove a stated hypothesis. What’s more, his selected few did not cry if their hypotheses were proven incorrect.
He rather thought that people shouldn’t have so many emotions, given that feelings were rarely logical, and therefore were of no use whatsoever. He had embarrassed himself once by falling into a slough of emotion—and it hadn’t ended well.
In fact, it had ended miserably.
The very thought sent a pulse of black pain through the region that he generally supposed to house his heart, but he ignored it, as was his habit. If he paid attention to how many times a month, a week—a day—he felt that little stab . . . There was no point in thinking about it.
If there was one thing he had learned from his mother, it was that regrettable emotions are best forgotten. And if one cannot forget (he couldn’t), then that personal failing should be concealed.
As if thinking of his mother brought her to his side, the door to his library opened and his butler, Cleese, intoned, “Her Grace.”
“My plans are in order, Tarquin,” his mother declared, entering on the heels of Cleese’s announcement. She was followed closely by her personal assistant, Steig, and by her personal maid, Smithers. Her Grace, the dowager duchess, preferred to have a little flock of retainers in tow wherever she went, rather as if she were a bishop trailed by anxious acolytes. She was not a tall woman, but she projected such a formidable presence that she achieved the impression of height, albeit with some help from a towering wig. In fact, her wig bore a distinct resemblance to a bishop’s miter. They both advertised the wearer’s confidence in his or her rightful place in the universe: to wit, on top.
Quin was already on his feet; now he moved from behind his desk to kiss the hand his mother held out. “Indeed?” he asked politely, while trying to remember what she was talking about.
Fortunately, the duchess did not view responsiveness as an obligatory aspect of conversation. Given a choice, she would prefer to soliloquize, but she had learned to give addresses that could almost be classified as interactive.
“I have selected two young ladies,” she pronounced now. “Both from excellent families, it hardly needs saying. One is from the aristocracy; the other is from the gentry, but recommended by the Duke of Canterwick. I think we both agree that to consider only the aristocracy is to show anxiety about the matter, and the Sconces need have no such emotion.”
She paused, and Tarquin nodded obediently. He had learned as a child that anxiety—like love—was an emotion disdained among the aristocracy.
“Both mothers are aware of my treatise,” his mother continued, “and I have reasonable faith that their daughters will surmount the series of tests I shall put to them, drawn, of course, from The Mirror of Compliments. I have put a great deal of thought into their visit, Tarquin, and it will be a success.”
By now Quin knew exactly what his mother was talking about: his next wife. He approved of both Her Grace’s planning and her expectation of success. His mother organized every aspect of her life—and, often, his as well. The one time he had engaged in spontaneity—a word and an impulse he now regarded with the deepest suspicion—the result had been disastrous.
Thus the need for a next wife. A second wife.
“You shall be married by autumn,” his mother stated.
“I have the utmost confidence that this endeavor, like all those you undertake, will be a success,” he replied, which was no more than the truth.
His mother didn’t flicker an eyelash. Neither of them had time for flattery or frivolous compliments. As his mother had written in her book, The Mirror of Compliments—which rather surprisingly had become a best-selling volume—“A true lady prefers gentle reproof to extravagant compliment.”
It hardly need be said that Her Grace would have been extremely surprised if offered a reproof, gentle or otherwise.
“Once I have found you a wife who is worthy of her position, I shall be happy,” she said now, then added, “What are you working on?”
Quin looked back at his desk. “I am writing a paper on Lagrange’s solution to Bachet’s conjecture regarding the sum of four squares.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Legendre had already improved on Lagrange’s theorem?”
“His proof was incomplete.”
“Ah.” There was a momentary pause, and then the dowager said, “I shall issue an immediate invitation to the chosen young ladies to join us here. After due observation, I shall make a choice. A reasoned choice. There will be no succumbing to light fancy, Tarquin. I think we both agree that your first marriage made patently clear the inadvisability of such behavior.”
Quin inclined his head—but he didn’t entirely agree. His marriage had been inadvisable, surely. Terrible, in some lights (the fact that Evangeline had taken a lover within a few months spoke for itself). Still . . .
“Not in every respect,” he said now, unable to stop himself.
“You are contradicting yourself,” his mother observed.
“My marriage was not a mistake in every respect.” He and his mother lived together quite comfortably, but he was well aware that the household’s serenity was dependent on the fact that he generally took the path of least resistance. When necessary, however, he could be as firm as the dowager.
“Well,” his mother replied, eyeing him. “We must each be the judge of that.”
“I am the judge of my marriage,” Quin stated.
“The question is irrelevant,” she replied, waving her fan as if to brush away an insect. “I shall do my best to steer you in such a way that you shall not fall into the same quagmire. I feel quite exhausted at the mere memory of the tempests, the pique, the constant weeping. One would think that young woman had been raised on the stage.”
“Evangeline—”
“A most improper name for a lady,” his mother interrupted.
According to The Mirror of Compliments, interruption was a cardinal sin. Quin waited a moment, just long enough that the silence in the room stretched to a point. Then he said, “Evangeline was deeply emotional. She suffered from an excess of sentiment and recurring problems with her nerves.”
His mother shot him a beady look. “I trust you
are not about to instruct me to speak no ill of the dead, Tarquin.”
“Not a bad precept,” he said, taking his life in his own hands.
“Humph.”
Still, he had made his point. He had no particular objection to allowing his mother to organize the matter of a second wife. He fully realized that he needed an heir. But his first marriage . . .
He chose not to entertain other people’s opinions on the subject. “To return to the matter at hand, while I am certain that the parameters you have formulated are excellent, I have one stipulation as regards the young women you have selected.”
“Indeed. Steig, pay attention.”
Quin glanced at his mother’s assistant, whose quill was at the ready. “The giggles should have worn off.”
His mother nodded. “I shall take that point under advisement.” She turned her head. “Steig, make a note. At the express request of His Grace, I shall devise another test, to determine whether the subject is overly given to giggling and other native signs of innocent enjoyment.”
“In-no-cent en-joy-ment,” Steig muttered, writing frantically.
Quin had a sudden vision of a haughty duchess with a huge ruff, like the faces of his Elizabethan ancestors up in the portrait gallery. “I don’t mind enjoyment,” he clarified. “Just not giggling.”
“I shall dispense with either candidate if she seems likely to indulge in overwrought expressions of pleasure,” his mother said.
Quin could readily picture himself bound by marriage to yet another woman who felt no pleasure in his company. But that wasn’t what his mother meant, he knew.
Besides, she had already left.
Three
In Which the Merits of Virginity and Debauchery
Are Evaluated, and Debauchery Wins
Olivia and Georgiana had scarcely finished their discussion regarding the desirability of peaches over celery when their mother entered the room.