Winning the Wallflower

by Eloisa James

  She also had a thorough knowledge of her mother’s favorite tome, The Mirror of Compliments: A Complete Academy for the Attaining unto the Art of Being a Lady, which was written by no less a personage than Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess of Sconce, and given to the girls on their twelfth birthday.

  In fact, Olivia’s mother had read The Mirror of Compliments so many times that it had taken over her conversation, rather like ivy smothering a tree. “ ‘Gentility,’ ” she had said the morning before the Micklethwait ball over marmalade and toast, “ ‘is bestowed on us by our ancestors, but soon blanched, when not revived by virtue.’ ” Olivia had nodded. She herself was a firm believer in the benefits of blanching gentility, but long experience had taught her that expressing such an opinion would merely give her mother a headache.

  “ ‘A young lady,’ ” Mrs. Lytton had announced on the way to the Micklethwait ball, “ ‘loathes nothing so much as entering parley with an immodest suitor.’ ” Olivia knew better than to inquire about how one “parleyed” with an immodest suitor. The ton understood that she was betrothed to the Duke of Canterwick’s heir, and therefore suitors, immodest or otherwise, rarely bothered to approach.

  Generally speaking, she tabled that sort of advice for the future, when she hoped to indulge in any number of immodest parleys.

  “Did you see Lord Webbe dancing with Mrs. Shottery?” Olivia asked her sister as they walked into her bedchamber. “It’s quite affecting to watch them stare into each other’s eyes. I must say, the ton seems to take their wedding vows about as seriously as do the French, and everyone says that inclusion of marital fidelity into French wedding vows turned them a splendid work of fiction.”

  “Olivia!” Georgiana groaned. “You mustn’t! And you wouldn’t—would you?”

  “Are you asking whether I will ever be unfaithful to my fiancé once he’s my husband—if that day ever arrives?”

  Georgiana nodded.

  “I suppose not,” Olivia said, though secretly she sometimes wondered if she might just snap one day and break every social rule by running off to Rome with a footman. “The only part of the evening I really enjoyed was when Lord Pomtinius told me a limerick about an adulterous abbot.”

  “Don’t you dare repeat it!” her sister ordered. Georgiana had never shown the faintest wish to rebel against the rules of propriety. She loved and lived by them.

  “There once was an adulterous abbot,” Olivia teased, “as randy—”

  Georgiana slapped her hands over her ears. “I can’t believe he told you such a thing! Father would be furious if he knew.”

  “Lord Pomtinius was in his cups,” Olivia said. “Besides, he’s ninety-six and he doesn’t care about decorum any longer. Just a laugh, now and then.”

  “It doesn’t even make sense. An adulterous abbot? How can an abbot be adulterous? They don’t even marry.”

  “Let me know if you want to hear the whole verse,” Olivia said. “It ends with talk of nuns, so I believe the word was being used loosely.”

  That limerick—and Olivia’s appreciation of it—pointed directly to the problem with Miss Lytton’s duchess-ification, or, as the girls labeled it, “duchification.” There was something very déclassé about Olivia, no matter how proper her bearing, her voice, and her manners might be. She certainly could play the duchess, but the real Olivia was, dismayingly, never far from the surface.

  “You are missing that indefinable air of consequence that your sister conveys without effort,” her father often opined, with an air of despondent resignation. “In short, Daughter, your sense of humor tends toward the vulgar.”

  “ ‘Your demeanor should ever augment your honor,’ ” her mother would chime in, quoting the Duchess of Sconce.

  And Olivia would shrug.

  “If only,” Mrs. Lytton had said despairingly to her husband time and again, “if only Georgiana had been born first.” For Olivia was not the only participant in the Lytton training program. Olivia and Georgiana had marched in lockstep through lessons on the comportment of a duchess, because their parents, aware of the misfortunes that might threaten their eldest daughter—a fever, a runaway carriage, a fall from a tower—had prudently duchified their second-born as well.

  Sadly, it was manifest to everyone that Georgiana had achieved the quality of a duchess, while Olivia . . . Olivia was Olivia. She certainly could behave with exquisite grace—but among her intimates, she was sarcastic, far too witty to be ladylike, and not in the least gracious. “She looks at me in such a way if I merely mention The Mirror of Compliments,” Mrs. Lytton would complain. “I’m only trying to help, I’m sure.”

  “That girl will be a duchess someday,” Mr. Lytton would say heavily. “She’ll be grateful to us then.”

  “But if only . . . ,” Mrs. Lytton would say, wistfully. “Dearest Georgiana is just . . . well, she would be a perfect duchess, wouldn’t she?”

  In fact, Olivia’s sister had mastered early the delicate art of combining a pleasing air of consequence with an irreproachably modest demeanor. Over the years Georgiana had built up a formidable array of duchess-like traits: ways of walking, talking, and carrying herself.

  “ ‘Dignity, virtue, affability, and bearing,’ ” Mrs. Lytton recited over and over, turning it into a nursery rhyme.

  Georgiana would glance at the glass, checking her dignified bearing and affable expression.

  Olivia would sing back to her mother: “Debility, vanity, absurdity, and . . . brainlessness!”

  By eighteen years of age, Georgiana looked, sounded, and even smelled (thanks to French perfume, smuggled from Paris at great expense) like a duchess. Mostly, Olivia didn’t bother.

  The Lyttons were happy, in a measured sort of way. By any sensible standard they had produced a real duchess, even if that particular daughter was not betrothed to a duke’s heir. As their girls were growing up, they told themselves that Georgiana would make a lovely wife to any man of rank. Alas, in time they stopped saying anything about their second daughter’s hypothetical husband.

  The sad truth is that a duchified girl is not what most young men desire. While Georgiana’s virtues were celebrated far and wide throughout the ton—especially amongst the dowager set—her hand was rarely sought for a dance, let alone for marriage.

  Mr. and Mrs. Lytton interpreted the problem differently. To their mind, their beloved second daughter was likely to dwindle into the shadow of a duchess, without becoming even a wife, because she had no dowry.

  The Lyttons had spent all their disposable income on tutors. That had left their younger daughter with little more than a pittance to launch her on the marriage market.

  “We have sacrificed everything for Olivia,” Mrs. Lytton often said. “I can’t understand why she is not more grateful. She’s the luckiest girl in England.”

  Olivia did not view herself as lucky at all.

  “The only reason I can countenance marrying Rupert,” she said to Georgiana, “is that I will be able to dower you.” She stripped off her gloves, biting the tips to pull them from her fingers. “To be honest, the mere thought of the wedding makes me feel slightly mad. I could bear the rank—though it isn’t my cup of tea, to say the least—if he weren’t such a little, beardy-weirdy bottle-headed chub.”

  “You’re using slang,” Georgiana said. “And—”

  “Absolutely not,” Olivia said, throwing her gloves onto her bed. “I made it up myself, and you know as well as I do that the Mirror for Bumpkins says that slang is—and I quote—‘grossness of speech used by the lowest degenerates in our nation.’ Much though I would like to attain the qualifications of a degenerate, I have no hope of achieving that particular title in this life.”

  “You shouldn’t,” Georgiana said, arranging herself on the settee before Olivia’s fireplace. Olivia had been given the grandest bedchamber in the house, larger than either their mother’s or father’s chambers, so the twins generally hid from their parents in Olivia’s room.

  But the reprimand didn’
t have its usual fire. Olivia frowned at her sister. “Was it a particularly rotten night, Georgie? I kept getting swept away by my dim-witted fiancé, and after supper I lost track of you.”

  “I would have been easy to find,” Georgiana replied. “I sat among the dowagers most of the night.”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Olivia said, sitting down next to her sister and giving her a fierce hug. “Just wait until I’m a duchess. I’ll dower you so magnificently that every gentleman in the country will be on bended knee at the very thought of you. ‘Golden Georgiana,’ they’ll call you.”

  Georgiana didn’t even smile, so Olivia forged ahead. “I like sitting with the dowagers. They have all the stories one would really like to hear, like that one about Lord Mettersnatch paying seven guineas to be flogged.”

  Her sister’s brows drew together.

  “I know, I know!” Olivia exclaimed, before Georgiana could speak. “Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar. All the same, I loved the part about the nursemaid costume. Truly, you should be glad you weren’t me. Canterwick stalked up and down the ballroom all night, dragging Rupert and me behind him. Everyone groveled, tittered behind my back, and went off to inform the rest of the room how uncommonly unlucky the FF is to be marrying me.”

  Between themselves, Olivia and Georgiana generally referred to Rupert Forrest G. Blakemore—Marquess of Montsurrey, future Duke of Canterwick—as “the FF,” which stood for foolish fiancé. On occasion he was also “the HH” (half-wit husband), “the BB” (brainless betrothed) and—because the girls were fluent in both Italian and French—“the MM” (mindless marito or mindless mari, depending on the language of the moment).

  “The only thing lacking to make this evening absolutely and irredeemably hellish,” Olivia continued, “was a wardrobe malfunction. If someone had stepped on my hem and ripped it, baring my arse to the world, I might have been more humiliated. I certainly would have been less bored.”

  Georgiana didn’t reply; she just tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling. She looked miserable. “We should look on the bright side,” Olivia said, striving for a rousing tone. “The FF danced with both of us. Thank goodness he’s finally old enough to attend a ball.”

  “He counted the steps aloud,” Georgiana stated. “And he said my dress made me look like a puffy cloud.”

  “Surely it could not have surprised you to discover that Rupert lacks a gift for elegant conversation. If anyone looked like a puffy cloud, it was I; you looked like a vestal virgin. Far more dignified than a cloud.”

  “Dignity is not desirable,” her sister said, turning her head. Her eyes were full of tears.

  “Oh, Georgie!” Olivia gathered her into another hug. “Please don’t cry. I’ll be a duchess in no time, and then I’ll dower you and order such beautiful clothing that you’ll be the wonder of London.”

  “This is my fifth season, Olivia. You can’t possibly understand how dreadful it feels, given that you’ve never really been on the market. No gentleman paid me any attention tonight, any more than they have in the last five years.”

  “It was the dress and the dowry. We all looked like ghosts, but not transparent. You, of course, were a willowy ghost, and I was a particularly solid one.”

  Olivia and Georgiana had worn matching gowns of frail white silk, caught up under their bosoms with long ribbons trimmed with seed pearls and tasseled at the ends. The same streamers appeared on the sides and the backs of the gowns, rippling in the faintest breeze. On the page, in Madame Wellbrook’s pattern book, the design had looked exquisite.

  There was a lesson there . . . a dismal one.

  Just because fluttering ribbons look good on a stick-thin lady portrayed in a pattern book does not mean that they will be, when festooned around one’s hips.

  “I caught sight of you dancing,” Olivia continued. “You looked like a bouncy maypole with all those ribbons trembling around you. Your ringlets were bouncing as well.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Georgiana said flatly. She brushed away a tear. “It’s the duchification, Olivia. No man wants to marry a prude who acts as if she’s a ninety-five-year-old dowager. And”—she gave a little sob—“I simply can’t seem to behave any differently. I don’t believe that anyone titters behind your back, unless from jealousy. But I’m like nursery gruel. I—I can see their eyes glaze over when they have to dance with me.”

  Privately, Olivia agreed that the duchification program had much to answer for. But she wrapped her arm tighter around her sister and said, “Georgiana, you have a wonderful figure, you’re sweet as honey, and the fact that you know how to set a table for one hundred has nothing to do with it. Marriage is a contract, and contracts are about money. A woman has to have a dowry, or no man will even consider marrying her.”

  Georgiana sniffed, which served to demonstrate how upset she was, as she normally would never countenance such an unrefined gesture.

  “Your waist makes me positively sick with envy,” Olivia added. “I look like a butter churn, whereas you’re so slim that I could balance you on the head of a pin, like an angel.”

  Most young ladies on the marriage market—Georgiana included—were indeed ethereally slim. They floated from room to room, diaphanous silk sweeping around their slender bodies.

  Olivia was not one of them. It was the sad truth, the canker at the heart of the ducal flower, another source of stress for Mrs. Lytton. As she saw it, Olivia’s overindulgence in vulgar wit and buttered toast stemmed from the same character defects. Olivia did not disagree.

  “You do not resemble a butter churn,” her sister stated, and wiped away a few more tears.

  “I heard something interesting tonight,” Olivia cried. “Apparently the Duke of Sconce is going to take a wife. I suppose he needs an heir. Just imagine, Georgie. You could be daughter-in-law to the most stiff-rumped starch-bucket of them all. Do you suppose the duchess reads her Maggoty Mirror aloud at the dining table? She would adore you. In fact, you’re probably the only woman in the kingdom whom she would love.”

  “Dowagers always love me,” Georgiana said with another sniff. “That doesn’t mean the duke will give me a second glance. Besides, I thought that Sconce was married.”

  “If the duchess approved of bigamy, she would have put it in the Mirror; therefore, its absence suggests that he is need of a second wife. My only other, rather less exciting, news is that Mother was told of a lettuce diet tonight and has decided that I must try it immediately.”

  “Lettuce?”

  “One eats only lettuce between the hours of eight and eight.”

  “That’s absurd. If you want to reduce, you should stop buying meat pies when Mama thinks you’re buying ribbons. Though, to be honest, Olivia, I think you should eat whatever you want. I want quite desperately to marry, and even so, the idea of marrying Rupert makes me want to eat a meat pie.”

  “Four pies,” Olivia corrected. “At least.”

  “What’s more, it wouldn’t matter how slim you became by eating lettuce,” Georgiana continued. “The FF has no choice but to marry you. If you grew rabbit ears, he would still have to marry you. Whereas no one can countenance the idea of marrying me, no matter what my waist looks like. I need money to—to bribe them.” Her voice wavered again.

  “They’re all port-brained buffoons,” Olivia said, with another squeeze. “They haven’t noticed you, but they will, once Rupert dowers you.”

  “I’ll likely be forty-eight by the time the two of you walk the aisle.”

  “On that front, Rupert is coming over with his father to sign betrothal papers tomorrow evening. And apparently he is leaving directly thereafter for the wars in France.”

  “For goodness’ sake,” Georgiana said, her eyes widening. “You really are going to become a duchess. The FF is about to become the BB!”

  “Foolish fiancés are often killed on the battlefield,” Olivia pointed out. “I think the term is ‘cannon fodder.’ ”

  Her sister gave a sudden laugh. “You could at least tr
y to sound sad at the prospect.”

  “I would be sad,” Olivia protested. “I think.”

  “You’d have reason. Not only would you lose the prospect of being ‘Your Grace’d’ for the rest of your life, but our parents would hold hands as they jumped off Battersea Bridge to their watery deaths.”

  “I can’t even imagine what Mama and Papa would do if the goose that promised golden eggs was turned into pâté de foie gras by the French,” Olivia said, a bit sadly.

  “What happens if the FF dies before marrying you?” Georgiana asked. “Legal or not, a betrothal is not a wedding.”

  “I gather these papers make the whole situation a good deal more solid. I’m certain most of the ton believes that he’ll cry off before we get to the altar, given my general lack of beauty, not to mention the fact that I don’t eat enough lettuce.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You are beautiful,” Georgiana said. “You have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen. I can’t think why I got plain brown eyes and you have those green ones.” She peered at her. “Pale green. The color of celery, really.”

  “If my hips were like celery, then we’d have something to celebrate.”

  “You’re luscious,” her sister insisted. “Like a sweet, juicy peach.”

  “I don’t mind being a peach,” Olivia said. “Too bad celery is in fashion.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  In Which We Are Introduced to a Duke

  Littlebourne Manor

  Kent

  Seat of the Duke of Sconce

  At the precise moment that Olivia and Georgiana were engaged in an agricultural wrangle over the relative merits of peaches and celery, the hero in this particular fairy story was certainly not behaving like the princes in most such tales. He wasn’t on bended knee, nor on a white horse, and he was nowhere near a beanstalk. Instead, he was sitting in his library, working on a knotty mathematical problem: specifically, Lagrange’s four-square theorem. To clarify my point, if this particular duke ever encountered a beanstalk of unusual size, it would doubtless have spurred a leap in early botanical knowledge regarding unusual plant growth—but certainly not a leap up said stalk.