Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip

by Maggie Fenton

  Waverley, red-faced and spluttering, finally conceded to Marlowe’s demand and stepped back out into the hallway.

  Marlowe slammed the door in his publisher’s face and returned to his desk to reread the ode with satisfaction. His muse had finally returned.

  And she was currently in the nursery somewhere above his head, teaching grammar to his children.

  WHEN MARLOWE WAS sure enough time had passed for Waverley to find his own way out, he left his library in search of something more fortifying than his lukewarm tea, tucking “The Alabaster Hip” in the top drawer, away from prying eyes.

  In his haste, he didn’t notice the Hoby boots lurking beneath the draperies at the end of the corridor.

  When he returned to the library an hour later—fed, shorn, bathed, and forced into a cravat, hessians, and cutaway by Pymm—he thought it odd to find his inkpot unstoppered. He could have sworn he’d put it up before he’d left. Then again, he’d been awake for over twenty-four hours, so his mind could very well have been playing tricks on him.

  He moved the ode to the bottom drawer and locked it up with the rest of Essex’s work, just in case Waverley did indeed employ spies.

  WHEN “THE ALABASTER HIP” appeared on the front page of the Morning Chronicle the following day, Marlowe nearly spat out his eggs.

  Waverley.

  The bloody little bastard had copied the poem while Marlowe had been out of the room. It was the only explanation.

  He knew he’d put that inkpot away.

  He abandoned his breakfast, stormed over to Albemarle Street, slammed into Number 51, shouldered into Nigel’s office, and punched the little thief in the jaw.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, when he grudgingly opened the Morning Post—an insufferably Tory mouthpiece he only read to keep abreast of the enemy—he was met with a headline that took up nearly a quarter of the page and stoked his still-smoldering ire:

  “ALABASTER HIP” SHORTAGE SPARKS RIOT ON N. BOND STREET: DAUGHTER OF DUKE OF D—— INJURED IN STAMPEDE

  Waverley.

  Marlowe left his poached eggs congealing on the china, stormed over to Albemarle Street, slammed into Number 51, shouldered into Nigel’s office, and punched the little thief in the jaw yet again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IN WHICH THE MORNING CHRONICLE PRESENTS

  (With the Exclusive Cooperation of Nigel Waverley,

  Of Waverley & Sons Publishers,

  51 Albemarle Street, Mayfair)

  THE ALABASTER HIP

  AN ODE

  By Christopher Essex

  Author of The Hedonist and Other Works of Poesy

  One eve before me was a vision seen

  With rosy lips and eyes of silver’d cloud;

  And off her dais the vision step’d serene

  In naught but the Springtime winds did enshroud;

  She moved, this nymph, with potent grace and charm,

  To dew-dripped bower there to pass the night;

  She turned to me, her tender flesh once more

  Bedamp’d by rain, to seek my trembling arm;

  And she was then as fair to me as light

  Upon a fiery sheath of golden ore.

  A third time pass’d my hand on marble turn’d

  As warm as woman’s secret flesh interred;

  Then burn’d did she, and follow her I burn’d

  And ached for words to sing my love for her;

  Yet many moons had pass’d since last I’d had

  Calliope’s sweet favor in my hand;

  So still my tongue in praise did hesitate,

  My lust, my love, in plain truth still unsaid

  Beyond caresses in our bow’r; and then

  Her praises sung rose from my heart too late.

  She cooled as my sweet words remained unforged;

  Oh desire! How soon it fled from her lips,

  How brief the fire lit tender flesh engorged

  And left naught but an alabaster hip;

  Cruel Galatea holds no love for me

  Nor I for her—a maid encased in ice

  With heart of stone and lips of wintry chill;

  Oh for the heated press of dewy knee

  And slick, sweet slide of skin that ever lies

  ’Neath moon and roof of fragrant bougainvill’.

  So, fair nymph, farewell! I cannot desire

  A nightly defeat on false pleasure’s wing,

  For I so sapped of Poesy’s strength’ning fire

  Ne’er could withstand another broken ring;

  Go from my lonely vigil, quick, and be

  No more than what you were before my dreams,

  Atop a fount, stillborn, in Spring’s first thrall;

  You are, no less, a goddess’ parody:

  The nymph who warmed my bed, to me it seems,

  The frigid stone of winter after all.

  TO BETSY LEIGHTON, Lady Hedonist herself, it was as if Christmas, Easter, her birthday, and her father’s future funeral had all come at once the morning she found “The Alabaster Hip” among the discarded broadsheets covering the breakfast table. It was definitely the first time anything good had ever come of rising before noon. Breakfast forgotten, she stole the Morning Chronicle before her brother could return from wherever he’d stormed off to, closeted herself in her room, and began to read.

  Two days later and twenty readings in, she had nearly memorized the entire poem, transcribed it twice (once for Miss Jones, who was still recovering from being squashed by Poseidon, and once for Mrs. Chips, who liked Essex despite what her eyebrows said), and ranked it among Mr. Essex’s other works—somewhere above The Italian Poem, yet still falling short of the genius that was The Hedonist. Alas, a mere four stanzas, however prettily done, could not unseat that masterful narrative poem in her affections.

  Nevertheless, Betsy was not complaining. Four stanzas in nearly three years was better than no stanzas in three years. And while the ode hadn’t the playful irony of his longer works, it was wonderfully morose and deliciously, tragically romantic. Just what all the Misstophers were gasping for at the moment.

  Even Prudence Potts, daughter of West Boring’s vicar, had been in alt over the ode in her recently arrived letter, and that tasteless philistine usually found everything wanting in comparison with Lord Byron’s verse—even that abysmally dreary “Prisoner of Chillon.” It was as if Essex had read the minds—or perhaps the secrets contained in their commonplace books—of every one of his female followers.

  Betsy sighed into her pillow, clutching the much-loved broadsheet to her bosom, and thought about reading it again. No doubt all of the females in the English-speaking world—and some of the males, at that—had swooned when they’d read the poem. Betsy herself had done so quite dramatically upon her counterpane halfway through the first stanza.

  She’d done so again at the titillating vision her mind conjured upon reading of “tender flesh engorged” in the third stanza. She wasn’t quite sure what the author intended to suggest by this, but she had a fair idea. What she lacked in experience, she more than made up for in her imagination.

  By the end of her first reading of the poem, she had been burningly jealous of whoever this woman was who had inspired the ode. If Essex were writing about anything other than a theoretical hip, if some other woman had sunk her claws into him . . . well, she was a Leighton and would not be pulling her punches any more than her father ever did. Which was never.

  She could only hope that the owner of the alabaster hip was merely the symbolic every woman of Essex’s other works, but after several days of trying to convince herself of this, she gave up. She may have been only sixteen, but she knew what a man sounded like when he was in love. It was how Brinderley sounded when he spoke to Elaine, how Montford sounded even when he was bickering with the duchess. It was even how Evie had begun to sound whenever he spoke of Miss Jones . . . though the man was too much of a muttonhead to ever realize how transparently enamored of his governess he had become.

  But s
he had Lady Hedonist’s rather rabid following slavering for her next work to keep her from brooding too much over Essex’s love life (for brooding was quite all right for poets, but not for young ladies determined to avoid wrinkles). And “The Alabaster Hip,” with its Greek allusions and mouthwatering sensuality, was ripe for the plucking. She had no less than a dozen plot ideas in need of pursuing already.

  But first she needed some foolscap, and for that she needed to raid Evie’s desk. He always seemed to be hoarding it, which never made sense to her, considering how allergic to letter writing he was. She waited until late afternoon when she knew Evie would be out of the house, then slipped inside the empty library, quietly shutting the door behind her and tiptoeing across the parquet to his cluttered desk. Betsy wasn’t sure why she felt the need for such subterfuge, as if she were doing something criminal. Then again, Evie had always been overparticular about the oddest things.

  Though his visits were increasingly rare as she grew up, then nonexistent after Evander’s and Caroline’s deaths, Evie had been her only ally in a house full of bedlamites. There had been Elaine, of course, but her older sister had been married and living in London long before Betsy’s memories even began. For all of his tarnish, Evie was pure mint underneath, and she had not even hesitated over whom to go to when she’d run away from Kent.

  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t have an attack of apoplexy if he caught her going through his desk. The one time in her childhood she remembered him losing his temper with her had been because she’d decided to use one of his journals for her watercolors.

  His anger had made him look exactly like Evander, who was always in a temper about one thing or another, and it had frightened her so much she’d vowed never to go snooping about her brother’s things again. He’d never laid a hand on her, of course—even at his angriest, Evie just didn’t have that sort of maliciousness in him (unlike his twin)—but she’d never wanted to see him look at her like that again.

  But desperate times called for desperate measures, and now was not the time to run out of foolscap, not when she was bursting with the perfect inspiration for her next story. It featured one delicious Mr. Essex, of course, and a young brunette, brown-eyed maiden who may or may not have been the runaway daughter of an evil earl, the pair of them trapped in a cave during a thunderstorm. In the shadow of the Parthenon, of course.

  Betsy’s enthusiasm waned, however, when she spotted a letter from the earl, half-crumbled, under a pile of bills. She slumped in Evie’s chair and sighed at the dread reminder of her father. Evie could only hold off the earl for so long, and just being here was asking a lot—maybe too much—of her brother.

  His relationship with Barming was already tattered enough without him shouldering the burden of her situation as well. The stubborn idiot would fight to the bitter end for her on principle alone, and that was both why she’d run to him and what scared her the most. Their family had already cost Evie too much. He’d shouldered the worst of their father’s abuse and Evander’s heartlessness—and she didn’t know precisely what had happened with his dead wife and Evander, but she had imagination enough to guess it was beyond horrible.

  Besides, why should she wait around for her brother to solve her problems? Legally, he could do nothing if the earl chose to retrieve her. Her father practically owned her until she was owned by a husband. She damn well hoped she lived to see the day when such ridiculous, archaic laws were changed, but they were not going to be soon enough to help her. Her only recourse, it seemed, was to find herself a husband more suitable than Poxley Oxley.

  She still held out hope where Essex was concerned, however. Despite what everyone thought, she was not so naïve as to think Essex would fall in love with her at first sight. She’d not want him if he did, for only fools—or people under the spell of a sorcerer’s potion (exactly what had happened to Essex in the Tristan and Isolde–inspired short story she’d written last year)—did that.

  Second or third sight would do just fine, and would give her enough time to weigh whether she could love the poet as much as she loved the poet’s words and her own fantasies. She was rather sure she could if the only other option were Poxley.

  In her nightmares, Essex turned out to be something horrible, like the corpulent haberdasher from Cheapside with five children and a fishwife, or even worse, Poxley Oxley himself, as the duchess had so horribly suggested. Though it seemed unlikely. Betsy seriously doubted Essex could be anything other than a beautiful man, for beauty did beget beauty, and she could think of nothing as beautiful in the world as Essex’s verse. “The Alabaster Hip” had done nothing but confirm what she already knew.

  But while Betsy remained certain she could win Essex’s affections if given half the chance, she also understood full well that being swept away by Essex—much less locating him—was likely to remain a mere daydream. It was a conclusion she’d reached after countless unanswered letters to the poet’s publisher (and a few covert trips to Albemarle Street, about which Evie remained oblivious).

  She had the daydreams, at least, and her stories, and these things would just have to suffice until she either met a halfway decent fellow or turned twenty-one and came into her grandmother’s bequest (her father had, so far, been unable to touch his mother-in-law’s funds, despite his best efforts). She’d set up her own household in London, become a novelist, and have ten cats instead of a husband.

  She rather hoped for the latter option, honestly, though it was the most unlikely, considering her father’s recent machinations.

  Too bad Evie’s best mates were taken. Christopher Essex had worn the Marquess of Manwaring’s perfect countenance in quite a few of her early fictions, but that had been before he’d eloped with Katherine Manwaring. Betsy was no adulteress, not even in the written word, and not even for the most beautiful man in the kingdom.

  That ruled out Montford as well, though she didn’t think she’d take him even if he were in need of a duchess, despite his noble profile. If she wanted to marry an old curmudgeon, she’d make sure he was at least an octogenarian with one foot in the grave.

  Which wasn’t a half-bad plan, actually. She’d be a merry widow soon enough, and as free as she’d ever get.

  She just needed to find one of those, then. Octogenarians—or any unattached man who wasn’t related to her—were rather low on the ground, however. She only knew of two prospects so far, and one was Sir Thaddeus Davies. The squint was rather disconcerting, and something she was not sure she’d be able to tolerate across the breakfast table for the next fifty years. His estate, in the Outer Hebrides, where she’d never be able to escape the squint, made him even less appealing.

  Betsy’s other prospect, which was even more abysmal, was Miss Jones’s sawbones friend, who’d been summoned to check on the governess after Poseidon had fallen on her. He was, according to Miss Jones, quite unattached and even younger than Evie, despite the steel in his beard—not that Betsy had asked about him after he’d left or anything. But Dr. Lucas seemed as stodgy and unbending as Montford. He’d never let her get away with anything.

  Besides, he was a sawbones. They were even less solvent than Cheapside haberdashers. Just because she was desperate didn’t mean she’d consign herself to a lifetime of abject poverty. Not even for those distinguished whiskers. Or those shockingly blue eyes. Or those broad shoulders and well-turned calves that obviously needed no padding to perfect their shape . . .

  Perhaps in her next work, Essex could be a physician with premature salt-and-pepper hair and blue eyes, and she could be the languishing consumptive whom he cured through the amazing healing power of his . . .

  She coughed and tried to push down the sudden flood of heat at the parade of lusty images that had just filled her head. Oh, the fun she’d have writing that one. The mere thought of imagining Dr. Lu . . . er, rather, Dr. Essex, “examining” her was . . .

  Well, totally inappropriate, especially while sitting at her brother’s desk, holding her father’s latest rant in o
ne hand.

  What was she here for again?

  Oh, yes, the foolscap. She tossed aside the letter and rummaged through the drawers without any luck, though her brother seemed inordinately well stocked with inkpots and quills. She pinched a few of those for herself and tried the middle drawer, which only held the household ledger, judging by its utilitarian leather binding, and a stack of business correspondence addressed to the viscount.

  Betsy gagged at how boring her brother had become. He’d not been embroiled in one good scandal since she’d arrived in London. Of course he would have reformed before she could enjoy any of his roguish ways firsthand.

  Ugh.

  The least he could do was leave something interesting on his desk. She remembered a time when her brother’s desk had been filled with books of all sorts, both printed and written in his own hand, even though she’d been too young to read them. She wondered when he’d stopped, when the earl’s distaste for a bookish heir had become yet another thing that had beaten down Evie’s spirit until he’d changed.

  Her father had a lot to answer for.

  Betsy tested the large drawer on the bottom right-hand side of the desk, but the handle wouldn’t budge. She jiggled it a few more times, but it held firm, locked tight against intruders. She beamed at the drawer, delighted. Finally, something interesting. What could warrant locking up when Evie didn’t even bother to do the same to his ledgers and financials?

  Not even the memory of the scolding Evie had given her years ago over his ruined journal was enough to overcome her curiosity. She’d cultivated that particular aspect of her character into a well-hewn weapon over the years, and it had served her well. Her skill at poking and prying into places she didn’t belong had been what had saved her from her father’s most recent plot, after all.

  After that first reading of the banns—which had come as a total surprise to her—she’d spent that following night reading all of her father’s correspondence out of the false bottom of his bureau. She’d discovered precisely how much he was in debt and precisely how much Poxley had promised him in exchange for her hand, and knew that she was doomed. The next night she’d fled to London on that dreadfully malodorous mail coach.