The Wedding Game

by Jane Feather

  “Their own sphere,” Chastity said. “That's precisely the usual argument. Women have their world and men have theirs and never the twain shall meet . . . and everyone is very clear which of the two is the more powerful and important,” she added, thinking she was beginning to sound as didactic as Constance. Ordinarily, she could see both sides of any issue, but for some reason Douglas Farrell caused her to suffer one-sided blindness.

  “I think perhaps we should agree to disagree on this,” Douglas said. “I'm not against the idea itself, I would merely hesitate to put it into practice until the majority of women have acquired the education and the ability to think outside the domestic sphere to the larger issues that at the moment are men's province.” He had thought that was rather a diplomatic way of putting it—his companion, however, didn't think so.

  “It's no wonder you don't find the idea of marriage appealing,” Chastity observed with disconcerting sweetness. “With such an outmoded and prejudiced view of women, how could you? And I venture to suggest that any woman who might come up to your exacting standards would probably find something unappealing in a man who holds such a generally low opinion of her sex.” She folded her arms again, as if punctuating the end of the conversation.

  Douglas scratched the side of his nose. “I had hoped we were beginning a rather promising friendship,” he observed. “Am I too unregenerate and dislikable to qualify as a friend, Miss Duncan?”

  “I don't dislike you,” Chastity protested. “It's just your opinions I dislike.”

  “Oh, is that all,” he said, sounding relieved. “I'm sure I can change those.”

  “If you changed them you wouldn't be the same person,” she pointed out unarguably as the carriage drew to a halt outside her house.

  Douglas jumped down and punctiliously gave her his hand to alight. He paid the driver and then walked with her up the steps to her door.

  “Let me give you back your scarf,” Chastity said, pulling the long muffler out of her coat.

  “Allow me.” He took it from her and unwound it from around her neck. They were standing necessarily very close together on the top step and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. “So,” he said, holding both ends while it still lay around her neck. “Friends, Miss Duncan?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  He leaned into her and touched the corner of her mouth with his. It was the kiss of a friend, of the kind she had exchanged with many men, but then something happened. He pulled on the ends of the scarf, drawing her closer to him, and his mouth was fully on hers. Her eyes had closed and against all reason and logic she returned the pressure of his lips, lifting her hands to his shoulders, holding him. They drew apart together, almost jumped apart in the same instant, and stood looking at each other in stunned silence.

  Chastity put her gloved hand to her mouth as she stared at him. He gave her a rather rueful smile. “A seal of friendship,” he said, but without much conviction.

  Chastity took the way out offered. “Yes,” she said. “Friendship. Of course.” She lifted the scarf over her head and held it out to him. “Christmas,” she said. “We didn't talk about Christmas.”

  “No,” he agreed.

  Chastity spoke rapidly and with as little expression as possible. “We're all, at least my sisters and I, taking the four o'clock train from Waterloo on Christmas Eve. If that's convenient, you could travel with us. Unless you prefer to come down on Christmas Day, but I doubt you'll find any trains running.”

  “I should be delighted to accompany you and your sisters on Christmas Eve,” he said with a bow of his head.

  “And what about a valet?”

  That made him laugh, breaking the awkward tension. “Chastity, my dear girl, after what we've been discussing, how could you possibly imagine I'd have a valet?”

  “I have learned, Douglas, that you are not always what you seem,” she said with a lofty air that she couldn't possibly maintain. She shook her head with a slight laugh, feeling for her key in her pocket. “No, of course I didn't expect you to be bringing a servant, but I had to ask.”

  “I can't imagine why,” he said, taking the door key from her and inserting it in the lock. The door swung open.

  “Thank you,” she said. The air crackled between them and she slid past him in the doorway. He reached out and lightly stroked the curve of her cheek with the back of his hand, a fleeting touch that was nevertheless deeply intimate.

  “Until later, Chastity,” he said, handing her the door key as Jenkins materialized from the shadows of the hall.

  “Thank you for the pie,” Chastity said, thinking how silly that sounded. She stepped farther into the hall and closed the door firmly behind her.

  Douglas walked to Harley Street in something of a daze. He couldn't decide what had just happened. Since Marianne he had avoided any kind of attraction to a woman of his own social circle, and he hadn't found it much of a deprivation. Once bitten, twice shy was a good motto, he reflected as he walked up the staircase to his suite on the second floor. Once he'd started his forays into the miserable slums of Edinburgh, all his emotional and physical energies had been devoted to the desperate souls in need of everything he had to give. He had kept a mistress, a pleasant undemanding courtesan who was happy to have her rent paid and a reasonable stipend in exchange for satisfying his sexual needs, but she was no more interested in emotional entanglements than he, and had moved without complaint to a substitute protector when Douglas left Edinburgh.

  He had left that city only when he'd established a thriving clinic staffed by men and women he'd trained himself and funded to a large extent with his own personal trust. Then, in search of fresh fields to conquer, he'd come to London. But the trust fund could only support one clinic, so Harley Street and a rich wife it had to be. There was no room in his life for anything other than a straightforward marriage of convenience, an arrangement where courtesy and consideration prevailed, but where romantic love and all its snares and pitfalls had no place. Dalliance with the Honorable Chastity Duncan was most definitely not in the cards. It would interfere with the primary goal.

  The door to his office suite stood open and he frowned in surprise. He hadn't yet acquired a receptionist and he was a half hour early for his appointment. He stepped inside, called, “Hello?”

  “Oh, Dottore, Dottore.” Laura Della Luca emerged from the inner office into the waiting room, her arms filled with swaths of material. “I was just trying out a few ideas. The caretaker let me in when I told him I was working with you on refurbishment.”

  “Oh.” The caretaker would have to whistle for his Christmas bonus, Douglas thought with justifiable irritation. He didn't want this woman, or indeed anyone, wandering in and out of his private apartments as if she had every right to do so. But in all fairness he could well imagine how she'd swept over any possible objections of the caretaker like a Covent Garden street sweeper dealing with the market detritus.

  “I thought this would be particularly suitable for the waiting room, Dottore,” Laura burbled on, quite oblivious of his silence and the lack of greeting. She held up a swatch of flowered chintz. “Just imagine it on the chairs. I have been looking at chairs and I found at a lovely little shop in Kensington some wonderful deep armchairs that would work very well with this material. We would have it made up with skirts to hide the legs . . . legs are so vulgar on chairs, don't you think?”

  “Rather necessary, I would have thought,” Douglas said aridly.

  “Oh, yes, necessary, of course.” She waved this little objection aside. “But we don't have to sully our eyes with necessities, do we, Dottore?” She shook her finger at him. “Now, I thought this would be really pretty on the windows, looped back, of course, with matching ties and a frilled pelmet.” She produced another swatch of chintz that looked identical to the previous one.

  Douglas peered at it. “Isn't it the same?”

  “No, no . . . men have not the eye,” she said. “See, the pattern is differen
t and the colors are different. This has a gold background, this a blue one.”

  “Ah.” Douglas nodded, thinking of the Park Lane mansion. Gold and blue were the predominant themes there too, but at least there they didn't make the place seem like a country tearoom.

  “And over the windows beneath we shall have this lovely filmy lace curtain.” Laura triumphantly held up a piece of white lace. “Just picture it, Dottore. Just picture it.” She hurried to one of the long stately windows and held the lace with one hand and the chintz with the other. “So sweetly pretty.”

  “Yes,” Douglas said faintly. Sweetly pretty. Dear God, sweetly pretty in the waiting room of a serious practitioner. He'd be the laughingstock of the medical profession.

  “And little gilt tables,” she rushed on. “I found just the ones. At each chair, I thought. For convenience, you understand.” She flung her arms wide. “With flower paintings adorning the walls we shall have an atmosphere of soft prettiness that will welcome the weary and the sick.”

  More like some old lady's boudoir, Douglas thought. But he didn't wish to be rude . . . it wouldn't do much to advance his suit. If he smiled, nodded, and procrastinated, the whole business would eventually die a natural death.

  “And just wait until you see what I have planned for your office,” Laura said, gesturing as she went before him into the office. “Here we will have the same lace at the windows to keep out the sun, but gold tapestry curtains with red tassels and a crimson leather top to your desk. Chairs in the same crimson leather, I believe. And a carpet, oh, most definitely. A carpet of multihues, reds and blues and golds. Yes, yes, it will be perfect.” She nodded firmly. “Just picture it, Dottore.”

  Douglas did, and shuddered. He would be conducting physical examinations in a room resembling a bordello. He cleared his throat, preparing to find a delicate way to steer her clear of this vision, but she swept on regardless.

  “I think Italian paintings on the walls . . . they are always the best. Italian art, there is nothing like it. No reproductions, of course, so I will have to look carefully for you. It will be expensive but you won't mind that.”

  Douglas cleared his throat again. “My funds are not unlimited, signorina.”

  Laura waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, I will bargain for you. We Italians are so good at negotiating prices. Don't you worry about a thing, Dottore. I will arrange everything just so.”

  “It's most kind of you, Miss Della Luca . . . Laura . . . to go to all this trouble, but I'm afraid . . .” He glanced at his watch. “I am expecting a patient in ten minutes and I must make some preparations.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. The busy doctor. I wouldn't intrude for the world.” She walked back to the waiting room, gathering up her swatches that littered surfaces everywhere. “But you can't expect to build up a practice properly without the right accoutrements, Dottore. Can you imagine the King's physician in such shabby surroundings? Oh, dear me, no.” She gave another of her little trilling laughs.

  “The King's physician?” he queried blankly, wondering where this could possibly have come from.

  She laughed and tapped him on the shoulder. “Ambition, Dottore. We all must have ambition and I can read yours in your eyes.”

  A somewhat illiterate reader of character, Douglas reflected, even as he kept his fixed smile on his face. It was beginning to feel as if it was cemented in place. Perhaps he'd never lose it.

  “You must leave these things to me,” she said with a significant nod. “You have your own concerns, Dottore . . . but I must practice calling you Douglas, mustn't I? Yes, Douglas, you have the man's work to do, you must let me take care of the woman's. Indeed you must.”

  “You are too kind,” he murmured. “Let me show you to the street.” He escorted her downstairs and out into the street, then he closed the door firmly and resisted the urge to lock it only by reminding himself that a prospective patient faced with a locked door was unlikely to become anything other than prospective.

  He returned upstairs wondering how five square miles of one city could contain such vastly different women as Chastity Duncan and Laura Della Luca. And for the first time he felt a niggle of doubt. Was Laura's money and the obvious willingness and ability with which she would throw herself into promoting her husband's career worth a marriage?

  He dismissed the cavil with a sweeping gesture of his hand. People made such compromises all the time, and had done so since the dawn of civilization. She was exactly what he needed. And they'd spend little enough private time together. He was sure he could give her what she wanted in a marriage, and she'd give him what he needed.

  But the King's physician? Dear God. That he would have to nip in the bud. She could have her chintz if necessary, but not that.

  Chapter 11

  Well, that was very satisfying,” Constance observed as the sisters walked out of St. George's, Hanover Square, on Christmas Eve, having witnessed Hester Winthrop and David Lucan tying the knot.

  “Yes, our first real matchmaking job,” said Prudence.

  “Not counting Amelia and Henry,” Chastity reminded them.

  “We can't really count them, Chas, because we didn't charge them anything,” Prudence pointed out.

  “But then, neither Hester nor David knew they'd been matchmade . . . if that's a word,” Chastity said.

  “It's not,” Constance said. “But it's descriptive enough. Anyway, they paid for the service, or at least their mothers did, although they didn't know it.”

  Prudence chuckled. “A generous donation to a charity for indigent spinsters. I still think that was one of your best, most devious ideas, Con.”

  Her elder sister laughed. “It worked, as we saw this morning.”

  “They were both radiant,” Chastity said as they stepped into the barouche where Cobham was holding the horses' heads. “We're going to the Winthrop residence, Cobham, but of course you know that.”

  “Of course, Miss Chas,” he said. “Nice wedding, was it?”

  “Lovely,” Prudence said. “Everyone was crying.”

  “Except us,” Constance said.

  “I was, just a little,” Chastity confessed. “Happiness always makes me weep.”

  “Oh, darling, you're so softhearted.” Constance put her arms around her and hugged her. “You make Prue and me feel like a couple of dragon ladies with iron hearts.”

  “You wouldn't say that if you saw me around Douglas Farrell,” Chastity declared. Her reputation as the softhearted sister sometimes irked her, particularly if, as she suspected, it was a euphemism for sentimental. And she really didn't think she was sentimental. “He thinks I'm the most sarcastic, provoking, inquisitive woman.” Even as she said this, she knew it wasn't the strict truth. She had said nothing to her sisters about the confusing nature of his so-called kiss of friendship, although she had confided to them the truth about his real mission. Even so, it was simpler somehow to keep up the pretence that she still disliked him as much as ever.

  “Well, you do have that side to you,” Prudence conceded. “Every one of mother's daughters has it. Yours just surfaces a little less frequently.”

  “We shall be watching with great interest at Christmas,” Constance said as Cobham drew up at the curb, expertly inching the carriage into a space among the throng of vehicles disgorging wedding guests. “If you need help besting him, you know where to come.”

  “I just might manage without assistance,” Chastity said with a toss of her head that made them all laugh. “The only assistance I really need is to keep him interested in Laura. We'll have to find all sorts of ways to throw them together.” And all sorts of ways to keep him at arm's length from herself. Any more of those “friendly” kisses would really jam up the works. But this too she kept to herself. The awful thought had occurred to her that Douglas, who presumably assumed that she was rich as well as single and available, might switch his attentions from Laura to her.

  “You're still prepared to condemn him to the Della Luca even though yo
u've revised your opinion of his gold-digging motives?” Prudence asked as she stepped to the pavement.

  Chastity shrugged. “He still wants and needs a rich wife. And he still doesn't care about what kind he gets. His view of women is so Neanderthal, I think all her nonsense will just flow over him. He'll treat her with the same somewhat amused indifference that he treats his mother and sisters. This is the way women are.”

  “And this is the way to treat them,” Constance said, inclining her head in scornful agreement. “You're right, a lost cause.”

  “What time should I come back for you, Miss Con?” Cobham inquired from the box.

  “Oh, around three o'clock, please. We're catching the four o'clock from Waterloo, so we'll go straight there from here.”

  “Right y'are, Miss Con. I'll bring Miss Chas's bags with me then.”

  “Yes, they're ready and waiting in the hall,” Chastity said, adding to her sisters, “I suppose Max and Gideon have yours?”

  “Yes, they'll be leaving at about the same time,” Prudence said. “Only in separate motorcars, of course. But they should get to Romsey by seven, in time for dinner anyway.”

  “I'll be back at three, then,” Cobham said.

  “Your last official driving job,” Chastity said with a smile.

  “Aye, Miss Chas.” He shook his head. “Not sure what I'll be doing with myself all day.”

  “You'll be in your garden,” Chastity said. “You'll love it.”

  He chuckled. “Getting under the wife's feet, that's for sure.”

  “She'll love it too,” Constance declared. Cobham laughed and clicked his teeth at the horses, who set off again at a brisk pace.

  “Right, let's go in and greet the newlyweds,” Prudence said, joining the steady stream of guests entering the Winthrop mansion.

  Douglas surveyed the small pile of prettily wrapped parcels on his dining room table and wondered if he'd done the right thing. He was unsure about the etiquette for Christmas-present giving at a house party but had decided that it was better to go prepared. If it seemed that exchanging presents was not a Duncan tradition then he could leave them in his valise. He had bought gifts for his hosts, deciding to assume that all three Duncan sisters as well as their father would consider themselves hosts. Lord Duncan had been easy to buy for, a particularly fine box of cigars was always acceptable, and since he didn't really know the two elder sisters at all, Douglas had settled for perfume. But Chastity had been a different case. He wanted something more personal for her. Something more suited to a friend and confidante.