Minerva had finally called in reinforcements (i.e. the housekeeper), and one glimpse of Mrs. Chips’s twitching left eyebrow and thinned lips was enough to cow both men into standing down. Once Pymm had grudgingly agreed not to burn his banyans, the viscount had even submitted to visiting the tailor with his new manservant. He’d looked as if he’d rather have all his teeth pulled out at once, but Minerva called it progress.
Needless to say, the twins did not get their lessons done that day, but Minerva didn’t begrudge them the time with their father, even if he were acting like a five-year-old. She’d not seen the twins happier, and twins who were happy were twins who didn’t put toads under her pillow (really, where did they find such an endless supply of amphibians in London?) or hide all of their mathematics lessons. Or steal her pantaloons. She still had no idea what they’d done with the things.
Minerva herself couldn’t say she minded the viscount’s frequent visits either. She thought Marlowe’s reasons for lurking about the nursery had less to do with dodging Pymm’s brushes and cravat pins and more to do with being in her company, not just the twins’. Just like Lady Elizabeth, he seemed intent on pursuing a friendship with Minerva in his own awkward way, which usually involved running circles around her in their conversations until she wanted to bite off his head (that is, behaving as he always had since the day he’d pulled her out of the ditch).
Minerva wasn’t sure how she felt about this development in their relationship. But though he was still perhaps the most aggravating man she’d ever met, she’d come to a conclusion over the past few weeks that was as unexpected as it was in retrospect completely obvious: Lord Marlowe was a good man masquerading in wolf’s clothing.
Or rather, vagrant’s clothing, though Pymm’s elegant hand was starting to show, as the viscount had begun to venture out into the world in nankeens that actually fit those long, rangy legs of his. After that initial triumph, smart cutaway jackets molded to the viscount’s broad shoulders and newly trim waistline began to appear, followed by snowy-white, cleverly tied cravats that could have rivaled Brummell’s in his heyday.
However, Pymm had still not broken the viscount of the habit of lounging around in his Chinese silk banyans and bare feet on the days he didn’t leave the house. Minerva doubted Pymm ever would. Or that she even wanted him to. She was growing rather fond of the viscount’s idiosyncrasies—either that, or she’d been steadily losing her mind over the past two months without realizing it.
That could very well have been the case, especially when she woke up one morning to the twins piled on top of her and one of Lady Elizabeth’s naughty stories (which she’d not been able to resist after all, any more than the second floor of the library) plastered to her cheek, and came to the stunning conclusion that she didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.
Oh, God, she was actually happy. Which made it even more likely she’d gone insane.
But then the duchess came to visit.
It was Minerva’s sacred day off (for though she’d truly grown to love the twins, she frankly needed her one day a week to recover from their antics), and she had every intention of hiding in Lackington’s Temple for the afternoon, browsing the new books. She had only made it as far as halfway out the back servants’ entrance, however, when she felt someone catch the door behind her and swing it wide.
She feared for a moment that it was the twins, for they’d developed an uncanny ability to know just when she was leaving the house on her day off—and an even more uncanny knack for manipulating her into staying with them instead.
It was, thankfully, just Mrs. Chips. Minerva had become fluent enough in the housekeeper’s cryptic body language, however, to know that twitch in her left eye meant trouble. And it was twitching particularly fast today.
“You can’t leave,” Mrs. Chips said without preamble. “The duchess has come calling with the Countess of Brinderley.”
“The duchess?” she prompted, since Mrs. Chips seemed to assume she knew what that should mean and why it should cut short her day off.
“The Duchess of Montford.”
Mrs. Chips’s tone was as flat as ever, but the name was enough for even Minerva to understand. The memory of Lady Blundersmith’s dead weight tackling her to the ballroom floor of Montford House swam through her mind, followed by the memory of the flame-haired duchess standing off to one side and loudly ordering everyone around with far too much glee for someone whose husband had just swooned into the refreshments. Trouble indeed.
“Ah,” she said diplomatically.
“She has brought her sisters.”
She had a sudden, horrifying vision of her standing in the ruins of a smoldering house while four cackling imps danced around her.
She stepped back into the house, abandoning her plans for the day. “What would possess her to do that?”
“I believe His Grace is out of town,” Mrs. Chips said, as if that explained everything.
“And?”
Mrs. Chips’s eye twitched even faster, which was answer enough. It seemed a bored duchess, the Honeywell sisters, and Lady Brinderley rated higher on the alarm scale than the twins playing lawn tennis in the drawing room. Which they’d done last week. On her last day off.
Speaking of which . . .
“My day off . . .”
“Will have to wait. The children are in the garden. I must . . . see to tea for the duchess and countess.”
Mrs. Chips would have stared down to the death anyone who had the nerve to accuse her of skulking, but that was exactly what she did, abandoning Minerva in the servants’ hall for the sanctum of the kitchens.
Something told Minerva that Mrs. Chips had made up that last bit in order to avoid the chaos sure to be in progress in the garden.
Minerva sighed as she shrugged out of her redingote and bonnet, tucking her gloves into a pocket and stowing the whole bundle away for later retrieval. If the stalwart Mrs. Chips was afraid of the duchess’s sisters, then perhaps what the viscount had told her about the Honeywells inciting the twins to arson last winter had been true.
Whatever the case, the four children together boded very ill indeed, though surely the few minutes it had been since their arrival could have hardly been enough time for them to cause too much trouble.
When she reached the back gardens and discovered the fate of her lost pantaloons, however, she realized just how wrong she was.
FIVE MINUTES EARLIER, IN THE VISCOUNT’S LIBRARY . . .
JUST WHEN MARLOWE thought his life could not possibly get any more ridiculous, the Duchess of Montford and his sister—the meddling older one with a nursery nearly the size of a Roman legion, not the Misstopher currently tucked up in her bedroom—decided to pay a call on him just as he was sitting down at his desk to write one morning. He had vague memories of the pair visiting when he was on his sickbed, but he’d successfully avoided them ever since. He should have known his luck would run out.
The first time Marlowe had met the Duchess of Montford, she was in the middle of the King’s Highway having her way with the duke—an image he very much wished he could excise from his brainbox. Very little had changed in that respect over the last five years besides the location: Astrid led Montford around by his nose, and for some inexplicable reason, Montford adored her for it.
Usually Marlowe was happy to let his friend enjoy the dubious rewards of wedded bliss, for he’d never seen Montford happier. But he secretly dreaded it whenever the duke traveled out of the city on estate business and left his wife behind. For an idle duchess was a social duchess, and a social duchess schemed with certain marchionesses and countesses to “improve” the lives of their husbands’ unmarried acquaintances.
The only low she’d yet to stoop to was outright matchmaking, but Marlowe knew it was only a matter of time, for the insinuations had already begun.
He cursed himself anew for making the disastrous mistake of introducing Astrid to his older sister. Then he cursed Sebastian for getting himself married of
f, for now the full brunt of Elaine’s and the duchess’s attention had landed on him. How they could think Marlowe was even remotely adequate husband material was quite beyond him. Elaine herself had witnessed his spectacular failure the first time around.
Then again, the two women’s judgment on the subject of men was questionable at best. Astrid had married Montford, after all, a man who to this day indexed his stockings by a complicated algorithm of fabric weight, color, and age, and still fainted like a maiden at the sight of blood.
And Elaine had married Brinderley. Who indexed his coin collection.
Their standards were skewed, to say the least. Marlowe had been hoping his drunken blunder into the Thames would have been enough to scare them off the hunt, but he should have known better.
“I have brought Ant and Art to see the twins,” the duchess declared as she breezed into his library unannounced, his sister, eight months gone, waddling in behind her. Mrs. Chips was on their heels, her left eye quivering. Even she hadn’t stood a chance guarding the gates against the two women. “I told them to play in the gardens so we can have a nice little chat.”
Marlowe’s wide-eyed look of panic was enough to send Mrs. Chips straight back through the door, hopefully in time to intercede before the Honeywell chits reenacted the Great Fire with the twins. Again.
“Elaine, Astrid,” he muttered in greeting, reluctantly rising to his feet to receive a kiss on each cheek . . . and a hard punch to each shoulder.
He rubbed at the injuries. “What was that for?”
“Worrying us to death for running off to Kent when you were still so unwell,” his sister sniffed.
“That was two months ago!”
“I would have come over here sooner to clout you,” Astrid said, “but I was giving birth. This is the first chance I’ve had to give you a proper scolding.”
“And I’ve been dreadfully sick with this one,” Elaine said, patting her round stomach.
He got that nauseated feeling every time he came too close to thinking about how his sister and the spindly, myopic Brinderley had made—and continued to make—all of those babies.
Astrid eyed him up and down approvingly. “I must say, though, being on your deathbed has improved your waistline, if nothing else.”
His hands shot to his midsection defensively, cradling it much like Elaine was cradling hers, and he scowled at her. “I have given up Honeywell Ale. Something in it was disagreeing with me,” he said loftily. Ha, that ought to stick in her craw. Astrid’s family had proudly brewed the ale for centuries, and any slight upon it was a slight upon the Honeywell name—something that never failed to get the duchess’s blood up.
Astrid scowled back at him. “Just for that, you shall not get your shipment of reserve this autumn.”
Damn. He’d made the decision to reform his profligate ways, not consign himself to a completely joyless existence. And that was exactly what his life would be in a world without Honeywell Reserve. But he figured he had half a year to get back into Astrid’s good graces.
In the meanwhile, he refused to let the woman run roughshod over him in his own house. Much.
“When does the duke return?” he asked, much too idly.
Her eyes narrowed. “Soon.”
“Thank God.”
“Humph. In his absence, I thought it best I check in on his best mate. I have heard you’ve acquired a new governess,” she said, much too innocently.
Every instinct he had told him to duck and cover. He had a feeling she wasn’t there to matchmake him after all, but something far, far worse. “You can’t have her,” he declared preemptively.
The duchess gave him an enigmatic smile that he didn’t like at all. “She has been here two months, I hear. And she’s still alive. Who is this miracle worker?”
“The twins are fond of Miss Jones, and I won’t have you poaching her to corral those two hellcats of yours.” He turned to his sister. “And you can’t have her either. She’d waste away running after your horde.”
Elaine lowered herself gingerly into a chair and waved her hand dismissively at the subject. “I have no need of your governess. But where is our sister, Marlowe? She has been avoiding me ever since she arrived in London.”
“She’s sixteen, Elaine, and it’s ten in the morning. Far too early for anyone to be paying or receiving calls,” he said, glancing pointedly at both of his unwanted guests. “We’ll be lucky to see her before the afternoon.”
Elaine ignored his hint entirely. “Father has already written me several outraged letters on the subject of Betsy.”
“He’s trying to marry her off to Poxley Oxley, Elaine.”
“Well, we cannot have that,” Elaine said crisply.
The duchess, impatient as ever to be the center of attention, inserted herself into the conversation. “Elaine and I have been talking about Lady Elizabeth’s situation.” Which didn’t bode well at all, in Marlowe’s opinion, especially when he noticed that secret gleam in her mismatched eyes. “And I have managed to procure these for you,” she continued, pulling three small cards out of her reticule and depositing them in his hand.
It took him a moment to truly believe what he was beholding. His palms started to sweat, his stomach began to churn uneasily, and his heart raced so hard he was afraid he was having some sort of traumatic episode. All he could clearly think was that he was too young to die.
“Vouchers. To Almack’s,” he said flatly. “What the devil am I to do with these?”
“Escort Lady Elizabeth to the Assembly Rooms,” Astrid said as if she were being perfectly reasonable. The duke had definitely been away for too long if Astrid had managed to convince herself that this was a good idea.
“Me. At Almack’s.”
She rolled her eyes. “You make it sound like the seventh circle of hell.”
“Isn’t it?”
He turned to his sister for help, but Elaine was looking far too entertained. “This moment was worth the miserable carriage ride over here,” she said with a grin.
He harrumphed and shot her a glare that promised some future retribution . . . perhaps when she was not so pregnant. Which could very well be years at the rate she reproduced.
Astrid set her fists on her hips and regarded him with a rare, sober expression. “The trouble with Poxley and your father is not going to go away. How long before the earl tries something? Better to head him off at the pass.”
“By attending Almack’s,” he said flatly. He would never understand the logic of a Honeywell.
“By demonstrating to your father that you have no need of his particular brand of matchmaking,” she said, as if she were having to explain something very simple to a very small child. “If Lady Elizabeth is out in society, your father may be more inclined to back off, if for no other reason than to avoid airing the family’s dirty laundry in public. There will be questions enough about why she is being brought out by you and not Barming, and he will be afraid how you might answer these if he presses the issue.”
Marlowe hated to admit that Astrid’s argument was sound. If there was one thing his father hated more than him, it was appearing anything less than pristine in the eyes of the ton. As badly behaved as the earl was behind closed doors, in the public eye, he was the image of sober respectability (the hypocrite).
It was another reason the earl despised Marlowe so much, for Marlowe had done his level best to be the cause of one public spectacle after another since his brawling days at Harrow.
The earl, as much as he wanted to marry Betsy off to the highest bidder as quickly as possible, wouldn’t dare put a foot out of line if Betsy were officially out on the marriage mart. Barming was trying to sell her to Poxley before she could be introduced to society at all, for he must have feared how it would have made him look if it were widely known. The Upper Ten Thousand made the institution of marriage look like the auction block at Tattersall’s, but surely even the worst cynic would have frowned on marrying off a sixteen-year-old girl to such a m
an.
Marlowe had never thought he’d live to see the day he’d be thankful for London society’s judgmental high-sticklers. But Almack’s?
Almack’s?
He shuddered.
“They’ll never let me in,” he said.
“Your name is on the vouchers. Let’s just say that Lady Cowper owes me a very big favor,” the duchess said briskly. She eyed his attire with a grimace. “Just don’t turn up in a banyan, or the Countess Lieven will kick you clear to Hampstead Heath.”
“But why must I be the one to do this?” he cried, growing desperate as his fate loomed closer. He felt as if an invisible noose were tightening around his neck.
Astrid gestured toward Elaine. “Your sister is about to burst any day now, and do you honestly want your father and stepmother involved? You need to bring out your sister as soon as possible and present it to your father as a fait accompli. Besides, you need the practice of acting like a normal, upstanding pillar of society for when your daughters are presented.”
The noose tightened even further, and he could barely see through a moment of blind panic. He may have crumpled the vouchers in his fist a bit at a sudden, soul-crushing vision of his daughters, grown and tarted up in the ridiculous, filmy silk fashions of the day, on an auction block, a slavering mass of young dandies gathered at their feet.
“The devil you say!” he cried.
“You have a decade at most to prepare yourself,” the duchess declared bluntly.
“Two decades. Three. I am in no hurry,” he said vehemently. “And why can’t you escort Lady Elizabeth if you’re so keen on this plan?”
Astrid laughed as if he’d said something amusing. “Me? At Almack’s?” she scoffed. “I’d rather be run through with a hot poker.”
Marlowe wondered if Montford would still be his friend if he murdered his wife.
He doubted it.
“Now let us go find the children,” Astrid said breezily, helping to tug Elaine to her feet, “before they manage to find trouble.”
Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip Page 9
