by Mara
But then Rothgar said, “There is one challenging development. The king wishes to inspect Ashart’s bride. You are commanded to attend the drawing room tomorrow, Genova.”
Genova went pale and clutched Ashart’s hand. “I’m not ready!” Then, like someone seeing salvation, she added, “I don’t have a court dress yet, so I can’t go.”
Rothgar dismissed that. “There are court gowns here belonging to my sister Elf and to Chastity, my brother Cyn’s wife. Both ladies are close in size to you. Seamstresses can make alterations and even re-trim them if you wish.”
“Overnight?”
“But of course.” He gestured as if it were nothing. “I will arrange to have them displayed for your selection.”
“But I don’t know what’s suitable!”
Ashart kissed her hand. “I delight to see you flustered, Genni. If you will allow me to advise you?”
“Oh, indeed I will.”
Rothgar turned to Damaris. “You, too, need a gown, and you should wear your rubies.”
She started. “I? Why? This is nothing to do with me.”
“You are a center of attention yourself. London already buzzes of the great heiress who has so much money that she not only makes hospitals the beneficiaries of her will but she gives money immediately to set up three more. That plus a rumor of your singing means that you, too, are to attend. You are to perform.”
“But I haven’t been able to practice properly in an age.”
“I’m sure your voice will please. Where’s Fitzroger?” Rothgar rang a bell. When a footman entered, he sent the man to find Fitz.
But the footman said, “He’s close by, milord,” and Fitz came in. He’d been outside on guard, and now, though he almost appeared bored, Damaris saw that he was braced for disaster.
“Make haste to equip yourself, Fitzroger,” Rothgar said. “You are to attend court, too.”
Damaris saw a flicker of something that might be panic. “Why, my lord?”
“To protect Damaris, of course. Her half brother may not hear the news in time.”
“I doubt he has the entree,” Fitz said.
“Any suitably dressed gentleman has the entree.”
“Pargeter’s will be closed.”
It was like another fencing match, and Fitz was on the defensive.
“I’m sure you know how to open such doors.”
For a moment Damaris thought Rothgar spoke of lock picks, but then she realized he meant money. He must have given some to Fitz.
If Fitz preferred not to go, however, he shouldn’t.
“Surely I will be safe, my lord,” she said.
“There is never certainty. And the king wishes Fitzroger to attend.”
A coup de grace that ended the bout.
Damaris went to Fitz’s side, hoping to ease his tension. “What is Pargeter’s?”
“A secondhand clothing shop of the grander sort.”
Secondhand. She hated that, but she couldn’t object. Yet... “I wish I could come. You’ll buy something plain.”
He smiled wryly. “I know the ways of court, Damaris. I assure you, I will glitter.”
She watched him leave, then waited with Genova and Lady Thalia for Ashart to change out of his finery and for the gowns to be brought out from wherever they were stored. Soon the group was all taken to an unused bedchamber, where four absurdly elaborate and completely gorgeous confections stood on stands almost as if a headless lady were still inside each.
Lady Thalia sat to observe, Ashart standing by her side. Damaris and Genova circled them all—a cream trimmed with pale pink; a dull yellow with gold; a pale green; and a beige rioting with embroidered flowers. Damaris thought the last one breathtakingly beautiful, but she gave Genova first choice. She had to pick that one. All the others were terrible colors for her.
Genova looked to Ashart. “I don’t know. You choose.”
“The cream,” he said, just as a seamstress arrived in a rush along with three assistants.
Damaris almost gasped a protest. He should know best, but pink and cream would make Genova look like garish pottery.
“Rip off the pink and replace it with blue,” he told the seamstress. “Not a pale blue. Summer-sky blue. Ribbons and stitchery in shades of blue. White blossoms and pearls. Some silver thread to catch the candlelight.”
He went, without apparent embarrassment, to inspect underlayers and accessories that were spread on the bed. He picked up a shift. “This one. Very pretty lace. And these silk stockings.” He added a pair embroidered with flowers.
“I have my own stockings,” Genova protested.
“Plain, I’m sure, but if you wish.” He tossed them back. “There’ll be no flashing an ankle at this event.” He turned to Damaris. “Do you want advice, too?”
He was cool, but his anger had either faded or was very well cloaked.
“I admire the embroidered one. Will it do?”
He considered it. “With rubies? Yes. Certainly the other two are impossible. I’ll leave you to your fittings, ladies. Tomorrow you’ll need to practice maneuvering with court hoops.”
He went to the door. Damaris had to know. She followed him and quietly asked, “Are you going to tell Rothgar?”
His look was somber. “I don’t know.”
After an hour of fitting, Damaris and Genova were set to court practice by Lady Thalia. Endlessly, it seemed, they sank into the deep court curtsy and practiced backing away from the royal presence without tripping over their own skirts.
Damaris had been trained in these things at Thornfield Hall, but that left her time to fret about having to sing and about why Fitz had been commanded to attend.
Lady Thalia soon agreed that Damaris would pass, so she was allowed to leave. She found the music room and settled to vocal exercises. All the same, her mind would not calm.
Was the king’s summoning of Fitz good news or bad?
In a just world the king would be grateful to him, but the world was frequently unfair. She worried he’d be shunned by the court. If the king acknowledged him, however, then it might help. No matter how they felt, people would hesitate to be openly rude.
She emerged from her practice looking forward to a peaceful evening, but discovered that Rothgar had invited a small company for cards, music, and supper.
When she tried to excuse herself, Rothgar insisted she attend. “It will create allies for you. People you’ll meet tomorrow at the drawing room. Allies for you and Fitzroger.”
That persuaded her, so she dressed in finery and joined her first London gathering. Fitzroger was there, dressed in a dusky-blue satin suit that seemed neatly placed between his usual plainness and the glitter all around.
She thought he looked wonderful, but she still wanted to see him in brilliance.
She was introduced to so many people that her head was whirling, but all seemed to be going well when the Duke of Bridgewater was announced. She flashed a look at Rothgar. Coincidence? She doubted it.
Had she misjudged everything? Was he going to pressure her to marry the duke instead of Fitz?
She studied Bridgewater across the room. He seemed amiable, and was dressed appropriately, but as if clothes were unimportant to him. She liked that. He was a little short and slight in build, and she knew he’d once been considered of frail health. Whatever the truth of that, she thought he’d live a long life.
But not with her.
When introduced to him, Damaris curtsied. “I admire what I’ve heard of your canals, your grace.”
His eyes lit. “Yes? It’s going well, you know. Many doubted, but now they see. Soon there’ll be canals all over England, speeding progress, making for pleasant travel. Far better to glide down a canal, Miss Myddleton, than to bump along a road.”
“Wouldn’t it be slow, your grace?”
“Why rush about? Enjoy the journey, I say. I still need money, however. I understand you’re an heiress.”
Damaris almost laughed at this blunt approach, but
she also found his honesty endearing. He was like Dr. Telford on the subject of a promising new treatment— nothing else mattered.
“Are you seeking more investors?” she asked, with a slight emphasis on the last word.
“Always, dear lady, always. But if you’re interested in a closer involvement, I wouldn’t be averse.”
He nodded and moved on. Damaris looked at Fitz and caught him looking at her. He instantly turned his attention back to one of the two overpainted women who sat on either side of him, both with something predatory in the angle of their bodies and the look in their eyes.
Feeling a growl in her throat, Damaris strolled over, wafting her fan and wishing she could hit both harpies with it. Fitz introduced Lady Tresham and Mrs. Fayne, who both had heavily painted faces, perhaps to disguise the fact that thirty was long past.
“What a delight to meet the canal duke,” Damaris said. “So fascinating.”
Lady Tresham raised a bored brow. “He talks of nothing but waterways. That amuses you, Miss Myddleton?”
Fitz excused himself and moved away.
Damaris was glad to have given him a chance to escape.
“A duke is always interesting, don’t you think?” she said.
“Especially an unmarried one,” sneered Mrs. Fayne.
“You know Fitzroger well?” Lady Tresham asked, with pointed surprise. “Such a handsome man, but rather wicked for a mere girl.” Lady Tresham actually licked her scarlet lips. “Wickedness is more fascinating than rank, however, isn’t it, Miss Myddleton?”
“Wickedness?” Damaris asked, pretending ignorance.
“You haven’t been warned?” Mrs. Fayne raised brows that were far too dark to be natural. “Very wicked. Too wicked for innocent ears. Really, it’s astonishing that Rothgar permits Fitzroger to join his company.”
“But a delightful treat for us, Susannah.”
“He’s staying here,” Damaris said, trying not to sound as acidic as she felt. To protect Fitz, she plunged into exaggeration. “The marquess expects great things of him.”
“Then it’s to be hoped Rothgar’s cloak of protection can prevent Leyden from acting on his gruesome threats,” said Mrs. Fayne, shivering theatrically. “Such an unpleasant man.”
“But all a result of his wound,” Lady Tresham reminded her. “Suffered,” she added with a sly look at Damaris, “during a most interesting situation.”
Damaris prayed for an air of worldly ennui. “When he caught Fitzroger in bed with his wife? All the world knows.”
The two women stared.
“Quite,” Lady Tresham said at last. “It makes Fitzroger such delicious forbidden fruit.”
All men other than your husband should be forbidden fruit, Damaris thought, but she kept her smile, seeing an opportunity to create a crack in the disgrace that imprisoned Fitz.
Dared she?
How could she not?
“He must have been very young,” she mused.
Mrs. Fayne let out a piercing laugh. “My dear! You’ve led a sheltered life if you don’t know the wickedness beardless youths are capable of.”
Damaris put on confused naiveté. “I did, actually— lead a sheltered life, ma’am. My father was in the Orient making his fortune, and my mother preferred to live quietly in his absence.” She lowered her voice. “You think it could have happened as portrayed?”
She took the excuse to look at Fitz, which unfortunately showed her the way many were subtly avoiding him. He’d warned her. She’d not entirely believed him. Instead of making her uncertain about her actions, it made them imperative. She was sure these two women were gossips of the first order.
“How else?” Mrs. Fayne asked. “Poor Orinda Fitzroger killed herself for shame not long afterward.”
“But Fitzroger’s brother was much older, so probably twice his size. It all seems so unlikely. But”—she sighed—“as you say, I know little of the world.”
Lady Tresham’s eyes narrowed. “You take great interest, Miss Myddleton.”
Damaris parried. “Fitzroger did me a service, so I would like to think well of him. At a halt at a coaching inn some miscreant tried to attack me. Fitzroger was quick to save me.”
“Doubtless hoping to curry favor. I’m sure you’re too wise, my dear, to be so easily snared.”
“Snared?” Damaris asked with a laugh. “Oh, he’s positively cool to me. But in matters of protection I’m told he can be relied on. He spent years protecting the lives and safety of some of the greatest men of our age, you know.”
Obviously they didn’t. Too late—always too late when the fire burned in her—Damaris wondered if that was secret. Well, it was out of the box now. The two gossips were fixed on her.
“Really?” Mrs. Fayne purred.
“Oh, yes.” In for a penny, in for a guinea, as they said. “Even royalty. You won’t say anything, I know”—the two women leaned closer to her—“but I have the impression that the king intends to reward him tomorrow. Perhaps even with a knighthood. Perhaps one of the lives he saved was His Majesty’s own.”
They were only perhapses, she told herself. She wasn’t directly lying.
“He’s not received at court,” Lady Tresham protested, but she was almost quivering with eagerness to be the first with this news.
Damaris thanked heaven for a piece of firm ground. “I think you’ll find he is. That will prove that old story to be nonsense, won’t it?” She gave them both a bright and, she hoped, guileless smile. “Perhaps his brother invented it all, being somewhat deranged.”
“I do remember,” Mrs. Fayne said, “that Leyden— plain Mr. Fitzroger then—was given to foul rages before the incident.” She raised a quizzing glass and stared at Fitzroger. “He’s never denied it, however.”
Damaris almost said that perhaps no one had asked him, but then one of these women might do it, and he’d confirm every word.
Her only option was risky.
“Then it’s probably true. Even if he was young, it was a terrible sin. But then,” she added, looking between them in confusion, “why does Lord Rothgar show him such favor? Why will the king? I put it to you, dear ladies, for I cannot fathom it.”
“Leyden always was a boor, Susannah,” Lady Tresham said. “With the king’s approval...”
“And Rothgar’s,” Mrs. Fayne concurred.
“He will attend the drawing room tomorrow?” Lady Tresham asked Damaris.
“I believe so,” she said as hesitantly as she could manage, especially with triumphant glee building. “But perhaps I’ve gained the wrong impression. I just heard... But no, I must not spread speculation and gossip. Please excuse me.”
She hurried away as if escaping, fighting a grin.
“What are you up to?”
Fitz had come to her side. Blast him. For them to be seen on good terms would undermine anything she’d achieved.
“Private matters,” she said curtly, and swept past him.
She saw Lady Thalia alone for a moment and joined her.
“Did Bella Tresham and Susannah Fayne distress you, dear? Rothgar must have invited them for their influence—that means they’re gossips—but such a dangerous ploy. They pay no heed to whether they do good or harm in their rush to be the first with the news.”
Damaris hoped so. She’d planted seeds, and if the king did show Fitz some favor at the drawing room, they should blossom into doubt about that old story. She shouldn’t have hinted at a knighthood, however. As usual, she’d rushed to extremes.
“Don’t fret about Fitzroger, dear,” Lady Thalia said. “I’m sure all will be well.”
“But I can see how people avoid him.”
“These things can turn in a moment.”
Either way, Damaris thought.
When the guests left, Damaris went wearily up to bed, but even when she was in her nightgown and Maisie had gone to her own room, a restless energy made it impossible to settle. So many things hung in the balance and would be decided tomorrow.
&
nbsp; She was tempted to go to Ashart’s room to beg him to keep the secret, but she knew that would be disastrous.
She was tempted to go to Fitz, especially after rebuffing him. He might think she’d changed her mind and now favored Bridgewater. She couldn’t do that either. Not here in Malloren House.
She knew which room he had, however.
She’d made sure to find out.
It was only two doors down on the right.
Two doors. Damaris looked that way as if she might see through walls, but she wouldn’t go. She could explain everything in the morning.
Her restless eye saw the stained pouch on a side table; the one with her mother’s letters. She was too agitated to sleep, so she moved a chair and the candelabra and sat to read them, tossing each bitter rant on the fire afterward. What sort of person kept copies of such things? Then she came to a letter that changed everything.
Oh, caitiff! Oh, cruel deceiver. Foul enough to snare me with sweet lies and then abandon me, but you are a deeper dung heap than ever I imagined.
Damaris stared at this opening, hardly able to imagine her cold, tight mother spewing such vitriol. And why? She tried to read quickly to get to the meat, but it was so high-flown and full of invective that she had to go slowly, picking out splinters of fact.
When she had the pieces, the paper fell from her hands. By the stars. So much was explained. So much was changed. And it might affect tomorrow.
She was at the door without thought, and thought didn’t halt her. She had to discuss this with Fitz. And yes, she still wanted to explain. And yes, not to be with him was a physical void almost past bearing.
She’d heard people nearby not long ago, but now the corridor was deserted, the house silent. She didn’t knock at the door for fear that someone else would hear, but opened it and slipped through, quickly closing it again.
Fitz turned, stark naked in the glow of a single candle. He snatched a pillow from the bed and held it in front of himself, which struck her as so funny she had to crush laughter under her hand.
He flung it aside, grabbed his robe, and put it on, but not before she’d seen his magnificent nakedness and a rising erection. He fastened only two buttons before grabbing her and shaking her.
