When the Duke Returns (11 page)

The Dower House
February 29, 1784

T
he table gleamed softly with old silver. Honeydew had conveyed Mrs. Bullock's promise that the food would be exquisite. The butler referred darkly to some exigencies in the recent past, but Isidore did not inquire further. She found that a combination of blissful ignorance and high expectations was the best policy when it came to household problems.

She was dressed in an informal open gown of the finest wine-dark silk. The overskirts pulled back into great loops of nearly transparent fabric, tied by forest green knots of silk. It was an unusual and charming garment—and perhaps most importantly, the bodice was cut extremely low.

There was quite a lot of Isidore in the chest area. She generally viewed this feature dispassionately, as an attribute that made certain corsets impossible, and others very uncomfortable. But she wasn't blind to how much men liked to be presented with abundance; if Cosway turned out to be someone enchanted by an expanse of flesh that would suit a worthy milk cow, Isidore was just the right one to enchant him.

In fact, she thought she had the virginal male fantasy in play. Breasts barely covered, with light, billowing skirts that appeared easy to remove,
check
. Unpowdered hair piled in loose curls,
check
. Just a touch of haunting perfume—the sort that smelled clean and innocent rather than French and seductive—
check
and
mate
.

Years of assessing male attraction were coming in quite useful. She thought it was quite likely that the duke, her husband, would experience her femininity like a bolt of lightning.

There was only one thing she didn't envision.

Two
males appeared at the door. Make that two virgins. And when they both walked in her front door, Simeon bending his head slightly so as not to strike his forehead on the lintel, it was his little brother Godfrey who looked as if he'd been struck by lightning. He stopped short and Simeon walked straight into him.

His mouth fell open. Strange noises came out, resembling frogs singing on a summer night.

“Good evening, Simeon,” she said, moving forward. Didn't he have any sense? Couldn't he have guessed—

Apparently not. Without even a flicker of regret in his eyes, Simeon was turning to his brother and introducing him. “Godfrey, stand tall. You haven't met the duchess for years, but I'm sure you remember her.”

Godfrey bowed so deeply that she was afraid he
wasn't coming back up again. He did, eventually, face red and hair on end.

She dropped into a curtsy that unfortunately put her breasts directly under his nose. He turned purple and cast a desperate look at his brother.

“It's my pleasure,” Isidore said. She gave him a kindly smile, one that said
calm down
.

But the duke was moving into the room and suddenly it seemed to have shrunk to half its size. Isidore stopped herself from falling back. It was just that Simeon was so…male. Very male. Very large.

“What a charming little room this is,” he was saying, wandering about just as if she wasn't there, quivering like a jelly tart fresh out of the oven.

“Yes, charming,” she said, watching his shoulders. They were broad and beautiful. If he didn't even kiss her good night, she decided, that meant he
was
incapable.

Alternatively, it could mean that he found her unattractive. No. That option was unacceptable.

He pulled out her chair and she sat down, mentally giving herself a shake. Obviously, her earlier plan wouldn't work. But she had once boasted of her ability to make any man flirt. Flirtation was halfway to the bedchamber.

This duke wouldn't see it coming, and Godfrey could take a lesson in adulthood.

She leaned forward, employing the smile that set half of Paris on fire during her twentieth year. That would be the male half, naturally.

“Do tell me about yourself, Simeon?” she cooed. “I feel as if I hardly know you.” In her experience, there was nothing a man liked more than to talk about himself.

Simeon put his heavy linen napkin in his lap. “I am so uninteresting,” he said blandly. “I would prefer to hear
about you. What have you done during the years while I was wandering around Abyssinia and the like?”

He was obviously a worthy opponent. He looked genial, friendly, utterly calm—and about as interested as he would be if she were a nursemaid.

“I traveled Europe with my aunt,” she said. “Surely you remember from my letters?” She let just a tiny edge sharpen her words.

The footman was pouring wine and Isidore noticed out of the corner of her eye that Godfrey was drinking with marked enthusiasm. Did boys of that age drink wine? She had the vague idea they were all tucked away in schools; certainly one never saw them at formal dinners.

“I expect that many of your letters did not reach me. I remember getting a note from my solicitor once informing me of some action he'd taken on your behalf.”

“Weren't you concerned that I might discuss intimate matters in my letters?”

He looked surprised. “I never considered the possibility, given as we had never met. What intimacies could we exchange? Of course I instructed my solicitors to act on my behalf with regard to any missive from my family that appeared on their desk. One never knew how long it would take to get mail, let alone to return my instructions to London.”

“Didn't you ever wonder where your wife was?”

He paused for a moment and then said: “No.”

Well, that was straightforward.

“
I
wondered where you were,” Godfrey said eagerly. “I still remember your stay at our house, though it was brief.”

“Impossible,” Isidore said. He was in that gangly stage, where his legs seemed impossibly long. He had the nose of a man and the eyes of a child. “You were only…how old? It was '73.”

“I was almost three,” Godfrey said. “Don't you remember playing peek-a-boo with me? I thought perhaps you had come to live with us.”

“I did,” Isidore said, seeing no reason to lie to him. “But I caused your mother such discomfort that my aunt decided it was better that I travel with her.”

He nodded. “The servants told stories about your visit for years.”

She raised an eyebrow.

He had a funny little grin, this brother of Cosway's. “No one before or after has called the duchess a termagant to her face.”

“There you see,” Isidore said. “What a good thing it was that my aunt agreed to take me with her. The heart palpitations your mother escaped once I left can only be imagined. I trust,” she added punctiliously, remembering that she was speaking to a child and should add guidance, “that you did not follow in my disreputable example.”

“She's not so terrible,” Godfrey said earnestly. “Truly. She gets frightened about money, and that makes her sniffy.”

Simeon reached out and knocked his brother on the shoulder in what Isidore assumed was a fraternal gesture.

Honeydew entered, followed by footmen carrying covered dishes. They were placed on the side table, just as she had instructed when she was envisioning a seductive meal. Honeydew waved the footmen outside and served the table himself as the three of them sat in utter silence. Godfrey had finished his wine, so Honeydew poured him another glass before retiring to the great house. Godfrey looked interestingly pink, and Isidore decided he was not used to imbibing.

Simeon's eyes had a kind of ironic laziness to them
that she found rather attractive, given that most men's eyes took on a feverish gleam if she paid them attention, especially with her bosom on display.

“Did you and your aunt live anywhere in particular?” he asked.

He really had ignored all her letters, or not received them.

“We lived in Venice a great deal of the time,” she explained, “as my family is from that city. But my aunt plays the violin, and so we traveled to various European capitals and performed in the courts.”

“She is a musician? You were travelling around Europe with a performing musician?” Now he looked surprised.

“We always had enough to eat, Simeon. In case you were picturing her playing for pennies by the side of the road.”

“Why didn't you inform my solicitor if you were in that sort of situation? It was utterly inappropriate for a duchess and I would never have allowed it!”

Godfrey was halfway through his second glass of wine but paused with the glass halfway to his lips. “Did you travel about in fairs?” he asked eagerly. “I love fairs! One came through the village and my mother allowed me to attend. There was a wonderful fiddler named Mr. McGurdy. Did you ever happen to meet him?”

“No, I didn't meet Mr. McGurdy,” Isidore said, enjoying herself hugely. “Why Simeon, are you saying that you would have travelled back to England before completing your investigation of the Nile had you known I was
in extremis?
”

He gave her a sour look. “I would have instructed my solicitors to find you an appropriate situation if you didn't wish to return to my mother's house.”

“A nunnery, perhaps?” Isidore asked mockingly.

For a moment his eyes lingered on her chest. “They wouldn't have had you.” She felt a flare of triumph.

“Was it hard sleeping by the side of the road?” Godfrey asked. He had finished his second glass and was sawing away at a piece of chicken in a manner that suggested his coordination was impaired.

“I never slept by the side of the road,” Isidore said, adding primly, “thank goodness.”

“I just don't understand this family!” Simeon said, putting down his cutlery. “Isidore, you had access to whatever funds you wished. Not only did your parents leave you a considerable inheritance, but you could have drawn on my funds at any point. Why were you travelling with fairs? Why is everyone's attitude toward money so peculiar?”

“Mother doesn't know you have all that money,” Godfrey said, turning to his brother owlishly. “She thinks we don't have any.”

“She knows,” Simeon said grimly. “She sees the books. She simply can't bring herself to disperse any of it.”

Godfrey frowned. “You mean—”

Isidore shot her husband a look. His little brother had the bewildered look of a child who's been lied to. “Her Grace showed her respect for her husband by continuing to operate the estate precisely as he had done, I have no doubt,” she said.

Godfrey brightened. “Yes, of course. Father never allowed any untoward expenditures. He considered it a point of honor.”

“There's little honor in not paying tradesmen for their honest work,” Simeon said.

Godfrey looked stricken again. Isidore took another try. “When I visited this house many years ago, I remember being rather surprised by your father's frugal attitude.
But in a frank discussion with your mother, she informed me that he considered himself merely the guardian of the duchy and hoped to pass on his estates intact, without wasting his substance as so many noblemen do.”

Godfrey reached for the sideboard and the bottle of wine, but Isidore gave him a minatory look and his arm dropped. He picked up his fork, but a moment later Simeon poured wine into all three of their glasses.

“I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell me how you and your aunt were reduced to busking at fairs, given your birth, not to mention our marriage,” Simeon said, his voice rather chilly. Apparently, it was her fault that at twelve years old she had failed to voluntarily enter a nunnery while waiting for his return.

“Some say my aunt is one of the greatest violinists ever born,” Isidore said. Godfrey had finished his chicken and looked a little dazed.

“She must have been better than Mr. McGurdy, then,” Godfrey mumbled. “Though he played a tambourine with his right foot at the same time.”

“My aunt played only the violin.”

Simeon put down his fork again. “I have felt as if I were living in two worlds for the past week or so, and this only confirms it. Are you saying that your aunt was in great demand, and you did not travel fairs?”

“No, we did not,” Isidore said. “She had a long-standing arrangement to join the French court for the Easter season; Queen Marie Antoinette is quite fond of music, you know. My aunt would play solos for her in gardens of Versailles. Sometimes my aunt would steal into the great maze, and then begin to play. The ladies would wander into the labyrinth until they were able to find her by following the sound of her music.”

“I'd love to see that,” Godfrey said.

“I should like to play a musical instrument,” Simeon said. “Once I was in an Indian bazaar and heard an old gentleman play a sort of violin-like instrument so beautifully that I began to weep.”

“To
weep?
” Godfrey said, his voice breaking in a high little squeal. “You cried, where anyone could see you?”

Simeon smiled at him. “There's no shame in a man crying.”

Nor in being a virgin either, Isidore thought sourly.

“I think it's shameful,” Godfrey said. “And do you know, Brother, I think it's a bit shameful that you're sitting down to supper without a cravat. Or a waistcoat. Her Grace—” he stumbled a little and slurred it together—“Her Grace is a duchess, you know. You're not paying respect to her. Or you're not respectful of her.” He looked a little confused, but stubborn.

Simeon looked over at Isidore in an inquiring kind of way. “Do you agree with my brother that the size or existence of a cravat determines the respect due a woman?”

“It would be a start,” she said sweetly. “After that would have to come respect for a woman's opinions, of course.”

She had to admit: he was intelligent. He knew instantly what she was talking about. “It's not that I won't respect my wife's opinions—”