She of course had known of Inigo’s brief tendre for the marchioness, whom he saw as a kindred spirit when it came to their charitable endeavors, so she was quite clear on what the duchess was intimating there. It was the other implication that left her so dumbfounded. It was foolish to assume the duchess had not come to her own conclusions after the past two days, yet how the duchess could have deduced such a thing when Minerva had said nothing on the matter was quite beyond her comprehension.
“I’m not . . . don’t be absurd . . . what?” she spluttered.
The duchess just gave her an arch look.
Minerva should have heeded all of Marlowe’s warnings about the Duchess of Montford. The woman was a menace. She sighed in resignation and sat back in her seat. “How did you know?”
The duchess tsked. “I’ve known since I found you half up Poseidon’s thigh.”
The marchioness choked on her tea. The duchess patted her friend on the back. “That’s a story for later, Katherine. The important thing was the way Miss Jones and Marlowe made calf’s eyes at each other the whole time—when he wasn’t staring at her legs. As if I wouldn’t notice what they were up to.”
“And Inigo?” Minerva demanded.
The duchess looked at Minerva as if she were an idiot. “A gentleman does not ask for a private audience with a lady to discuss the weather. Though he was hardly in tears when he left. I doubt any hearts have been broken . . . well, I suppose I can’t say that. Someone left the house in tears that day.”
Minerva decided to ignore that last part because she knew very well the duchess was painting it brown. Marlowe, in tears? Over her? Ridiculous. Though he had looked rather destroyed yesterday when he’d come to fetch Laura.
“Inigo is a friend,” she said firmly. “He’s long thought it his duty to marry me himself, but I think we have finally agreed that it could never work.”
“Which leaves Marlowe,” the duchess pressed. “You have been upset since you arrived, and I thought it best not to demand an explanation. But after all that has happened, I simply must know what is going on.”
“I wouldn’t even try to prevaricate,” Lady Manwaring said wryly. “The duchess shall have it out of you one way or another. It just depends on how painful you make it for yourself.”
Minerva sighed and took the marchioness’s advice. “The viscount kept something from me that was rather significant. I had to find it out from Lady Elizabeth, and now I feel . . .”
“Betrayed?” the duchess offered.
“And humiliated. He made a fool out of me, and just when . . .”
The duchess and marchioness both looked much too interested in how she might finish that sentence.
“Just when I was beginning to think he truly cared for me.”
“I’m fairly certain you’re not wrong to think he cares, judging by Marlowe’s behavior these past few weeks,” the duchess remarked. “And that terribly transparent ode he wrote in the Morning Chronicle.”
This time Minerva was the one to choke on her tea. Luckily most of it landed back in her cup. She set it aside and gaped at the duchess, who looked very pleased with herself.
“You know!” Minerva cried.
“Of course I know. Had it out of Montford on our honeymoon. He’s horribly easy to break if you know where to press.”
“I would rather not know what you and your husband get up to in the bedroom, thank you,” the marchioness interrupted primly.
“Who said it was only in the bedroom?” the duchess murmured.
Lady Manwaring rolled her eyes at her friend, then looked uneasily at the divan upon which she was sitting, as if she suspected it to be the site of one of the ducal couple’s non-bedroom trysts. “But what is it you know, Astrid? Why do I have the feeling I am the only one here who doesn’t?”
The duchess turned to her friend with a pitying look. “You really must do a better job of wrangling your husband, my dear. He should have told you ages ago that Marlowe has a secret profession.”
The marchioness looked from the duchess to Minerva and back again, clearly disbelieving as she began to piece the threads of the conversation together. “No!” she breathed.
“Oh, yes,” the duchess said. “Marlowe is Christopher Essex.”
“But . . . no! Marlowe?” Lady Manwaring looked positively poleaxed.
“Marlowe,” Her Grace confirmed.
The marchioness collapsed against her seat as if she’d been struck by a cricket bat. It was exactly how Minerva had felt for the past two days.
“Marlowe is Christopher Essex,” Lady Manwaring said slowly, as if trying to convince herself. “The author of Le Chevalier d’Amour and The Hedonist. The most celebrated poet in Britain. Marlowe, who wears a banyan all day because he can’t be bothered to get properly dressed. Who massacres the English language nearly every time he opens his mouth. That Marlowe.”
“That Marlowe,” the duchess affirmed.
Something else seemed to click in place for Lady Manwaring. She turned to Minerva. “‘The Alabaster Hip’ is about you?”
Silence.
“What? No! Of course it’s not,” Minerva spluttered, thankful she hadn’t even attempted another go at her tea.
The duchess frowned at her. “Of course it’s about you. Knew it immediately—he must have written it right after your little contretemps in the fountain. Where he did, in fact, see your hips.”
“What?” she cried, outraged that she could once again feel the heat of her mortification practically pouring into her face. “He did no such thing . . .”
“Oh, my dear, we all did,” the duchess said with a pitying smile. “And you do indeed have lovely alabaster skin. I can attest that his comparison is completely accurate.”
Minerva wasn’t quite sure whether to thank Her Grace or storm out of the room in a dudgeon. She settled on pinching the bridge of her nose to warn away her burgeoning headache.
“‘The Alabaster Hip’ is not about me,” she insisted, though she knew it was a lie. Marlowe had confessed it himself, though she was trying her hardest not to think about that particular conversation.
Or those brief, searing moments when those honied words of the ode had dripped from the viscount’s lips as he lowered his head between her legs. When she’d discovered the truth, those words had seemed a mockery. But if they weren’t, if he were being sincere . . .
Minerva was not sure she was prepared to entertain the possibility. She was just so angry, so hurt.
He’d squeezed his way past all of her defenses since the day he’d picked her up off the side of the road. She’d been so determined not to like him at all, but then she’d witnessed firsthand his love for his daughters, the way he’d defended his sister against his own father, his fondness for Mrs. Chips, and even all of his singular quirks of character that should have annoyed her instead of charmed . . .
She’d thought she’d finally come to know the viscount’s true self underneath all of his ridiculous banyans and fool’s act. But it had turned out she didn’t know him at all. She was not prepared to forgive him. Not yet.
“It’s not about me,” Minerva insisted, a little less vociferously this time. “And even if it is, it changes nothing. He should have told me. Before . . .”
Lady Manwaring’s austere features softened, and she reached out and squeezed Minerva’s hand in sympathy.
“Whether you forgive him or not, you shall have my support,” the duchess declared. “I’m of the firm opinion that a woman should not depend upon a man for her happiness, much less marry one she cannot be certain of. I shall not matchmake.”
The marchioness gave her friend a look of disbelief. “You? Not matchmake?”
“Stuff,” the duchess said dismissively. “You and Sebastian were a special circumstance. It was literally excruciating to watch the two of you moon about, pretending to despise each other and playing all that dreary Beethoven. It was my duty to intervene. For the good of England.”
“Dreary? Beethoven?” Lady Manwaring cri
ed, appalled.
“Do you know how many times I had to listen to Sebastian play the Pathetique in this very drawing room? I had to insist that Montford move the pianoforte back to Sebastian’s lodgings before I took a hammer to it.”
The marchioness looked as if she might respond to that, but just then, Stallings, the Montford butler, swept into the room. He presented a card to the duchess with a bow. “A Lady Blundersmith to see you, Your Grace,” he said impassively.
Minerva groaned inwardly. Of all the residents of London, she could think of only one other she’d rather see less.
The duchess grimaced. “Lawks, that woman has called upon me for days. I can’t imagine what she should want. I suppose I’d better receive her this time.”
Stallings disappeared, and Minerva took this as her cue to leave. She stood up.
“Where are you going?” the duchess asked, motioning her to sit down. “You must stay. We’re not done discussing the viscount.”
“But Lady Blundersmith . . .”
“If I have to endure the next half hour, I demand that you do as well.” The duchess’s grin was practically feral. “Besides, if she sees you having tea with me, she’s liable to swoon.”
The prospect of having one over on Lady Blundersmith was rather appealing. The woman had been rather vicious when she’d cast Minerva out without references. The look on her face when she discovered Minerva having tea with the duchess was sure to be worth the discomfort of her company. And Lord knew Minerva could do with some entertainment.
She sat back down. “So long as she doesn’t swoon on me,” she muttered.
Lady Blundersmith swooped into the room seconds later in a haze of violet taffeta and lavender toilette water. She was no less monumental than she had been nearly two years ago, her bosom jutting out ahead of the rest of her like the prow of a ship. After Minerva’s encounter with the Honorable Mister Ashley Leighton, however, Lady Blundersmith seemed a bit less daunting.
Then Minerva remembered what it felt like to be trapped beneath all of that taffeta and bosom, the stink of lavender barely masking the more odorous emanations of a lady who claimed immersing any part of herself in soap and water was unhygienic.
Minerva shuddered at the memory. Then she shuddered again when she noticed the small, mousy woman in gray trailing behind Lady Blundersmith, a stack of cards in one hand and the lady’s smelling salts in the other. Ah, Lady Blundersmith’s latest victim. There but for the grace of God . . . or rather Christopher Essex, in Minerva’s case.
Lady Blundersmith was halfway through the usual pleasantries when she spotted Minerva. The constipated look on her face was something to be savored, making even the necessity of curtsying to the lady worth it.
“And I believe you know Miss Jones,” the duchess said, looking equally pleased with needling her unwanted caller.
“Indeed,” Lady Blundersmith said stiffly, lowering herself upon an unoccupied settee. It groaned under the weight, bowing inward ever so slightly. Her anonymous companion hovered anxiously behind her employer and nearly jumped when Lady Blundersmith snapped her fingers for her smelling salts.
“I wonder how you have come to be acquainted with a person like Miss Jones, Your Grace,” Lady Blundersmith said with no effort to conceal her disapproval. “I do hope you haven’t been foolish enough to employ her.”
The duchess had, in fact, done just that. But Her Grace stared in utter disdain at her visitor. “Miss Jones is a dear friend, Lady Blundersmith. I’m sure I don’t know what you mean to insinuate.”
Lady Blundersmith’s eyes widened at this very clear set down, then they narrowed upon Minerva suspiciously, as if she’d enchanted the duchess somehow.
Minerva just gazed back at her former employer serenely, though inwardly she was awash with gratitude and a fair bit of disbelief over the duchess’s words. She’d expected the duchess to explain how she had indeed hired her for a governess, not to claim her as a friend. The duchess had made it clear several times that she thought of Minerva in those terms, despite their brief acquaintance and disparity of station, but Minerva hadn’t really dared to believe her. It was one thing to invite her to tea (mostly, Minerva suspected, to stave off boredom by prying into Marlowe’s affairs), but it was quite another to defend Minerva to her peers.
Lady Blundersmith harrumphed and leaned back against the settee. It gave another alarming creak under the shifting weight. She turned to the marchioness and said with remarkably less enthusiasm, “Lady Manwaring, I did not know you were in town.”
The marchioness, who had abandoned her relaxed posture for a more rigid one now that they were not alone, just inclined her head rather coldly at Lady Blundersmith. “My husband had business to attend to, and I thought it an opportunity to visit friends.”
It was clear from her tone Lady Manwaring didn’t consider Lady Blundersmith among them, which was unsurprising, considering the way the older woman’s face had spasmed at the mention of the marquess. Lady Manwaring’s elopement was still, it seemed, the subject of much contention among polite society, and it was clear Lady Blundersmith had allied herself with the high sticklers who disapproved.
Ironic, considering Lady Blundersmith’s own Gretna Green marriage years ago. Though Minerva supposed Lady Blundersmith had spent her life since then doing everything in her power to distance herself from her own youthful folly—even convincing herself that it had never happened.
“Shall I call for a fresh pot, Lady Blundersmith?” the duchess inserted smoothly, diverting attention away from the marchioness.
Lady Blundersmith waved away the suggestion. “You’re too kind, but I’m afraid I can’t stay long, Your Grace.”
“That is a pity,” the duchess said with a sincerity Minerva doubted.
“It’s a miracle I’ve finally caught you at home, and just in time, as well.”
“I am intrigued at your urgency, Lady Blundersmith,” the duchess murmured into her tea.
Lady Blundersmith snapped her fingers again, and her companion jumped and fumbled with the stack of cards in her hands. They fell into the folds of Lady Blundersmith’s taffeta skirts, and with a panicked yelp, the companion dove in after them. Lady Blundersmith swatted her away with her fan and plucked the cards from her skirts. She handed them back to the companion, swatted at her again, and ordered her to deliver one to the duchess.
The duchess read the card, snorted quietly, and handed it over to the marchioness, who gave it a bemused look and passed it on to Minerva. She soon discovered the reason behind the duchess’s snort—and Lady Blundersmith’s dagger-like stare in her direction. It read:
The Ladies’ League Against Lewd and Lascivious Literature and Letters invites you to its first annual Rally Against the Corruption of Public Virtue and Literary Vice in Hyde Park on Saturday, April 2, at three in the afternoon. Interested parties may bring offending material to be disposed of forthwith.
Tea and Light Refreshment will be provided.
LLALLLL is grateful for the patronage of Her Grace, the Duchess of Delacourt; The Right Honorable, the Countess of Carlisle; the Right Honorable, the Viscountess Blundersmith; and Lady Emily Benwick.
“Your aunt, Lady Benwick, was sure you wouldn’t be interested,” Lady Blundersmith began, “but I assured Emily that just couldn’t possibly be true. As your standing among the ton is without question, you must certainly be interested in setting an example for decency and virtue all of us may admire.”
“You are correct, Lady Blundersmith. I should like nothing so much in the world as for everyone to be decent,” the duchess responded with a completely straight face. “Do you not wish the same, Katherine?”
“It seems my mother does,” she said, referring to Lady Carlisle. “And to think I almost didn’t come up from the country. I might have missed this,” the marchioness continued with a sweetness that only Lady Blundersmith seemed to buy.
“And the festivities are to be tomorrow,” the duchess murmured. “So soon, Lady B?”
/> “Not soon enough!” Lady Blundersmith said rather querulously, waving her salts through the air. “After that dreadful man published his latest travesty, action must be taken, before all of our daughters are lost to perdition.”
“Speak of the devil,” the duchess murmured beneath her breath.
“But to which dreadful man do you refer?” Lady Manwaring asked, all innocence. “There seem to be so many of them these days.”
“Why, that Essex fellow, of course. Most unsavory. The Ladies’ League Against Lewd and Lascivious Literature and Letters is quite determined to end his influence upon our impressionable young ladies—and to see to it that those who promote his filth are dealt with.”
It was quite obvious by the look she threw in Minerva’s direction whom Lady Blundersmith considered a promoter of filth.
Minerva had the sudden urge to hurl her teacup at Lady Blundersmith’s head. How dare the woman! How dare all the members of this league for their ridiculous crusade. It was clear Essex was this absurd Ladies’ League’s main target, and that would just not do. She didn’t care how angry she was at the viscount—his poetry deserved to be celebrated, not censored by ignorant puritans.
“I do hope you’re taking Byron to task as well,” Her Grace said.
“Of course,” Lady Blundersmith sniffed.
“And Shelley. Both of them. Oh, and that horrid Mr. de Quincy. He’ll have all the debutantes eating opium if given half the chance,” the duchess continued avidly.
“What about that Blake fellow?” Lady Manwaring added.
The duchess waved that suggestion away. “Poor man is a bedlamite. I shouldn’t think it in good taste to crucify the infirm.”
Lady Blundersmith had no idea how to respond to that. From the way her eyes were beginning to narrow, there was a possibility that she was beginning to catch on to her hostess’s poorly veiled irony, but Minerva doubted this. Lady Blundersmith wouldn’t recognize sarcasm if it hit her on the head and dragged her across the room. It was why Minerva had lasted a full five years before getting sacked.
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