He said nothing for a moment, but smiled at her. He was truly handsome but he had none of the aura of power that daunted her when she was with the duke. She could be comfortable with this man. “Women have their place.” He lifted his hand, touched her cheek.
Damaris smiled back. He wanted to kiss her. She would let him, because maybe then she could forget that other kiss. It was worth a try.
A rustle at the door was all the warning they had before Matilda swept in, followed by Dorcas and Delphi. Matilda flipped her hand as Damaris and Sir Peter broke guiltily apart. Sir Peter made a little more of the near-kiss than Damaris liked, stumbling and finding his feet again with a muttered apology.
Matilda halted, and glared at Sir Peter, but he did not take the hint. At that point, he should have left the room as Matilda was positively bristling with annoyance. He did not. Instead, he stood by Damaris’ side. “Madam.” The one word was filled with chilling hauteur.
Matilda was made of stern stuff and she did not wilt before the onslaught, but Dorcas and Delphi reared back. “This room is rather small for such crowds,” she said. “Shall we adjourn to the drawing room? I feel sure we will not be disturbed.” The last was said with some bitterness. Damaris’ senses went on alert. Matilda was rarely bitter.
They filed out of the room, Sir Peter following Damaris. He was too close to her, but she showed what dignity she could and followed the others upstairs to the elegant drawing room.
Before coming here, the family had lived happily for years in Bunhill Row in Shoreditch, near Smithfield Market. They had considered their house a pleasant one with several gracious rooms, but they had not imagined living in a place like this. The previous earl had preferred to keep his distance from their part of the family. If he and his heir had not been killed in an unfortunate accident, the situation would have remained that way. Damaris and her family lived perfectly contentedly in their house in London. They paid visits to their small estate in the country after their parents had died, and assumed their lives would go on in the same way forever. They’d been wrong.
Now, they inhabited a house they did not particularly feel at home in, wore clothes they were not comfortable in and spent their days being looked down on by people they didn’t know. Where was the good in that?
Damaris sat on a spindly gilt French chair in a drawing room that would have taken up the whole of a floor of their previous house sipping tea from a fine porcelain cup. She felt as miserable as if she’d been condemned to hell.
Sir Peter mollified her by attending to her needs. He handed her the dish of tea, sat close, but not too close, and chatted about town and events for the allotted twenty minutes. When he left, he appeared reluctant to go, but politeness required that he did so.
He bent over Damaris’ hand once more, and bade them good day.
As soon as the drawing room door had closed behind him, Damaris made to rise. She would continue her work until she had to dress for dinner. “Stay,” Matilda commanded her.
The door opened to admit Gerald. He wore an elegant dark green coat with large cuffs and a beautifully embroidered cream-colored waistcoat peeped out from under it. Despite the finery, he was still the same Gerald, the brother who had done nothing but his best for his sisters. They’d had to almost beg him to marry the woman he had fallen in love with two months ago, but his bliss with Annie was not difficult to see. Where he had been restless before, he now appeared settled and happy. “I saw Sir Peter leave,” he said.
“He’s just gone. He’d have stayed here all afternoon if we hadn’t made it clear it was time for him to go.”
Gerald sat in the chair Sir Peter had just vacated and leaned his elbow on the arm, resting his chin on his hand. He addressed Damaris directly. “Do you like him?”
She shrugged. “Well enough.” That was the truth. “He’s handsome, polite and considerate.”
“And rich,” Matilda added. “He is showing you particular attention,” she went on. “He is a suitable marriage candidate, if not a brilliant one.”
Dorcas made a scoffing sound at the back of her throat. “He’s the only suitor we have.”
Gerald’s mouth turned down. “I know, and I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Gerald. It’s the spite of one influential woman and her family. If she finds her duke soon, she’ll forget this.”
“And you visited the Royal Society?” Gerald’s voice rose, as if he were about to scold her. “How could you do something like that?”
Heedless of the fine lace ruffles at her elbows, Damaris folded her arms, bracing herself for a fight. “They sent me a letter, said they were considering my membership and invited me to the next meeting. As soon as they saw my sex, they changed their minds. How fair is that?”
“It is the way the world works,” Matilda said.
Gerald’s shoulders slumped. “So you did not stride in unbidden.”
“She behaved properly,” Matilda said, “and she was right. The Articles of the Royal Society do not say that only men need apply, and she was invited.”
Gerald nodded reluctantly, his mouth tight.
Damaris shifted restlessly in her chair and it scraped on the floor. She winced at the sound and stopped moving.
“We paid a few visits this afternoon.” Matilda glanced at Damaris’ sisters, who were sitting quietly by her side on the big sofa.
Dorcas kicked the ruffle at the hem of her pink gown, flicking up the fine fabric in a rhythmic swing. “It was a waste of time,” she said. “Two were not at home, even though they were, and the two that let us in had a drawing room full. We were not special enough to reject.”
Delphi shot a hard glare at Damaris. “Except for one thing. They asked us about our sister’s unusual appearance in the City, detailing the visit and the outcome.”
Matilda took a deep breath, her fichu rising sharply. “They were avid for gossip, asked how I could not have known the Royal Society was a male concern. They called you a bluestocking.” She closed her eyes, as if mustering strength. “You girls have great opportunities. If you can weather this season, you have a good chance of making excellent marriages.”
The distress of Damaris’ sisters, despite their outward defiance, struck her to the heart.
“Sir Peter is seriously interested in you, and you like him well enough. If he offers for you, take him,” Matilda said.
Dorcas squeaked, then coughed. “That was honest.”
“Far too honest,” Gerald said. “Take him if he asks and only if you truly want him, Damaris. Only that.” Considering Gerald once considered throwing himself on the sacrificial altar with Lady Elizabeth, that came as a powerful statement. He had chosen the woman he loved over the woman who would have helped him most, and provided a safe society berth for his sisters. “It’s a more difficult road, but if I have learned anything since I met Annie it is to be true to yourself.”
“You took some persuading.” Delphi brushed a speck of dust off her blue silk gown.
Gerald grimaced. “I did, I admit it. But you were right.”
Damaris got to her feet. “I don’t think I will ever have the depth of feeling for anyone as you have for Annie. I’m not sure I even have a heart.” Her loves were numbers and gazing into the heavens, but not with any romantic notions. She reserved her passion for answering the questions “Why?” and “How?” and sometimes “What?”. She would never understand how someone could not feel that way about something. Delphi had her literature and poetry, and Dorcas had her gardens. They all had passions. Maybe love for another human being would be secondary to that. Maybe they had used all their passion up already. “But I like Sir Peter well enough. I could settle down with him. He seems devoted to me, enough not to prevent my studies. He has similar interests to mine.” He also had the money to indulge their mutual desire, something Damaris could not lay claim to.
The thought sounded like a door clanging shut in her mind.
She dismissed it and turned to happier thoughts. Da
maris had gone through life ignoring what was not pleasant, turning to the skies to set her mind free and restore her mood. When Sir Peter asked her to marry him, she would accept.
Chapter Four
If Damaris had imagined matters could not get worse, she was wrong. The news of her visit to the Royal Society was all around London by the next day. Or the part of London that mattered, as Matilda sagely stated at breakfast on the following day. “Last night at the theater, everybody stared at us but nobody spoke.”
Matilda lifted the coffee pot and shook it. With a grimace, she held it up for the footman to have it replenished. Matilda drank a lot of coffee in the mornings. She’d probably consumed at least three-quarters of that pot.
Damaris preferred tea. She helped herself to another dish. Although the tea dishes here were fine porcelain, they were as large as the plain china ones they’d used before, and the tea tasted just fine. The air smelled of bacon and eggs, mingled with the chops her brother liked so much. A family breakfast was always worth savoring. Except, of course, when she’d spent the night observing the sky, but she’d had no time for that recently. Perhaps that was why she was out of sorts. Nothing to do with her recent humiliation or the way people stared but shrank away when she approached them.
She felt worse for Dorcas and Delphi because, this time, she had caused the problems.
“People will come around,” Matilda said firmly. “Perhaps next season. We have plans for the summer, after all.” They were going to their own estates to take stock and decide what they should do with it all. Gerald was in possession of an estate that was new to him. Although by society’s standards the holdings were modest, it was a huge change for them, and they wanted time to absorb it all.
Gerald lifted Annie’s hand and kissed it. “We may go to the main estate and stay there for a while. I know we planned to travel to the other places, but I think we will take it easier.” Something in the way he smiled at her or the faint flush brought to her cheeks made Damaris suspicious.
Damaris glanced at her sisters, then their brother. He was smiling broadly. Annie, flushed and happy, nodded. “Yes, I’m expecting.”
“How long?” Matilda asked.
Gerald flushed deeply. “Soon after the wedding.” They had been married so recently, but Annie was a widow and had given birth before. The two proofs of her affection for her previous husband were upstairs in the nursery.
Or just before their marriage. After a night’s observation in the upper reaches of the house, Damaris had been making her way to her bedroom in the early hours when she’d seen her brother come in. Of course, a man would often stay out, especially during the season, but she knew where he’d been. That was shortly after Annie had enchanted the sisters by barging into the house and insisting on seeing Gerald in private. That night, he had tossed his hat on the nearest hall chair, grinned at the hall boy, who was asleep on his pallet, and tiptoed upstairs. Damaris had not allowed him to see her. His expression of blissful joy had surprised her, since he’d been troubled recently.
That was the night he’d spent with Annie, Damaris was sure of it. She would expect a premature birth. Although the women who could afford to tended to come to London for the birthing, to obtain the best and most up to date care, she’d wager Annie would remain in the country, the better to obscure the date of the birth from the chattering classes. The gossiping, vicious people who would not hesitate to blacken their family further. That was what they were facing. Continued gossip could do more than blight the sisters’ marriage prospects. It could destroy Gerald, and all the people who worked for him. He was dependent on networks and communications to manage his estate and investments properly. A collective cold shoulder would ruin him.
Damaris would not let that happen. The burden of her foolish actions last week weighed on her heavily. While the rest of the family exclaimed with happiness, congratulating Gerald and Annie, Damaris held back. They would put it down to her natural reticence, but today it was more than that. But when her time came, she embraced her sister-in-law warmly. “This is why you’ve been resting in the afternoons?”
“Yes.” Annie laughed. “I tire in the first few months, but I’ll recover from that. Gerald is keen to make me rest. Will you help me persuade him that I am not ill, merely enceinte?”
She could still make Damaris laugh. “Of course, he is naturally anxious, but I have no reason to think this time will be different from the other two.” Damaris loved Annie’s straightforwardness, her lack of guile. Any other wife would have not mentioned Annie’s previous marriage, but she was proud of her sons, and rightly so. With Gerald’s encouragement, she spoke of their father often. It was in order, she said, to remind her boys of the fine man who had sired them.
And yet she had never loved him. She’d preserved that honor for Gerald who loved her right back.
Her heart went out to them both. Not everyone was so fortunate.
As she straightened, Watson came in, his salver holding one letter. Matilda tutted, but she didn’t have to say anything. At this time of the season the salver should be overflowing with letters and invitation cards. Gerald leaned over and snagged the letter, glancing at the superscript. He lifted a brow and tossed the note to where Damaris had been sitting. “It’s for you.”
“Me?”
Intrigued and apprehensive, she went back to her seat and picked up the note. The paper was of a cream-laid, expensive variety, and although the seal was imprinted with an emblem, it was blurred. It would not have helped her much if it was not, since she didn’t know many crests. She broke it and opened the single sheet. Someone had scrawled a brief message with a hasty hand, but it was readable.
“Lady Damaris,
I promised I would take you driving in the park. I would crave the honor of your presence at one o’clock, if that is convenient to you.
Yours,
Glenbreck.”
Matilda spoke from behind Damaris. She had been reading over her shoulder. “The maroon carriage gown, I think. You look very good in that.”
Damaris dropped the note from nerveless fingers. “He did say he would ask me but, after today I thought he wouldn’t come. I can’t go.”
“You can.”
Violently, she shook her head, dislodging a curl from her carefully pinned hairstyle. It bounced against her neck.
“You cannot avoid this man.” Matilda waved her hand in the vague direction of the front of the house. “In three hours, the Duke of Glenbreck will appear outside this house in an open carriage and pair. It will not go unnoticed. If someone does not drive out with him, the gossips up and down this street will have a field day. The stories will be unconfined.”
“How can I?” she wailed. “I said yes, but…” She finished with a helpless shrug.
“To be seen in the company of a duke can only help our cause. If you go with him at the fashionable hour, everyone will see you. It will raise your credit enormously, and help your sisters, too.”
“I thought you favored Sir Peter,” Damaris said.
“Use the duke’s interest to bring Sir Peter to the mark,” Matilda said frankly. “Make Sir Peter realize he might lose you. I do not for one minute think the duke’s interest will persist. After all, he has the pick of young, eligible women. But do not humiliate the duke by refusing him,” Matilda continued. “If you do that, we might as well go home.”
He had chosen the fashionable hour for the promenade in the park. She had no doubt he meant Hyde Park, where the world gathered to display their fine mounts and their beautiful riding habits.
She had faced worse, she told herself. Or had she? Was the worst yet to come?
“Logan, you are dallying,” the duchess said firmly. “I introduced you to the loveliest woman in London, and you merely made polite excuses and then walked away.” She leaned forward, pushing her finger into his chest. “What is wrong with you?” Although she was half his size and built like a small bird, the Dowager Duchess of Glenbreck was never overlooked.
“Offer for Lady Elizabeth Askew as soon as possible.”
Logan scraped his chair back an inch to prevent more poking. “Mama, have a care, you’ll mark the silk.” He was wearing white today, but he cared more for his chest than the waistcoat. She had a very sharp finger, as he knew to his cost.
She heaved a sigh much too heavy for the situation and straightened in a flutter of gray ruffles and lace. The dowager duchess always wore a form of mourning dress since the loss of her husband. “What are you doing skulking here?”
Logan glanced around as if he had not seen the star maps and charts spread haphazardly over the library table until she pointed them out. “Skulking,” he offered. “According to you and my sister, I’m very good at that.”
In fact, he did not know what to think. He had decided against Lady Elizabeth, but perhaps it would not be wise to tell his mother right now.
His mind went to Damaris Dersingham of its own accord. He’d even dreamed of her last night, but it hadn’t been a romantic dream. It had been earthy and lustful, and wholly reprehensible. He’d been sorry to wake up.
London was alive with gossip, and it had not yet blown over. “What society needs is a good, honest scandal. Then it won’t care about me or what I do.”
She brandished a paper before his nose. “What about this?”
He took the paper from her and held it still.
The caricature showed men seated around a large table, surrounded by charts and globes very similar to the ones he owned in his library. A woman dressed in a low-cut gown, her unpowdered hair frizzed around her head, stood over them. Her breasts had left the confinement of her bodice, and quills stuck out of her hair, as if she had not noticed her state of disarray. A balloon emerged from her mouth, and the legend, “I am as good as you gentlemen, any day! Do you see any differences in me?” was scrawled inside. The gentlemen were unashamedly ogling her, various lewd comments emerging from their mouths. A man with natural dark hair and a scowl was saying, “I see the differences, madam, and I cannot wait to test them for myself.”
A Hint of Starlight Page 6
