Heather and Velvet (26 page)

Jamie
. Prudence stared into her lap, biting back a smile. A rush of nostalgia blurred her vision.

“—I decided to investigate the matter myself. The King
is very dismayed by the length of time that has passed. He and the Prime Minister have taken extraordinary measures to rectify their part in the sad affair.”

He patted his coat and pulled forth a creamy envelope. Prudence recognized the Royal Seal and sat back in her chair, bracing herself for a lengthy and boring formal condolence.

“The King has little doubt that your father did outstanding scientific work and would have been of great benefit to the crown had he lived.”

She murmured an agreement.

His throat rumbled. “So it is with great pleasure and approval of the King that I wish to confer upon you, Miss Prudence Walker, the only direct descendant of Livingston Walker, this patent of nobility. You are henceforth to be known as the first created Duchess of Winton.”

A shocked squeak from the other side of the door was quickly muffled.

The man continued. “Your aunt’s dear friend, the viscount, recently managed to convince the King that the title was worth little more than paper without some monetary compensation.”

D’Artan reached over and patted Prudence’s hand. She was too dumbfounded to protest.

“As I’m sure he has told you,” the man continued, “the viscount pursues interests similar to your own from his laboratory in Edinburgh. The King believes an exchange of information between the two of you regarding your father’s fulminic research would benefit all of England. So for this service to the crown, he has decided to gift you with an annual pension of ten thousand pounds.”

Prudence sat as if frozen. “Am I to understand,” she asked in a very quiet voice, “that I am now a duchess?”

Before the man could reply, D’Artan said smoothly, “A duchess of moderate wealth, my dear.” With great ceremony, he dropped to one knee and folded her fingers in his cool hand. “Your Grace.”

Tricia couldn’t resist poking her head around the door as she heard a sound she hadn’t heard in over two months—the rich, velvety notes of Prudence’s laughter. Prudence rocked
back in her chair, clapping her hand over her mouth. Both D’Artan and Lord Pettiwiggle-Periwinkle were staring at her as if she’d gone as mad as old King George. But she could no more stop her wild peals of laughter than she could stop the tears streaming down her face.

T
he Duchess of Winton stood at the mullioned window, watching the rain stream down the sparkling panes. Tendrils of steam curled from the tiny glass in her hand and warmth wafted out from the marble hearth, but still she shivered. The cold crept up from deep within her. She took a sip of the heated liqueur. It slid down her throat, as dark and bitter a comfort as the night outside the window.

Street lamps cast misty halos of light over the glistening cobblestones of Charlotte Square. The teeming streets of Old Edinburgh might have been a galaxy away from this elegant symmetry of park and avenues christened New Edinburgh. Wrought iron gates and snarling stone lions guarded the neat rows of brick town houses. Across the park, the lights from other mansions winked like distant stars. A shiny carriage clip-clopped past. A man in a
woolen greatcoat bustled down the walk, his shoulders hunched against the icy rain. Prudence wondered if Sebastian was out there somewhere, cold and wet and alone.

She closed her eyes, battered by the memory of a stormy night when she and Sebastian had clung to each other in a haze of mud and rain and fear. She would trade all of her warm comforts for a chance to go back to that damp, dusty crofter’s hut and begin again. It was too easy to imagine Sebastian safe in this cozy drawing room—leaning against the pianoforte with negligent grace; clinging to Tricia’s arm with those long, elegant fingers, the paragon of a doting husband while he winked at Devony.

Prudence’s eyes flew open. Her lips tightened. Sebastian had made his choices. And she had made hers. A stranger’s eyes glittered back at her from the darkened pane.

Who was the elegantly coiffed woman in the window? she wondered. In a room humming and twirling with laughing people, Prudence felt utterly alone with the woman she had chosen to become. She had swathed herself in armor of lace and silk, as soft as velvet and as hard as steel, burying the awkward, wistful girl who had dared to offer her heart to Sebastian Kerr. Her skin was porcelain, her heart ice, and no one would know or care if her own brittle laugh shattered her into a thousand pieces.

A raindrop skittered down the window, wavering like an errant tear past her cheek. She touched her finger to the cool glass.

A breathy whisper interrupted her reverie. “Lovely creature, isn’t she? Wherever did she come from?”

“Tricia had her tucked away in the country,” another female voice answered. “Lady Gait swears she’s a Hapsburg princess. Her aunt was once married to one of their princes, you know.”

“Tricia de Peyrelongue has been married to nearly everyone,” a third woman said. “This one’s in no haste to follow her lead. She’s received three proposals since Christmas and turned down every one. Much to her aunt’s chagrin, I might add. Tricia threw quite a tantrum after
the last one. Perhaps the girl’s holding out for a prince herself.”

“A bit thin for my tastes. I’ve never seen her eat. You’d think she’d wear a bustle.”

Prudence stiffened. After three months in Edinburgh society, she should have grown accustomed to the murmurs and stares, but they still unnerved her.

The brittle tinkle of champagne glasses was followed by a new whisper, this one low and masculine. “After she dared to debate him on the morality of his poetry, even Burns is besotted with her. And they say old Romney offered to paint her. For nothing.”

“For nothing? Or with nothing on? She might be his next Emma Hart.”

The ripples of laughter ceased as Prudence swung away from the window alcove. She lifted to her eyes her gold spectacles, which hung from a chain around her neck, and favored them with the glacial stare that had earned her the sobriquet “the Duchess of Winter.” She noted with dull amusement that two of the women were wearing identical pairs of spectacles. Spectacles fitted with plain glass had become all the rage since “the mysterious young duchess” had made her Edinburgh debut. Their blind emulation both repelled and fascinated Prudence.

Beneath her challenging gaze, the women drifted away, leaving the musk of their perfumes lingering on the air. The plump hips of the girl who had pronounced her too thin swayed beneath her skirts. Prudence suspected she wasn’t wearing a bustle either.

Their companion, a sheepish young man with long, unkempt hair, murmured a pardon and attempted to slip away. She crooked a slender finger at him.

He bobbed an awkward bow, raking a hand through his curls. “Your Grace?”

“Lord Desmond—Ned. It is Ned, isn’t it?”

He looked absurdly pleased that she had remembered. Prudence squelched a flicker of shame.

“Ned it is, at your service, my lady. What can I do for you?”

She considered asking him to stand on his head and balance a wineglass with his toes, but the cruel impulse passed. She lay her fingers on his crisp linen sleeve. “I wish to discuss a certain wager I overheard last night between yourself and a young Mr. Cotton.”

Lord Desmond colored prettily. “Cotton’s a rapscallion and a commoner. Pay him no mind.” He disowned his previous night’s companions by glowering at the circle of gentlemen leaning lazily against the chimneypiece. They lifted their glasses with comical precision, pretending not to be watching.

Prudence led him away from the sheltered gloom of the window and into the fountain of light that poured from the candles of the chandelier, shimmering off the peach damask walls.

“You were discussing,” she said, “which of you might first discover the source of my patent of nobility. Mr. Cotton suggested I could have performed some covert service for the King, such as shoving him out of the way of an assassin. You alleged that I might have performed a different sort of service for our liege.”

“But I wouldn’t … I never … I swear I didn’t mean …”

Prudence would have sworn his arm grew warmer beneath his sleeve, and she pursed her lips in a studious frown. “You then went on to wager with Mr. Cotton the corpulent sum of one hundred pounds that you might be the first to elicit a smile from me tonight.”

They had reached the hearth. The young men straightened, tugging at their cravats in preening abandon. The freckled Mr. Cotton fidgeted with an ivory snuffbox.

Prudence released her fawning captive. “I’m sorry, Lord Desmond, but you owe your friend a hundred pounds.”

With those words, she dipped her slender shoulders in a curtsy and favored the gaping Mr. Cotton with a luminous smile. She knew—since she had been told—that her smile softened her features without dispelling the faint air of melancholy these child-men seemed to find so irresistible.
As she turned to leave them, Ned groaned and Mr. Cotton whooped with triumph, slapping him on the back. Prudence lifted her skirts and slipped away, feeling the heat of their adoring gazes against her bared shoulders. A heady elation swept her at her power over them.

Sebastian had laid that power in her hands and left it there like a loaded pistol, primed for a touch that would never come.

Her smile faded, her complicity in their silly games leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. The more practical part of her found their attentions ridiculous. But if they chose to mistake her sarcasm for wit and her melancholy for sophistication, who was she to enlighten them? At least she didn’t have to pretend to be stupid. The neglected little girl within her basked in the fickle heat of their admiration.

She drifted through the dancers, her silk stockings whispering against her calves. The wistful notes of a Bach cantata spilled from the pianoforte. She plucked another liqueur from a maid’s tray and downed it in one swallow, as if its warmth could thaw the icy claw tightening around her heart. It was nearing February, but it seemed as if the spring would never come.

She set her empty glass on a pier-table, longing for escape. But from across the crowded drawing room, Tricia’s waving fan stopped her. Glancing at her aunt’s elaborate gown, Prudence nearly smiled. Tricia’s only concession to the simpler fashions inspired by the revolution in France was narrower panniers. She no longer had to turn sideways to enter a room.

She saw two men flanking Tricia, and sighed. Not another plump elderly count, she prayed. Since Prudence’s unconventional inheritance, Tricia had renewed her old campaign to see her niece wed. Not only was Prudence stealing all of her attention, she had committed the unforgivable transgression of outranking Tricia in the nobility.

The Viscount D’Artan hovered near Tricia’s elbow. It had been he who had arranged for their invitation to stay at the Campbells’ town house. He had been their constant companion since their arrival, helping Tricia query solicitors
about her missing fiancé and even tolerating Boris and the Blakes as Tricia’s chosen traveling companions.

Prudence banished a shiver as she wove through the crowd. Both in the laboratory and out of it, the elderly viscount was as considerate of her feelings as a father. He had been painfully patient with her, even when she refused to reveal the exact formula that had killed her father until their research was more conclusive. But Prudence could not abolish the sense of desolation she felt each time she saw D’Artan. The viscount had come into her life and Sebastian had gone. That was her own doing, though, she reminded herself. Blaming it on the viscount would not change what she’d done. Nothing would ever change what she’d done. A garrote of pain squeezed her frozen heart.

D’Artan’s attention was not on her now. His brows were knit into a silvery line as he glowered at the man next to Tricia.

Prudence caught her breath with an odd ache at the sight of him. A black and green belted plaid was draped over his broad shoulders. His beringed hand rested proudly on the hilt of his claymore. A leather sporran hung at his waist.

Tricia clung to the fall of ruffles at his wrist. “I must confess the Scottish sense of humor eludes me,” she was saying as Prudence approached. “The horrid solicitor we approached yesterday did all but tell me my fiancé was but a figment of my demented imagination.”

“Not an apparition, my lady, but perhaps only a scoundrel.” The Scot’s gruff voice was touched with a musical burr, not yet obliterated by the stilted English of Edinburgh society.

Prudence listened hungrily as he continued.

“As difficult as it may be to consider, there are men who would prey on a woman of your beauty.”

And wealth, Prudence added silently. The man was as tactful as he was charming.