Desperate Duchesses (26 page)

“Should I have raised you in a different way?” he asked, struck to the heart by sudden anguish. Mrs. Grope looked rather garish beside the ladies at the table. Lord Corbin was kindly speaking to her about the stage, and she looked like a bedazzling peacock in comparison to his sober attire.

“What do you mean, Papa?” Roberta asked.

“Should I have spared you the company of Mrs. Grope?” he whispered hoarsely. “Or Selina, darling Selina?”

She blinked at him over a forkful of green beans. “Papa, do you mean to say that you are having a change of heart about your household arrangements,
now
?”

“Why not now?” he enquired.

“Because I am twenty-one! Perhaps you should have had these qualms when I was fourteen and Selina waved goodbye to her traveling group.”

“I was in love,” he said, shamefaced. “Your mother had been gone for two years, and I fel in love.”

She smiled a little at that, and his heart lightened. “I know you did, Papa. I know you were in love.”

“But,” he continued in a low voice, “it isn’t because of that, because of my lack of convention that you’ve chosen Vil iers, is it?”

“Of course not, Papa,” she said. But she didn’t meet his eyes.

Vil iers might be a perfectly acceptable man in his own way. But he wasn’t the one for Roberta. He was a cold-blooded man.

“If you change your mind about this marriage,” he said, “there wil be many other men eager to marry you, Roberta. You’re barely been in London a week. Just think who you might meet.”

“Papa!” she squealed, with a glance to her right. “Don’t say such things. I shan’t change my mind.”

“Are you quite certain of that?”

“Of course.”

The marquess tried to imagine himself stopping by for a friendly supper with his daughter once she was the Duchess of Vil iers and he knew without a second thought that it would never happen. Vil iers was a man of rigid propriety. He would never invite an aging and foolish marquess to his house, except for those occasions on which relatives could not be excluded.

Christmas, perhaps.

He felt a tear rol down his cheek. It was bad enough when he lost Margaret, but he had had his delightful scrap of a daughter to tel him that his poetry was terrible, just as her mother used to do. Without Roberta…

Another tear fol owed the first. Roberta’s hand crept into his. “Papa, I promise to visit you,” she said, so sweetly that he could hardly bear it. “I can’t stay at home forever.”

“I didn’t mean you to do that,” he said. “And yet I have made so many mistakes! So many mistakes!”

Suddenly he realized that al conversation around them had ceased. There was a look in the Duke of Vil iers’s eyes that suggested he wouldn’t even be invited for Christmas dinner. Mrs. Grope, bless her heart, was eating her peas with her knife.

Perhaps he should have…

“It must be so hard to say goodbye to a child,” the Duchess of Beaumont said kindly. “I can imagine how painful it must be.”

The marquess cast a guilty look at Roberta. She hated it when he made a scene, and sure enough, she was staring down at her lap. Hastily, he dashed away his tears. “When I think of al the unfeeling things Roberta has said about my poetry, my heart lightens,” he said. “Do you remember, child, when I read you my masterpiece, virtual y my only published masterpiece, and you said it was twaddle?”

To his sorrow, Roberta looked even more downcast. “I’m sorry, Papa,” she said.

“It
was
twaddle!” he said gaily. “Utter twaddle! I read it over the other day and realized what a mistake it had been. I tried an experiment,” he told the unexpressive, uninterested face of Vil iers. “To write an entire sonnet, fourteen lines, with one rhyme only. Of course, Shakespeare had a scheme worked out that al owed him seven rhymes. The great Petrarchan sonneteers sometimes made do with fewer. But I think I am the only English poet to write a sonnet with one rhyme!”

“What was your rhyme?” the Duchess of Beaumont asked.

“I had to choose a rhyme with many variants,” he said, “so I settled on bear.”

“Ah, a nature poem,” Vil iers said, boredom dripping from his voice. “I would guess that the
bear
went to its
lair
.”

The marquess reminded himself that he was a grown man, and fools have always made fun of literature. “You’re absolutely right,” he said with dignity. “There are many useful rhymes, such as
fair, mare,
and
pear
.”

Vil iers looked to his left, at Roberta. “But your daughter thought the poem was rubbish, did she? How extremely unkind of her.”

His comment spoke volumes, to the marquess’s mind. This man would never be able to understand a line of poetry. It wasn’t that he wanted a poet for a son-in-law, but:

“A man who doesn’t understand poetry, cannot live poetry,” he stated, hoping Roberta would understand him.

“Living poetry has never been an active pursuit of mine,” Vil iers responded promptly.

Roberta cleared her throat. The marquess remembered how much she hated philosophical statements. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass her on such a special evening. His heart dropped again.

“My father was speaking metaphorical y,” she said to Vil iers.

“I know of metaphors,” Vil iers said, glancing at Roberta with an indifference that shocked her father to the bone. “But I fail to understand the concept.”

“Try to think of it as a person who lives in contact with great minds,” she said to him and, gentle though her voice was, there was a sting in it. “Perhaps there were great chess players of the past, but they have left no record. There have been great poets, and we are able to enjoy their thoughts stil .”

The marquess sat, frozen. Roberta had defended him! Her father’s chest hurt from the joy of it.

Vil iers took a bite of chicken, presumably because he was so floored by his fiancée’s bril iant riposte that he could think of nothing to say.

The duchess said in a very soothing way, “Who is your favorite poet, Lord Wharton?”

“Shakespeare,” he said. “I am pedestrian in my admiration for the man, but to live in Shakespeare’s words, to walk in his steps, gives me reason to continue.” He caught sight of Mrs. Grope’s plumage wagging at his shoulder and added hastily,

“Along with my deep devotion to Mrs. Grope, of course.”

“Of course,” Vil iers agreed. There was something very unpleasant about his tone. The marquess didn’t dare look at his poor daughter. Though he had been a terrible papa, and embarrassed her time and again, she stil loathed it when people made fun of him.

So this time he took her hand. Because though he’d told her many a time that laughter didn’t hurt him, he knew she didn’t real y believe him.

The sad thing was that she had never grasped the truly important thing: laughter can’t hurt someone, but cold indifference can.

T
he Duke of Viliers had made up his mind. While it would be acceptable to marry Roberta, he may have made a wee error. In truth, he’d be just as happy
not
to marry the lady. He certainly would rather not have her father as an intimate. His engagement didn’t seem to have made a damn bit of difference to Jemma. In short, he may have made a mistake.

It was unfortunate that he came to his conclusion approximately two hours after issuing a formal proposal. But it was the work of a moment to launch a stratagem that would change the complexion of the board as it was laid out before him.

Unless he missed his bet, his old friend Elijah was flirting with a new piece, a pawn, a pawn, a veritable pawn and yet

…who was he not to admit that pawns could be deliciously useful in their own way?

He would send Elijah’s queen careening toward the opposite side of the board. He would then sacrifice his own queen

…it was al in the nature of the game.

“Would you care to accompany me to the library?” he asked his fiancée.

Roberta came to her feet with a pretty show of grace. She was an elegant young woman, he had to admit. They walked to the library.

“I merely wanted to make certain that we were in agreement about certain aspects of our marriage,” he said, helping her to a brocaded couch.

“I am al attention,” she said.

He blinked. In another woman, the comment might have an unpleasantly satirical edge, but she was smiling at him.

“It’s a simple thing,” he said. “Having to do with those unpleasant bits of law cal ed torts.”

“Torts?”

“Breach of contract.”

“I trust you are not planning to break our engagement?” She asked it with perfect courtesy, but her eyes narrowed.

Perhaps this marriage would have been the making of him. Yet it would be better to let it go.

“I would never break our engagement,” he said. Such an action would be rash and clumsy, opening him up to attack by pieces not yet in play, such as solicitors. Yet it should be a matter of no particular difficulty to cause the lady to withdraw from it herself. That was the nature of a bril iant game…to put forward one’s pieces and see what came of them.

“The particular breach I was thinking of comes after marriage,” he said, “and has to do with
spurious issue
versus
lawful
issue
.”

“Bastard children,” she stated.

“I would prefer—nay, I must insist—that you have none.”

“I had no plans to do so.” She was silent for a moment.

“I trust this was not too unromantic?” Vil iers enquired.

“Indeed, Your Grace, it shows a decidedly unromantic lack of faith in my character.”

“I meant no imputation about your character. Did you think that we would have some sort of conventional union, like a pair of bakers who fal in love over a floury board and swear never to part?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly.”

Roberta forced herself to sit for a second and col ect her thoughts. Her future husband clearly loved the subtleties of rhetoric and law. “Wil you do me the same honor?” She raised her head and looked straight into his eyes. “My understanding is that you have
spurious issue
with several women. Are you intending to create more of these children after our marriage is celebrated?”

“If you’re asking me to start giving a damn what the world thinks, I won’t and I can’t. I never have.”

Roberta took a deep breath. “I am asking you to be faithful to me,” she said clearly.

Vil iers was silent. She watched the dark shadow of his eyelashes, his swarthy, almost harsh features. “Faithfulness has always struck me as an unreasonable concept,” he said, final y. “I would greatly prefer if you were faithful until we raised a brat or two for the estate. It seems unreasonable to give another man’s son my grandfather’s land. But a clever woman can always prevent conception.”

“And after that?”

“I would give you precisely the same freedom I would take for myself. I would do you the great honor of swearing—on my honor—that I wil never fal in love with a woman. That any attachments would be a matter of impulse and pleasure, never of true intimacy.”

She could hardly understand what he was saying.

“You, of course, would need no excuse other than
les caprices de jolie femme
, a beautiful woman’s right to commit a fol y,” he continued.

She looked directly at him. “Won’t you be enough to captivate my fol ies?”

“I much doubt it.”

This was a level of emotionless control that was indeed the opposite of her father’s blatant adorations. She drank in the devil’s slant of his eyes, the weary wrinkles at the edge of them, his palpable lack of interest. Her heart beat quickly. “Al right,”

she whispered.

His voice lashed her. “I’ve seen you look at the Earl of Gryffyn with a giddy sort of pleasure that belies your words.”

“That’s—” she caught herself. “That’s nothing. Child’s play.”

“No doubt,” he said, sounding bored. “I would certainly have to reach some sort of second infancy to contemplate a
liaison
with Gryffyn myself.”

“I do not contemplate a liaison! I would never—”

He raised a beringed hand, and the words died in her throat. “For God’s sake, play me no scenes. I don’t give a damn about the purity of your body or your soul. I would advise you, though, to act with a queen’s munificence toward those for whom you feel desire. Any other circumstance is likely to breed resentment. And resentful wives are so very tiresome, to themselves and others.”

She barely suppressed her shock.

His eyes laughed at her. “Shaken, country mouse? It must be the poet’s soul you inherited from your father.”

That stung her. “My father does not belong in this conversation.” It made her feel almost queer, to realize how much her father would dislike the whole topic. How much he would loathe Vil iers, if he heard his concept of marriage.

“And yet your father has such a fascinating liberal attitude toward pleasure, given his attachment to the estimable Mrs.

Grope.”

It gave him obvious pleasure to utter Mrs. Grope’s name; Roberta felt a flash of bitter resentment. It was so easy to make mockery of Mrs. Grope, so difficult to see what a true and loving relationship her papa and his courtesan shared.

“I would that Papa would marry Mrs. Grope,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort.

“He won’t.” He wasn’t looking at her anymore. In one clean movement, he pul ed a long shining rapier from the interior of his polished cane.

“Oh!” she cried.

“Sword stick. Beautiful, isn’t it? I had it made for me by Parisians; they understand duels in a way that no Englishman can hope to do. You see how I favor you as my future wife. You are the only person in England who knows the secret of this cane.”

“You wil forgive me,” Roberta said, “if I reveal that knowing the secret of your cane is hardly an intimacy to which I aspire.”

“I do like you,” he said, grinning at her. “I never expected that in a wife.”

“Why do you think that Papa won’t marry Mrs. Grope?” Roberta said, ignoring what felt like a very thin compliment.

“We don’t marry the women we screw,” he said, running his sword across the red velvet of the sofa cushion, to polish it, she had to suppose. “You surely have noticed that I have not made any movements toward your bed, haven’t you?”