Winning the Wallflower

by Eloisa James

  It should be obvious from the above that the Duke of Sconce was the sort of man repulsed by the very idea of fairy tales. He neither read nor thought about them (let alone believed in them); the notion of playing a role in one would have been preposterous, and he would have rejected outright the notion that he resembled in any fashion the golden-haired, velvet-clad princes generally found in such tales.

  Tarquin Brook-Chatfield, Duke of Sconce—known as Quin to his intimates, who numbered exactly two—was more like the villain in those stories than the hero, and he knew it.

  He couldn’t have said at what age he’d discovered how profoundly he did not resemble a fairy tale prince. He might have been five, or seven, or even ten—but at some point he’d realized that coal-black hair with a shock of white over the forehead was neither customary nor celebrated. Perhaps it was the first time that his cousin Peregrine had called him a decrepit old man (a remark that had led to a regrettable scuffle).

  Yet it wasn’t only his hair that set him apart from other lads. Even at ten years of age, he’d had stern eyes, fiercely cut cheekbones, and a nose that screamed aristocrat. By thirty-two, there were no more laughter lines around his eyes than had been visible twenty years earlier, and for good reason.

  He almost never laughed.

  But Quin did have one major point of resemblance with the hero of The Princess and the Pea, whether he would have acknowledged it or no: his mother was in charge of choosing his wife, and he didn’t give a hang what criteria she applied to the task. If she thought a pea under a mattress—or under five mattresses—was the way to ascertain the suitability of his future duchess, Quin would agree, just as long as he didn’t have to bother about the question himself.

  In this crucial fashion, he was as regal—as real—as the nameless prince in the fairy tale, as dukified as Georgiana was duchified. He rarely saw a doorway without advancing through it as if he owned it. Since he owned a good many doorways, he would have pointed out that this was a reasonable assumption. He looked down his nose because he was taller than most. It was there to look down, and arrogance was his birthright. He couldn’t conceive of any other way of behaving.

  To be fair, Quin did acknowledge some personal failings. For example, he seldom knew what the people around him were feeling. He had a formidable intelligence and rarely found other people’s thought patterns very surprising. But their emotions? He greatly disliked the way people seemed to conceal their emotions, only to release them in a gassy burst of noise and a tearful exposition.

  This antipathy to displays of feeling had led him to surround himself with people like his mother and himself: to wit, those who responded to a problem by formulating a plan, often involving experimentation designed to prove a stated hypothesis. What’s more, his selected few did not cry if their hypotheses were proven incorrect.

  He rather thought that people shouldn’t have so many emotions, given that feelings were rarely logical, and therefore were of no use whatsoever. He had embarrassed himself once by falling into a slough of emotion—and it hadn’t ended well.

  In fact, it had ended miserably.

  The very thought sent a pulse of black pain through the region that he generally supposed to house his heart, but he ignored it, as was his habit. If he paid attention to how many times a month, a week—a day—he felt that little stab . . . There was no point in thinking about it.

  If there was one thing he had learned from his mother, it was that regrettable emotions are best forgotten. And if one cannot forget (he couldn’t), then that personal failing should be concealed.

  As if thinking of his mother brought her to his side, the door to his library opened and his butler, Cleese, intoned, “Her Grace.”

  “My plans are in order, Tarquin,” his mother declared, entering on the heels of Cleese’s announcement. She was followed closely by her personal assistant, Steig, and by her personal maid, Smithers. Her Grace, the dowager duchess, preferred to have a little flock of retainers in tow wherever she went, rather as if she were a bishop trailed by anxious acolytes. She was not a tall woman, but she projected such a formidable presence that she achieved the impression of height, albeit with some help from a towering wig. In fact, her wig bore a distinct resemblance to a bishop’s miter. They both advertised the wearer’s confidence in his or her rightful place in the universe: to wit, on top.

  Quin was already on his feet; now he moved from behind his desk to kiss the hand his mother held out. “Indeed?” he asked politely, while trying to remember what she was talking about.

  Fortunately, the duchess did not view responsiveness as an obligatory aspect of conversation. Given a choice, she would prefer to soliloquize, but she had learned to give addresses that could almost be classified as interactive.

  “I have selected two young ladies,” she pronounced now. “Both from excellent families, it hardly needs saying. One is from the aristocracy; the other is from the gentry, but recommended by the Duke of Canterwick. I think we both agree that to consider only the aristocracy is to show anxiety about the matter, and the Sconces need have no such emotion.”

  She paused, and Tarquin nodded obediently. He had learned as a child that anxiety—like love—was an emotion disdained among the aristocracy.

  “Both mothers are aware of my treatise,” his mother continued, “and I have reasonable faith that their daughters will surmount the series of tests I shall put to them, drawn, of course, from The Mirror of Compliments. I have put a great deal of thought into their visit, Tarquin, and it will be a success.”

  By now Quin knew exactly what his mother was talking about: his next wife. He approved of both Her Grace’s planning and her expectation of success. His mother organized every aspect of her life—and, often, his as well. The one time he had engaged in spontaneity—a word and an impulse he now regarded with the deepest suspicion—the result had been disastrous.

  Thus the need for a next wife. A second wife.

  “You shall be married by autumn,” his mother stated.

  “I have the utmost confidence that this endeavor, like all those you undertake, will be a success,” he replied, which was no more than the truth.

  His mother didn’t flicker an eyelash. Neither of them had time for flattery or frivolous compliments. As his mother had written in her book, The Mirror of Compliments—which rather surprisingly had become a best-selling volume—“A true lady prefers gentle reproof to extravagant compliment.”

  It hardly need be said that Her Grace would have been extremely surprised if offered a reproof, gentle or otherwise.

  “Once I have found you a wife who is worthy of her position, I shall be happy,” she said now, then added, “What are you working on?”

  Quin looked back at his desk. “I am writing a paper on Lagrange’s solution to Bachet’s conjecture regarding the sum of four squares.”

  “Didn’t you tell me that Legendre had already improved on Lagrange’s theorem?”

  “His proof was incomplete.”

  “Ah.” There was a momentary pause, and then the dowager said, “I shall issue an immediate invitation to the chosen young ladies to join us here. After due observation, I shall make a choice. A reasoned choice. There will be no succumbing to light fancy, Tarquin. I think we both agree that your first marriage made patently clear the inadvisability of such behavior.”

  Quin inclined his head—but he didn’t entirely agree. His marriage had been inadvisable, surely. Terrible, in some lights (the fact that Evangeline had taken a lover within a few months spoke for itself). Still . . .

  “Not in every respect,” he said now, unable to stop himself.

  “You are contradicting yourself,” his mother observed.

  “My marriage was not a mistake in every respect.” He and his mother lived together quite comfortably, but he was well aware that the household’s serenity was dependent on the fact that he generally took the path of least resistance. When necessary, however, he could be as firm as the dowager.

  �
��Well,” his mother replied, eyeing him. “We must each be the judge of that.”

  “I am the judge of my marriage,” Quin stated.

  “The question is irrelevant,” she replied, waving her fan as if to brush away an insect. “I shall do my best to steer you in such a way that you shall not fall into the same quagmire. I feel quite exhausted at the mere memory of the tempests, the pique, the constant weeping. One would think that young woman had been raised on the stage.”

  “Evangeline—”

  “A most improper name for a lady,” his mother interrupted.

  According to The Mirror of Compliments, interruption was a cardinal sin. Quin waited a moment, just long enough that the silence in the room stretched to a point. Then he said, “Evangeline was deeply emotional. She suffered from an excess of sentiment and recurring problems with her nerves.”

  His mother shot him a beady look. “I trust you are not about to instruct me to speak no ill of the dead, Tarquin.”

  “Not a bad precept,” he said, taking his life in his own hands.

  “Humph.”

  Still, he had made his point. He had no particular objection to allowing his mother to organize the matter of a second wife. He fully realized that he needed an heir. But his first marriage . . .

  He chose not to entertain other people’s opinions on the subject. “To return to the matter at hand, while I am certain that the parameters you have formulated are excellent, I have one stipulation as regards the young women you have selected.”

  “Indeed. Steig, pay attention.”

  Quin glanced at his mother’s assistant, whose quill was at the ready. “The giggles should have worn off.”

  His mother nodded. “I shall take that point under advisement.” She turned her head. “Steig, make a note. At the express request of His Grace, I shall devise another test, to determine whether the subject is overly given to giggling and other native signs of innocent enjoyment.”

  “In-no-cent en-joy-ment,” Steig muttered, writing frantically.

  Quin had a sudden vision of a haughty duchess with a huge ruff, like the faces of his Elizabethan ancestors up in the portrait gallery. “I don’t mind enjoyment,” he clarified. “Just not giggling.”

  “I shall dispense with either candidate if she seems likely to indulge in overwrought expressions of pleasure,” his mother said.

  Quin could readily picture himself bound by marriage to yet another woman who felt no pleasure in his company. But that wasn’t what his mother meant, he knew.

  Besides, she had already left.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In Which the Merits of Virginity and Debauchery Are Evaluated, and Debauchery Wins

  Olivia and Georgiana had scarcely finished their discussion regarding the desirability of peaches over celery when their mother entered the room.

  Most women in their forties allow themselves to take on a soft roundness. But, as if in reproach to her unsatisfactory elder daughter, Mrs. Lytton ate like a bird and ruthlessly confined what curves she had in a whalebone corset. Consequently, she looked like a stork with anxious, beady eyes and a particularly feathery head.

  Georgiana instantly rose to her feet and curtsied. “Good evening, Mother. How lovely that you pay us a visit.”

  “I hate it when you do that,” Olivia put in, pushing herself to a standing position with a little groan. “Lord, my feet hurt. Rupert trampled them at least five or six times.”

  “Do what, my dear?” Mrs. Lytton asked, just catching Olivia’s remark as she shut the door behind her.

  “Georgie goes all gooey and sweet just for you,” Olivia said, not for the first time.

  Her mother’s frown was a miraculous concoction: she managed to express distaste without even twitching her forehead. “As your sister is well aware, ‘A lady’s whole pilgrimage is nothing less than to show the world what is most requisite for a great personage.’ ”

  “Show unto the world,” Olivia said, making a feeble gesture toward mutiny. “If you must quote The Mirror of Senseless Stupidity, Mama, you might as well get it right.”

  Mrs. Lytton and Georgiana both ignored this unhelpful comment. “You looked exquisite in your plum-colored sarcenet tonight,” Georgiana said, pulling a chair closer to the fireplace and ushering her mother into it, “particularly when you were dancing with Papa. His coat complemented your gown to a turn.”

  “Have you heard? He is calling on us tomorrow!” Mrs. Lytton breathed the pronoun as though Rupert were a deity who deigned to enter their mortal dwelling.

  “I heard,” Olivia said, watching her sister tuck a small cushion behind their mother’s back.

  “You’ll be a duchess by this time tomorrow.” The tremble in Mrs. Lytton’s voice spoke for itself.

  “No, I won’t. I’ll be formally betrothed to a marquess, which isn’t the same thing as actually being a duchess. I’m sure you remember that I’ve been unofficially betrothed for some twenty-three years.”

  “The distinction between our informal agreement with the duke and the ceremony tomorrow is just what I wish to speak to you about,” their mother said. “Georgiana, perhaps you should leave us, as you are unmarried.”

  Olivia found that surprising; Mrs. Lytton was fluttering her eyelashes in such a way that suggested she was in the grip of deep anxiety, and Georgiana had a talent for soothing aphorisms.

  In fact, just as Georgiana reached the door, their mother waved her hand: “I’ve changed my mind. My dear, you may stay. I have no doubt but that the marquess will dower you shortly after the marriage, so this information may be relevant to you as well.

  “A formal betrothal is a complicated relationship, legally speaking. Of course, our legal system is in flux and so on.” Mrs. Lytton looked as if she hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. “Apparently it is always in flux. Parts of the old law, parts of the new . . . your father understands all this better than I.

  “Under current interpretation of the law, your betrothal will be binding, unless the marquess suffers a fatal accident—when, of course, it would be invalidated by his death.” She snapped open her fan and waved it before her face, as if such a tragedy was too terrible even to contemplate.

  “Which is all too likely,” Olivia said, responding to the fan as much as to her mother’s words. “Inasmuch as Rupert has the brainpower of a gnat and he’s apparently going into battle.”

  “ ‘Civility is never out of fashion,’ ” Mrs. Lytton said, dropping the fan below her chin and dipping into The Mirror of Compliments. “You should never speak of the peerage in such a manner. It is true that in the tragic event of the marquess’s demise, the betrothal will come to nothing. But there is one interesting provision that falls under the provenance of an older law, as I understand it.”

  “Provision?” Olivia asked, creasing her brow—unluckily just as her mother glanced at her.

  “ ‘Cloud not your brow with disdainful scorn,’ ” Mrs. Lytton said automatically. Apparently duchesses remained wrinkle-free for life, doubtless because they never frowned.

  “If you were to . . .” Mrs. Lytton waved her fan in the air. “To . . . to . . .” She gave Olivia a meaningful glance. “Then the betrothal would be more than legally binding; it would turn into a marriage under some sort of law. I can’t remember what your father called it. ‘Common,’ perhaps. Though how a common law could have any application to nobility, I cannot say.”

  “Are you saying that if I tup the FF, I become a marchioness even if he dies?” Olivia said, wiggling her sore toes. “That sounds extremely unlikely.”

  The fan fluttered madly. “I’m sure I don’t know what you intend to say, Olivia. You must learn to speak the English language.”

  “I expect that the law is designed to protect young women,” Georgiana interrupted, before her mother could elaborate on the subject of Olivia’s egregious linguistic lapses. “If I understand you correctly, Mother, you are saying that should the marquess lose his composure and commit an act unbecomi
ng his rank as a peer, he would be forced to marry his betrothed bride, that is, Olivia.”

  “Actually, I’m not entirely sure whether he would be obligated to marry Olivia, or whether the betrothal would simply turn into a marriage. But most importantly, should this occurrence result in—in an event, the child will be declared legitimate. And if the betrothed were not deceased, then he would not be allowed to alter his mind. Not that the marquess would think of such a thing.”

  “To sum it up,” Olivia said flatly, “bedwork is followed by bondage.”

  Their mother snapped her fan shut and came to her feet. “Olivia Mayfield Lytton, your incessant vulgarity is unacceptable. The more unacceptable, because you are a duchess-to-be. Remember, all eyes will be upon you!” She stopped to take a breath.

  “Might we return to a more important subject?” Olivia asked, rising reluctantly to her feet once more. “It seems that you are instructing me to seduce Rupert, although you unaccountably neglected to give me a tutor in that particular art.”

  “I cannot bear your rank vulgarity!” Mrs. Lytton barked. Then, remembering that she was the mother of a duchess-to-be, she cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “There is no need for any . . . exertion. A man—even a gentleman—merely has to be given the impression that a woman is ready for intimacy and he will . . . that is, he will take advantage of the situation.”

  And with that, Mrs. Lytton swept out the door without so much as a nod to either of her daughters.

  Olivia sat down once again. Her mother had never been very interested in shows of maternal warmth, but it was painfully clear that quite soon Olivia would have no mother at all—merely an irritated, and irritating, lady-in-waiting. The thought made her throat tighten.