Pink Carnation 05 - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

by Willig, Lauren

  “Don’t be silly,” said Henrietta. “That would be kings, not dukes, and we don’t have any of those here.”

  “Just jacks,” put in Penelope, her lip curling as her gaze made the circuit of the men scattered about the room. Neither Charlotte nor Henrietta was under any doubt as to what she meant. The jack was also commonly known as the knave. “We have plenty of those.”

  “Well, Martin Frobisher, surely,” said Henrietta, surveying the assemblage. Charlotte would never forget the memorable occasion where Martin Frobisher had attempted to make an improper suggestion to Henrietta and been rewarded with a sticky stream of ratafia all down the front of his new jacket. He had never tried that again. At least, not with Henrietta. “And Lord Henry Innes. They’re as thick as thieves. And I’ve heard all sorts of stories about Sir Francis Medmenham, but other than that . . .”

  “Don’t forget our duke,” added Penelope.

  Charlotte didn’t like the way Penelope’s lip curled as she said it. “Robert isn’t like them.”

  “No?”

  “No,” said Charlotte vehemently. It was one thing for Penelope to put on worldly airs, but quite another for her to insinuate untruths about someone she barely knew. Penelope didn’t know him; she did.

  “He hasn’t been back in the country long enough to do anything appalling. Has he?” asked Henrietta with interest. “Unless you heard something about his time in India.”

  Penelope nodded in the direction of Sir Francis Medmenham. “Just look at the company he keeps.”

  “What other company is he meant to keep?” argued Charlotte, as much for herself as for Penelope. “They’re the only ones here.”

  Penelope just shrugged. It was amazing how much innuendo Penelope could pack into one small shrug.

  Charlotte’s chin lifted stubbornly. “I don’t see why you need to be so cynical about everyone. Especially about Robert.”

  “Dear Charlotte. Dear, innocent Charlotte,” said Penelope condescendingly, “if you had been out on as many balconies as I have, you would be a cynic, too.”

  “Well, who told you to go out on all those balconies?” said Henrietta tartly. “That’s just asking for trouble.”

  “But I do it so well.” Stretching sinuously, Penelope rose from her chair. “Speaking of which, I promised Lord Freddy a dance. You’ll have to carry on the duke-hunting without me.”

  With a backwards twitch of her reticule in farewell, she turned her back on her friends and began to move away. Henrietta exchanged an alarmed look with Charlotte behind her back.

  “Pen?” Henrietta called.

  Penelope stopped where she was and angled her head over her shoulder, her very stance a challenge. For all her bravado, she looked very alone and strangely vulnerable as she looked back at Henrietta.

  Henrietta forced out a smile. “No balconies.”

  Penelope’s habitual mask of indifference clamped down over her features. “It’s too cold for balconies. Alcoves, on the other hand . . .”

  “Are an equally bad idea,” finished Henrietta, but Penelope was no longer there to hear her.

  “Blast,” said Henrietta.

  Charlotte squeezed Henrietta’s arm. “She will come around, you know. In time.”

  “I know,” said Henrietta, but she didn’t sound as though she meant it, and there was an unhappy expression on her face as she watched Penelope swagger across the ballroom.

  Charlotte could feel the mirror of it on her own face. It hurt her to see Penelope hurting so, and to know there was nothing she could do about it. It wasn’t as though she could fill Henrietta’s place for Penelope. As much as she knew Penelope did care for her, and as fiercely as Penelope would defend her if anyone were ever to threaten her, they had never quite spoken the same language. It was Henrietta to whom Penelope had always turned, Henrietta who knew how to jolly Penelope out of her bad moods, and persuade her out of her more ridiculous schemes. But Henrietta, as Penelope saw it, had chosen Miles over her and that was the end of that.

  “It’s just that she doesn’t like change,” Charlotte tried to explain, knowing how inadequate her efforts were.

  Henrietta twisted indignantly in her chair. “But I haven’t changed.”

  She might not have, but her situation had, and for Penelope, that was much the same thing.

  Since there was nothing else Charlotte could say, she did the only thing she could do. She squeezed Henrietta’s hand. “She will come around.”

  Henrietta made a moue of annoyance indicative of extreme dissatisfaction. Shaking her thick brown hair like a horse swatting off flies, she twisted around in her chair, scanning the ballroom. “Enough of this. Where’s your duke?”

  Charlotte’s duke (although he would have been very surprised to hear himself referred to as such) was busy trying to look like a bored man of the world.

  At least part of that was accurate. He was certainly bored. Standing around ballrooms evaluating the charms of the ladies and criticizing other gentlemen’s cravats had a very limited appeal. The card room appealed even less. Robert had never really seen the point of wagering one’s wages on the turn of a card. Perhaps that was because, for him, they had been wages. He had earned them. These bored young bucks of the ton, with their allowances and their constant excursions into what they called “dun territory,” were a complete mystery to him, as exotic as the elaborate multiarmed goddesses in the Indians’ temples.

  After ten days of attempting to win their confidence, Robert was developing an extreme allergy to idleness. His enforced inactivity itched like a rash. Give him a river to be crossed, an enemy to be run through, even a ledger to be balanced, something simple and straightforward that one could do and get done, as opposed to this prolonged game of tricking confidences out of the unwary. Tommy had been no help; he was too busy yearning after Miss Deveraux. Without his cousin’s company over the past ten days, he probably would have run screaming out into the gardens of Girdings. Only his walks and conversations with Charlotte had provided a modicum of distraction from the distasteful exercise in amateur espionage.

  It was, he realized, not unlike the roles they had played twelve years before, when dancing attendance on his shy little cousin had provided a welcome escape from the sordid arguments between their elders.

  But they weren’t children anymore. And he wasn’t the only one to have taken notice of Charlotte.

  Next to him, Medmenham trained his quizzing glass on the small figure in silvery green silk. “The little Lansdowne is in excellent looks tonight.”

  Given that Medmenham had assessed all of the women in the room—most of them unfavorably—at some point in the evening, the remark should not have filled Robert with the fervent desire to pluck the quizzing glass out of his hand and stomp it to smithereens under his heel. But, then, none of those other women was his responsibility.

  His very innocent, very defenseless responsibility, who was indeed wearing a very becoming dress.

  Her hair had been pulled back from her face in a series of curls that seemed more golden than usual against the silvery green of her dress, making her look like an earthbound Christmas angel. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright as she carried on an animated conversation with her recently arrived friend.

  As Robert watched, Charlotte’s friend said something that made Charlotte look up. Catching his eye, she cast him a slightly sheepish smile and quickly looked away again, her cheeks even pinker than before.

  “Yes, she is,” Robert said shortly.

  Medmenham’s glass remained trained on Charlotte. “Well dowered, I suppose?”

  Robert had no idea. “Naturally.”

  Medmenham let his quizzing glass dangle from one finger. It swung slowly to and fro, light glinting off its surface. “Excellent,” he said.

  Robert forced his hands to unclench, finger by stiff finger. “I hadn’t realized you were in search of a wife, Medmenham.”

  From society’s standpoint Medmenham was everything that could be desired
in a husband. He had five thousand pounds a year, a baronetcy, and at least three properties of which Robert knew: the infamous Medmenham Abbey, a hunting box in Melton Mowbray, and a sugar plantation in the West Indies. He was young, personable, and undeniably clever. Charlotte needed someone clever, or at least someone who could understand her vocabulary, a requirement that ruled out a good three quarters of the ton. It wouldn’t be a brilliant match for a duke’s daughter, but it would be a respectable one.

  At least, it would be, if Medmenham were the least bit respectable. Somehow, Robert just couldn’t see marrying off his only cousin to an amateur diabolist, no matter how many sugar plantations he owned.

  Being the head of the family was far more complicated than he had realized.

  Medmenhem regarded him with the casual scorn he reserved for his closer acquaintances. “You really have been out of the country too long. Why do you think we were all dragged out here? It’s not for the rural amusements, that’s for certain.” The way Medmenham’s glass dipped towards a country-bred squire’s daughter made it quite clear just which rural amusements he was referring to. “The Dowager has been trying to market the little Lansdowne for years now.”

  “I hadn’t realized that’s what they were calling it now.”

  “We, my dear Dovedale, are men of the world. Why call a spade anything but what it is?”

  “Because by another name it might smell sweeter,” countered Robert.

  Medmenham pursed his lips, an expression that made him look disconcertingly like Charles II, only without the long wig.

  “An interesting point. Our senses are so often led by our expectations. Take the red-haired chit over there.” His glass angled towards Miss Deveraux, who was dancing down the line with Lord Frederick Staines. “Her features are commonplace enough, but she has flash and flair. We expect beauty from her and therefore we find it.”

  Robert didn’t, but if Medmenham chose to redirect his attentions to Charlotte’s friend, that was perfectly all right with him. From what he’d seen of Miss Deveraux, she could take care of herself. She already had poor Tommy on a very short string, following along after her looking like a whipped dog hoping to be tossed a treat. Personally, Robert didn’t see the attraction.

  “And then there’s the little Lansdowne. When you look at her closely,” said Medmenham, suiting actions to words, “she’s not an unattractive thing. But she lacks élan. And there is that unfortunate grandmother of hers.”

  “The Duchess comes as part of the deal,” said Robert quickly. If anything could kill passion, it was the thought of the Duchess lurking behind the bridal bed.

  Medmenham brushed the Duchess aside. “She must be eighty, if she’s a day. I give her another five years, at most.”

  Robert forced out an incredulous laugh. “The Dowager Duchess? She’ll outlive us all, and kick the Devil in the shins when he comes to fetch her.” With feigned nonchalance, he raised an eyebrow at his companion. “Besides, wouldn’t marriage rather put a damper on your subterranean bacchanals?”

  Medmenham looked at him with genuine surprise. “I don’t see why. Fidelity is too, too crushingly bourgeois.”

  If that was the case, then Robert was a bourgeois at heart. His father’s amorous adventures had brought him no happiness; only an empty purse, an emptier hearth, and a whopping case of the French pox. “Infidelity doesn’t seem to quite do the range of your activities justice. What does one call philandering on an epic scale?”

  Medmenham raised his quizzing glass, turning it slowly in the light so that it winked like the star the wise men followed to Bethlehem. “Divinity.”

  “I’ll vouch for that once I’ve met some of your divinities,” retorted Robert. “From my experience, fallen women tend to be more earthy than divine.”

  “It depends on how one defines the divine. Some of the pagan goddesses were notoriously earthy jades. Venus herself was a tired old tart.”

  “Is it Venus you worship, then?” The last time Robert had looked, the attribute of the goddess had been a dove, not a lotus.

  Medmenham smiled blandly. “We are ecumenical in our devotions. And in our appetites.”

  Robert bit down on a sharp retort as Medmenham’s gaze once again strayed towards Charlotte. To show irritation would be a fatal mistake; Medmenham controlled his followers by probing at their weaknesses.

  Instead, Robert assumed an aggrieved expression. “Damnation. Duty calls. I promised this set to my cousin.”

  Medmenham raised one well-groomed eyebrow. “And you mustn’t disappoint her.”

  Robert pulled a wry face. “I mustn’t disappoint her grandmother. If the Dowager doesn’t come after me, her little dog will.”

  As he had learned during his brief stay at Girdings, all the young blades of the ton went in mortal terror of the Dowager’s little yipping dog, which she employed to great effect among their ranks, like a capricious goddess unleashing plagues for her own amusement. It was said her dog could shred a new pair of pantaloons in about three seconds flat.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Medmenham . . .”

  Medmenham’s eyes glinted with his usual diabolical amusement as he waved a languid quizzing glass.

  “Carry on, old chap, carry on. I’ll be here. Waiting my turn.”

  Chapter Five

  We went to the local pub for dinner. In the interval since my last relationship, I had forgotten that strange alchemy by which moonlight and roses turn into dropped socks and empty take-away cartons. Not that I was complaining, mind you. I liked take-away. I also liked pubs. Besides, how much more English could you get than ye olde country pub with ye not so olde local landowner? It was the sort of thing impressionable Anglophiles dream about. Admittedly, when I’d dreamt about it in the past, ye olde landowner had been looking a lot like Colin Firth and had been wearing knee breeches, but I had no complaints to make.

  I had had more than my fair share of living in the past that afternoon as I read through Charlotte’s letters to Henrietta from Girdings. Henrietta’s arrival at Girdings had entailed a predictable gap in the correspondence, but I had been sufficiently caught up in the story by then to dig around in the wainscoting like a research-minded mouse until I found Henrietta’s journals.

  As Colin maneuvered the Range Rover along a twisty country lane, I asked something that had been puzzling me all day: “How come all of Henrietta’s papers are here, instead of at Loring House?”

  “Probably,” said Colin, expertly navigating around a rut, “because that line died out. No male heirs. One of Henrietta’s great-granddaughters married back into the Selwick side.” He frowned at the windshield. “Great-great-granddaughter?”

  I did some hasty mental math. If a generation is generally considered to be about thirty-five years . . . “So that would be your grandmother?”

  “Great-grandmother,” he corrected, braking briefly to avoid hitting a wayward rabbit.

  “So you’re descended from Miles!” I exclaimed delightedly.

  Colin was less excited than I was. “And monkeys, too, if you go back far enough.”

  “I could tell that,” I said, with an exaggerated eye roll. “It’s just . . . It’s a bit like finding out that the characters in one of your favorite books are actually real.”

  “Eloise, I hate to tell you this, but they were real. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  “I know. But . . .”

  It was hard to explain. As a historian, I found myself all too often treating my historical subjects like fictional characters, malleable entities that could be made to do one thing or another, whose motivations could be speculated upon endlessly, and whose missing actions could be reconstructed and approximated based on assessments of prior and later behaviors. It was one of the hazards of working with a fragmentary source base. You had little scraps, like puzzle pieces, and you put them together as best you could. But no matter how faithful you tried to be to the historical record, there would always be that element of guesswork, of imagination, of (
if we’re being totally honest) fiction.

  “They lived and loved and died,” said Colin briskly, competently swinging the car onto a road that was mercifully paved. My posterior thanked him. Dirt roads might be picturesque, but they were hard on the backside. “They lost money, they died in wars, they suffered broken hearts. It isn’t all trumpets and glory.”

  “I know, I know.” Although I sincerely doubted that Charlotte was heading for a broken heart. Her romance with the Duke of Dovedale was shaping up as prettily as a novel by Georgette Heyer. I wondered if he would propose on Twelfth Night? True, it was all very fast, but when you know, you know. I had a good feeling about them. So did Henrietta, which is probably why I did. That’s another pitfall for the historian, falling prey to the prejudices of our sources. “I think that’s why one sees more happily ever afters in fiction than in biographies. It’s not that the two trajectories are necessarily so different, but in fiction you can take the moment when everyone is happy and just clip off the thread of the narrative there, right at that trumpets and glory moment.”

  “Even in fiction, isn’t it more interesting when you look at the whole picture, with the bad as well as the good?” argued Colin. “I’d rather know the whole story, even if it ends on a low note.”

  “Warts and all?” I said, quoting the famous phrase about Cromwell. “Perhaps. It may be more interesting. But sometimes it’s less satisfying.”

  Every now and then, you just need to believe that everything can be frozen in that one moment where everything is going right.

  Like right now. Part of me would have given anything to freeze us as we were at that moment, before the blush could wear off the relationship. It might become something better as it went on, if we made it past the intermediary stages where mundanities take the place of philosophical discussions and shaving no longer seems quite such a necessity, but it would never again be what it was then, new and shiny and perfect.

  I didn’t say that, though. What I did say was, “Oooh, is that the pub?”

  My stomach grumbled, as if seconding my question.