Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip

by Maggie Fenton

  The woman eyed the dog balefully, then narrowed her eyes at the duchess and her placard.

  “You are not welcome here today, Astrid.”

  Astrid produced Lady Blundersmith’s invitation and waved it in front of her aunt. “Oh, but I was specifically invited. And I took it upon myself to invite a few others. I do hope that is acceptable,” she said, gesturing to the rapidly growing crowd of ladies with placards behind her.

  “It is not acceptable, and if you cause any trouble today . . .” Lady Benwick began.

  Mademoiselle’s growls turned to outright barks when Aunt Emily took one step closer to the duchess.

  “Trouble? Moi?” the duchess cried, sounding shocked by the accusation. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “I would,” Aunt Anabel muttered.

  “So would I,” Lady Elizabeth said, and Madame la Duchesse looked at the young woman approvingly.

  “Besides, you are the one causing trouble, Aunt Emily. Surely you’re not truly considering lighting that pile ablaze,” the duchess continued.

  “Of course I am.”

  “But that’s absolute madness!” the duchess cried.

  “It is not. Someone must take a stand against such inflammatory literature, lest our whole society is corrupted.”

  “By poetry?”

  “‘To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it,’” Madame la Duchesse pronounced crisply.

  “That was actually very well put, Aunt Anabel,” the duchess said approvingly.

  “It had better be. That were Montaigne,” she muttered. “Not that Emily even knows who that is.”

  “If he’s French,” Lady Benwick sneered, “then I am sure I don’t want to know. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to call to order.” Then she snapped her fingers, and the servant who had just doused the pile of literature in oil dropped a lit taper before anyone could stop him. The pyre immediately ignited with a whoosh and crackle, nearly taking off the poor man’s eyebrows.

  Minerva, along with the duchess and her followers, cried out in dismay at the carnage. The rate at which the books and assorted papers went up in flames was alarming, and soon the bonfire raged at least twenty feet in the air. Several of the more excitable ladies of the LLALLLL (including Lady Blundersmith, of course) gasped and reached for their salts, and everyone widened the perimeter around the inferno.

  The Misstophers began to wail.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IN WHICH THE DUKE AND THE MARQUESS STAGE AN INTERVENTION

  SINCE LAURA HAD run away, forcing them to confront the cracks in their relationship, things had been easier between Marlowe and his daughters. The loss of their favorite governess had shaken them all, but they weren’t broken. Only this morning, a frog in the cook’s soup pot had created quite the stir, and Marlowe accepted it as the peace offering he knew it to be. Had his daughters stopped their mischief altogether, he would have been more worried.

  He was less sure that his staff would recover, however. Pymm had nearly broken down in tears again that morning at the sight of Marlowe donning the red silk banyan—the only survivor of the massacre. He’d have to brave the tailor’s soon before his valet died of melancholia, but there was only so much torture he could bear in one week. He was putting off the visit for as long as he dared.

  Mrs. Chips was also making her displeasure with him known. He’d had lukewarm tea ever since Minerva had left, pea soup and stale bread at every luncheon, and a horrifying quantity of mutton at the dinner table. He was too afraid to say anything, however. Chippers had even taken to scowling at him, and this was such an unprecedented display of emotion that he’d adopted a policy of avoidance and nonconfrontation when it came to his housekeeper, lest she snap and abscond to Cornwall for good.

  He hadn’t even thought Chippers liked Minerva.

  Marlowe knew he should have told Minerva long ago he was Christopher Essex, but by the time he’d realized he wanted something more between them, he’d been too frightened of her response—justifiably so, seeing as how she’d popped off to Montford’s in a pique the moment she’d discovered his secret.

  Besides, her infatuation with Essex, while not as horrifying as a commonplacer’s (he still shuddered at the mere thought of Lady Hedonist and the wand), had made him uncomfortable. How could he ever live up to her expectations? He was, in reality, just a man—a deeply flawed man. He’d written his last poem about his governess’s hip, for God’s sake. That was hardly the mark of the romantic man of letters Minerva had cast in Essex’s role.

  He didn’t know if Minerva would ever forgive him, or even if she should. Even discounting the whole Essex debacle, he was a bad bet all around, and she knew this too well.

  But he’d not given up.

  After their last acrimonious encounter at Montford’s and all of the palaver with his girls, however, he’d thought it best to regroup and let her anger cool. In the meantime, he had vowed to write her a sonnet so incredibly moving and passionate that she’d fall into his arms, all of his sins forgiven.

  He thought the plan was a sound one in theory. She liked Essex—she liked Essex perhaps more than she’d ever liked the viscount. But . . .

  One night and half a day since he’d begun, he’d not produced a word.

  And that was how Sebastian found him, slumped over his library desk, staring at a blank page.

  He should have smelled the ambush the moment Montford—dressed in an uncharacteristically shiny silver cutaway, no doubt influenced by Sebastian’s dubious sartorial advice—stepped into the library on Sebastian’s heels. But he was distracted by the cask of Honeywell Reserve Sebastian’s bulldog valet, Crick, was setting upon the sideboard.

  He definitely should have cried foul when Montford, who’d sworn off Honeywell Ale for reasons he refused to explain (though Marlowe had inveigled most of the tale of Rylestone Green’s Annual Foot and Ale Race of 1817 out of Newcomb years ago), began matching Sebastian’s rather advanced pace. But two pints in—all that Marlowe would allow himself these days, despite the reserve being the nectar of the gods—and the loose, relaxed banter among the three of them had lulled him into a false sense of complacency.

  “So, Marlowe,” Sebastian began in his most disingenuous tone that always foretold trouble, “what the devil is going on with your governess?”

  Marlowe choked on his mouthful of ale. He really should have seen this coming.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  His friends’ twin glares made it clear that he would not be getting off so easily.

  “Oh, no,” Sebastian said. “After the massive bolloxing you gave me when I was courting Katherine, there is no way I am going to pass up the opportunity to return the favor.”

  “My staff is still cleaning the cake from the ballroom ceiling, by the way,” Montford said dryly.

  Marlowe snorted. “Playing Katherine’s swain was your dear wife’s idea, Monty. I were only doing what I was told.”

  Sebastian’s head turned sharply toward the duke, eyes wide with shock. “Astrid’s idea? I should have known.”

  Marlowe rolled his eyes. How had Sebastian not figured out that one? “You really should have, Sherry. Just like it was her idea, and the marchioness’s, I’m sure, that you ambush me today.”

  Neither man was able to meet his eyes or deny the claim. The sheepish look on their faces would have been hilarious had Marlowe not been so annoyed at them.

  “Look here, old thing,” Sebastian finally said after polishing off his third pint, “you saved me from losing Katie, so forgive me for wanting to return the favor. If you are as enamored of Miss Jones as I am of my wife, then I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to withdraw from the field without even a fight.”

  Marlowe wasn’t, but the last thing he needed was his friends’ well-intentioned interference. It would be the cake fight all over again.

  “She wants nothing to do with me,” he muttered, “and for good reason. I lied to her about so many th
ings she can never forgive me.”

  Both of his friends looked shocked that he’d not even tried to deny his infatuation. But what use was in denying it, when it was true?

  Montford cleared his throat, awkward as ever. “I’m not entirely sure that is true. Astrid says the woman talks of nothing else but you. Well, ranting might be a more appropriate word for it.”

  “See?” cried Sebastian. “She wouldn’t be so passionately vocal about it if she didn’t still care.”

  “Yes, well, you’ve not heard the whole story,” Marlowe muttered, and then he proceeded to tell them, if only to demonstrate how futile their mission was.

  When he was done with his tale, Sebastian and the duke both downed another pint of reserve with desperate enthusiasm.

  “Only you,” drawled the duke, after emitting a very unducal belch, “would find yourself in such a ludicrous, tangled mire.”

  “Thank you both for your concern,” he growled. “Now, if you’ll leave me to my misery.”

  Sebastian and Montford exchanged glances and seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. It seemed to be, shockingly, in favor of following Marlowe’s request . . . though it seemed the duke’s and the marquess’s consumption of Honeywell Reserve may have been a little too heavy-handed to allow them to follow through with their decision, as Marlowe soon discovered.

  “Well, at least I can tell Katie we tried,” Sebastian said on a hiccough. He rose to his feet but wobbled so badly he had to sit down again.

  “I suppose I should see what Astrid’s getting up to,” the duke said with a resigned sigh. He too tried to rise to his feet but failed. “She’s been on the warpath. Apparently some rather dreadful ladies’ association is protesting today in Hyde Park, and my wife is determined to protest the protesters.”

  “The Ladies’ League Against Lewd and Lascivious Literature and Letters,” Sebastian drawled. “Or is it Letters and Literature? Unfortunately—or fortunately, I’m not sure which—my own wife is too under the weather today to accompany the duchess. But your sister and Miss Jones, I hear, are attending with the duchess.”

  Marlowe had wondered why Betsy had been so eager to visit the duchess today. “She’s not my Miss Jones,” he muttered. “What the devil are they protesting, then?”

  “The Ladies’ League is protesting you, old boy,” Sebastian said. “Essex, Byron, de Quincy, Wollstonecraft, the Shelleys—any halfway decent bit of literature, as far as I can tell. The duchess and Miss Jones are having none of it, though.”

  “They made signs,” Montford said mournfully, having Crick refill his glass in lieu of departing.

  Marlowe brightened a bit at this information. The fact that Minerva was throwing her lot in with the duchess gave him hope. Surely if she didn’t plan on forgiving him this century, she would not be so willing to support Essex so publicly.

  “One more for the road,” Sebastian said, signaling for Crick, “and then I really must be off.”

  Montford toasted vaguely in Sebastian’s direction at such a clever idea, and Marlowe rolled his eyes. He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of them.

  But before the duke and the marquess could start their last pint, Mrs. Chips appeared at the door and announced a very unexpected visitor . . . after flinging a quick glare in her employer’s direction, as she’d done every day since Minerva’s departure.

  Dr. Lucas, of all people, swept into the room, looking unsurprised to find Montford and Sebastian in attendance. Marlowe was too exhausted—and a bit squiffy from his two pints—to even object to the man’s intrusion, though he did send a token scowl the man’s way. It seemed to have little effect, however, as the Doctor didn’t so much as cringe.

  “Whiskers!” Sebastian cried, swaying in his seat, waving his fourth pint at the man. Montford cleared his throat loudly in admonition, and Sebastian grimaced. “That is, er, Dr. Lucas,” he amended.

  Doctor Lucas ignored the marquess entirely, as he usually did, and after a brief nod at Marlowe, turned to the duke. “I have been summoned to Hyde Park,” he said. “There is some concern that the ladies gathered may soon be in need of medical assistance, and I thought you might want to know.”

  Montford gusted out a sigh. “If my wife has started a riot . . .”

  “I think it is the enormous fire the Ladies’ League has lit in the middle of the park, rather than the duchess, that is a cause for concern,” the doctor said.

  Oh, good God.

  “A fire! For what purpose?” the duke cried, wobbling to his feet and nearly spilling the rest of his ale. The man really could not hold his liquor. No wonder he’d always been so abstemious.

  “Apparently they’ve decided to burn books,” the doctor said, accepting a pint of ale from Crick. After a suspicious sniff, he took a small sip. Obviously deciding it was worthy of his palate, he polished off the pint in one long draught. Marlowe was rather impressed at the display. And hated the man just a little less for his obvious good taste. “This is excellent, by the way,” the doctor added.

  Sebastian shot up from his seat, incensed and only staggering a little. “They’re burning your books, Marlowe!” he cried.

  “Surely not,” he bit out. Such an act of censorship was inconceivable.

  “Your books?” Dr. Lucas asked, turning to Marlowe with a puzzled look.

  Marlowe sent Sebastian a withering glance for his drunken outburst. But he could see no purpose in not telling the sawbones the truth, considering that everyone—and their dogs—seemed to know his secret these days. What good had it done him to remain anonymous anyway?

  “I am Christopher Essex,” he gritted out.

  Dr. Lucas remained silent for a long, long moment, then held out his glass for Crick to refill. “I believe I shall have another drink.”

  When the doctor had made it halfway through his second pint, he seemed recovered from his shock enough to speak. “No wonder Minerva is so angry at you. She found out who you were, didn’t she?”

  “Got it in one,” Marlowe muttered into the bottom of his glass.

  “Well, I’m sure she’ll come around,” the doctor said brusquely. “Minerva’s temper always burns hot and quick, but she is a very forgiving sort in the end.”

  Marlowe gave Dr. Lucas an astonished look. “What? Why are you . . . But I thought . . . surely you want Minerva for yourself!” he cried.

  Dr. Lucas smiled wryly at him. “We are friends. That is all. I thought perhaps we might wed, when it seemed as if neither of us would ever find a more suitable match, but it is out of the question now.”

  “You think I am a more suitable match?” he spluttered.

  Dr. Lucas fixed him with a scathing look. “I admit to having extreme doubts. But as much as you pretend otherwise, I know you are a decent enough fellow. And now that I know you are Christopher Essex . . . well, it explains many things. Besides, how could I ever compete with the poet himself for a Misstopher’s affections?”

  “That little minx . . .” Marlowe muttered, feeling a mixture of fury and relief at the doctor’s revelations. “She had me convinced she would marry you just to spite me.”

  “Ah, so she’s not yet reached the forgiving stage,” Dr. Lucas said sagely.

  “It will take a bloody miracle,” Marlowe said.

  “Or,” Sebastian pronounced dramatically, with the look of someone who’d just had a brilliant idea, “a Grand Gesture.”

  “The ale has pickled your wits,” Marlowe said. He didn’t even want to know what Sebastian might mean.

  “I agree with Sebastian,” the duke said. Then for some unfathomable reason, he staggered to his feet and began to unbutton his cutaway jacket.

  “What are you doing?” Marlowe cried.

  The duke wobbled dangerously as he tried to strip off the sleeves, and Crick finally interceded to help.

  “You can’t very well make a Grand Gesture in a banyan,” Montford said, sounding a bit slurred around his vowels. He thanked Crick as he took his jacket in hand and held
it out to Marlowe. “And since you lost the rest of your wardrobe, I propose a trade.”

  “You are drunk,” Marlowe declared.

  “Maybe a little,” Montford admitted, swaying on his feet.

  “Maybe a lot, but I agree with Monty,” Sebastian said, which of course he did. He was even more bosky than the duke. Grand Gestures indeed. “If you go to the park in your dressing gown to rescue the fair maiden, it will not go over well.”

  “Rescue the . . . ? Good God, what do you think they’re doing in the park that anyone needs rescuing?” he cried.

  “Apparently trying to burn it down,” Dr. Lucas said into his pint.

  “Not sure if I’ll be looking any more presentable in the jacket,” Marlowe muttered.

  “I shall pretend I didn’t hear that,” Sebastian said haughtily. “I helped Monty select the fabric myself.

  “Shocking.”

  Sebastian glared. “It’s Italian silk.”

  “Just wear the blasted thing,” Montford grumbled, looking ready to fight Marlowe if he didn’t agree.

  Marlowe, who knew very well what the duke’s fists felt like, especially when applied to his molars, began to reluctantly shrug his way out of his banyan and into the silk abomination.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Marlowe gazed in utter dismay from Montford’s open-air barouche as thirty-foot flames shot into the air down near the banks of the Serpentine, a crowd of rather belligerent-looking noblewomen gathered around the inferno arguing with each other.

  Montford, whose notoriously weak constitution had been addled by the combination of the ale and the movement of his carriage, leaned against one wheel and wiped the bile from his mouth after emptying his stomach in the grass. “Seems Lucas is right about burning your writing,” he said. “I can see the Chronicle from here.”

  “If ever there was the occasion for a Grand Gesture, I would think this qualifies,” Sebastian pronounced, stepping out of the carriage and sipping from the pint he’d brought along for the ride, giving Montford a wide berth in case the man were sick all over him.