by Lynn Messina
“Menus,” the dowager said now with sincere and surprising relish.
Vinnie, perceiving immediately the discussion to be had, stood up and offered the older woman her seat. “Here, ma’am, let me.”
“Thank you, Lavinia,” she said. “You are a dear.”
Emma also understood what was in store—a long, boring afternoon of discussing menus for the ball the duchess was determined to throw on her and Trent’s behalf—but she made a feeble attempt to evade it anyway. “No, thank you, ma’am. I’ve already had lunch, and I believe Alex and I are dining out tonight.”
Well used to Emma by now, the dowager merely laughed and reached for one of the books that Vinnie held out. “The first course is the most important course to be served because it sets the tone for the entire meal,” she wisely intoned. “Make a misstep at the very beginning and your guests will be grousing about the grouse while devouring the dish, and there is nothing, I assure you, that brings on indigestion faster. So we must deliberate carefully for as long as possible to make sure we arrive at the correct decision. Needless to say, of course, all decisions will be contingent upon your choice of dress.”
In actuality, however, the connection between Emma’s dress and the first course of the meal needed not only to be said, but expounded on at some length as well, as neither of the Harlow sisters could conceive what one had to do with the other and communicated this fact over the dowager’s head with raised eyebrows and furrowed foreheads.
“Now here is the menu for the ball Alex’s father and I hosted when we were first married,” she said, handing Emma a sheet of parchment that was yellowed at the edges. “You’ll see we had oysters, which were tres fashionable at the time but which I think are garish now. Ah, the folly of youth. And here is the menu for the second ball we hosted. It was a Christmas affair.”
As the dowager and her duke had plighted their troth to each other more than three decades ago, Emma imagined endless hours of reviewing menus with no decisions made for the first course, let alone the whole meal. She couldn’t believe this was how she would spend her afternoon.
She looked to Vinnie for sympathy, but her sister was no help. The other Harlow miss had not only an eye for detail but a genuine appreciation of it as well. She loved charts and evaluating data, and Emma could well imagine her graphing the grouse and foie gras on X and Y axes.
The only thing that could make the afternoon worse was a visit from her sister-in-law, whose opinion of her brother’s marriage had not been as sanguine as her mother’s, and Emma had no sooner had the thought than the woman in question appeared in the doorway.
“Mama, I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Louisa said in scolding tones as she stepped into the room, which she could easily accomplish because there was still so much space left, despite the crowd already gathered. She settled herself into the armchair to the left of the settee, a piece of furniture that Emma had particularly protested when Trent had it installed. One armchair and a settee was company. Two armchairs and a settee was a party.
“I was just at the milliner and Letitia Hawkins-Bonds was there ordering the most horrid chartreuse-and-pink organdy hat with a purple plume,” she said, launching immediately into the purpose of her visit. “She swears anyone who is anyone in Paris is wearing it, but I can’t credit such an absurdity, even for foreigners, and if it were true, I’d insist on chopping off my own head with a guillotine rather than laying that atrocity upon it. She said—Letitia Hawkins-Bonds, that is—that Mrs. Delano is having a little soiree on the same evening as our ball. Ordinarily, I’d be offended at the obvious slight, as invitations for our ball went out two weeks ago and the event is well established. However, Mrs. Delano is godmother to Miss Hedgley and is no doubt throwing the party to spare her dear goddaughter the humiliation of attending our ball or, worse, the humiliation of not attending our ball on a flimsy pretext. With all this in mind, I do think the soiree is but an act of kindness and it would hardly be appropriate for us to cavil at it.”
The dowager, who had been on the verge of presenting the menu for Louisa’s coming-out ball for several minutes, scowled at her daughter. “If we need not cavil, then we need not discuss it. As I was saying—”
“Yes, Mama, but I am more sensible of the insult done to Miss Hedgley, given the way my brother quite threw her over, and can’t help but wish we could come to some sort of detente with her family,” she said, with a hint of genuine tragedy in her voice. It was harder to say for whom she felt more sorry: herself or Miss Hedgley.
“I have an excellent solution,” Emma said, with a devilish grin her sister-in-law was not sensible enough to recognize.
“Really?” Louisa asked snidely in a tone that implied her brother’s wife had few ideas at all, let alone any excellent ones. “Do tell.”
“I shall divorce Alex and go to the soiree myself,” Emma offered. “It sounds like a very pleasant gathering and as a guest I will not be consulted on the menu. A happy resolution all around.”
“Unacceptable, imp,” said her husband, who stood at the entrance with an ineffable twinkle in his warm brown eyes. “If I have to go the ball, then you have to go to the ball.”
Emma grinned back at him. “Well now, the gang’s all here,” she said with a pointed look at the crowded room.
He understood her meaning as clearly as if she’d said I told you so and crossed one black Hessian over the other as he leaned against the door’s frame. “I will not have the servants discomforted, not even for you, my love,” he announced to the confusion of his mother and sister.
But Vinnie knew them both well enough to follow the conversation, and she immediately applauded his good sense. “We tried it at Crescent House and had lumpy hollandaise sauce for a week.”
The dowager, who knew all about the dangers of lumpy sauces—and was happy to pontificate on the great béarnaise disaster of ’09 if her family would only let her get to the ball she threw that year—harrumphed at these absurdities. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’m sure I don’t want to know. The ball is in one week, and we’ve yet to settle on a menu. As you all know, I’m a temperate soul not given to melodrama, but the situation is about to become dire and I do not appreciate the frivolity with which you are treating the matter.”
“I am never frivolous,” protested Louisa.
“No, I know, dear,” said her mother with what may have been a hint of disappointment.
“I apologize, Mother, for interrupting,” said Trent. “It was not my intention to upset your planning, as I’m quite aware of the honor you do me and Emma in hosting this affair. I realize the timing grows crucial, but I don’t doubt for a moment that you will bring it off without a hitch.” At this officious speech, his wife stuck out her tongue at him and he bit back a grin, lest his mother accuse him of frivolity again. “I’m only here because Felix has returned from his travels and I thought you might want to say hello. He’s practically family so I felt certain you wouldn’t want to stand on ceremony.”
In an instant, the dowager’s demeanor changed and her moue of annoyance became a smile of delight. “Felix is here?”
The duke nodded. “He returned last night and barely paused to wipe off his travel dust before paying us a call.”
Even Louisa seemed to perk up at this news. “That’s above all things wonderful. Where is he?”
“He’ll be along in a moment. He is greeting Mrs. Crenshaw, whom he seems unduly happy to see is still with us. I suppose he thought she had been pensioned off. Ah, here he is,” said Trent eagerly. To his surprise, he found he couldn’t wait another moment to introduce his oldest and best friend to his wife. “Felix Dryden, Marquess of Huntly, I’d like you to meet Emma, Duchess of Trent.” He rarely spoke with such pomp and circumstance and even now meant the recitation of her title more of a joke on himself than a proper introduction. And yet nobody could mistake the pride in his voice.
Emma, as bold as ever, stood up and offered her hand to the handsom
e peer, who appeared momentarily put off by her audacious behavior. He stared at her, then her hand, seemingly not quite sure what to do with either. Then, as if figuring out the answer to a great puzzle, he took her hand and gave it a hearty shake. “It’s a great pleasure to meet the woman who has made my friend so happy. Truly, I never expected to see the Duke of Trent relishing married life. It’s a sight to behold.”
“I assure you,” Emma said with a laugh, “I didn’t expect it myself. Like all good hoydens, I had quite resolved to never marry.”
“Well, I’m very glad you relented.”
“I am, too,” said Emma, as if it were still a surprise.
“And this,” said Trent, gesturing toward Vinnie on the footstool at his mother’s elbow, “is my very dear sister-in-law, Miss Lavinia Harlow.”
Entirely nonplussed by the awfulness of the situation—how could he be here now when she’d said good-bye to him hours before?—Vinnie kept her eyes trained on the menu the dowager was holding. Was it from a ball in 1802? Or did that say 1807? She couldn’t quite tell, for her eyes had suddenly blurred. And the heat was unbearable. Her cheeks felt as if two dozen suns were shining directly on them.
She had never been more embarrassed in her entire life—and that was saying a lot, as the entire episode earlier that day had been one long descent into the valley of mortification.
Fret as she would, there was nothing she could do now. She was trapped, and Lavinia Harlow, never a hoyden but certainly not a coward, raised her head to stare into the unsettling aquamarine eyes of her brother-in-law’s dearest friend.
She was prepared for it, she knew exactly what to expect, and yet it was still a shock.
Chapter Two
Felix Horatio Dryden, sixth Marquess of Huntly and eighth Earl of Revesby, needed only three things in life: a warm meal, dry clothes and a soft place to lay his head at night. He’d learned this fact about himself while on a Royal Navy expedition onboard the HMS Triton, which had supplied these requirements for the last one year, ten months and twenty-one days, and it had come as a revelation for a man who had been raised with so much abundance.
He hadn’t gone on a voyage to the South Seas looking for Spartan austerity—his goal had been new flora, which he had achieved in spades—but he’d returned to London determined to retain a simple existence. His life before the expedition had a certain floridness that embarrassed him now. An entire village on Tarawa could be constructed from his waistcoats alone—a bright, colorful, perfectly absurd village, yes, but a village nonetheless.
It was with this new aesthetic in mind that he’d gotten dressed that morning. He knew, being back in the metropolis, he could no longer get away with the casual comfort of an islander, but he’d done the best he could, to the displeasure of his valet. Petrie, who had accompanied the marquess on the trip, along with two other servants, had borne the indignity of discarded cravats and rolled-up pantaloons only on the understanding that such improvisions were temporary. That the marquess planned to continue his island habits in London was a horror that had not occurred to the little Welshman.
Having won an argument with his valet, something he rarely accomplished, and eager to see the duke and his family after the long absence, Huntly had walked to Grosvenor Square in the best of good moods. He greeted everyone he passed with a tip of his hat, even Lord Marshall, who had dunned him out of fifty pounds in a specious bet about the mating habits of the great auk on the eve of his departure, and when Caruthers opened the door with his customary scowl, Huntly felt a contented peace descend. Nothing has changed, he thought with satisfaction and relief.
The duke was out and the dowager indisposed—this, too, was a familiar circumstance—and the marquess, who had run tame in the house since he was in leading strings, did what he always did: visited Trent’s magnificent conservatory.
He assumed the room would be empty. Only a few servants were entrusted with the care of the precious flowers, and they typically did their watering first thing in the morning, when the east sun was at its strongest. He thought to pass a quiet hour inspecting Alex’s impressive collection of orchids. As a botanist, Huntly knew all about flowers—he could identify phylum, genus, species at a glance—but he didn’t have the duke’s skill in raising them. He expected to be awed and humbled, as always, by what his friend had managed to bring to life.
What he didn’t expect was a rain shower. No, not a rain shower, he thought, a cloud burst. He’d supposed, ensconced as he was in the duke’s magnificent indoor conservatory, that he was safe from the unpredictable forces of nature. And yet he had no sooner set foot in the room than he’d been accosted by a wall of cold water. It happened so quickly and with so much force that all he could do was lament the loss of yet another dry shirt.
The effect was so similar to what he had experienced on his travels that it took him a full sixty seconds to realize he wasn’t in a subtropical jungle many thousands of miles from England. His inability to understand what had happened did not put him at a disadvantage because the architect of his misfortune—a pretty blond woman with a trim figure and blue eyes—seemed equally dumbfounded. She stared at him for so long and with such intensity that he began to fear he’d sprouted a second head in the rainstorm.
He tilted his head forward to confirm that there was still only one there—not that a second brainbox would necessarily be amiss—and begged her pardon. Although he couldn’t discern her purpose, he’d clearly interrupted a delicate operation.
This attention to the gallantries elicited no response, and Huntly began to fear that the lady didn’t have all her faculties. He tried to remember if the duke had a cousin who had suffered a fall from a horse or some equally debilitating accident. And then the woman made her astonishing exclamation: turpentine!
Huntly, who accounted himself quite knowledgeable of many subjects, had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Turpentine?
Fortunately—or, rather, unfortunately, depending on one’s capacity for precise detail on esoteric topics—the woman explained. As she talked, the marquess wished for a miraculous rescue and darted his eyes toward the door in hopes of seeing Caruthers or the duke magically materialize there.
His luck was as soggy as he was, however, and for several minutes he suffered a lecture on the screw pump, which, no, he hadn’t known was invented by Archimedes, thank you very much. And, frankly, he didn’t see why he should have to know it now. Thirty-one years of ignorance of this fact had in no way impeded the pleasure of his existence.
The woman finally recalled herself and did the proper with an apology for not only the accident but the overlong explanation as well. Huntly appreciated her effort and did the proper right back in hopes that an exchange of polite nothings would bring the episode to a close. But no! Instead, the woman did a second very astonishing thing and broke into hysterics, laughing so hard that tears trailed down her cheeks, which she wiped at with a cloth so filthy it left fat streaks of dirt behind.
At this point, Felix decided the woman was an escapee from Bedlam and waited for a pair of orderlies to carry her away. Instead, a footman named Tupper appeared to carry him away, which he didn’t object to in the least. He was happy to go to Bedlam himself if it meant ending this interview, especially as Tupper’s ready response to her orders indicated that she in fact belonged in the house.
With a heavy heart, the marquess realized that much had in fact changed while he was gone. There was now a red room amid the tastefully appointed blue bedrooms on the second floor, and beloved Mrs. Crenshaw, for whom he’d brought back a beautiful carved parakeet, had been replaced by a creature called Mrs. Wellburger. Most troubling of all was the introduction into the household of this awful woman who had the temerity to call him short. He was not short and could in fact go inch to inch against the duke.
Who the devil was she?
Huntly was trying to reconcile all these changes when Tupper said the words that stuck pure terror in the marquess’s heart: the duke’s wife
.
Impossible, thought Huntly, as he followed Tupper up the stairs. Absolutely impossible. He knew the duke’s mother and sister were always scheming to bring him about. Every season, they settled on one green miss from a respectable family who would produce fine-looking grandchildren and threw her at his head. But Trent had fine reflexes and always managed to duck in time. There was no way his mother had finally succeeded, certainly not with the latest contender, if he remembered correctly. Trent would never go for a milk-and-water miss like Portia Hedgley.
But there was no doubt about it: Tupper had definitely said the duke’s wife, and there was no getting around the fact that there was a young, missish and remarkably bizarre woman installed in the house.
The duke’s wife?
Surely not. The Duke of Trent was far too smart and sophisticated to fall for a quiz like she. There had to be a mistake, Huntly told himself as he got to the top step. Then he looked up and there was the man himself standing at the end of the hall: Alexander Keswick.
“Alex, old man,” he said, a huge grin splitting his face in half, “this good fellow here is trying to gammon me into believing you got married.”
Tupper immediately began to stammer, and the duke raised a hand to calm him. “Don’t worry about it, Tupper. You can go. I’ll take it from here.”
Happy to be dismissed, Tupper bowed and scurried down the stairs.
“I’ll thank you not to tease my staff, Felix,” the duke said, as he strode across the hallway to envelop his friend in a hug. He noticed immediately that the marquess was wet and stepped back to examine him with interest. “What you do? Swim all the way from Oceania?”
