Duchess by Night

  “Enough buttered eggs,” Harriet said, at precisely the same moment that Eugenia said, “Yes, please.”

  “All right, buttered eggs,” Harriet said. She took Eugenia’s hand. “I’d like to know exactly what frightened you, but let’s wait until we wash your face.”

  They went down the stairs in silence. Harriet’s heart was still racing. She felt ill, an aftermath of shock and excitement.

  They walked into Harriet’s chamber and she looked with some disbelief at the chair still pushed to the side, at her boots and rapier.

  “I’m sorry you thought there was a fire,” Eugenia said, perching on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t mean to give you that impression.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Harriet said. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “Oh no,” Eugenia said. “That wouldn’t bother me. I’m not a baby, you know. I would go back to sleep. It was the rat.”

  “Rat!”

  “Yes,” Eugenia said, nodding. “It ran across my bed and I woke up and there it was, looking at me. Right in the face. It was all black with a horrid pink tail.”

  “It must have been a dream,” Harriet said. “A rat would never do such a thing. They’re afraid of people. You were dreaming.”

  “I know the difference between a dream and a rat, Harry. The rat bit me. A dream would never do that.”

  “The rat bit you? Where?”

  “Right here.” She held out her right hand. Sure enough, just above her thumb there were four sharp puncture marks, the skin swelling around them.

  “Oh, no,” Harriet breathed. She scooped Eugenia up and ran over to the water basin, poured some water from the pitcher and thrust Eugenia’s hand into the water. “Soap,” she said. “Soap.” Her heart was thumping again.

  “Right there,” Eugenia said, pointing to the ball of soap.

  Harriet soaped and soaped.

  “He wasn’t a very dirty rat,” Eugenia said. “I mean, he frightened me. And I didn’t want to stay in the room with him. But he had a nice white spot on his stomach, as if he had a fancy waistcoat on. He was a clean rat, as rats go.”

  Harriet groaned and scrubbed harder. “How many rats have you seen?”

  There was a knock on the door and Harriet swung around, ready to scream at Jem. But apparently they hadn’t been able to root him out of whatever bed he was nesting in, because it was Povy with yet more buttered eggs. He set them down on the little table next to the armchair. A footman carried in another armchair.

  “Yum!” Eugenia said, slipping her hand out from Harriet’s and shaking water drops all over the floor. “I’m so hungry.”

  “I gather Lord Strange is nowhere to be found,” Harriet stated.

  Povy bowed. “I have not had success, Mr. Cope.”

  “Have you checked every bedchamber?” Her tone was only slightly acid.

  He blinked. “Naturally not. I cannot inconvenience our guests in that matter.”

  “Do so,” she snapped.

  “Lord Strange will be quite angry,” Povy said.

  She fixed him with a look. “Lord Strange will have other things to worry about. You might wish to inform him that his daughter has been bitten by a rat.”

  He stood for a moment as she gave him her best duchess stare. Then he faded backwards, closing the door quietly behind him.

  “I don’t think Povy likes you, Harry,” Eugenia said, taking a huge bite of buttered eggs.

  “I don’t like him very much either,” Harriet said. “If there is a rat in your room, it is Povy’s fault.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Eugenia said after a moment. “Papa told me that all old houses have mice.”

  “Mice are one thing. Rats are another.”

  “I expect the rat was hungry,” Eugenia said. “I went to bed without my supper because I was naughty.” She ate another large bite of egg.

  “What did you do?”

  “I fell into a rage,” Eugenia said. “I do that, and it is a great fault. My governess was so angry at me that she left.”

  “And she didn’t come back.”

  “Yes, so I didn’t get supper. But I knew I wouldn’t. I am never supposed to have supper if I am impertinent. And sometimes I just feel impertinent.”

  “We all do,” Harriet said, feeling the rage bubbling inside of her. “I think you should still be given supper.”

  “I know the way I ought to behave,” Eugenia explained. “But I just can’t get there. My governess wanted me to practice my French. But I very much wanted to do my calculations instead. And I couldn’t pay attention; I just couldn’t. And then I snapped at her.”

  “Were you rude?” Harriet asked.

  “Frightfully so,” Eugenia said cheerfully, starting on the toast. “You know, Harry, your hair is standing straight up in parts.”

  Harriet put a hand to her head and discovered that her hair had fallen out of the tie at her neck and was curling wildly around her head. “It’s that sort of hair.”

  “It makes you look like a girl,” Eugenia observed. “You would make a very pretty girl.”

  Harriet was inordinately pleased by that compliment.

  “Are you a girl?” Eugenia asked, with that remarkable straightforwardness employed by children.

  Harriet nodded.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Eugenia promised. “I wish I was going to be as pretty as you are. But I’m not. I’m reconciled to it.”

  “What on earth are you saying?” Harriet said. “You’re beautiful!”

  “My papa says that the worst thing you can do is fib to someone just to protect his feelings,” Eugenia said, her gray eyes very earnest. “My hair is peculiar and I have a big nose.”

  “You do have very curly hair,” Harriet agreed. “So do I. But your nose is not big, and you have lovely eyes.”

  “I am used to it,” Eugenia said serenely. “Papa is very rich, so I shall marry whomever I wish. I shall buy him.”

  “Oh,” Harriet said, rather taken aback.

  “Are you rich?” Eugenia asked. “It makes things quite pleasant.”

  “Yes,” Harriet said after a moment. “I suppose I am. I haven’t thought about it much.”

  “Why not? You could buy yourself a husband, you know. I can tell you how to do it, as Papa told me all about it. You go to London and post how much money you have on a pillar in St. Paul’s Cathedral. That’s a very big place and you can find everything from a horse trainer to a wife there.”

  “Oh,” Harriet said. “Is your father planning to buy himself a wife?”

  “He loved my mama very much,” Eugenia said. She was starting to look a little sleepy. “He didn’t buy her, though. She bought him.”

  “Why don’t you sleep in my bed until your father comes to find you?”

  Eugenia stumbled her way to the bed and fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillows.

  Harriet stood for a moment and gently touched Eugenia’s hair. It hadn’t been brushed before bed. Which made sense given that the governess had stormed from the room before supper and didn’t come back, not even to wash Eugenia’s face. But shouldn’t Jem have visited his daughter to say goodnight?

  She swallowed. If life had been kind enough to give her a child…

  “I could have a passion for you,” she whispered. If Eugenia were hers, she could have felt as fiercely about her as Benjamin had for chess.

  It was a bleak thought, and just made her feel more tired. So she stumbled back to the armchair and sat down. She finally fell asleep thinking of calculations and children.

  When she woke again, from a dream in which a very clean, intelligent rat was doing calculations on a scrap of paper, it was dawn. Her neck was stiff from sleeping in a chair. She stumbled to a standing position and then fell into her bed next to Eugenia, fully clothed.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Of Rats and Their Ability to Change Their Spots

  She opened her eyes to find him there, hanging over her, such painful anxiety in his e
yes that she forgave him, although his sins were unforgivable.

  “Is she badly frightened?” he whispered.

  It was the first time that she’d seen the almost physical glow of intelligence and confidence that surrounded Jem Strange diminished. She felt an instant wish to bring it back.

  And quelled the emotion by remembering what an ass he was, sleeping God knows where.

  “It could have been a fire,” she said sharply, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

  He had no wig. Of course not: he and his mistress likely didn’t close their eyes for a moment.

  If he ever came to her bed, she wouldn’t sleep all night.

  “God,” he said, running his hands through his hair. It sounded like a prayer. Harriet felt another wash of sympathy and choked it back down.

  “She would have died,” she said, her voice steely hard, chill, logical. “No governess. She’d had no supper. No one washed her face. A rat woke her from sleep and bit her on the hand. I expect he thought she smelled like a buttered crumpet. Did you know that you had rats?”

  He wheeled and stared at her, his eyes huge, the shadow of his lashes falling on his cheek. “Did I know I had rats?” he said, sounding almost dazed. “No. I suppose I should have known. I thought we had mice. Eugenia told me that she heard scurrying and little squeaks and I told her that old houses have mice.”

  “Rat-bite fever,” she said, bringing her worst fear to the surface, but unable to say more than just the name of the disease.

  “Which hand was bitten?” He moved to the side of the bed. Eugenia was sleeping in a tangle of dark hair. She was smiling a little, the tips of her lips turned up.

  “The right,” Harriet said.

  He picked it up. The four puncture wounds were a little swollen. “God,” he said. Again it sounded like a prayer.

  “When a man on my estate died of the fever, it came on a fortnight after the bite. You’ll have to watch her.”

  “I’m such a bumbling fool. I just thought I was keeping her safe!”

  Harriet couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You can’t imagine what it’s like to have a child,” he said, falling into the armchair where she’d slept part of the night. “When her mother died, I thought I’d put her out to a wet nurse and then send her away to some female relative somewhere. That made sense, didn’t it?”

  Harriet nodded.

  “But then I picked her up and she had this odd face, with all that corkscrew hair going on—” He stopped. “You look a bit like her. I couldn’t send her away. I had the wet nurse here. Later I should have sent her to Sally’s aunt, where she’d be safe and with other women, but I couldn’t. Idiot!” he cried, clutching his head.

  “It’s not that terrible,” Harriet said, speaking against every instinct she had. She simply couldn’t bear the bleak look on his face.

  “I know what I have to do. She must go live somewhere else, away from this place and its dangers.”

  Harriet cleared her throat. “Couldn’t you be less drastic? Why not simply invite people whom you trust to the house so that you can unlock the nursery wing? And get rid of the rats. It seems simple to me.”

  “Simple! You don’t know how easy death is. It’s—it’s like a door. A person simply walks through it, and she’s lost to you forever.”

  “As it happens, I have lost someone very dear to me,” she said. “But I did my best to keep him safe.”

  “As I am doing!”

  “By inviting her for picnics in that leaning tower?” she burst out. “By filling your house with people whom you yourself don’t trust not to be dangerous? By locking her in, and not even bothering to check on her before you go to bed?”

  “I didn’t go to bed,” he said. His voice grated. “You’re right about everything else.”

  “The fact that you didn’t go to bed is just part and parcel of the truth of it,” she said. “Perhaps you should send her away. A father who spends the night gallivanting rather than bothering to check on his daughter obviously has no time for her.”

  He put his head back in his hands. She felt that alarming sweep of vertigo again, as if she would do anything to make him stop looking so stricken.

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

  “I—”

  “I’m a terrible father. My father was no father at all, but I thought I could improve on the model.” He straightened up again and his face shocked her, with such black shadows under his eyes that it looked as if he’d been punched. “Hubris. I should have known. Men in my family can’t be decent parents.”

  “Why?” she said sharply. “And I don’t think you’re a terrible father. You simply need to be less careless.”

  “We’re a disreputable bunch. Villiers did you no great service by bringing you here. I’ll have to send her away.” His voice was as bleak as midwinter.

  Harriet swallowed. “She loves you,” she said, faintly. “Don’t send her away. Just change your life.”

  “I let her be bit by a rat,” he said, turning around again. “This house is, metaphorically at least, full of rats. And I, like they, have no idea how to turn into a more civilized version of myself. I am no quiet country squire, Harry Cope.” Then: “Is it rage that makes your eyes that color?”

  “Anger has no particular color,” Harriet said. She was trying to work through what he just said. Could it be that Jem allowed this house party to continue because he considered himself reprehensible? Flawed beyond the ability to change?

  “Your eyes are the most peculiar color,” he said. “Sometimes they’re brown, and sometimes they take on a violet tinge. When you disapprove of something they—what am I saying?”

  Harriet was wondering the same thing. What sort of man stayed up all night making love to his mistress and then praised a man’s eyes?

  He turned away again and gently pulled the coverlet from Eugenia.

  “Don’t you wish to leave your daughter here until she wakes up? I can go to another bedchamber,” Harriet said. “She’s so exhausted.”

  “So are you. I’ll take her with me,” he said, and scooped Eugenia into his arms. She murmured something and turned her face against his chest. Her long thin legs fell from his arms like a crane’s legs.

  “We owe you huge thanks,” he said.

  “You owe me nothing.”

  “If nothing else, another lesson at the rapier.” His eyes swept around the room, seeing the rapier cast to the side, the rug bundled away.

  “I find I love the sport,” Harriet admitted.

  “In the afternoon. You have to sleep.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Lay Me Down and Roll Me to a Whore. Or Not.

  February 8, 1784

  She woke without finding Jem standing over her, for a change. The room was utterly silent except for the song of a bird on the branch outside her window. Then there was a rustle of paper and she raised her head to see Isidore sitting by the fire, reading a book.

  She sat up and stretched.

  Isidore glanced over and said, “You will likely shriek when you see your hair; I’m just warning you.”

  “I’ve lived with this hair my whole life. My maid tames it by binding it back when it’s wet.”

  “It seems you had an exciting night,” Isidore said, putting her book aside. “Will you please tell me what happened? I’ve heard of an invasion of rats and a fire and a missing host. It sounds like a bad play. Except for the rat part. That has a dismaying touch of reality to it.”

  “There was a rat, in Strange’s daughter’s bedchamber.”

  “Ugh,” Isidore said. “I can’t abide rats. I stayed in an inn that was infested with them. We were eating dinner and then realized that three or four of them were dancing under the table nearby. They weren’t in the least afraid of us.”

  “I thought there was a fire, but there wasn’t. And Lord Strange couldn’t be located. He wasn’t in his bed.” The words made Harriet’s chest feel hard, as if it was
filled with small, hard stones.

  “I wonder who he’s bedding,” Isidore said. “I suppose he has a mistress. There are a great many women here, you know. I keep encountering women in the ladies’ salon whom I never saw before.”

  Harriet didn’t say anything. It was horrifying to discover that she still wanted Jem, even knowing that he had a lover.

  “You are an odd female,” Isidore said rather obscurely, picking up her book again.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Machiavelli’s little book called The Prince. It’s all about how Italian princes keep their power. My mother said that a distant relative is mentioned in here somewhere, and so I thought I would read it.”

  “Was your relative a prince?”

  “No, as I understand it, he was an underling with a sideline in poisons,” Isidore said. “My family is full of people with various talents.”

  “My family is full of people of tedious virtue.”

  Isidore turned a page in her book, but looked up. “Tedious virtue?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Perhaps I am a long-lost relative. I find I am not enjoying this sojourn at Lord Strange’s house. Last night Lord Roke said such an astounding thing to me about brandied apricots.”

  “What was it?” Harriet asked.

  “It was a suggestion of a physical nature,” Isidore said. “I retreated into the ladies’ salon and found myself in conversation with a lady wearing a great quantity of cosmetics. And a swath of gold hair that towered above her shoulders.”

  “Everyone’s hair towers,” Harriet said moodily. She was not looking forward to returning to the duchy and dressing her hair once more. “Look at Jemma. She once told me that she had fifteen bows affixed to her hair.”

  “Not like this. The lady in question could have had an entire rat’s nest in there and no one would have known.”

  “A distasteful thought.”

  “Do you know what I find odd? Strange doesn’t even like most of his own guests, let alone know their names.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “He and I were circling the room and some of his own guests were forced to introduce themselves. I thought that was appallingly rude.”