Eloisa James - Duchess by Night (14 page)

She must be freezing, Isidore remarked, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders.

The actress was wearing a gown made of twists of gauze, sewn al over with glittering bits of glass. Her hair was free and strung with glass beads.

Its a lovely costume, Harriet whispered back. Look how her hair glitters.

It shimmers with every shiver, Isidore said.

Another woman appeared, wearing a crown and a scanty toga-like costume. Here be Venus of the sky. Ask me your request, fair maiden.

I wanted to be at least a little bit shocked, Isidore hissed. This is like a bad masque at Court.

Harriet felt a pluck on her sleeve and turned to find Kitty beaming at her. Come join us, she whispered. I saved you a seat.

Lord Strange appeared from nowhere and began speaking to Isidore. He didnt even greet Harriet, and when she glanced at them, he didnt raise his eyes.

Though obviously he knew she was standing there. Fine.

Isidore, she said, interrupting whatever Strange was saying. Isidore was laughing and there wasnt a trace of worry on her face any more.

Strange was one of those men who made everyone in his vicinity fade away. He was standing there looking a bit tired, but burning with fierce intensity and she felt like

How ridiculous.

Dont worry about the duchess, Strange said, not bothering to greet Harriet properly. She can join me in the front row. You trot off with the lovely Miss Kitty.

Harriet ground her teeth. If the bal et of the six virgins grows too risqué, Isidore wil not be comfortable in the front row.

Strange gave Isidore a wicked little half-smile. Il leave it entirely up to her, he murmured in such an intimate way that Harriet felt her face grow a little hot. Not surprisingly, Isidore kissed Harriet goodbye with indecent haste.

You go with your friend, she said brightly.

Kitty had returned to her seat and was beckoning in an extremely unsubtle manner.

What a lucky young man you are, Strange murmured. He took Isidores arm. I fancy Mr. Cope wil occupy himself this evening, Your Grace.

Isidore smiled at him. I dont use the title. Please, you must cal me Isidore.

Harriet forced herself to walk away without looking back. Strange wasnt for her. By al appearances, he was interested in Isidore, which was good for Isidores plan.

She felt a tinge of sympathy when she realized that her seat turned out to be next to Nel . Poor Nel , in love with Strange and soon to be disappointed, it seemed.

Did you give him a letter from me? Nel whispered eagerly.

On the stage, Venus seemed to be rather angry about something. I fear the sparkling majesty that issues from your most imperial eyes, the maiden said, fal ing to her knees.

Yes, I did, Harriet whispered back.

What did he say? Is he coming to my bed tonight?

Nel s eyes were shining the way Kittys did when she looked at Harriet. Both Nel and Kitty had woeful y misplaced affections. At the moment, for example, Kitty was almost leaning on Harriets shoulder, although she was pretending to be interested in the histrionic acting on the stage.

I tried to be more subtle, Harriet said. I sent him the first two lines of a poem, and Il give him two more tomorrow.

Nel looked unconvinced. What did the poem say?

The dark is my delight, Harriet said.

When Nel smiled, her whole face transformed from an almost plain col ection of features to something truly enchanting. Lovely!

she said. Then she leaned over and whispered in her ear. I told Kitty that you were the heir to a coal mine, so be sure and act like it.

Harriet goggled at her. You what?

Not that you needed it, Nel said, smothering a giggle. Shes got a stupendous attraction to you. She bent over and whispered in Harriets ear. She says youre a gentleman of voluptuous beauty. Voluptuous! What a word to use for a man.

Harriets heart sank. She wasnt voluptuous even in female clothing. At that very moment Kittys hand crept onto Harriets knee.

Harriet nearly jumped out of her seat and whipped her head around, only to meet Kittys naughty little smile.

She picked up Kittys hand and moved it firmly off her knee; Kitty pouted but didnt say anything, so Harriet looked straight ahead and pretended to be fol owing the performance.

Venus was gone, replaced by two more shivering, wailing virginsWho knew that Lord Stranges disreputable house parties were so tedious?

Isidore and Lord Strange left after ten minutes, but Harriet didnt think it had anything to do with the six mournful virgins. More likely, Isidore was bored.

She was bored.

Youl have to forgive me, she whispered to Kitty, when the six virgins had been joined by six extremely scantily clad young men.

Harriet fancied she could see their goose-bumps from her seat.

I think there might be a more interesting part coming, Kitty whispered back. She hadnt taken her eyes off the stage since the male actors appeared.

Il see you tomorrow, Harriet said firmly.

She escaped just as one of the virgins col apsed into her male counterparts arms. Harriet could only be glad that at least they would be able to share a little warmth.

The Leaning Brothel of Fonthill

February 7, 1784

H e walked into her room the next morning with hardly a knock on the door, but Harriet was ready this time. She was up and dressed, casual y seated in an armchair reading, as though she hadnt flung herself there two seconds before.

Oh! Strange said, coming up short.

She rose, smiling, as if men strode into her bedchamber regularly. Are you ready to go, sir? she asked, ignoring the fact that her bottom throbbed like a pincushion at the very thought of a saddle.

Yes, he barked.

He looked angry again. Obviously, something about her made him peevish. Harriet thought about il manners al the way down the staircase. Benjamin used to feel free to be very il -mannered as wel .

But she had been trained that a lady should never exert her moods over other people. And she had adhered to that plan for years, never snapping at the people who obliquely blamed her for Benjamins suicide, no matter how pestilently rude she felt they were being.

Strange leapt onto his horse with a sort of boyish enthusiasm that she found attractive, despite herself.

Or perhaps it was the way the muscles in his legs bulged when he settled on the horse.

That was one thing about attending a party notorious for its il icit liaisons: the atmosphere lent itself to frank assessments of bodily charms. There was a great deal about Lord Strange that Harriet found attractive.

When they reached the beginning of the road, Strange rose slightly in his stirrups, bringing his horse to a trot. Harriet eyed him from behind, and revised her opinion. What she felt went beyond attraction.

She felt almost helpless in the face of the desire she felt. It wasravenous. As if she would do anything to caress him, to touch him.

And never mind the fact that he thought she was an effeminate male whose company he could hardly stand.

She gathered up her reins and urged her horse to a trot. Not to put too fine a point on it, the first blow of the saddle as the horse started trotting made her want to scream. But she wedged her boots into the stirrups and tried to hover above the saddle. It workedkind of. It was much better once her horse lengthened her stride and started gal oping. She bounced along in opposite rhythm to the horse and it wasnt nearly as painful.

In fact, she actual y found herself leaning over the horses neck and beginning to enjoy herself, barring the icy wind whistling in her teeth and squealing in her ears.

Strange waited for her at the end of the road. Harriet pul ed up her horse, her chest heaving.

Better, he said. He wheeled his horse and started back the way he came.

For Christs sake, Harriet muttered, staring after him. Didnt he say yesterday that the horses needed to walk after a gal op?

Final y she took out after him. If she paused even for a moment, the cold ate at her bones. The ground whirled by at her feet, frozen clods of brown earth flying from the horses hooves, thin ice cracking.

It felt wonderful.

Her heart was pounding, blood thumping through her veins. She suddenly realized that she hadnt felt this alive inohyears.

Since Benjamin died, perhaps before Benjamin died. It was as if she had been living in cotton wool, and suddenly the wooly blanket lifted and the world flared out around her, bril iant, ful of life, color, and movement. A jay started out from a bush; she caught the tail of a rabbit bounding under a hedgerow.

At the entrance to Stranges drive, she hauled on the reins. Her mare had enjoyed the run, and slowed to a walk with a few graceless, stiff-legged movements that jolted every one of Harriets bruises. But she was too interested in Stranges house to do more than wince.

It was the first time shed real y looked at it. It was a childs drawing of a country house, a castle and a house in one. Part of it gleamed in proper Portland stone, but the bit to the right looked like the left-over parts of a medieval castle without a turret.

Then there was a wing extending to the left that sprawled low to the ground, with greenhouses sprouting from it like spokes on a wheel. And final y there was a tower-like affair that must be the famous reproduction of the Leaning Tower of Pisaexcept she didnt think the famous Italian tower leaned quite this much. It was made of brick, with a little brass peaked hat on top.

It looked dangerous.

A smoky voice said, Youre frowning at my tower. Would you like to see it?

You real y did design that?

For the first time since shed met him, Stranges eyes lit up with something more than lazy appreciation or sarcasm.

Lets take a look. And without waiting for an answer, he directed his horse through the archway.

Harriet shook her freezing fingers and picked up the reins.

Up close, the tower was made of bricks, with a wooden door. It leaned in an alarming fashion. In fact, it didnt exactly lean: it toppled. It looked like a tree forced out over the edge of a cliff by repeated winter storms. It looked like a drunk man fal ing to the ground.

It looked, in short, like certain death.

Strange was already off his horse and unlocking the door when Harriet arrived.

Come on, he said over his shoulder, disappearing inside.

Harriet looked down. She had never dismounted without assistance. Ladies didnt. And Nick, her favorite groom, who had boosted her into place with plenty of whispered bits of advice that morning, was nowhere to be seen.

Grunting a little from her sore muscles, she pul ed her right boot out of the stirrup and tried to slide to the ground.

She ended up fal ing with a wal op onto the frozen ground just as Strange came back into the doorway.

She quickly scrambled to her feet.

Youre the worst horseman Ive ever seen, he said, in a not unfriendly tone of voice. And yet you ride quite wel in a neck-or-nothing sort of way. Didnt your mother let you on a horse?

My Harriet said, before remembering that Vil iers had given her a sickly mother in the country. My mother is afraid of horseflesh, she said. What shal I do with the reins?

Just put them down. My horses are extremely wel trained. You see how my horse is simply waiting for me? Yours wil do the same.

Harriet put the reins down and stepped back. Her horse, being no fool, instantly decided that she would rather be in the nice snug stables, and set off in that direction.

In a hurry.

Harriet didnt see any need to comment on it, so she walked past Strange, leaving him muttering some interesting curse words behind her.

She stopped short inside the tower. It was one round room, and rather than having floors, the ceiling simply receded and receded, so Harriet felt dizzy when she looked up and saw the roof veering off to the left.

The room was hung with great swaths of watered apricot silk. It had only two pieces of furniture: a large bed hung with matching gauze, and a solid oak desk piled with papers. It looked like an odd cross between a Turkish harem and the chambers of a solicitor.

Her mouth fel open.

Isnt it interesting? Strange said, appearing next to her. I pressured the vector to the most extreme that it could manage in terms of weight-bearing.

Its like looking up a crooked chimney pipe, Harriet said, ignoring the bed and looking upward again.

If you calculate the angles, Cope, youl see that I achieve around a sixty-three-percent lean by fifty percent of the extension.

What do you think?

I think its dangerous, Harriet said bluntly.

Its not dangerous. I calculated the weight of the bricks very careful y against the slant of the tower.

Im sure you did. Its dangerous.

Its not dangerous, he said in a control ed voice that told her other sensible souls had pointed out the same thing. The servants dont like to come near, and so I al ow them their foibles. But any educated man has to recognize that the science of engineering dictates exactly what a building can and cannot do, in terms of angles.

No windows? Harriet enquired.

They altered the weight-bearing properties of the bricks.

In other words, Harriet translated, the whole thing would have col apsed into a pile of dust.

The tower in Pisa has been standing since the 1170s, Strange said. He strode over and struck a flint to light a lantern hanging from a little hook. It cast a golden light over his shoulders that served to remind Harriet how cold she was.

When she didnt say anything to affirm his bril iance in tower-building, he added: In the summer, Eugenia and I often picnic here.

She swung around from examining a couple of bricks she was sure were about to crumble into each other. You shouldnt do that.

Do what?

Your daughter should never be in this tower. Ever. Its one thing if you want to put your own life at risk and mine, she added silently but your daughter should not come within a hundred feet of this building.