Lady Reluctant

by Maggie Osborne

  “The pleasure is mine,” the Duke responded gallantly, contemplating a breast that had awed men from three continents. By supreme effort, he raised his gaze to the garden of patches blooming on Isabelle’s countenance. His gray eyes widened slightly, then he moved to stand before Blu.

  His mustache was soft and feathery, his lips warm across the back of her fingers, and an involuntary shudder rippled Blu’s skin the moment his mouth brushed her hand. She gave him a questioning look, wondering if he possessed a secret power to produce such an unwilling response.

  “Are you chilled?” he inquired, looking down into her eyes.

  “Not bloody likely. I’m sweating like a cook at an oven. See the sweat?” Raising her arm, she invited his inspection, then observing Monsieur’s scowl, she hastily added, “But thank you, sir, for inquiring.”

  The Duke’s lips twitched with suppressed laughter, then he saluted her with his wine glass. “Nevertheless, you look lovely this evening.”

  “I do, don’t I?” she agreed, beaming.

  “Indeed.” Smiling, the Duke moved backward a step to examine her. The gown she wore was hopelessly dated, out of fashion a score of years and more. In England, hoops had flattened in front and behind and were no longer round. Necklines had risen a crucial few inches. But he had not deceived her: Blusette Morgan was beautiful. Hoydenish, outrageous, blunt yet strangely innocent, still she was beautiful. He could hardly look away from her. The others—he could think of no adequate words to describe them. Glancing at his company, he smiled and decided this was certainly the most curious dinner he had hosted.

  After discoursing on the weather and the rapid time they were making, he led his guests to the table.

  “Forks!” Monsieur cried. Thrusting his spectacles up his nose, he gazed at the Duke with an excited expression akin to adulation. “I confess myself near tears, sir, to find myself in the company of a cultured man!”

  The others inspected the instrument with suspicion and an exchange of wary glances.

  “How is it to be used?” Blu inquired after Monsieur had seated her. Two forks hung on the back wall of Black Bottom’s kitchen, but she had not thought to discover one beside her plate. Nor had she noticed a fork that night in the hut; but then, her mind had been on other matters. Curious, she turned the utensil in her hand.

  As Monsieur shamefacedly admitted himself rusty in fork etiquette, it was the Duke who demonstrated its proper use after the chine of beef had been served. “I predict you will find a fork an invaluable convenience,” the Duke promised.

  It was not to be. Mouton was first to abandon the effort and return to a spoon and knife. Isabelle understood the formality of the evening enough to murmur an apology, then completed the meal using her fingers as she had done all of her life.

  Because Blu was determined to present herself as civilized, she doggedly persisted. After several awkward attempts in which she speared nothing but her plate, she resigned herself to picking up her beans and bits of meat and shoving them firmly onto the tines before placing the fork into her mouth. Comparing her manners at table to the Duke’s, she recognized a severe disadvantage. Next to his elegant ease and fluid grace, she felt crude and clumsy. Had Monsieur not been watching with his bright hawklike eyes, her resentment and discomfort could easily have erupted in hostility.

  “If you prefer to sup with a spoon,” the Duke commented after observing her failed efforts, “you may.”

  “I know I bloody well may,” she snapped. “I prefer to eat like a damned lady!” She scowled at her platter. “Though I don’t know how I’ll satisfy myself, as this bloody corset has my belly tamped down as tight as skin on a pig.” Raising her scowl to Monsieur, she demanded to know how a lady could possibly feed herself.

  “I accept the blame for your discomfort,” Monsieur said grandly. “I neglected to mention that a lady eats before she laces, then picks daintily at her plate at table. Only peasants display a hearty appetite.”

  As if to prove the point, Isabelle shifted a handful of meat to her left hand and used her right to stuff her breast back into her bodice.

  While they watched, a series of popping sounds exploded along Isabelle’s back as her corset lacings snapped and gave way. She heaved a great sigh, then shrugged and smiled and applied herself to her plate. Blu stared in envy.

  When coffee had been served and the plates cleared by a liveried boy, the Duke passed cigars to Mouton and Monsieur, who professed himself transported by the rapture of the meal and the excellence of the cigars.

  Blu tasted the coffee then spat it on the floor. “I’d rather have a pint of sky blue,” she said, requesting gin. She couldn’t imagine why he had served coffee. So far as she knew, coffee was good only for easing the suffering of a snotty nose and, as he could plainly see, her nose was clear.

  “Perhaps a brandy instead?” the Duke suggested, not looking at the splat of coffee on his floor.

  She hesitated only a moment. “Very well. I’ll have a pint of brandy.” Because he refused to glance at the coffee she had spat out, a suspicion arose that it might not be proper to spit on her host’s floor. Blu made a silent note to check this point with Monsieur.

  “A pint?” the Duke asked, looking up from the table. One dark eyebrow lifted.

  “If you please.”

  After serving the brandy, he studied her in the blaze of lemon-scented candlelight, smiling his bloody superior smile. “This has been”—he paused in search of words—“an unforgettable evening.”

  Narrowing her eyes, she searched for any insult in the words, not relaxing until she was certain there was nothing at which to take offense. Isabelle stuffed her breast into her gown, Mouton scratched his armpit, Monsieur beamed.

  “Thank you,” Blu said for them all. She tossed back the brandy and extended her tankard for more, allowing herself a smile. She did believe she was taking the measure of being a lady. Even the hated Lady Katherine would have been proud tonight.

  “Unforgettable,” the Duke repeated, shaking his head. After a moment he laughed out loud.

  6

  Thomas observed Blu’s efforts with interest and more than a little curiosity. By midpoint in the voyage, she had mastered the art of walking in heels and could do so during periods of wind and high water. She no longer walked with the energetic strides he had noticed on Morgan’s Mound and he observed the loss with an odd sense of regret. Yet, she moved with an unexpected natural grace.

  This should not have surprised him, as she had demonstrated a swiftness to imitate and learn, illustrated by her mastery of a fork at table. No longer did she use her fingers to push food on the tines. Instead, she employed her fork to increasing advantage, having requested one be sent to her cabin, where presumably she practiced.

  Moreover, she demanded a tub and hot water each Saturday night and had not lapsed backward toward the grimy urchin he had first encountered.

  Watching her now as she stood against the rail gazing toward England, he realized with a small jolt that from a distance she could be mistaken for a lady of quality. If, of course, one made allowance for the dated clothing, her undressed hair, and the dagger she wore tied with rope about her waist. Even clad as she was, she would turn a hundred male heads if she were to stroll down Bond Street.

  While he agreed she could not have appeared in London in the manner and garb she wore on Morgan’s Mound, and he understood the necessity for a transformation toward civilized appearance and behavior, he did not comprehend her continued references to becoming a lady.

  Until recently, he had supposed she was destined for the squalor of the East End, living among Londoners as rough and raucous as herself. But if that had been her destination, Monsieur, who had visited London and knew it well, would not have devoted two days to teaching her to sit properly. Straddling a bench in skirts was not an uncommon sight near the docks; sitting properly would not have been at issue. Plainly, Monsieur was embarked on an accelerated course to groom Blusette Morgan for greater ends tha
n London’s East Side.

  At odd moments the question teased his mind: Why? To what purpose?

  Approaching her from behind, he paused to admire the dark curls that tumbled from beneath her cap. Of a sudden he felt a desire to lift that silky weight in his hands and feel the strands against his skin. He was tempted to come up behind her and span her narrow waist with his hands. The intensity of his desire to touch her astonished him.

  Each man harbored a weakness, but women were not one of his. He enjoyed the company of women, particularly women of intellect and spirit, and until recently he had maintained a mistress in Lambeth. But he had never conceived a passion for a woman, nor did he understand those among his acquaintances who had. As he had never believed a woman necessary to his contentment and happiness, he found it difficult to align his mind with those who did. Consequently he found it impossible to empathize with acquaintances suffering the despair of a ruined love affair.

  Neither did he understand rogues who accosted any pretty skirt that swayed across their path. While he took pleasure in the sight of a handsome woman, it did not occur to him to intrude his attentions upon her. His liaisons had occurred because the woman of choice made it known his attentions would be welcomed. And none of the women with whom he had shared a mutual pleasure resembled Blusette Morgan in the slightest.

  Therefore it astonished him that the one woman to incite his interest to this extent should be Blusette Morgan. Smiling at the fancy, he thrust it aside and leaned his back against the railing to look into her face. He wasn’t certain if he had noticed previously that her face was oval and her dark eyes were particularly lively and fine. Why he should do so now caused him no little puzzlement. Perhaps it was the isolation of the voyage.

  “This bloody damned corset is choking the life out of me,” she complained immediately, scowling at him. He thought it interesting that when she scowled, the thick part of her brows curled upward. Her scowl deepened. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “I’m thinking about your murderous corset,” he said, smiling. “Do you resent your sex, Miss Morgan?”

  “Not my sex, Captain Duke, merely the trappings that cloak it. At least for a bloody lady.”

  “When we’re alone you may call me Thomas.” The suggestion bemused him. He wondered if he had eaten something to affect his wits.

  “Very well.” She agreed as if she were granting him a favor. After a pause, she turned again to the sea. “I hate not being able to lower my arms. I hate wearing stockings. I hate baring my breasts for every man jack to see. I hate being on this ship and I hate the notion of England!”

  A hundred details demanded his attention, all of which he delayed in favor of an overweening curiosity. “Then why do you go?”

  Her gloved hands curled into fists atop the railing and her mouth pressed into a grim line. For a time he believed she would not answer, then she spoke in a venomous tone. “My father forced me. I sail to meet my mother.”

  Oddly, he had never considered that she might have a living mother. If he thought of it at all, he supposed he had assumed her mam had been an island whore.

  “She’s a bleeding English lady.’’

  As he considered this possibility, which was about as likely as talking trees, he decided to offer no comment.

  “So I have to become a bleeding lady too!” With an expression of supreme scorn, she licked her thumb, then spat over the rail. “At least enough of a lady so my mother won’t be mortally offended the first time she claps eyes on my person.”

  “Ah, I see.” He was beginning to understand. A smile curved his lips as he attempted to balance her expectations against the probable reality of the mother she sailed to meet. No doubt she based her fanciful notions on what she had been told. Certainly Beau Billy’s conception of a lady and England’s conception were not alike. He suspected Beau Billy would accept as a lady any woman who kept herself marginally clean and pretended a modicum of modesty. Heaven knew what and who Blu’s mother might actually have been.

  Blu must have sensed the skepticism beneath his comment because she whirled to face him. “You doubt I can become a lady?”

  “My dear Blu,” he answered gently. “One can dress a wolf in lamb’s clothing. One can teach it to bleat like a lamb, feed like a lamb, and trot like a lamb. But it still is a wolf.”

  Her fists dropped to her waist and she leaned forward, thrusting her lovely face next to his. “You say I lack the sand to become as much a lady as me mam?”

  “I say a lady is born, not made. Each in God’s world is positioned as he was meant to be.”

  Her face pushed closer until their noses nearly touched. Her eyes blazed into his. “You are stating clear as clams that you think I can never be a lady!”

  God help him, he wanted to kiss her. Her eyes leaped like dark fire, her breath, sweet from eating apples, flowed over his lips. Had he lowered his gaze, he would have seen the creamy swelling of her breasts. Moisture damped his palms at the thought.

  He returned her furious gaze and held it. “Aye,” he said softly and with sincere regret. “I do say it.”

  “God’s balls!” She stared into his eyes. “Ye forget who ye be speaking to. This be Beau Billy’s daughter.” She rapped her knuckles against her breast. “There be nothing I cannot do, nothing I cannot master if I set me mind to it!”

  He raised his eyes from her lips. “Being an English lady is more than mastering a culinary skill or learning to sit and walk and talk.”

  “Talk! Nobody said anything about my talk. What’s amiss with my bloody speech?”

  “Aristocracy is a set of mind. It is a lifetime of manners and subtleties more convoluted than a spider’s web. You cannot learn in a few brief weeks, nay in years, the intricacies of a lifetime.”

  “Bloody hell, I cannot! Ye just watch, Mister High and Mighty!” Turning, she tossed her magnificent head and, despite her heels, managed to stride away from him.

  ~ ~ ~

  The next time they spoke was by accident rather than design, although Blu could not be certain the discourse at the railing had been by design. What it had been was motivating, on that score there could be no doubt. That the Duke believed her incapable of becoming a lady inspired her to renewed effort in a manner the threat of her mother could not. At bottom she did not care a farthing what her mother thought. Pride, not caring, drove her to seek a surface veneer on that count. But the Duke was another matter, though she could not have explained why that should be true.

  Regardless, his words rankled and scratched at something deeper than pride. Although she understood he had not intended a challenge, a challenge is what she heard. She found herself lying upon her cot grimly daydreaming of a future moment when she, in the guise of a great lady, would again encounter the Duke. In her daydream, the Duke prostrated himself before her hem and humbly begged her forgiveness. As a great lady ought, she extended forgiveness before she placed the heel of her boot on his hand and crushed his fingers.

  Later, as she took her customary turn about the deck before seeking her rest, she was contemplating the pleasure of breaking his bones when the Duke fell into step beside her.

  “Good evening, Miss Morgan,” he said pleasantly, smiling.

  “‘Tis a fine evening,” she acknowledged with exaggerated politeness, knowing Monsieur, who walked behind with Mouton, would overhear and pass judgment.

  “The breeze is cool. Are you warm enough?”

  “Except for my breasts,” she said, adjusting a shawl over the bare expanse. “I cannot accustom myself to displaying so much...”—she glanced over her shoulder at Monsieur and sought the proper word—“flesh. This reminds me. Perhaps you can settle an argument, Sir Duke,” she suggested, continuing to be polite.

  “It would be my pleasure, Miss Morgan.”

  “Monsieur insists one says breasts; Isabelle and Mouton claim one may speak of tits. We are agreed that you as a proper gentleman can settle this dispute. Which is it?” Again she glanced at Monsieur, thinki
ng she had phrased herself rather well. His nod of approval confirmed it.

  The Duke clasped his hands behind him and glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “In truth, I don’t recall that I have ever heard a lady refer to that portion of her anatomy. But I should think breasts.”

  Behind her, Blu heard Monsieur’s sniff of triumph.

  “We thank you. Perhaps you can also enlighten us as to how a lady scratches her privates?” Monsieur and Mouton moved closer to hear the reply. This issue had baffled them all. “You see what happens,” Blu explained, demonstrating. “When one pushes at the petticoat to reach one’s privates, the entire rig flares up behind and knocks people over or flips one’s buttocks to the breeze.” She believed she was doing rather well with this “one” business. Monsieur’s pride was almost palpable. “Then when one reaches the right spot, there are too many layers of clothing to scratch through to bring relief.”

  Sucking in his cheeks, the Duke raised his eyes and studied the sails against the starry night. His chest lifted in a long breath then collapsed. “Would this be a frequent trouble?” he asked finally.

  She considered. In truth, since she had begun bathing each Saturday night, she had not discovered herself troubled by itchy parts. Monsieur postulated a connection, but Blu had not yet weighed for or against.

  “Nay,” she answered slowly, drawing the word out. “Not of late. But it could be. Should it be, we need to know the proper way to scratch.” Monsieur and Mouton stood directly behind her, peering at the Duke and awaiting his ruling.

  He glanced at their expectant faces, then tugged his stock with a finger. “Ladies and gentlemen of quality do not scratch in public.”

  Blu’s eyebrows rose toward her hairline. “Not at all? Not even when their privates are burning and itching as if they were on fire?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if it’s urgent? Not even if the itching is enough to drive a person bloody damned insane?”

  “Not even then.”

  “Not their armpits either?”