Duchess by Night

  “Why did you buy it then?”

  “It was part of the lot,” Jem said. “Monsieur Bonnier de la Moson died last year, and his collection is being sold off.”

  “I don’t understand,” Harriet said. “How exactly can you make use of a squirrel shaped like a fish?”

  “I don’t make use of it. Knowledge is my ultimate end.”

  “That sounds very grand,” Harriet said. “And yet knowledge generally has some use.”

  “Not this kind,” Jem said cheerfully. “I’m a feckless sort. I like to examine anything strange or unlikely very, very closely.” There was a light in his eye that suddenly made Harriet wonder exactly how he found her strange.

  “Everything out of the common run of things is valuable in its own right,” Jem said. “People, after all, are so similar. The majority of them bore me to tears.”

  Harriet finished a bite of buttered egg. It sang to her mouth, if silky eggs had a voice. “In that case,” she said, “why on earth do you always have a houseful of guests? Either you find them boring, in which case you should send them all home, or you actually enjoy them.”

  “Ah, but the people you find here are not in the common run.”

  Harriet thought about that a while. “I don’t agree,” she said finally. “I have been enjoying myself enormously. But while it is true that Kitty is rather more forthcoming about her particular ambitions, she strikes me as similar to many young ladies.”

  “Kitty is no lady,” Jem pointed out.

  “And yet she is akin to most of them. There’s a wistful look in her eyes, you know. I think she will marry the next man who asks her—”

  “I must remind myself to hold my tongue,” Jem murmured.

  “She will marry,” Harriet said firmly, “and then she will have a great many children. And while she will likely have fond memories of being one of the Graces, and perhaps even keep a feather or two as a memento, she will have any number of delightful, noisy children and be very happy. In fact, I would guess that she’ll never think about her past as a wild young angel.”

  “You’re remarkably cynical for such a young sprig,” Jem observed.

  Harriet snorted. “Cynicism is not the provenance of the elderly.”

  “And what is it brewed from, then?”

  “Oh, boredom,” she said lightly. “When one is bored, one tends to spend an inordinate amount of time analyzing one’s neighbors. That’s why I would suggest that there is no great difference between your salacious guests and the run of the ton.”

  “They burn more brightly. Gentlewomen are tediously attached to concepts of marriage and fidelity, even as they carry on affaires.”

  “Are they? There seems to be just as much anxiety here as I find in the ton,” Harriet said. “Take Nell, for instance.”

  “Nell appears to have something of a fascination for me,” Jem said. “She caught me in the corridor the other day and I thought she was going to leap on me like a ravening lion.”

  “There is no accounting for tastes,” Harriet said. “My point is that Nell appears deliciously free of society’s pressures. But secretly I believe she’s rather desperate to marry you, rather than merely bed you.”

  “I am afraid to ask about my true desires.”

  She opened her mouth but he raised his hand. “I truly mean it. I don’t wish to know. Villiers?”

  “He’s different,” she said. “He has a passion.”

  “Chess.”

  “Yes. When a person has a passion, his life is different.”

  “And have you a passion?” He asked it quietly enough, but the question rang in Harriet’s ears.

  Had she a passion? Had she some reason for living that would make a mockery of Benjamin’s wish to kill himself? He killed himself because he wasn’t the very best at chess. That was a passion, if you wish.

  “Not a true passion. And you?”

  “I’m lucky,” Jem said, finishing the last of the toast. “I have several. In fact, I am somewhat burdened with passions. I love creating things, like my rash tower. I love learning about odd things in nature, like squirrel fish. And I am very fond of watching how money moves through markets, which has been useful for my pocketbook.”

  “You are lucky,” she said. “If one of those things fails to please, you can turn to another.”

  “You need to find something, obviously. Harry, you need a passion.”

  Chapter Twenty

  More Buttered Eggs

  When Harriet finally made it upstairs, she found Nell sitting on her bed. She suppressed a groan at the sight of her.

  Nell leapt to her feet. “It’s working!” she cried.

  “What is working?” Harriet said, dropping into a chair. The warm glow of cognac had faded away, leaving her bone-tired.

  “Strange is beginning to notice me. I don’t know how you’re doing it, Harry, but it’s working!”

  “How can you tell?”

  “We met in the corridor, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, looked into my face very seriously, and said, ‘Isn’t your family name Gale?’”

  She stopped.

  “And then?” Harriet prompted.

  “That was it. I leaned toward him a bit, in case he wanted to give me a kiss, but he set off down the corridor again. Still, his interest is definitely piqued. And now I have an idea.”

  “What is it?” Harriet asked, smothering a yawn.

  “I think I might marry him.”

  Harriet couldn’t stop a little laugh. “Really?”

  Nell was not the sort to be easily put off. “Strange needs a wife. Obviously he is deeply attracted to me, and only waiting for the right moment to approach. If I play this correctly, he’ll marry me.”

  “How will you play it?” Harriet asked.

  “I’ll refuse to bed him,” Nell said. “Only the first request, of course. And I need you to change the poem.”

  “In what manner?”

  “To signify matrimony, of course.”

  “I can’t see how to do that,” Harriet said dubiously. “I’ve been talking about nights and delight. How can I turn that to marriage?”

  “You can do it,” Nell said encouragingly. “Unless you think I should just let him come up with the proposal himself.”

  “I think that’s a better plan,” Harriet said with some relief. “The poem is already written. The last couplet will rhyme Nightingale and Nell Gale, obviously.”

  “I can’t say I think much of that rhyme.”

  “I never said I was a poet,” Harriet retorted.

  Nell bounded from her chair and bent to give Harriet a kiss. “You are my knight in shining armor. I’m so grateful to you!” And she was gone.

  Harriet stayed where she was, staring at her booted toes.

  Benjamin was such a passionate man that she had faded into his shadow during their years of marriage. It was only when she wore men’s breeches that she was able to parry and fence with a person like Strange. Normally someone so beautiful would make her tongue-tied. He would look at her with indifference, and she would mumble and walk away.

  It was only in breeches and stockings, with her legs exposed for the whole world to see, that she had courage.

  A passion…

  Beyond a passion for wearing breeches.

  The word slid into her mind with the cool sound of steel. If I were allowed to have any passion I wished, Harriet thought, I would have one for the art of the rapier. Jem had started her lessons in order, he said, to give her a weapon, to make her a man.

  It worked. She felt powerful with that thin, dangerous blade in hand. She felt like the kind of person who should be listened to. Her blood sang with the beauty of matching her opponent’s swirling movements with her own. It was a complex sort of mathematical thinking that she understood.

  She got up and grabbed her rapier again, exhaustion forgotten. Pushing aside the chair so she had a good space, she began to practice the moves he taught her. Attack, parry, feint, thrust. Jem’s voice soun
ded in her head. The straightest path between two points is with your tip, not the side of your blade. She pretended she had an opponent opposite her, coming in with a swirling keen blade. She practiced her move against him over and over and over again. Watching the silver gleam of his blade, seeing it cut the air, bringing her own up to meet it.

  Blocking is a move of last resort. Evade the blade.

  She practiced that, over and over, imagining the angle of the blade, the position of the body, jumping to the side so that his invisible rapier slashed through space rather than her body.

  By the time she bent over, clutching a stitch in her side, panting, sweat dripping from her brow, the house was deadly quiet. It had to be the middle of the night.

  Yet somewhere she could hear—

  Could it be a cat calling? It sounded like a cry. Harriet wiped her face and put down her rapier. Her shirt was a bit damp around the collar.

  It was extraordinary how different it was to be a man rather than a woman. She never sweated in her woman’s clothes. Now her heart was thumping, and her blood was racing. It made her want to laugh.

  Without bothering to pull her boots back on, she opened the door so she could hear the noise more clearly. That was no cat. She started running.

  Eugenia, the third floor, the locked door.

  Harriet flew up the stairs, came to the huge oak door that barred Eugenia’s wing from the rest of the house.

  She could hear her clearly now, little thumps from her fists beating on the door, and calls drowned by sobs.

  “Eugenia!” she called. “It’s Harry. What’s the matter?”

  There was a rush of words, but she couldn’t understand. So she raised her voice to a shriek. “Is there a fire?”

  A little voice said, close to the keyhole. “There’s a fire in my bedchamber.”

  “Oh my God,” Harriet said, her head starting to swim. “Where’s the footman? Where is he?”

  She heard sobs. “I don’t know where he is. I’ve been hammering for ages and no one came, and it’s cold and dark, and my governess…” She couldn’t hear the rest.

  “Is there a lot of smoke?” Harriet asked in her sternest voice.

  She only heard sobs and something she couldn’t understand.

  “Eugenia, I need you to listen to me. Put your ear to the keyhole. Is there smoke in the corridor?”

  Silence. Then: “No.”

  “Excellent,” Harriet said, her mind racing. “Now, did you pull the bell cord in your chamber?”

  “I forgot,” Eugenia said, her voice catching in a sob. “I was frightened and I ran out of there and I don’t want to go back!”

  “I don’t want you to,” Harriet said. “Can you see the fire?”

  Eugenia sounded a little puzzled. “Of course not.”

  “Then stay right where you are,” Harriet said. “Don’t move. If the fire comes, stay low. I’ll be back in one minute, Eugenia. Will you be all right until then?” She felt the door anxiously. It was chill, without the glow of a fire’s warmth. Surely the blaze wouldn’t swell into the hall immediately. “Eugenia! Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But, Harry—”

  “Just wait,” Harriet said sharply.

  She turned around. She was on the third-floor corridor, and bedchamber doors stretched on either side of her. Without hesitating she pushed open the door closest to her, and felt for the bell cord. She couldn’t find it so she ran to the windows and threw open the drapes.

  She heard a confused murmur from the bed but didn’t even glance that way, just ran back to the door. She could see the cord in the light cast by the moon. It was on the opposite side of the door from where she thought. She rang it, rang again, rang a third time, as hard as she could.

  “What’s this all about?” came a male voice from the bed.

  She looked over to find a man who looked like a walrus with a nightcap on. “Fire in the west wing, sir,” she said, hauled on the rope again and ran out into the corridor and back to the door. “All right, Eugenia?” she said, steadying her voice.

  “I don’t like it here,” Eugenia said, and the sob in her voice made Harriet’s heart stop. “It’s dark and I’m all alone.”

  “I’ll kill your father,” Harriet said between her teeth.

  “I want Papa,” Eugenia said, starting to cry again. “I want Papa!”

  There was no key. Of course, there wouldn’t be a key since Jem wanted to make sure that degenerates didn’t find their way into the west wing.

  “Isn’t your father’s bedchamber in the west wing as well?” Harriet asked.

  “He’s not he-here,” Eugenia hiccupped. “I went to his room and he’s not here.”

  Harriet ran to the top of the stairs and looked frantically down the long flight of steps.

  “Don’t go!” Eugenia called. “Don’t go anywhere, Harry. Please don’t go.”

  “I won’t,” she said, putting her hand on the thick wood as if she could caress Eugenia’s face through it. “I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

  “Sing me a song,” Eugenia said.

  Harriet thought madly.

  “Do you know any songs? My papa doesn’t know a single song. He says it’s because he’s a man.”

  “Well, I know some,” Harriet said. But her mind was blank and all she could think of was the smell of smoke. She knew nothing about children’s songs. Finally she thought of one song that her music instructor had drummed into her head, years ago when she was about to make her debut and expected to perform.

  “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” she sang, “And I will pledge with mine.”

  “What does that mean?” came a sharp little voice. But it sounded less frightened.

  “It means that the singer admires the eyes of his beloved, the person he loves.”

  “Oh. Do you know any other songs?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Yet leave a kiss but in the cup, and I’ll not ask for wine.”

  “How do you leave a kiss in a cup?”

  “Good question,” Harriet said. But she didn’t answer, just kept singing. “The kiss that from the soul doth rise, requires a draught divine. Yet might I of Jove’s nectar sup, I would not change for thine.”

  “Isn’t nectar what bees eat?”

  “I believe so.”

  “I wouldn’t trade any of that for a kiss either. What’s a draught?”

  But Harriet finally heard feet coming up the stairs and jumped to her feet. It was a footman, so tired that his face was white.

  “Fire!” Harriet bellowed. “There’s a fire in the west wing and Miss Eugenia is alone in there.”

  He stared at her for a second and then wheeled and tore down the stairs.

  “Harry?” Eugenia said, through the door.

  “Yes, sweetheart.”

  “Did you say fire?”

  “Don’t worry,” Harriet said firmly. “He’s bringing the key and I shall have you out of there in exactly one minute. You’re going to be fine, Eugenia. We’ll get the fire out, and then we’ll find your father and murder him.”

  He must be in the wrong bed, she realized. Of course he was. A man like that had a mistress, though she hadn’t realized it, with her monumental naïveté. He was snug in a bed, likely with one of the Graces.

  “But Harry,” Eugenia was saying, “the fire is in my room.”

  “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worrying about that,” Eugenia said. “Do you know, Harry, you sound like a girl when you sing?”

  Harriet cleared her throat. The whole subterfuge was ridiculous. She opened her mouth, but just then there was the sound of pounding footsteps and a crowd of footmen burst up the last flight of stairs, led by Povy, carrying a great brass key.

  “Give it to me!” Harriet demanded.

  Povy handed her the key.

  She stuck the key in the lock, threw open the door, scooped up the small huddled figure in her
arms and threw herself backwards, holding Eugenia.

  “Thank God,” Povy was saying. “Thank—” His voice died. He was looking down the corridor. There it was, dim in the light of one lamp burning by the door. There wasn’t a wisp of smoke. There wasn’t even a—

  “Eugenia,” Harriet said, putting the girl on her feet. “Didn’t you tell me that there was a fire?”

  Eugenia sniffed. “There was,” she said. “There’s always a fire in my room.”

  Doors were opening down the corridor behind her. She could hear little squeaks of dismay.

  “A fire,” the walrus gentleman suddenly roared at Harriet’s shoulder. “In the other wing.” He gave the impression of having too many teeth.

  There was an answering little shriek from the assembled company in the corridor. Povy jerked his head and a footman ran into the west wing.

  Harriet knelt down in front of Eugenia. “You were crying. You were afraid.”

  Eugenia sniffed again and tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Was your bedchamber on fire?”

  “No,” Eugenia said. “But I—I woke up alone.”

  Harriet looked up at Povy. She felt as if she were learning to breathe all over again. “Where is the footman who is stationed here? And where is Miss Eugenia’s governess or maid? Who sleeps with her?”

  “I will certainly inquire in the morning,” Povy said. “I will inquire as to—”

  “You will inquire now,” Harriet snapped, standing up. Every inch of her had transmuted from being genial Harry Cope to being a duchess, a woman who had run the duchy estate, not to mention Judge Truder’s court, for years. “I suggest you discover the whereabouts of these people immediately, Povy. And you might—” her tone was withering “—you might wish to inform Lord Strange, if you can find where he bedded himself, what happened tonight.”

  Povy pulled himself upright. “I will do that, sir,” he said. “Immediately.”

  “I shall take Miss Eugenia to my chamber.” She looked down the corridor at the huddled folk. They looked a great deal less glamorous this late at night. “There is no fire,” she stated. “Go back to bed, if you please. We are sorry to have disturbed your rest.”

  “Tea?” Povy asked rather desperately. “Buttered eggs?”