Page 24 of Duchess by Night


  Jem began coming to dinner every night. And luncheon, many days. Some nights he sat beside her, and others he sat at the head of the table and flirted with Isidore.

  The heady pleasures of being male—of being able to ride freely, fence, and argue—grew more and more dear to Harriet. She found every conversation interesting. One night she got into an argument with one of the scientists about the recent discovery of a new planet called Uranus. Mr. Peddle argued that the head of the Royal Society shouldn’t have given Herschel, the man who discovered the planet, a Copley medal.

  “What did he really do? The man spends his time stargazing, that’s all. And now he’s elected a fellow of the Royal Society! For nothing. You know, Sir Giles, down there—” He nodded down the table at bespeckled professor. “—Sir Giles identified the genus of the Purple Swamphen. Now that’s a good reason to become a Fellow. This man just looks at the sky and notices a star. Bah!”

  “But we need to map the night sky,” Harriet said. “We have to understand our world. And stars are no different than wings on a butterfly, to me.”

  “I disagree,” Peddle said. “When you’re older, you’ll understand how very different it is to spend a lifetime doing exacting scientific analysis, versus sitting outside of an evening with a glass of wine and waiting for a star to catch your attention!”

  Jem elbowed her. “Turned down as a Fellow of the Society,” he murmured into her ear. “Migratory habits of the grasshopper not considered an adequate topic. The study took him seven years.”

  “Strange was admitted to the Royal Society by right of his experiments on frog’s legs,” Peddle said. “No one can dispute that.”

  Harriet raised an eyebrow at Jem. “Indeed.”

  “Changing all sorts of things to do with electricity,” Peddle said, rather vaguely. “Frog’s legs and metals; you must have read about it.”

  “It was five years ago,” Jem said. “Frogs are well in the past.” He had that secret smile in his eyes. He was proud, but he was pretending it didn’t matter.

  Harriet turned to Mr. Peddle and asked him about how grasshoppers make music.

  Later that night Harriet enquired about frog’s legs, but Jem wasn’t interested in them any longer. “They twitch,” he said. “It was all rather fascinating, but then I wrote up everything I knew. It pointed toward mathematics, so I followed my nose and I never ended up back with frogs.”

  Harriet shook her head. “Aren’t you proud of being made a member of the Royal Society?”

  He shrugged. “Proud…I’m proud of this.” And he got out of bed, buck naked. It turned out that what he was proudest of was a bridge. “Five arch ribs,” Jem said. “Over one hundred feet across the river.”

  “It’s beautiful!” Harriet said, tracing the drawing with her finger.

  “I couldn’t have done it without Darby’s cast iron. See, each one is cast in two halves?”

  She nodded. She was beginning to understand how the combination of Jem’s wildly powerful mind and his inventiveness were changing the world. Literally changing the world.

  “What are you most proud of?” he asked her later.

  There were no bridges to mention so she said, “In the town where we live, the judge is a drunkard. So sometimes, if he was incapable, my husband would sit in the court.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “It’s always been done that way.”

  “Aristocrats,” Jem said, amused. “So the country squire would stride in and save the day, would he?”

  Should she tell him? She should…she should…I am a duchess. How hard was that to say aloud? Very hard. The words made her afraid. She couldn’t help thinking of Jemma’s words—that no one makes love to a duchess without thinking of the rank. The title changed everything.

  “I can see Villiers doing that,” Jem said, idly tracing a pattern on her shoulder with one fingertip. “What happened after your husband died? Did the next squire take over?”

  “I did.”

  He sat up and his mouth fell open in a very satisfactory manner. But then he snapped it shut and said, “Of course you did. Of course you did!”

  They ended up talking about Loveday Billing and women like her, women whose lives could be changed, perhaps, by a sympathetic voice and two pounds. “It’s amazing what a very small amount of money can do,” Harriet found herself saying. She told him things she’d never told anyone, about her view of the world and its injustices.

  But he liked stories of Sibble best, Berrow’s most creative criminal. “He plagues the town,” Harriet said heart-feltedly. “No one is safe. It’s all a game to him.”

  Jem laughed and laughed.

  One night Jem rose from dinner and announced that the men would retire to take port together. The ladies left for the sitting room with looks of discontent. The men sat around the flickering candlelight for hours, arguing about slavery, tax relief, advances in taxidermy, whatever came to mind. There was no Game that night.

  Harriet put her elbows on the table. She refused a cheroot, but drank more port than was good for her. Jem sat at the end of the table, his eyes laughing, not looking at her much.

  But then he said something about the artwork at the ancient Roman site, Pompeii. Apparently every single drawing featured a phallus.

  Even more interesting, it became clear that most of the men in the room had given those drawings plenty of study while touring Europe.

  “My favorite object from Pompeii is the birdbath,” Jem said lazily. “Cope, you saw the birdbath, didn’t you? When you took the grand tour, I mean?”

  He was playing with fire. “Of course,” Harriet said firmly, dropping her voice a notch. “It was inspiring.”

  Lord Pensickle hooted, and shot her an edgy look. “Found it inspiring, did you? That’s rather revealing.”

  “One must assume that you found your own inspiration elsewhere,” Villiers said. Harriet loved the fact that she had two champions: her supposed relative, Villiers, and her host.

  “The brothel,” Pensickle said promptly. “Nice-looking frescoes. Nice-looking women. I see nothing particularly interesting about a birdbath that pees water. And no one has equipment of that size.” He gave them a squinty look, and Villiers smiled into his sleeve.

  Jem left his seat at the head of the table and sat down next to Harriet. “After all,” he said, sotto voce, “there are only men here.”

  Harriet was so happy she didn’t worry about it. Jem poured her port, and laughed at her jokes. When all the men launched into a rousing version of The Westminster Whore, he elbowed her until she joined in the chorus. When Lord Oke staggered away from the table and pissed in the corner, Harriet squealed and Jem elbowed her silent.

  “I thought there was a chamber pot there,” wailed Oke.

  Jem rang for Povy and ushered everyone out of the room so cleaning could commence.

  They lay in bed that night and Jem played with drops of forty-year-old burgundy, trailing them across her breasts and licking them clean.

  “You haven’t said anything about my offer of marriage,” he said, once they had bathed and fallen back into bed.

  “What?”

  “I asked you to marry me,” he said, hair falling over his eyes so she couldn’t see them. “Remember?”

  “I—that was a joke. Wasn’t it?”

  She held her breath, but he said: “What was your husband like?”

  “He liked porridge in the morning.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “He didn’t make love the way you do.”

  “I know that. Tell me what I don’t know.”

  “He loved chess. More than anything, he loved chess.”

  Jem was silent, but she knew him now, knew that his mind flew directly to the implication that Benjamin didn’t love her as much as the game. “Did he like playing judge?”

  “No.” She hesitated. “I actually started sitting in the shire court before he died. He was so busy.” That was a lie, but it was a wifely li
e.

  They spent the rest of the night talking about the bonfire on Guy Fawkes day last that burned down Peter Nicoll’s dairy, and how hard it was to apportion blame to a crowd of drunk men. She told him about the theft of six oranges and then they talked again about Loveday Billing and her five husbands.

  “Five!” Jem said. “Loveday was an energetic woman!”

  “They kept leaving her,” Harriet said. “I think she just wanted one, but she couldn’t keep one in the house.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about my other wives,” Jem said. “It would never work for me.”

  “For Loveday, once a husband was in jail, or in Italy, he was gone.”

  Jem’s hair was over his eyes again. “It wasn’t like that for me, when Sally died. She was there still for so long. At the breakfast table, or down in the garden. I kept thinking I would turn a corner and she’d be there.”

  “It sounds heartbreaking.” She brushed back his hair.

  “Wasn’t it like that for you as well?”

  “No.”

  “So when your husband was gone, you never thought you saw him through a door, forgot he was gone, remembered something you had to tell him?”

  How could she tell him what it was like when someone committed suicide? It was the one fact that she lived with, day in, day out, for months, for a year. She never forgot the cause of death long enough to think she saw Benjamin in the garden. The pain was in her bones, in her feet.

  “He killed himself.”

  She made herself say it, the deepest most self-hating thing she could do, because she couldn’t keep it quiet any longer. “You might want to reconsider your proposal. Quite a few people think that Benjamin was so deeply unhappy because—because of me.”

  He gathered her roughly into his arms and held her against his chest and said one word. It was an ancient, Anglo Saxon word, the kind of violent swear word that never came from his mouth.

  The wall she’d built up to keep him out cracked a little. And perhaps there was even a small crack in the wall under that one, the wall she’d put between the world and herself after Benjamin shot himself.

  “Sweetheart,” Jem said huskily. He was kissing her hair, and squeezing her so tightly that her chest hurt.

  She stifled a sob because she didn’t want to cry, not now. She wanted to hear what he was saying.

  He wasn’t making a good deal of sense. He kept saying how sweet she was, and then what a total idiot her husband had been. And as for the people who could possibly imply that his suicide had anything to do with her, well, they were idiots too. And worse.

  “It wasn’t that,” she said. “That didn’t matter so much. It was that he didn’t love me enough to stay here.”

  “He was a fool,” Jem said roughly. “You know that, don’t you? I can’t not speak ill of the dead in this case.”

  She nodded. But then: “Benjamin wasn’t a fool. He was just so unhappy that he forgot about me. There wasn’t room in his mind for me.”

  “There’s nothing in my mind but you,” Jem said.

  And then he set out to prove it to her, in an entirely satisfactory manner.

  Chapter Thirty

  An Unexpected Marriage

  February 19, 1784

  Harriet walked into the drawing room unprepared to find Isidore glittering like a bird of paradise. Or a princess. Harriet actually blinked for a moment, watching her. Isidore was clinging to Jem as if he were the tree she was determined to nest in—which was also strange and unexpected.

  She was wearing a gown that fitted her like a second skin. It was made of a silver material that shimmered every time she moved. At her waist it billowed into soft billowing folds, transparent, pulled back to reveal watered silk of a deep blue color. It was a dress for Marie Antoinette. It was a dress for a princess…

  Even more so when Harriet got close enough to realize that the bodice and skirts were sewn all over with tiny glittering stones. Diamonds. And there were diamonds in Isidore’s hair too.

  It took her a few minutes to actually reach Isidore’s side; gentlemen were clustered around her as thickly as salmon swimming upstream, with Jem like a rock in the middle. He met her eyes over Isidore’s head and mouthed something, but she couldn’t understand.

  “My darling Mr. Cope,” Isidore cried lavishly. Her eyes were sparkling and yet, to Harriet’s eyes, they were wild.

  She bowed. “Your Grace.”

  “Do look at this amusing missive I received today,” Isidore said, dropping something into Harriet’s hand as she turned away to greet Lord Castlemaine.

  Harriet unfurled a wrinkled bit of parchment.

  I discover I have some missing property, read the note. Harriet frowned. The words were written in a strong hand, dashed off as if the writer cared little for penmanship. She almost missed the one remaining word. Tonight. And then: C, scrawled in the lower right corner.

  Harriet gasped. The duke. Isidore’s Cosway. Isidore’s scheme had worked. He was here, not just here in England but here.

  She started back toward Isidore, elbowing one of the jugglers sharply in the ribs.

  “Mr. Cope,” Isidore said again. She was utterly exquisite—and as white as a water lily.

  Harriet took her arm and pulled her away from Jem, who looked rather relieved. Naturally all the men turned to follow, as if Isidore were some sort of rabbit and they the foxes.

  Isidore smiled, that lavish erotic smile she had, the one that promised men everything and delivered nothing. Harriet could actually see the man closest to her shiver a little. “My dear Mr. Cope will escort me to—to—”

  “We will return, gentlemen,” Harriet said, towing her away.

  “I’m not ready,” Isidore cried, the moment they were free of the crowd. “I’ve changed my mind, Harriet! I don’t want—”

  “You’ve brought the man all the way from the Nile,” Harriet said. “Of course you want him.”

  “I’m not ready,” Isidore said fiercely. “In my bed, Harriet. I’m not ready for that. With a stranger. Tonight!”

  In truth, it was a daunting prospect, put so bluntly. Isidore came to a halt. “It’s worse because of watching you and—”

  Harriet pinched her. “Hush!”

  “You know what I mean…”

  And Harriet did. When she was married, if she’d had any idea how much pleasure, joy, a man and woman could have together…the comparison to her own life would have broken her heart, probably.

  “Isidore—” she said, as they went through the door into the entrance hall. “You must—” But the words died in her throat.

  When she walked into the drawing room a mere two minutes before, the great foyer to Fonthill was populated only by a group of lackadaisical footmen. But now the front door was open, bringing with it a little swirl of snow and darkness.

  She heard Povey’s measured tones. “Indeed, Your Grace, it is an unseasonably cold winter.”

  And then a deep laugh. “I’m not used to it, and I’m shivering like a shorn lamb, I assure you.”

  Isidore went utterly rigid, and made a little sound of distress. The man was inside now, but his back to them. He was huge, wrapped in a greatcoat and an enormous fur hat.

  “I have to go upstairs,” Isidore breathed.

  “Too late,” Harriet said, stopping her. “He’ll see you on the stairs.”

  “I can’t…”

  Harriet gave her the frown she gave repeat visitors to her courtroom. “Yes, you can.”

  It was as if everything was happening in slow motion. The greatcoat was gone, and the hat was gone. Harriet had hardly time to see a great tumble of inky black hair, unpowdered and not even tied back, before he turned.

  Her first thought was that he couldn’t be English. She’d never seen an Englishman that color—a sort of gorgeous mahogany. He wore a jacket that Villiers would envy, made of pale blue but he didn’t have it buttoned in the front, as was proper. She could see brown skin, right down below his throat. Where
was his cravat? He wore no waistcoat. Long white cuffs tumbled over his hands, but rather than have them caught at the wrist by a pearl button, he wore them open. He was half dressed.

  There was a moment of utter silence in the anteroom. The duke was looking only at Isidore.

  Just as Harriet was about to say something—some sort of introduction!—he swept into an extraordinarily deep bow. Her eyes fixed on his face, Isidore sank into a deep curtsy. Still without saying a word, she held out her hand.

  “My duchess, I presume,” he said, carrying the hand up to his lips. His voice was dark and foreign, like that of a man used to speaking strange languages.

  Harriet felt as if she were watching a play. How did Cosway know that he was facing his wife? And didn’t he wish to retire to his chamber before he greeted Isidore? His face wasn’t clean-shaven. Gentlemen—dukes!—never had stubble on their faces, to the best of her knowledge. That’s what valets were for: to make sure that dukes pinned their cuffs, wore waistcoats, buttoned their coats…

  No valet could tame the wildness of Cosway’s face.

  “I’d like to introduce a dear friend of mine, Mr. Cope,” Isidore said.

  Harriet bowed, and the moment she straightened she saw that he knew precisely what she was. Instantly.

  His eyes were dancing with amusement.

  “Mr. Cope,” he said, softly. “Had I known that my wife’s friends were of this…caliber, I would not have rushed across all England to rescue her.”

  “I need no rescuing,” Isidore said coolly, just as if she hadn’t planned precisely that.

  “I had no doubt,” he said. “Alack and alas, my mother is of a nervous disposition. I do believe she would have swum the Nile and bearded the crocodiles herself in order to bring me home.”

  “Would Your Grace like to refresh yourself before joining the company?” Povy asked. Harriet had forgotten he was there.

  The duke shook his head. “The duchess and I leave in the morning, and I positively long to see the decadent pleasures offered by Fonthill. I’ve just come from a rather extraordinary wedding given for the Princess Ayabdar and yet from my mother’s descriptions of Fonthill I expect to find myself shocked to the bone by Lord Strange’s bacchanalian scene. I confess myself all anticipation.”