The Secret Duke (13 page)

Bella glanced at the window and saw gray sky. That suited her mood. “The brown wool, Kitty.”

She put on her leather shoes and turned toward the door.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

Bella turned back. “Yes, Kitty?”

“What am I to do with the costume, ma’am?”

Burn it
, leapt into Bella’s mind with a ferocity to make her flinch. Rejecting that and all it implied, she said, “Oh, pack it away somewhere. One never knows. . . .”

She hurried on her way, trying not to think why she’d reacted like that, and failing. Because she knew that for her the costume represented flaming temptation.

She’d rather not face Peg today, but she always left through the kitchen, so anything else would be like waving a banner.

As usual, Peg gave her appearance a jaundiced look, but she asked, “What was the duke’s house like, then? Very grand?” She was beating something in a bowl.

“Of course.”

Peg refused even to pretend a lack of interest in the grand and their ways. She often walked to the Queen’s House in hopes of seeing Their Majesties out strolling, and sometimes came home happy. Bella couldn’t starve her of details like this.

“The arrangement of the house was most impressive. Pillars, ruins, the effect of a square with balconies above as if of people’s houses. Having never been to Italy, I’m not sure how accurate it was, but other guests seemed impressed.”

“Oh, I wish I could have seen that.”

“But it was only for the rich and grand,” Bella pointed out. “In a just world, it would be open to lesser folk, at least before or after.”

She expected agreement, but Peg said, “I don’t know about that, dear. Boots all over the good floors and carpets. Dirty hands on the curtains.”

“More work for the servants, you mean.” But Bella wouldn’t be defeated. “They could put down cloths, and keep people away from curtains.”

“Then it wouldn’t be the same, would it?”

“Very well, next time I invade such an event, I’ll take you with me.”

“Lawks, you won’t!” Peg exclaimed. “I’d not leave my room dressed as you were. You did stay safe?” she asked with a worried look.

Bella picked a raisin from a bowl and split it to take out the seed. “Completely. Though any number of men made improper proposals.”

“Of course they did, pretty as you are. Any suitable?”

“Peg! I was an interloper. Anyway, you know I’ve no interest in men, and especially not in marriage.” Bella chewed and swallowed the raisin.

“I do know, and it’s a proper shame.”

“Just because you had a good husband doesn’t mean they’re all that way.”

“Oh, how you do go on. Off you go to your clucking hens.”

“Oh, how you do go on,” Bella tossed back at her, and left the kitchen.

 

At Lady Fowler’s it went much as she’d expected. The Grandistons’ behavior had been scandalous, for there seemed general agreement that they’d been caught intimately entwined and with Lady Grandiston’s costume seriously disarranged, but their being married made such matters of little use.

“I did wonder about Lady Jessingham,” Bella said, trying to find something of value. “Apparently she had expectations of Grandiston, not knowing he was married. As he’s the Duke of Ithorne’s foster brother, perhaps . . . well . . .”

“Well?” asked Lady Fowler.

She lay on her chaise before the fire in her bedchamber. She hardly left the room, which was kept unpleasantly warm. There was also a distressing smell. Strong-faced Helena Drummond, the older sister, sat on a stool nearby, the fire catching lights in her thick red hair. Bella gave her credit for fortitude.

Bella still blushed to speak of such things. “Perhaps they shared her.”

Two other attendant ladies gasped.

Mary Evesham had been reading aloud when Bella arrived. A few letters lay in her lap. They would be from Lady Fowler’s supporters. Mary was a recent arrival—a curate’s middle-aged sister left destitute when he died. Bella rather liked the quiet woman, whom she thought of excellent understanding, and who often had a twinkle of humor in her eyes.

The other lady was Celia Pottersby, a thin, bitter widow who never revealed what had caused her bitterness.

In a corner, stocky Agnes Hoover sat sewing. She had been Lady Fowler’s maid for thirty years. She hardly spoke a word to anyone, but she watched and listened, and often looked as if she disapproved of everything. She was truly devoted to her mistress, however, and treated her as tenderly as a mother.

“They probably were sharing her,” said Helena Drummond with a sneer, “and in the same bed, but you’ve no proof, Bellona. In any case, this digging up of dirt doesn’t serve the real cause.”

“Then why did you propose the invasion of the revels?” Bella demanded.

“To invade a duke’s house,” Helena said with a greedy smile. “That could have presented many possibilities.”

What on earth had the Drummonds planned?

“Did you enjoy it, dear Bellona?”

Helena’s malicious look made Bella realize that the Drummonds thought she would have been horrified by playing such a part. So should she have been, as Bellona.

“It was dreadful,” she said with a shudder, “but I hope I am always willing to make sacrifices for the cause.”

“Dear, dear Bellona!” Lady Fowler exclaimed, holding out a bony hand.

Bella took it gently, feeling the thinness of the skin. “I’m sorry to have failed, ma’am.”

“We cannot win every battle. Sit by me as we listen to Mary. Such a soothing voice.”

The stool was set too close to the fire. Sweat was already forming on Bella’s face, and the poor dying lady did smell of decay.

“Alas, ma’am, I have a small emergency at my house. One of my maids . . . I will try to return later.”

She escaped, feeling guilty about those trapped in Lady Fowler’s house by poverty, but very relieved when she achieved fresh air again.

 

Thorn greeted his valet and the day sourly. Damn the Olympian Revels and all involved in them, including himself. Joseph moved quietly around the room, as always sensitive to his master’s mood. At the moment, Thorn found that annoying too.

“Breakfast,” he said, climbing out of the huge ducal bed. It had been his father’s, and why the man had wanted bulbous carvings on all surfaces, he had no idea, having never known him. At least the carvings weren’t obscene. Though that wouldn’t have been particularly surprising.

A hard-drinking, hard-gaming, hard-riding rake—that had been the second Duke of Ithorne, and Thorn was glad never to have known him. He wished some of the reputation didn’t cling to the title. He was no saint, but he wasn’t as far gone as some assumed, and today he needed every scrap of dignity.

He went into his dressing room and used the shower he’d had installed there, copying a design sometimes used on ships. He enjoyed a bath, especially the large Grecian one in the basement, and especially with female company, but the shower was efficient.

He stood in the wide, thigh-deep basin and pulled the chain to release some water. Exactly the right temperature, of course, just off cold. He washed, including his hair, which still had the coating of gray powder Joseph had applied to disguise his hair color for his goatherd persona.

That had been fun for a while. Until everything had gone to hell.

Damn Christian, and damn his coldhearted, newly discovered wife. But it was Psyche Jessingham he wanted to consign to the deepest regions of hell. She’d stalked Christian in hope of catching him out and succeeded, much good would it do her. Had the woman really expected to use scandal to force him to marry her?

He stepped into the warm towel Joseph held and dried himself. He combed his hair, put on his banyan robe, and then sat to be shaved. Stubble was a useful attribute, especially the dark sort he grew rapidly. As the impeccable Duke of Ithorne, he was shaved twice a day. As Captain Rose, he let it grow, sometimes into a beard. It quite changed his looks, as had a day’s stubble on the goatherd.

All the same, most people had known him. He’d been mischievously tempted to ask his half brother to come and attend. He and Caleb could have played some amusing deceptions. Alas, there was no amusement left in all this.

After breakfast he chose his dress carefully, armoring himself for a visit to Malloren House, where he’d be the petitioner in Rothgar’s lair, but must not seem in the slightest way inferior.

“What shall I do with this, sir?”

Thorn glanced over to see Joseph had a spray of silver stars in his hand.

“Where did they come from?”

“They were snagged in the cloth of your costume, sir.”

Kelano.

He should tell the valet to throw them on the fire. They were mere tinsel and not worth a sixpence. Instead he said, “Put them on the dressing table. I may be able to return them.”

Joseph did so with noticeable impassivity.

The valet was right, Thorn admitted as he left his room. Keeping such trinkets was never wise. The ornament might lead him to Kelano, whoever and wherever she might be, but she was doubtless a temptation best forgotten.

 

The next day Bella was reluctant to visit Lady Fowler’s house. She lingered over her breakfast and the newspaper, pretending that she was hunting for hints of wicked behavior. As she looked briefly over the short advertisements, a name caught her eye. Then she read the whole short announcement:

It couldn’t be coincidence. She’d lost her spray of stars at the masquerade, probably when embracing the goatherd, but returning her ornament would not be all he had in mind. The name Orion Hunt was a warning. Orion had been the god who hunted the Pleiades with wicked intent.

But she read the brief message again, tempted.

She was drawn to folly not just by spicy memories, but because it would be escape from everything else in her life. Escape from Bellona Flint. A return to that fairy-tale world that was so different from Lady Fowler’s circle.

If she were to meet him, how could she do so and remain safe?

Kitty came in. “Oh, I thought you’d be done with your breakfast, miss.”

Bella realized she was nibbling on a piece of dry toast. “I am,” she said, rising from the table.

Kitty cleared the breakfast dishes, but was clearly still troubled. It turned out, however, that Bella’s actions weren’t the only concern. As the maid handed her the fichu, she said, “Miss, I’ve something to tell you. . . .”

Bella turned, alerted by Kitty’s hesitant, anxious tone.
Oh, no.
She couldn’t help looking at her maid’s waistline.

“Miss!” Kitty exclaimed. “I never would. And nor would Annie.”

“No, no, I’m sure not. I’m sorry. You sounded so . . . Never mind. What do you need to tell me, Kitty?”

The girl bit her lip and swallowed, then blurted out, “Me and Annie, miss. We want to get married.”

Bella stared, almost saying that sisters couldn’t marry each other, but her blank mind managed a sensible question, “Marry whom?”

“Alfred Hotchkins and Zebediah Rolls, miss.”

A to Z
, Bella thought dazedly, struggling for a response. “But, Kitty, you and Annie are very young.”

“Seventeen and nineteen, miss, and Fred and Zeb are a bit older. They’re cousins, see.”

Bella didn’t see at all. “Where did you meet them?” “At church, miss, years ago. They’re good lads. Honest, hard workers.” Kitty’s fingers were mangling her apron.

“You don’t need my permission, Kitty.”

“Don’t we? Then whose do we need?”

Bella realized she didn’t know, but other thoughts were tumbling in now that the shock was thinning. “Kitty, Kitty, have you thought? You don’t truly want to be married. I can set you and your sister up in a business. There’s no necessity . . .”

The maid’s eyes widened. “Oh, I do want to marry, miss! And so does Annie, just as much.”

“But why? Think, Kitty, of the way the law puts us under the domination of a husband. Anything you earn will belong to him. He will be able to dictate where you live and what you do. The law will not defend you if he beats you.” Bella didn’t feel able to raise the subject of a husband’s rights in the marriage bed and the danger of disease.

Kitty’s brows were furrowed as if Bella spoke a foreign language. “I won’t be working, will I, miss? Not for wages, and where would I live other than with him?”

“You might want to flee if he beats you.”

“I doubt he would, miss, but if Fred did mistreat me, the women of the parish would see, all right, starting with his gran. A fierce lady is Granny Rolls. He’d be running to me for protection,” she said with a saucy grin.

Bella stared. Women joining together to oppose the cruelty of men. Was it possible?

“And anyway, miss, I love Fred, and Annie loves Zeb, and love doesn’t ask, does it? It tells.”

Insanity!
Bella wanted to exclaim, but she was too staggered.

“I need to meet these young men,” she said, aware of the absurdity of her words. She was only a couple of years older than Kitty, and was neither girl’s guardian, but she had to try to protect them from this folly.

Perhaps it would be a long time before the couples could afford to marry.

“Do Fred and Zeb have a trade?”

“Oh, yes, miss! They’re cousins, see, and their fathers have a coach- making business that’ll be the lads’ one day, so they’re well set, and as Zeb’s mother’s dead, and Fred’s is a bit of an invalid because of an illness she took a year back, they need help in the house.”

“In other words, all these men want is free servants! Don’t you see that?”

Kitty giggled, then quickly stifled it with her hands, but her eyes were full of amusement. Bella’s cheeks heated. The girl was laughing at her!