The duchess set down her teacup and smiled so sunnily at Lady Blundersmith that Minerva knew immediately she was up to something. “I am positively intrigued, Lady Blundersmith. You may certainly expect me at Hyde Park tomorrow. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Lady Blundersmith’s confusion cleared. She looked delighted. “I knew Lady Benwick was mistaken about you, Your Grace. I myself was beginning to think—with the company you keep”—another damning glance in Minerva’s direction—“that you wouldn’t be interested in our endeavor.”
“I am so interested in it I could scream,” the duchess declared brightly.
Lady Blundersmith looked taken aback by the rather enthusiastic response. “Yes. Well. Certainly that won’t be necessary.”
THE MOMENT LADY Blundersmith steered her way from the room, the duchess’s grin faded into a scowl, then into something grimly calculating.
“How do you feel about a stroll in Hyde Park tomorrow?” she mused.
“I can think of nothing better,” Lady Manwaring murmured.
The duchess turned to Minerva. “Miss Jones? Shall you join us as well?”
Minerva remembered the way she had been unceremoniously cast from Lady Blundersmith’s household without a reference because the lady disagreed with her reading material. If not for Inigo’s aid in helping her to secure the position at West Barming—however loathsome it had turned out to be—she would have been out on the streets. Over poetry.
Many in her position would have probably given in to their employers’ demands—life for a paid companion was precarious enough, with only the goodwill of people like Lady Blundersmith upon which to rely. But her life—her future—was so grim a prospect anyway that she had been unable to surrender what little autonomy was left to her. She had so few things she could call her own, but one of them was her mind. She’d not endure a life in which that most sacred part of her was imprisoned. She would not censor her mind or her reading material.
Nor would she let others do so simply because they didn’t understand it.
“I may be furious with the viscount, but I’ll not allow old biddies like Lady Blundersmith to speak ill of his genius,” Minerva said firmly.
The duchess, pleased with her response, set down her teacup decisively and stood. “I must pay some calls, then, and muster the troops. We’ll not let Aunt Emily get away with this.”
Minerva almost felt sorry for Lady Benwick, for the duchess’s current expression was precisely the same one Minerva’s father used to wear when staring down a target with his gun in hand—as if he were imagining it was Napoleon’s head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IN WHICH THE MARQUESS AND MARCHIONESS OF MANWARING BASK IN DOMESTIC BLISS
AFTER ONE LAST scratch behind Seamus’s ear, Sebastian Sherbrook, the Marquess of Manwaring, the “Most Beautiful Man in London”, according to the Times, and now happily married former scoundrel, sent off the three-legged Irish Setter to join the others at the hearth and patted the column of watch fobs crisscrossing his waistcoat with satisfaction. Finally, after nearly three years of scouring every crooked pawnbroker in the city, he’d found the last of his collection, lost to Sir Oliver’s thuggish cohorts, at a shop in the Strand. He’d felt rather naked without them . . .
Though he had to admit he was rather fond of being naked these days.
Still, it was nice to have his beloved watch collection restored to him after all this time.
He sat down at his Broadwood’s stool and plunked out the first notes of the Opus 109. Beethoven was only getting better with age. After a few more sessions of rehearsal, Sebastian would have the piece perfected enough to play for Katherine in celebration of her happy announcement.
Just when he thought his life couldn’t be improved upon, something came along to make it even better. First his watch collection, and now a child on the way. The only thing that would make life utterly perfect would be seeing Marlowe as happy as he was. His best mate had looked even more melancholy than usual at Tatt’s, and he wished he knew of something he could do to help.
The door swung open with a bang, and he jumped to his feet in surprise, as did the four dogs now lazing at the hearth. He half expected some long-lost creditor of his he’d forgotten to pay off to come storming in, but it was only his wife. Katherine stalked into the room, ripping her bonnet off and tossing it carelessly to one side, her cheeks flushed with color, her green eyes bright with excitement. She was in such a lather it was easy to figure out where she’d been all afternoon.
“And how is the duchess?” he asked, crossing to his wife and bussing her rosy cheeks before ceding ground to the dogs, who promptly mobbed her for attention.
“You’ll never guess what I have learned,” she said without bothering to answer his question, petting each of the dogs’ heads in turn.
He blazed a path back through the fray to his wife, caught her around the waist, and led her over to the piano stool before the dogs could knock her over. She was in a delicate condition, after all.
“I’m not sure I want to know what you’ve been gossiping about over there to have you in such a state,” he said dryly. “Dr. Whiskers has made it clear you are not to overexcite yourself.”
She rolled her eyes and waved away his concern. “Nonsense. I feel perfectly fine. I’m with child, not the plague.”
Despite his opinion of the man’s whiskers, Sebastian thought Dr. Lucas was a damn fine sawbones, and his advice seemed perfectly reasonable. His wife obviously thought otherwise. But she looked better than she had in days—that is, less green—so he decided to hold his tongue . . . no matter how much he’d love to assist his wife in relaxing. Preferably in their bedroom. Sans watch fobs.
Penny butted her head against his knees in a demand that he cede ground, and he backed up a step to allow the dog her due. He—and his ankles—had learned the hard way not to ignore Penny’s admonitions.
Katherine stroked Penny’s lumpy head and proceeded to tell Sebastian the news, whether he cared to know it or not. “Miss Jones was there . . .”
“Who?”
“Miss Jones!” she huffed. “Marlowe’s governess! Dr. Lucas’s fiancée! Only she’s not his fiancée at all. You had that all wrong. And she’s been staying at Montford House.”
“Marlowe might have mentioned it,” he said.
She scowled up at him. “Well, you didn’t mention that part to me. I have a feeling you haven’t mentioned a great deal about Marlowe,” she accused.
Something told him he needed to tread very carefully. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
She shook her head as if disgusted with him. “Miss Jones! The viscount! Did you not think it strange that Marlowe’s governess is now living with the duchess?”
“I . . .”
“And did you not think,” she continued, her tone hardening a little, “in the nearly two years of our association . . .”
“Association!” he scoffed. “We have more than an association!”
Her eyes narrowed. That was never a good sign. “In the past two years,” she repeated, “did you never think to mention the fact that the drunken, debauched scoundrel you call a best mate is, in fact, the most celebrated poet in all of Europe?”
Oh. That.
Yes, well, he supposed that had been a rather huge omission on his part.
“Er, the subject never arose?” he tried.
She smacked his arm in irritation. She had definitely been friends with Astrid Honeywell for far too long.
He rubbed his injury—or lack thereof, since he’d hardly felt it—with rather more vigor than it warranted and tried to look as innocent as he could. “Perhaps I should have mentioned it, but it’s been a busy few years . . .”
“Not that busy.”
“…and Marlowe rather plays the whole Essex business close to his chest. As far as I know, only his publisher, Montford, and I know he is Christopher Essex. And, besides, it really isn’t my secret to tell, is it.”
He sent a prayer up to the heavens for Montford’s poor, beleaguered soul. “Of course she knows. She doubtless beat every single secret out of Monty on their wedding night.”
Her eyes narrowed even more. “I would hope I didn’t need to do the same.”
Well. He’d talked himself straight into that particular quagmire.
He redirected the conversation before he could do any more damage. “Yes, Marlowe is Essex, but perhaps we should keep that to ourselves. He is very set on his anonymity.”
She only looked even more disgruntled. “Of course I’m not going to tell anyone. What do you take me for?”
“My beloved wife?”
Her expression softened. “Good answer.”
He sighed in relief.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you for not telling me.” Damn. “Or the fact that Marlowe and Miss Jones are engaged in a clandestine love affair.”
Huh. That was something he hadn’t known.
Sebastian had to sit down after that revelation. He fumbled his way to the settee and collapsed onto the cushions. He couldn’t speak for several long seconds, but at last he managed a weak, “What?”
“Marlowe and his governess,” Katherine repeated slowly. “But he did not tell you this? Apparently he seduced her but failed to inform her that he was also Christopher Essex.”
He tried to wrap his head around this information and failed. “I am cast to sea, my dear,” he finally said.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”
“Why should she care if he’s Christopher Essex or not?”
She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe she’d married such an imbecile. “If the man I loved withheld such crucial information from me, I would have his head.”
He made a note to himself never to fib to his wife.
“Besides, Miss Jones is a Misstopher,” Katherine added. “Needless to say, she has not taken Marlowe’s subterfuge well.”
He grinned at this new piece of information. Marlowe and a Misstopher. It was so wonderfully fitting. And hilarious.
“Well, I suppose a broken affaire does explain why Marlowe was so positively morose the other day. He always was a hopeless case when he was in love,” he said.
Katherine sighed, looking a bit overwhelmed. “I’m still getting used to the idea that Marlowe is Essex. Marlowe in love may be more than I can bear to imagine at the moment.”
Sebastian always forgot that Katherine had not known Marlowe for very long. She had not lived through the Caro Years and had only caught the tail end of its disastrous aftermath. But Sebastian had been by his friend’s side through all of Marlowe’s many permutations, and though he made light of it at present, he was also very worried. Caro had nearly broken the man, and Sebastian honestly didn’t think Marlowe would recover from another broken heart.
This Miss Jones had better watch herself, or he’d be very cross with her for hurting his friend. Very cross indeed.
“I didn’t say he was in love,” he said carefully. “Just that he might be.”
“Then you must pay him a call tomorrow and get to the bottom of the matter,” Katherine said briskly. Well, he’d walked into that one. She had definitely been hanging about the duchess for too long to be so determined to meddle. “Astrid is sending round Montford as well.”
“Of course she is,” he murmured.
She was not pleased with his reluctance. “Don’t you want your friend to be happy?”
“Of course I do. But I have not even met this Miss Jones to know if I should even encourage such a match.”
“She is splendid,” Katherine replied with certainty. “I would not pursue this if I didn’t think she was worthy. Even the twins like her.”
It was hard to argue with such a recommendation. As far as Sebastian could tell from their horrible habit of setting caretakers’ sheds on fire, the twins didn’t like anyone.
Hmmm. Perhaps the twins’ approval was not the best way to assess the governess’s virtues.
But if this love affair were indeed the root of Marlowe’s melancholia, then Sebastian supposed he’d better investigate. The chance that this Miss Jones might be the one to finally give Marlowe and his daughters a proper, happy ending was too significant to ignore. Though he was rather certain Marlowe was not going to thank him for meddling.
Which was exactly what the man deserved, now that Sebastian thought about it, after meddling in his affairs at the Montford Ball. He’d lost a lovely pair of boots to that cake.
“I shall consider the matter,” Sebastian said.
She lifted her eyebrow.
He sighed in resignation. “And visit Marlowe on the morrow. But only to ascertain his intentions.”
She looked grudgingly satisfied with his plans, so he took the opportunity to sweep her up in his arms, plunk himself on the piano stool, and set her on his lap. He wrapped his arms around her waist and cradled her belly, burying his nose in the nape of her neck.
“Now, I do believe it is time for a duet, my lady wife,” he murmured.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IN WHICH LADY BENWICK LAUNCHES A CRUSADE AGAINST EXCELLENCE IN BRITISH LETTERS
THE LADIES’ LEAGUE Against Lewd and Lascivious Literature and Letters was born into existence the day Lady Emily Benwick opened up her daughter Davina’s commonplace book, left by mistake on the parlor settee, and found a work in progress dubiously titled “Le Cockerel d’Amour.” Half expecting some sort of childish fairy tale featuring an enchanted rooster (for Davina had always been overly fond of her Perrault as a child), Lady Benwick decided to see what sort of nonsense her daughter spent her time on these days and sat down to read.
After arriving at a passage in which the heroine fell to her knees at the poet’s feet and began to fumble with the falls of his breeches, breast “heaving with passionate intent,” Lady Benwick slammed the book shut and took to her fainting couch while her blood cooled and her mind cleared.
So, not about an enchanted rooster, after all.
She may or may not have also encountered the phrase “erect member” somewhere in her perusal, but she chose to forget that particular trauma entirely.
Just to make sure she had not just suffered a fever dream, Lady Benwick glanced inside the journal when she had recovered enough to bear the review. The story, in her daughter’s unmistakable hand, with all of its alarming carnality, once more assaulted her eyeballs.
Before she could come across another scarring turn of phrase, she flipped farther along in the book and found several sheets of foolscap folded between the pages. It was another sensational bit of dreck, but this one was penned by someone calling herself Lady Hedonist. Lady Benwick made the mistake of reading a full page of the tale, featuring one Mr. Essex’s misadventures with a woman of extremely loose virtue in the back of a carriage. She dropped it from her fingers, scalded by the indecency contained within.
She’d not even known half those things were physically possible in a bed, much less a moving conveyance.
She didn’t want to know.
And she most certainly didn’t want her daughter exposed to such filthy, vile pornography. Cockerels were the very least of Lady Hedonist’s comprehensively indecent repertoire.
After copious tears, one ruined ball gown, and the threat of a Portuguese nunnery (despite her firmly antipapist stance), Lady Benwick soon had the whole sordid business out of her daughter. Davina admitted belonging to a secret confederacy of young women who called themselves Misstophers—and who apparently spent their days trading obscenities when not swooning over the poet’s verse.
It was even worse than Lady Benwick could have imagined. She’d encouraged her daughter’s friendships, blithely assuming that all young ladies spent their days as they were supposed to: gossiping about fashion and the marriage mart. Yet all the while, they’d been engaged in this disgusting diversion.
Davina wisely did not ask what her mother thought she had been doing in her room for so many hours every day. She hadn’t that many letters to write. Nor did she admit to the stack of old commonplaces she kept hidden under the loose floorboard beneath her bed . . . nor her secret ambition to become a sensational novelist. She knew her mother well enough to know that the very idea of her daughter with so common an occupation would send her on an even worse rampage than the Misstopher smut ever could.
Davina dreamed of the day she was married to a man—any man, really, as long as he didn’t beat her (her standards were quite low these days)—if only that she might escape her mother’s iron fist. She also would have been quite at peace with Lady Benwick’s premature death, but that was a bit of wishful thinking she didn’t plan on ever sharing with anyone. If her mother got wind of it, Lady Benwick would live for another fifty years just to spite her.
Lady Benwick confiscated Davina’s journal and any volume of suspect literature in the house (i.e. all of it except the Fordyce) and consigned them that very same afternoon to the fireplace. Realizing she was beaten, Davina put up a token fight, all the while scheming to secure the rest of her hidden writings from her mother’s reign of terror. Though she was rather cross about losing Lady Hedonist’s masterpiece (it had taken months to acquire it), sacrifices had to be made for the Misstopher Cause.
Lady Benwick would have dropped the matter entirely after the commonplace book was destroyed and Davina seemed so properly chastised. She was horrified by her daughter’s behavior, of course, but she hardly wanted to make public her own failings as a mother. No daughter of hers was going to be exposed as a Misstopher. But then . . .
Then in one of her searches of her daughter’s room, long after the commonplace journal had been destroyed but not long enough to assuage her suspicions completely, Lady Benwick came across the book on one of the shelves. The book that had launched Davina’s entire fascination with Christopher Essex one fateful summer: a copy of Le Chevalier d’Amour hidden in the pages of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia she had pinched from Rylestone Hall before it had burnt to the ground.
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