by Lynn Messina
“That’s a wonderful idea, my dear,” the dowager said kindly. “Your purchasing every print Miss Biddle made won’t convince that wretched woman at all to produce more.”
Emma sighed and, with a cry of defeat, threw herself onto the sofa, where her sister was sitting silently, her hands clasped stiffly in her lap. Vinnie did not know what to say because she couldn’t figure out how she felt. She was horrified by the picture, of course, which depicted all the members of the British Horticultural Society as potted flowers lined up on a windowsill, each of their distinctly recognizable faces surrounded by petals. Standing in front of them was a lampoon of Vinnie holding the Marquess of Huntly flower in her hand. “Plucked!” read the caption.
Her mortification was eased, however, by the illustrious company she was in, and she reviewed the list at regular intervals to bolster her courage.
She was grateful—so absurdly very grateful—for the dowager’s mild response, for she had strongly opposed Vinnie’s application for exactly this reason and had every right to offer recriminations, especially as she’d exposed the duke to the same indignity. But Trent’s mother didn’t seem to mind that her only son had been turned into a pink daisy and displayed in the window of 227 St. James.
As surprised as she was by the dowager’s calm, she was even more taken aback by her sister’s agitation. The Harlow Hoyden had been gracing Miss Biddle’s front window for years—as well as Mrs. Humphrey’s and Mr. Poolshank’s—and she never once flinched at the farcical representations of her exploits. Indeed, she rarely deigned to acknowledge them, knowing that the more attention a picture received, the more encouraged the artist would be. The single worst thing a subject of a caricature could do was complain about the attention. King George himself once took issue with the work of Mr. Gillray, and the unrepentant cartoonist turned around and satirized the monarch’s comment in yet another drawing.
Emma understood the futility—at least when it pertained to herself. When it had to do with her defenseless older sister, she railed against the injustice and consigned half the ton to hell.
Vinnie was trying not to be offended by this double standard, which, she felt, implied that she was too weak to handle what had been a regular occurrence for the indomitable Miss Harlow. It was true she had little experience with notoriety and she had spent a significant part of her life avoiding unwarranted attention, but that didn’t mean she would crumble at the first stroke of an unkind pen.
The door opened and suddenly Louisa appeared on the threshold, her face a mask of distressed concern. “I came as soon as I heard,” she announced with all the drama she could muster on such short notice. Then she fell to her knees beside her mother’s chair and clutched her hand comfortingly. “You poor, poor dear. How are you holding up?”
Her mother smoothly extricated her hand, stood up and ordered her daughter to stop being so absurd. “Pull yourself together, Louisa, while I have Tupper bring you some tea. It’s only a silly drawing. I don’t understand why everyone is having agitated fits. Indeed, if you ask me some of those long-in-the-tooth gentlemen should be flattered to be considered among the tulips of the ton.”
Louisa, who refused to believe her mission of mercy was not vitally necessary, spoke soothingly as if being careful not to alarm a bedlamite. “Of course, Mother, there’s no reason to be upset. All is well. Please let me get the tea. You sit down by the window. Look how pretty the sky is.”
Although Emma was not the intended target of Louisa’s heavy-handed consolation—and a good thing, too, for she would not take as kindly as the dowager to having her shoulders clasped—she recognized in herself a similar strain of insulting histrionics and immediately changed her tone. She straightened up properly in her seat, stopped fidgeting and announced she would love a cup of tea.
“Then I propose we all resume our schedules for the day, for there is no point in our gathering in a single room as if keeping vigil,” she said reasonably. “I have an appointment with the modiste at one, then I’m meeting Philip in Hyde Park. Do consider coming, Vinnie. He has acquired a new invention that he is calling a hobble-horse. It’s a wooden horse with two wheels that you propel forward with your feet. From what I understand, it’s meant to be used on flat terrain, but Philip is determined to try it down a hill.”
“Then he will be hobbled for sure,” remarked the dowager, who was still trying to overcome her daughter’s officious concern. Having liberated her shoulders, she sought refuge behind a wingback chair, which was almost as tall as she. Louisa took her mother’s behavior as proof of her frailty—needing a chair for support!—and redoubled her efforts.
Emma enjoyed the display immensely and was disappointed when Louisa went off to locate smelling salts as a precautionary measure.
“Shall I barricade the door, ma’am?” Emma asked as soon as her sister-in-law had left. “I have an infallible system.”
Although the dowager was sorely tempted, she knew better than to encourage Emma in her antics. Furthermore, she was still peeved at her recent locked-door stunt, for she had quickly figured out that the game had been rigged against her. “I agree with your suggestion that we proceed with our day as if nothing untoward has happened because, if you will recall, that was my original suggestion. It is always distressing to see representations of oneself, but you mustn’t let it upset you. I assure you, your elbows are not that pointy.”
Both Harlow girls, who had never thought twice about their elbows, examined their arms while the dowager hid a smile.
Tupper brought the tea and Vinnie accepted a cup, but she did not participate in Emma and the dowager’s discussion about Philip’s recent acquisition. Although she did not know how to account for Emma’s altered attitude, she was grateful for it. An infuriated Harlow Hoyden was a terrifying force, and Vinnie hated to think of what act of reprisal she might devise for poor Mr. Holyroodhouse.
Vinnie herself wasn’t entirely above thoughts of revenge. She loathed the clever caricaturist for the skilled way he neatly summed up a complicated situation with a single image, making them all look like fools. The drawing of her was particularly unflattering, with her jabby elbows, bulbous nose, pointy chin, smug smile and eyebrows so heavily drawn she looked like a witch out of a child’s fairy story. But the true victim of the piece was Huntly. Ruthlessly pulled from his pot, he was literally in the hands of a hideous woman, a hen-pecked milksop with no recourse. The caption said it all: He was plucked. Having created the unpleasant circumstance, it was now beyond his control and he could do nothing but submit to the mockery of the ton.
Although she knew it was just a drawing, Vinnie found it intolerable to see Huntly portrayed as weak and helpless when he was in fact the very opposite. No weak and helpless man would survive nearly two years at sea, collecting hundreds of specimens from dozens of tiny islands inhabited by dangerous fauna and most likely ill-bred cannibals. The Marquess of Huntly was strong and capable, and he didn’t deserve the ridicule.
Vinnie, who thought her sister’s agitation in defense of her was insulting, discovered she was too angry on Huntly’s behalf to sit still. She ordered herself to calm down and finish her tea, but she simply could not stand it a moment more and jumped to her feet.
The dowager, finding her actions jarring, exhorted her to move with more delicacy. As Vinnie murmured an apology, Louisa returned to announce the completion of her five-point plan for Overcoming a Caricature Scandal. She held her list up triumphantly, and just as Emma grabbed it from her hand, Vinnie snuck out of the drawing room to pay a visit to Huntly. She was putting on her pelisse when she heard Emma exclaim, “Disavow all familiarity with the participants! Am I to pretend I don’t know my own sister? Or husband, for that matter?”
Smiling faintly, Vinnie quietly let herself out the front door and quickly traversed the few blocks to the marquess’s house. It had been five days since she’d seen him—five days since he’d come upon them in the study plotting the downfall of his fellow society members. She’d expect
ed to hear from him in the interval, during which she and Emma had continued to negotiate deals for votes, but he had not been in contact. As she had expected further coercion, especially after he understood the thoroughness of their plan, she didn’t know what to make of his silence. It seemed to imply a certain disgust of her and the enterprise in which she was engaged, but that was not the impression he’d given the other day. Indeed, upon taking his leave after several cups of tea, he’d appeared to be wryly amused by her endeavors.
Having left the house on impulse, Vinnie did not think to bring a maid, and standing alone on Huntly’s doorstep, about to request entry into a bachelor’s residence, she suddenly felt like a jabby-elbowed fishwife. Abruptly, she turned to leave and found herself face-to-face with the man himself.
His cheerful greeting died on his lips as he observed her look of distress. “Is something wrong, Miss Harlow?” he asked.
Vinnie, who had caught the easy smile before it faded, was surprised to find him in such good humor and could only conclude that he did not yet know of Mr. Holyroodhouse’s drawing. It seemed unlikely that he could have passed an entire morning in ignorance—she had learned of the truth from a note delivered to the dowager only minutes after breakfast had been served—yet she could not conceive how any man who had seen himself depicted as an enfeebled flower could not be out of sorts.
“May I have a word, my lord?” she asked, looking around anxiously. If standing on the marquess’s doorstep by herself had made her feel like the brazen harpy in the illustration, it was nothing compared with the uncomfortable sensation of standing on the marquess’s doorstep with the marquess. She resisted the urge to curl her back and hide behind his broad shoulders.
He immediately agreed and upon entering the house, requested that tea be delivered to the drawing room at once. Then he paused and said, “No, Fleming, bring it to my study. Miss Harlow is as gifted a horticulturalist as her brother-in-law and would enjoy looking at some of my samples.”
Vinnie, who found the heavy burden of her guilt already almost too much to carry, visibly shrunk under the weight of this kind tribute. “I really don’t think—”
But Huntly wasn’t listening to her attempt to demur, for he was asking his butler to retrieve a magnifying glass from the desk in his bedroom. Then he led her down the hall to his study, a bright room with red silk drapes, a large desk and several hefty crates aligned against the long wall.
“Please sit down and tell me what’s on your mind,” he said, indicating a cream-colored chair on the near side of the desk.
Grateful to have a large piece of oak furniture between them, Vinnie complied with his request and was dismayed when the marquess sat in the matching chair beside her, rather than the imposing wingback on the other side of the desk.
Sitting stiffly, although the chair was actually quite comfortable, she said quickly and with no preamble, “I am withdrawing my application for membership.”
As soon as the words were out, Vinnie felt some of the tension leave her. She had known from the moment Tupper had returned from Miss Biddle’s shop with the print—no, even earlier than that, when her grace read aloud Lady Courtland’s description—that she had to withdraw. She was no milksop herself and as long as the scandal remained focused on her, she had no trouble ignoring her critics or outlasting the naysayers. She had found the challenge invigorating and enjoyed every minute she’d spent scheming with Emma over the dossiers.
There had been only one moment previously when she had thought about withdrawing—the other day when Huntly had called and Emma left them alone with the files. How happy she had been to see him striding into the room! Even after the awful turn he had done with the Brill factory tour, she’d felt her heart leap with excitement with his unexpected arrival. And because of it, she had carelessly revealed that Emma had broken into her fiancé’s apartment. It was a stupid gaffe to make and attributable to the level of comfort she felt in the company of the marquess. If she’d felt more self-conscious around him, she would never have been so thoughtless. But it wasn’t the slip that bothered Vinnie and made her rethink her admission into the society; it was the realization that she wanted to keep sliding. In that moment, she’d wanted to tell him everything about her relationship with Windbourne.
Such a confession would have been fatal, for she knew how terribly the entire episode—duped into an engagement by a traitorous spy whom she killed and then pretended to mourn for the sake of respectability—reflected on her. If Mr. Holyroodhouse’s illustration made her look monstrous, it was nothing compared to what her own story would do to her.
Craving his good opinion, Vinnie could not risk losing it. She had his respect and knew the exact moment she’d earned it: in the distillation lab when Mr. Brill complimented her on her idea for how to improve the elasticity of India-rubber molecules. Huntly had turned and stared at her with such a glint in his eye. If she hadn’t known better, she would have called it pride, but that was far too unlikely so it had to be respect.
That afternoon in Emma’s study, appalled by her own admission and terrified by how easily she could give it all away, she’d thought about ending her candidacy right then and there. She couldn’t bring herself to do it because she knew it also mean ending their association, something she was curiously unwilling to do.
But now she had done it, and the other Harlow girl’s turn as a hoyden was over. She breathed deeply and felt the sigh almost pour out of her. Withdrawing was the right thing to do, for now Mr. Holyroodhouse and his ilk could turn their poisoned pens elsewhere.
“No,” Huntly said.
Vinnie had been so wrapped up in her thoughts, she assumed she’d missed an entire conversation. “Excuse me?”
“No, you are not withdrawing your application for membership,” he said firmly.
Although she could not imagine what brought about this change of heart, it did not matter. “I am.”
“You’re not.”
Vinnie tilted her head down, straightened her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap. Then, as if all that stood between her statement and the marquess’s acceptance was bad posture, she said, “I am withdrawing.”
Huntly crossed his legs. “You are not withdrawing.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” she said carefully enunciating every word just in case unclear speech was the problem. “I’m withdrawing my candidacy. As of this moment, I’m no longer applying for membership to your society.”
“And you don’t seem to understand,” he said with the same precision, “that you’re not. You are going to go forward with your application. In fact, your treatise is due in three days and your presentation is scheduled for one week from tomorrow.”
Vinnie jerked her head back, then shook it. “No.”
“Yes.”
Feeling as if she had stumbled into a play being performed by French-speaking actors, she paused for a moment to evaluate the situation. By all accounts, she was who she thought she was, Miss Lavinia Harlow; the gentleman across from her was the Marquess of Huntly; and they were both seated in the marquess’s study. She was, after weeks of resisting, finally giving in to his demand that she withdraw. Huntly should say thank you and bid her good day.
Why wasn’t he saying thank you and bidding her good day?
She recalled then that he didn’t have all the available information necessary for making the right decision. “My lord, although I appreciate this unprecedented and inexplicable show of support—and please believe I am grateful for it—there seems to be a circumstance of which you are not aware.”
“Plucked!” he said.
He said it so emphatically, Vinnie jumped. “You know.”
“That I’ve been plucked?” he asked with a smile. “For a while now, yes.”
Vinnie was confused by his amusement. “Then you must see that I can’t continue.”
“No, Miss Harlow, what I see is that you must continue,” he said softly with that strange glint in his eyes. It was respect,
Vinnie told herself. It couldn’t be anything else.
Vinnie paused, took a deep breath, calmly ordered her thoughts and said without a hint of agitation, “My lord, for several weeks you have been trying to get me to withdraw, and now I am complying with your request. Can you please explain to me why you’ve changed your mind?”
Mimicking her overly serene pose, he said, “I’m happy to, Miss Harlow. It is true that previously I opposed your application to the society and had devoted a good deal of energy in the past two weeks to trying to change your mind. I can understand why you might find my change of heart confusing, especially in the light of Mr. Holyroodhouse’s masterpiece, but it is because of Mr. Holyroodhouse’s masterpiece that I did change my mind.”
“You are teasing me,” Vinnie said, unable to find any other explanation. “You know that illustration is horrid and that I have no choice but to withdraw to avoid more humiliation for all parties involved, so you are pretending that you don’t want me to as a joke. You are getting back at me for causing you all this distress.”
“The only distress you have caused me is the possibility that you might truly think so little of me as to believe that,” he said with a seriousness she’d never heard from him before.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, for she hated the thought of distressing him. “I’m afraid it has been a rather trying day. Of course I don’t believe that.”
He smiled. “Miss Harlow, if you had complied with my request any time in the past few weeks, I would have been relieved and grateful. That’s the honest truth, as they say. But it is one thing for you to follow the advice of someone who is genuinely concerned about your welfare and the welfare of an institution he has belonged to for almost a decade. There is no shame in that. It is another thing entirely to cave to pressure from a toad-eating dandiprat with a pen. That is a mortification to which I cannot lend my countenance. Now,” he said, in a more businesslike tone, “you asked me once if I would review your treatise and offer advice on how you may improve it. I’m afraid I was remiss in responding to your request at the time, but I would like to remedy that now. Please forward me a copy.”
