by Eloisa James
Cam’s jaw tightened. “Gina has written me letter after driveling letter about Bonnington, telling me how much she wishes to marry him. Someone has made a mistake.”
“I have no doubt but that is the truth of it,” Rounton said. “And after you make it clear where your opinion lies, Your Grace, society will follow your lead. You are her husband, after all.”
“Hardly. A few minutes before the altar twelve years ago doesn’t make the title worth much. I dislike even referring to Gina as my wife. She and I are both aware that we are not truly married.”
“I suggest we both travel to East Cliff,” Stephen put in. “I can spare a night or two. You may not know this, Cam, but Parliament isn’t in session until early November.”
“Of course I know that, you ass!”
Stephen shrugged. “Given that you have shown no interest in taking up your seat in the House of Lords…”
A twisted grin crossed Cam’s face. “You may be older, Stephen, but you haven’t changed. You were always the one who understood responsibility. And I was always the one who ran from that same admirable trait,” he continued. “I see no reason to alter my entirely comfortable habits at this point. I have work to do at home.”
“I think you owe it to Gina,” his cousin insisted.
“You don’t understand. I have work to do.”
Stephen eyed him. “Why can’t you make something over here? We have stone and chisels—and beautiful women to serve as models.”
“I’m in the middle of a glorious piece of marble, of the faintest pink. Do you know how much time I’ve already lost, just by traveling here?”
“Does it matter?” Stephen said with the insolence of a politician convinced of his own usefulness in the grand scheme of things.
“Yes, it bloody well does,” Cam snapped. “If I don’t work—well, it’s the only thing that does matter.”
“I saw your Proserpina, the one Sladdington bought from you last year. Quite nice.”
“Oh, yes. That was a bit risqué, wasn’t it? Now I’m working on a Diana. A prudish one. Modeled on Marissa, of course.”
“Of course,” Stephen murmured. “I think you owe it to Gina,” he repeated. “She’s been married to you most of her life. You can’t blame her for kicking up a bit of dust with you out of the country. But once she’s not a duchess anymore, she’s likely to be tossed out of society. I doubt she understands just how brutal the ton will be to an ex-duchess with a damaged reputation.”
Cam’s knife gouged the dart and broke off its tip. “Bloody hell!” He tossed the dart to the floor.
“We’ll go together,” Stephen said. “I’ll find a hunk of marble and you can bring it with you. Make yourself another Proserpina.”
Cam’s mouth quirked. “Do I detect a snide note, cousin? Don’t like Roman goddesses?”
Stephen said nothing.
“Oh, all right,” Cam said. “I’ll desert my Diana. I just hope that Marissa doesn’t gain too much weight while I’m gone. I’ll have to starve her back into a goddess shape.”
“Marissa is his mistress,” Stephen informed Rounton and Finkbottle.
“My muse,” Cam corrected. “Gorgeous woman. At the moment I’m sculpting her as Diana rising from the water.”
Stephen threw him a darkling look.
“Not to worry. I have put some foam around her hips.” He smiled his lopsided, sardonic smile. “Think it’s rubbish, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” his cousin said bluntly. “Because it is rubbish.”
“People like it. A beautiful woman can enliven the garden. I’ll make you one.”
“You don’t respect it yourself,” Stephen said savagely.
“That’s what I dislike the most.”
“You’re wrong there,” Cam replied. He stretched out his hands and looked at them. They were broad and powerful, marked by small scars from the slip of a chisel. “I’m proud of my goddesses. I’ve made quite a lot of money on them.”
“That’s not a good enough reason to keep fashioning naked women,” Stephen snapped.
“Ah, but that’s not the only reason. My talent, such as it is, lies in naked women, Stephen. Not in darts, nor in boats. I can’t really fabricate objects worth a damn. But I can fashion the curve of a woman’s belly so that it would make you uneasy with desire just to see it.”
Stephen raised an eyebrow but held his silence.
Cam shrugged an easy apology to Rounton and Finkbottle. “Please forgive the family squabble, gentlemen. Stephen is our gift to the world, standing up for crippled army veterans and climbing boys—”
“Whereas Cam has made a fortune selling plump naked women fashioned in pink marble to parvenus such as Pendleton Sladdington.”
“Marissa is not plump yet,” Cam observed mildly. Then he reached over and swatted Stephen on the shoulder. “It feels good to argue with you again. I missed you, old moral sobersides that you are.”
Rounton cleared his throat cautiously. “Am I to understand that you will join the earl in a visit to Troubridge Manor, Your Grace?”
Cam nodded. “I just remembered that I have a gift for Gina, sent from her mother’s estate. I’ll deliver it in person…if Stephen arranges for a one-foot-cube of marble to be delivered within a day of my arrival.”
“If you fashion it into something other than a female body,” Stephen snapped back.
“A challenge!” Cam said gleefully.
“No less,” his cousin retorted. “I doubt you know how to model anything but life-size female torsos.”
“I can hardly make a life-size torso out of a block that size. But promise me you’ll display whatever I make in your house and you’re on,” said Cam.
“Done.”
Rounton sighed inwardly. Now he had to depend on the duchess’s beauty to win her husband’s heart. It was the best he could do, to throw them together for a brief period and let nature take its course. The young duchess was famed for the vivid beauty of her red hair and green eyes; Rounton returned to London, offering a brief prayer to the gods that Girton would find himself unable to resist her hair, if nothing else.
Stephen stayed on at the Queen’s Smile with his cousin. He sent Cam’s man back to London to fetch his own valet, some luggage and one-foot block of marble. It felt oddly comfortable to be sitting in an inn in the back of beyond, drinking brandy and amiably quarreling with his only living relative.
Tuppy Perwinkle joined them as evening wore on. Apparently, the cartwright would not be able to fix his gig’s axle until the following day.
“How do you do, sir?” he asked, shaking hands with Stephen.
Stephen immediately warmed to the man’s blue eyes. “Very well,” he replied. “Are you a resident of these parts?”
“Leave him alone, Stephen,” Cam said, looking up from his fifth attempt at making a dart. “Tuppy’s house is in Kent, so he’s out of your bailiwick. No votes there.”
Stephen’s mouth tightened. “It was merely a polite question,” he snapped. Seeing that Tuppy’s eyebrow was raised, he explained, “I’m the MP from Oxfordshire.”
Tuppy nodded. “Congratulations.”
Stephen bowed slightly and turned to his cousin. “How on earth did you find out that I’d made it into the House, then? Don’t tell me the London Times makes its way over to Greece!”
“Actually, it does. Not that there’s much of interest to read in it,” Cam said. “I heard from Gina, of course. She’s written me about your campaign. I even got you a vote.”
Stephen looked deeply skeptical.
“I did!” Cam protested. “Some old fussbudget named Peter Parkinson ended up at my table. He was from Oxford and he solemnly promised to vote for you.”
“Thank you. Are you getting many Englishmen over there?”
“More and more,” Cam replied. “Come out of curiosity, I suppose. You don’t even have to pay tuppence to see the cracked English duke. What’s more, you can take a statue home to plant in your garden, if you have the
money. I charge absurd amounts these days.”
Stephen snorted. “Using your title to get yourself sales?”
“Absolutely. It’s useless in every other respect. Only good for handing on to a son, and I’ve got no wish to acquire one.”
“You might well marry once you get this annulment out of the way,” Stephen pointed out.
“Not bloody likely,” Cam grunted. But when he said nothing further, Stephen changed the subject.
“What are you doing in these parts, Lord Perwinkle?” he asked.
“On my way to visit my aunt. She’s a funny old thing, and she always has a house party around now. Wants me to come and show myself as the heir, even though I don’t live up to her expectations.” He grinned faintly. “She’ll shriek herself blue in the face when she sees these clothes, unless my man discovers where I am. He was following with my luggage.”
“What the devil’s the matter with your clothes?” Cam asked.
Tuppy laughed. “Nothing that’s not wrong with yours.”
Cam wore a shirt of white linen tucked into gray trousers. Neither article of clothing was in the first fashion, nor were they new; instead, they were comfortable and extremely clean.
“Who’s your aunt?” Stephen asked.
“Lady Troubridge of East Cliff.”
“We’ll take you up with us tomorrow, if your gig isn’t repaired. That’s the house party where you’ll find your wife, Cam.”
He grunted and didn’t look up from his dart.
Tuppy’s mouth quirked. “We’ll both be seeing our wives, then.”
At that, Cam did look up. “I thought you lost yours.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t see her now and again. Generally only at this house party. I can’t miss it since my aunt threatens to disinherit me. I spend most of my time fishing. My aunt has a decent trout stream.”
“So what’s the house party like, then?” Cam was still whittling away.
“A nuisance. My aunt fancies herself something of a literary hostess. There’s a load of bad poets and dissolute actors wandering about. Gawky girls, being polished up for their debuts. And my wife’s set, of course. They’re usually there as well.”
At Stephen’s raised eyebrow, he went on. “Young and married, bored to death with their own lives and their own skins, rich enough to flaunt convention and discontented enough to do it.”
Cam looked up. “My duchess?”
Tuppy’s smile was rueful. “Quite so, Your Grace. I believe she is one of my wife’s closest friends.”
“Don’t call me that,” Cam said impatiently. “I can’t stand all that folderol. Call me Cam, if you please. Why didn’t you tell me yesterday that our wives were friends?”
“I didn’t think it was particularly relevant,” he replied, surprised.
“Gina always was a devilish little thing. Remember when she followed us fishing, Stephen?” Cam turned to Tuppy.
“We wouldn’t take her with us because she was a girl, so she snuck after us and while we were fishing she stole our lunch.”
Stephen gave a snort of laughter. “I’d forgotten that.”
“What’d she do? Throw your food away?” Tuppy asked.
“No, that would be too simple. We’d told her that she couldn’t come with us because girls can’t handle worms without screaming. So she opened up every pasty and every tart and carefully packed worms inbetween the layers. Cozily lined the basket with worms as well.”
“Once we got over the shock,” Stephen chimed in, “it was fabulous. We had no lunch, but we had enough worms for a week’s worth of fishing.”
Cam grinned. “We took her along the next day, of course.”
“She got more fish than either of us.”
“Now I think about it,” Cam said thoughtfully, “it makes absolute sense that Gina would be in a wild set.”
“As far as I can tell, she and her friends don’t do anything but make scandals,” Tuppy said. “Sometimes I think my wife left me merely because it was considered tedious to live with one’s husband.”
Stephen looked curious. “That is a remarkably frivolous reason to desert the marital bond,” he commented. Tuppy shrugged. “None of them have husbands about. Your wife”—he nodded at Cam—“has you, and you live abroad. Esme Rawlings has a husband but they haven’t shared a house in ages. Mind you, he makes no secret of his love affairs. And the last is Lady Godwin.”
“Oh,” Stephen said. “That would be Rees Holland’s wife, correct?”
“He has brought an opera singer to live in his house in Mayfair,” Tuppy put in. “Or so they say.”
Stephen frowned.
“So they are all husbandless and free to do as they wish,” Cam said thoughtfully.
Silence fell over the group, broken only by the gentle slide of Cam’s knife up and down the dart.
4
Domestic Pleasures
Troubridge Manor, East Cliff
Emily Troubridge was a woman who considered herself lucky indeed.
About twenty years previous she had had the good fortune to attract a man whose chief characteristics were years and holdings on the ’Change. In both areas, his possessions were enormous. In fact, as her second cousin had whispered to her on the morning of her marriage, her husband was twice as wrinkled as Methuselah and richer than Midas.
Not that hers was an enforced marriage. After Troubridge had declared himself captivated by the young Miss Emily, who paired docility with likely fertility, Emily’s mother had not scrupled to point out the advantages of the match. Troubridge was old; ergo, he would not trouble her for long. He was rich; ergo, she would have a maid in country and a maid in the town, and more drunken footmen than she knew what to do with.
And sure enough, Lord Troubridge quickly went the way of all flesh. Somewhat to Emily’s relief, he suffered a heart spasm after only two months of marital bliss. The funeral was followed by a rather apprehensive fortnight, during which everyone waited to find out whether her presumed fertility was up to task, but after that possibility had been cleared away Lady Troubridge settled down happily to spend as much of her yearly income as was humanly possible.
Early on she flirted with the idea of remarriage, but quickly realized that she had no interest in a long-term bed partner. Nor, more to the point, did she want a male to hold her purse strings. So she summoned her husband’s heir, Lord Peregrine Perwinkle, also known as Tuppy, assured him that she would never marry, and proceeded to spend every penny of her dear, dear husband’s money that wasn’t entailed.
In the next few years, Emily Troubridge grew into a woman whom her ancient husband would not have recognized. She adopted an air of authority and command. Her dress took on an eccentric sense of fashion only successful among those who were either very beautiful or (as in Emily’s case) who paid obscene amounts of money to their modiste. Her face was pale and too long, but it daily became lovely through an exertion of its mistress’s strong will combined with her maid’s gift for cosmetic application.
With the passing of time, Lady Troubridge’s parties—especially those held in the tedious summer months after the close of season and before the return of Parliament—became well known. In fact, invitations were fairly lusted after, given that her gatherings spanned the scandalous and the marriageable. Those seeking to marry and those seeking to undo a marriage could find themselves equally entertained, and since Lady Troubridge had decidedly advanced opinions on horticulture, she dotted the landscape with small Greek temples and circular conservatories, ensuring privacy enough to achieve whatever goal one might wish to advance.
Young men flocked to hunt Troubridge’s grouse-rich forests, and to flirt with unprincipled young matrons. Where unmarried men went, there went matchmaking mamas, daughters trotting at their sides like beribboned spaniels.
As well as the cream of the ton, Lady Troubridge always invited a bevy of performers, musicians, painters, and artists, who attended in the hopes of gaining a patron, and with the certitude tha
t they could live high on the hog for a matter of a month.
Of course, the presence of those with artistic temperaments did not make things easy for Lady Troubridge. But, as she told her friend Mrs. Austerleigh, artists were hardly more trouble than lovers. And lovers she had plenty of, this summer at least.
“For there’s Miles Rawlings and Lady Randolph Childe,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “And I believe Rawlings’s wife is setting up Bernie Burdett as her latest flirt, although how she can stand his company, I simply can’t say!”
“Well, I can,” Mrs. Austerleigh said. “He’s terribly beautiful, you know, and Esme Rawlings is partial to beauty.”
Lady Troubridge had no such weaknesses. She merely snorted and continued. “Sir Rushwood hemmed and hawed and finally informed me yesterday that he would like to be housed on the same floor as Mrs. Boylen.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Austerleigh tittered. “Dear me, I remember when she married Boylen. She rushed all over London declaring that there was no lady happier than she.”
“I don’t suppose she knew about his fancy bird then, did she? All those children of his—five or six, isn’t it?—must have been a terrible shock for the poor girl.
“And there’s the dear duchess, of course,” Lady Troubridge continued.
But Mrs. Austerleigh broke in. “The Duchess of Girton? Just who do you consider her lover? Or should I say, which one?”
“Marquess Bonnington, of course, my dear. You don’t believe that taradiddle about the tutor, do you?”
“I don’t see why not. Willoughby Broke was quite adamant that he saw the duchess and her tutor in the conservatory in the wee hours of the morning.”
“She says they were watching a meteor shower.”
“Scandalous, that’s what it is,” Mrs. Austerleigh remarked, wondering if the haddock served at breakfast could have been off. Her stomach was taking a nasty turn.
“The duchess is no more disreputable than Mrs. Boylen.”
“Yes indeed she is. Mrs. Boylen is discreet. But the duchess was seen with the man at night—and he is a servant!” It was hard to shock Mrs. Austerleigh, but she looked genuinely shocked at that.
