Elizabeth was mystified as to why anyone should believe she
wouldn’t
make a piece of work of it. Mr. Melchers was supposed to be the rakehell, not St. Clair. Perhaps she had not made the situation clear. “I was not talking about previous wives, but ladybirds.”
“You were talking about previous wives in your letter! I have it right here.” Sir Charles patted his pocket. “Or I did until I threw it in the fire. However, I perfectly remember what you said. You were in the fidgets because Charnwood’s previous wife was in the house. You were also in the fidgets because no one informed you Charnwood
had
a previous wife. You may thank your mama for that. I told her you wouldn’t like it above half.”
Elizabeth would have liked to hear what Maman told Sir Charles in return. “Matters have progressed. I find I can tolerate Magda. I can even tolerate Augusta. I am not entirely certain, however, that I feel as charitable toward ladybirds.”
For a horrified moment, Sir Charles thought Elizabeth referred to his own tendency to dally elsewhere than in his own home. Then he realized with relief that she referred not to himself, but to the duke. “Good Lord, what matters the occasional ladybird? Everyone has one!” he said.
Did Sir Charles speak from experience? “Fifty-six of them?” Elizabeth inquired.
Fifty-six ladybirds! A man would think he’d died and gone to heaven. Sir Charles collected his scattered wits. “Think no more on it, Elizabeth. Ladybirds don’t signify. It’s you who are his wife.”
Ladybirds didn’t signify? On certain matters the sexes felt far differently, it seemed. “As to that,” Elizabeth responded, with a certain relish, “I’m not so sure I am.”
Sir Charles experienced
a frisson
of foreboding. “Certainly you’re married. I saw you wed myself. True, it wasn’t the ceremony Lady Ratchett would have liked, but it was legal all the same. ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here ...’ ”
“Thank you, Sir Charles. I recall the ceremony.” Elizabeth pressed forward before he could move on to the ‘wives, submit yourselves unto your husband’s part.’ “It wasn’t my
wedding
I was speaking about.”
If not wedding, what did the chit refer to? Not ‘procreation of children,’ egad?! How
could
Lady Ratchett have raised a daughter so lacking in proper feeling as to force a fellow to discuss that which he would rather not? At least Sir Charles was fairly certain that he would rather not. But needs must when the devil drove. “Do you mean to tell me that you are— That he, ah, has not—”
“Yes!” Elizabeth blushed almost as mightily as her step-papa. “I am, and he has not, and so therefore I am not legally wed.”
Definitely, Sir Charles disliked these father-daughter talks. He promised himself to never have one again. “And don’t tell me that I should be
nice
to him,” added Elizabeth. “Because I have been extremely amiable. Usually. Most of the time.”
Sir Charles didn’t care to inquire into the particulars. “Are you sure you didn’t do anything to give him a disgust of you, my girl? Because I don’t mind telling you I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
This wretched imbroglio was to be laid at her doorstep? Elizabeth’s temper flared. “I did nothing! Magda showed up on our wedding night.”
“Ah. In that case—” Sir Charles could see how it was that a gentleman might find it unnerving to engage in amorous congress with his bride while his first wife dozed beneath the same roof. But in that case, why didn’t he send the extra female on her way?
“He says that he cannot,” replied Elizabeth, to whom this question had been addressed. “Magda hasn’t a feather to fly with. She barely escaped from France. Moreover, St. Clair is convinced she’s involved in some mischief, and wants to know what that might be. I’m not sure that’s not just an excuse, because he wants her to stay.”
“France?” Sir Charles came abruptly to attention. “You didn’t say she was an émigré.”
Elizabeth was startled by this sudden interest. She had never seen Sir Charles so intent. “Magda is as English as we are, though she speaks French like a native, and knows a great many émigrés. Gus is determined to make her out a spy.” She went on to explain Lady Augusta’s presence beneath the ducal roof. “But we are getting off the subject. I fear St. Clair doesn’t like me much. The last time we, ah— That is, we didn’t— He threw me on the bed and said he couldn’t do it, and walked out of the room.”
Sir Charles had been on the verge of delivering a lecture on the subject of conjugal obligation and decorum. Now he snapped his mouth shut. The duke
couldn’t?
How the devil did the man expect to get himself some offspring if he wasn’t up to the task? Couldn’t bring himself to the sticking point? Was flogging a dead horse? And what the devil did he
do
with those fifty-six mistresses, in that case? “How extraordinary! Are you sure you didn’t bungle the business, miss?”
Elizabeth rose to remove Birdie from the piano leg, which the parrot appeared to be courting, and deposited her on the jasperware urn. “I haven’t had a chance to bungle anything. It was stupidly done of me to write that wretched letter, but I was shocked to discover St. Clair had a previous wife, which is
not
unremarkable in me, and if anyone had seen fit to warn me, I might have behaved differently. But as for bungling, I am hardly to blame for what Charnwood does, or doesn’t do, in my bedroom.”
Sir Charles flung up his hands. “Say no more, I beg you! There’s something smoky here. I must puzzle over it. Perhaps all Charnwood needs a gentle push.”
Elizabeth felt like pushing Charnwood, ungently, out a window. She doubted that was what Sir Charles meant. “What sort of push?”
Sir Charles recalled the various females whose acquaintance he had made in the byways of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, not to mention various houses of civil reception, any one of whom would be better equipped to have this conversation than he was. Thanks to the tender ministrations of those females, Sir Charles knew what he liked, intelligence of which would cause Lady Ratchett to have an apoplexy, but there was no guarantee that Charnwood liked the same. Upon further reflection, Sir Charles decided that Charnwood probably
wouldn’t
like the same, being as he was a duke and therefore probably accustomed to more exotic fare.
Sir Charles didn’t mean to have that conversation with his stepdaughter, either.
But he must tell her something. “Take off your clothes! Nature will do the rest.”
Elizabeth was not so naive as to think Sir Charles meant she should disrobe in public. “St. Clair didn’t like it when I showed my bosom. Are you sure?”
Sir Charles wasn’t sure that the duke’s brains weren’t in his ballocks. However, though his stepdaughter wasn’t chicken-breasted, she appeared abominably missish in her simple white gown. She
was
missish, therein lay the problem. “You showed your bosom? I’ll tell you what, Elizabeth, I don’t think I should hear this stuff!”
Elizabeth flushed. “It wasn’t like that! I showed it to everyone. At the Assembly Rooms.” Sir Charles looked horrified, and she began to laugh. “Not like that! I wore a very low-cut dress. Maman wouldn’t have approved.”
Sir Charles was a great deal more interested in Lord Charnwood’s likes and dislikes than in Lady Ratchett’s, with which he had become all too well acquainted during the long years of their married life. The duke hadn’t cared to observe his wife’s bosom? That was more than passing strange. Elizabeth could hardly be blamed for being in a taking. Sir Charles wondered what Lady Ratchett had—or hadn’t—told her daughter about matters marital.
As he was pondering how to delicately phrase this question, voices sounded in the hallway. Said one,
“Voyons!
I am hungry. It is almost time for dinner,
n’est-ce pas?”
Replied another, “How can you be hungry? You ate an entire plate of apple tarts!”
Sir Charles turned toward the door, as did Elizabeth, and the parrot perched atop the urn. “Try harder, there’s the ticket!” Sir Charles hastily advised his startled stepdaughter. “I’ve told Charnwood that if this business between you isn’t soon resolved I will take you home with me, and so I shall. I don’t like to see you made unhappy by your mama’s ambitions, Elizabeth.” The duchess stared at him, startled. The parrot fluttered its wings.
Magda entered the room, saw the visitor, and dimpled. Gus followed, and frowned. Elizabeth performed introductions. “May I present my stepfather, Sir Charles Ratchett? Lady Augusta Shadwell is St. Clair’s cousin. Madame de Chavannes is his previous wife.”
“
Ma foi,
I was an aberration. This time Saint has got it right.” Magda curtsied.
“Enchanté,
Sir Charles.”
De Chavannes, was it? Damned if he’d ever seen a dress cut that low. At least not on a lady. If she was a lady. Sir Charles’s instinct for mischief went on the alert.
“Is something wrong, Sir Charles? You are twitching,” Elizabeth asked.
“Maybe he is allergic to the parrot,” suggested Magda. “Or your kitten. Where is Minou,
ma petite?”
That was an excellent question. In the shock of her stepfather’s arrival, Elizabeth had forgotten all about the cat. “I don’t know. St. Clair took him away.”
“Mayhap he drowned it,” remarked Augusta. “Whatever were you thinking, to bring home a kitten? St. Clair does not like cats.”
“
A
bon chat, bon rat,”
said Magda. “Mayhap he will drown you next.”
Birdie fluttered her wings for attention and whistled a lively tune. “Jack’s Maggot,” I believe,” said Elizabeth, and picked up the bird.
A footman appeared in the doorway. “Dinner is served, Your Grace.”
Parrot perched on her shoulder, the duchess led the way into the dining room. Lady Augusta hovered at her elbow, attempting to avoid the bird’s beak. “You will be pleased to know the invitations for our dinner party have been sent out.”
Elizabeth, thought Sir Charles, appeared less pleased than resigned. “Parrots at the dinner table?” he queried. “Lady Ratchett would not like that.”
“We are informal here.” With an enchanting, twinkling smile, Magda took his arm. “You have recently come from London,
monsieur?”
Sir Charles admired the lady’s décolletage, and the cameo that hung between her breasts. She twinkled at him. “You have noticed my Eros. “It is an invitation to
l’amour.”
L’amour,
by Jove. Sir Charles patted his companion’s hand, and embarked upon an animated discussion of Frigates and Fencibles, Raftweather and the Semaphore.
Chapter 19
“A woman’s honor lies in public recognition of her virtue, a man’s in the reliability of his word.”
—Lady Ratchett
While Sir Charles and the ladies lingered over a repast as notable for the presence of a parrot as for the excellence of the fare, His Grace the Duke of Charnwood was being ushered into the drawing room of Mr. Slyte’s house in Queen’s Square. Nigel and his aunt were seated at a Chippendale card table, intent on a game of piquet. Lady Ysabella wore a dress fashioned from an India shawl, its wide border forming the hemline. Perched atop her golden curls was a frivolous lace cap, and on her nose a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. Her nephew resembled a rumpled owl; the cards not falling in his favor, he had been running his hands through his hair. Both were drinking port, which was hardly a beverage for a lady, but Ysabella was a lady only when she wished.
She glanced up as Justin walked into the room. “I am one hundred twenty to his ninety-nine. Nigel has spent too much time with Augusta, Saint.”
Nigel threw down his cards. “Aunt Syb’s taken my last farthing. Next I’ll have to wager the gold buttons off my coat.”
“You shouldn’t play if you’re not prepared to come down with the darbies.” Lady Ysabella rose from the card table and arranged herself in an invalidish manner upon a chaise longue. “Must I remind you that you’re the one who asked to play for stakes? Saint, you look like a gentleman bent on carnage. No, you may not fling that chair across the room.”
It was a temptation. Justin leaned on the chair-back instead. “You may not be surprised to learn that I have yet another houseguest.”
Distracted from consideration of the ready rhino, or his lack thereof, Nigel picked up the bottle by his elbow, and poured his friend a glass of port. “Did I not predict it? Sometimes I astonish even myself. You can move in here with us, we have ample room. We may
not
have a cook much longer, does Aunt Syb not cease haranguing the poor woman.”
“That ‘poor woman’ deserves haranguing. Imagine, boiled neck of mutton.” Lady Ysabella shuddered. “I should have brought along my own chef.”
“No, you shouldn’t!” countered Nigel. “Because Cook would quit for certain, and I like boiled mutton well enough. I’ll stake a button it’s Lady Ratchett who’s caused Saint’s long face. Will you call my wager, Aunt Syb?”
Justin strode toward the table and snatched up the port glass. “Not Lady Ratchett has come to Bath, but Sir Charles. Elizabeth wrote a letter. She says she didn’t put it out to be franked.”
“There lies exactly the peril of a household too well run.” Nigel leaned back in his chair. “Note it well, Aunt Syb. If ever a letter was writ in this household, there’s no chance it would go accidentally into the post.”
“Before a letter might be written in this household, one would first have to give up his humbuggery long enough to apply himself to the task!” retorted Lady Ysabella. “Elizabeth wrote to her stepfather? That surprises me. I didn’t know that they were close.”
“I don’t have the impression that they are.” In unwitting imitation of his bride’s step-papa, Justin took a turn around the room. “Sir Charles opened Lady Ratchett’s letter. I am mildly curious as to why. Instead of passing it along to her, he came here himself.”
“Took French leave, did he?” Lady Syb took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I can’t say I blame him. Geraldine was ever guilty of too much high-mindedness. It makes her monstrous dull, and no little bit a shrew. I’m surprised her daughter turned out as good-natured as she has.”