“Rosalinde Murphy is hardly a mercenary, Jerry,” Edward replied mildly. “I believe she has a genuine interest in your welfare.”
“Not my welfare,” Jeremy corrected him. “
My purse
.”
“Your pers
on
,” Edward said, with a laugh. “The young lady’s taken with you. What’s so wrong with that?”
Jeremy exhaled impatiently. “Because it’s not
me
she wants!” he insisted. “It’s my money, and that damned title! Every woman I meet, the minute she learns I’m a duke, it’s
Your Grace
this and
Your Grace
that. All a woman who meets me can think about is the day when she might begin signing her name Duchess of Rawlings. I can see it in their eyes. They’re already picturing themselves with a tiara on their head and ermine round their shoulders.”
“What you’re seeing in their eyes, Jerry, is lust, and it’s not for your title.” Edward attempted, unsuccessfully, to stifle a chuckle. “Look at yourself, Jerry. You might still consider yourself the scrawny little scamp you were when you were ten, but Rosalinde sees someone entirely different. She sees a tall, robust young man, with dark hair and light eyes and a good set of teeth—”
“I hardly think Rosalinde Murphy has ever noticed my teeth,” Jeremy muttered, to cover the embarrassment he felt at his uncle’s assurances.
“Perhaps not,” Edward laughed. “But you’re still a fine figure of a man, Jerry, and you can’t expect women not to respond to that. And when they do, don’t automatically dismiss that interest as purely pecuniary in nature.”
Jeremy, thoroughly embarrassed now, muttered into his beer, “Well, being a duke certainly doesn’t make that kind of thing any easier. I mean, my God, I can’t even marry whom I choose! I have to marry a woman who’d make a decent duchess.”
“True,” Edward said. “But that doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s impossible for one to find marital bliss with the kind of woman who’d make a decent duchess.” Thoughtfully, he lifted his tankard. “I managed to do it, after all.”
“Too bad my father wasn’t as discriminating,” Jeremy
commented bitterly. “Of a pair of sisters, he managed to pick the one who’d eventually end up getting him killed.”
Edward cleared his throat uncomfortably as he set the tankard down again. “Yes, well. Pegeen was only ten years old, I believe, when John first came calling on your mother, so I don’t believe she was much in the running.” Then, as if remembering something, Edward leaned forward and said, in a completely different tone of voice, “You’re not to tell your aunt why it was you were sent down this time, Jerry.”
“As if I would,” Jeremy said bitterly. “The last thing I’d want is for Aunt Pegeen to know. But she’s bound to find out anyway. It will probably make the papers.”
“Certainly it will make the papers,” Edward said with a curt nod. “That’s different, however, than you coming straight out and admitting it. That’s the only way Pegeen’d ever believe
you
were capable of murder.”
“Right,” Jeremy agreed, with a smile every bit as cynical as his uncle’s had been earlier. “Me, the boy who cried for hours after his first hunt, because he felt so sorry for the fox.”
“You didn’t cry for all that long,” Edward said, shifting in his seat, a little uncomfortable at the memory of that fateful day. “But you’re right. It’s hard to reconcile what you were then to what you are now.”
Jeremy’s gaze was still sarcastic. “And what am I now, Uncle?”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?” Edward took another sip of his beer, then asked, “What sort of man do you want to be?”
“One who isn’t a duke,” Jeremy responded promptly.
“But that,” Edward said, “isn’t possible.”
Jeremy nodded as if this were the response he’d expected. Without another word, he started to slide from the settle. Edward looked up at him, surprised. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the devil,” Jeremy informed him casually.
“Ah,” Edward said with a nod. He settled more deeply into his seat, and lifted his tankard in a solemn toast to his nephew’s departing back. “Be home in time for dinner, then.”
“Oh, Maggie!” Lady Edward Rawlings cried, as she brushed aside the tissue paper surrounding the small canvas. “Oh! Oh, it’s lovely!”
Maggie Herbert, her freckled nose wrinkled skeptically, looked down at the painting from where she stood behind Pegeen’s chair. Too much green, she thought. Yes, entirely too much green in the background. As she scrutinized the painting, a white blossom spiraled down from the branches stretched overhead, and settled upon the freshly dried canvas. Maggie thought the petal an improvement, but Pegeen impatiently swept it away.
“Oh, I can’t wait to show it to Edward,” Pegeen declared, her gaze still locked upon the painting. “He simply won’t believe it. I don’t think any of the other portraits we’ve had done of the children captures them quite as accurately as this one—”
“Really?” Maggie’s tone was mildly incredulous. She narrowed her eyes until the image on the canvas blurred, but she could still see only a series of shapes and colors she’d laid down the day before, and not the whole of the painting that Pegeen was raving over. And too much green.
“Oh, yes,” Pegeen assured her. “Why, it’s as if you were able to capture their little souls!”
Maggie laughed. “Oh, hardly! If I’d done that, Lizzie would look completely different. As it is, she looks too sweet by far—”
“What do you mean, too sweet?” Pegeen lifted the canvas, which was only six inches by another six, and held it out at arm’s length, still so entranced by it that she could not look away. “Lizzie looks perfectly, adorable. John, too. Oh, and look at Mary’s little pout! And Alistair’s chin. You’ve captured it exactly! I’ve overheard
some
people calling Alistair’s chin stubborn, you know, but it’s just firm, that’s all.”
Maggie lifted her gaze and fastened it upon the face of her mother, who sat in a wrought-iron lawn chair opposite Pegeen’s. The smile Lady Herbert returned was every bit as knowing as Maggie’s. All of the Rawlings children’s chins were inevitably thrust out stubbornly in unconscious imitation of their mother’s expression when she was at her most intractable, and the fact that Pegeen refused to recognize this was the source of some amusement among her friends and neighbors.
“Oh, Maggie,” Pegeen sighed, still unable to take her eyes off the portrait. “It’s just beautiful. I don’t know how you do it.”
“I don’t know how she does it, either.” Lady Herbert leaned forward to pour out another cup of tea from the silver service on the small folding table that had been set up between the lawn chairs. Since Pegeen was expecting—though not as soon as Maggie’s elder sister, Anne, who sat opposite Lady Herbert, her teacup and saucer balanced on the generous swell of her stomach—the older woman had automatically taken on the duties of hostess, though in fact both she and her daughters were Pegeen’s guests at the manor house where Sir Arthur, Maggie’s father, worked as solicitor to the young duke’s estate. The Herberts spent so much time at Rawlings Manor that Maggie had long come to consider it her second home, and tended to treat it as such, a fact that did not sit particularly well with the very ladylike Anne, particularly when she found her youngest sister sliding down banisters, which up until a year or two ago had occurred all too frequently.
“She certainly didn’t inherit the talent from me,” Maggie’s
mother declared, stirring sugar into her tea. “It must come from her father’s side of the family.”
“Papa?” Anne looked uncomfortable, as she always did whenever her youngest sister’s talent with a paintbrush was mentioned. “Certainly not! No one on Papa’s side of the family ever took up
painting.
Goodness, Mamma. How could you make such a suggestion?”
Maggie, turning her gaze back down to the little portrait she’d rendered, shook her head. “No, Lizzie’s smile isn’t right,” she murmured to herself. “Not nearly wicked enough.”
Unfortunately, Lizzie’s mother overheard.
“Wicked!” Pegeen cried, snatching the painting to her chest, as if she feared Maggie might try to take it away to make adjustments. “Nonsense. There isn’t a wicked bone in my daughter’s body. She’s a little angel. They’re
all
little angels.” Seeing that Maggie had no intention of retrieving her gift, Pegeen snuck another peek, and immediately launched into further raptures. “Oh, Anne, look at the way she’s done John’s eyes. Have you ever seen anything so uncanny?”
Maggie, still unconvinced, looked away from the painting and toward the rest of the garden, where Pegeen’s “little angels” were currently engaged in tearing up one of the rose beds. They were joined in their efforts by Anne’s children, though Maggie’s well-behaved nieces and nephew were considerably less boisterous than the Rawlings brood, and by approximately fifteen orphans from the Rawlings Foundling Home, whom Lady Pegeen was entertaining to a May Day picnic on the manor house grounds. A single glance at Pegeen and Edward’s eldest child told Maggie that she had, indeed, erred on the side of sweetness. Elizabeth Rawlings was a pretty girl, but obviously as headstrong as both of her parents. This was illustrated by the clod of dirt she promptly launched in her brother John’s direction when he failed effectively to carry out her orders.
“And have you managed to talk your father into letting you attend that Parisian art school you were telling me about, Maggie?” Pegeen wanted to know.
“No,” Maggie said. She couldn’t keep a note of sullenness from creeping into her voice. “He’s terrified that the moment I set foot off English soil unescorted, I shall allow myself to be seduced and whisked off to Morocco and sold as chattel to some Arab prince.”
“Maggie!” Anne’s teacup went crashing back into its saucer.
Lady Herbert echoed her eldest daughter’s astonishment, though in a considerably milder tone of voice: “Really, Maggie. What in heaven’s name are you talking about? Your father thinks no such thing.”
“He does, though,” Maggie said, leaning back against the trunk of the cherry tree with a sigh. “Papa’s quite aware of my peculiarly carnal inclinations.”
“Maggie!” Anne’s cheeks had gone crimson with mortification. “How many times do I have to beg you not to use words like … like”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“
carnal
in public conversation?” Turning toward Pegeen, she pleaded, “Oh, do stop laughing, Lady Edward. You’ll only encourage her.”
“Oh!” Pegeen wiped tears of laughter from the corners of her green eyes. “Oh, dear! Maggie, my dear, you mustn’t, you really mustn’t say things like that. You’ll end up getting a reputation—”
“With whom?” Maggie asked disgustedly. “The local tenant farmers? I hardly think
they
care whether or not I use the word
carnal
.”
“Not the tenant farmers, Maggie dear,” Lady Herbert said gently. “Young men.”
“What young men?” Maggie reached behind her and began scraping bark away from the cherry-tree trunk with a sharp stick she’d found in the fresh spring grass. “The only young men around here are the ones herding sheep, and I’ll wager there’s not much
they
don’t know about carnality.”
“Maggie!” Anne looked as if she would have very much liked to pinch her little sister. Unfortunately, the size of her swollen belly forbade quick movements, and she knew from past experience that she’d have had to be very quick indeed
if she wanted to pinch Maggie and escape a reciprocal slap. “For heaven’s sake!”
Maggie shrugged. “Well,” she said. “It’s the truth.”
“Yes, but you’re nearly seventeen, now, dear.” Anne spoke with obviously forced patience. “You’ll be coming out next year. The young men you’ll meet during your first season in London won’t care to hear about your, er, inclinations—”
“Actually,” Pegeen interrupted thoughtfully, “I’m quite certain they’d
love
hearing about it, but I’m not sure it’s something Maggie ought to go about advertising … .”
“There,” Anne declared. “You hear that, Maggie? Listen to Lady Edward. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. If you’re going to find yourself a husband in London, you’re going to have to start acting more like a lady—”
“I don’t
want
to act like a lady,” Maggie muttered, the full of her concentration on the hole she was gouging in the trunk of the tree. “If acting like a lady means doing nothing all day but attend dress fittings—” She grunted as a good chunk of bark gave way beneath the point of her stick. “And nothing all night but listen to the insipid conversation of idiotic baronets—”
“What are you doing to that tree?” Lady Herbert demanded. “Come sit down and put away that dirty stick.”
Maggie dropped the stick, but she did not sit down. Instead, she pressed her back against the hole she’d made in the tree trunk. She didn’t know why she’d felt compelled to take out her aggression upon an innocent tree, but she felt that, overall, the tree was a better choice than her elder sister.
“If you don’t want to act like a lady, Margaret,” Maggie’s mother inquired, with some amusement, “what
do
you want to do?”
“I
told
you, Mamma.” Maggie sighed. “I want to paint. That’s
all
I want to do. And I want to go to Madame Bonheur’s to learn to do it right.”
Lady Herbert lifted her gaze heavenward, but it was Anne who burst out, “But Madame Bonheur’s art academy is out of the question! Mamma, you
must
tell her, and be
firm
this time. Maggie
must
not be allowed to—”
“But why?”
Pegeen sounded impatient. Maggie couldn’t help smiling. It seemed as if Lady Edward Rawlings was forever finding some new cause for which to campaign, and today she’d chosen Maggie.
“Why is it out of the question? It’s perfectly ridiculous to waste talent like your sister’s, Anne. Why, Maggie’s a thousand times more skilled than that silly little painter Edward hired to do my portrait last year. Look at the colors in this painting she’s done of the children.” Pegeen held the canvas out for the other women to see. “The way she’s mixed them so that each one looks like a separate jewel. And the way she’s captured the children’s expressions—why, it’s more accurate than any daguerreotype!”
“I perfectly agree with you, Pegeen,” Lady Herbert said a bit tiredly. “But—”
“Sir Arthur doesn’t have some silly old-fashioned notion about not wasting money educating a girl, has he?” Pegeen demanded. “Because if he has, I will gladly march right over to Herbert Park and enlighten him—”
“It isn’t just that, Pegeen,” Anne said, solemnly. “Papa doesn’t approve of women pursuing occupations outside the home, and an occupation in the arts—Heavens! The very mention of it sends him into apoplexies. But I must say, I can’t help but agree with him. It’s quite scandalous, really, the number of girls going to London to pursue livings as nurses and clerks and teachers, and, oh, I don’t know what all! But I suppose they can’t help it—they
need
the work, you know, to survive. But Maggie? She doesn’t need to work at all. She simply
wants
to, which is, of course, perfectly ridiculous. Everyone knows the only avocation for which women are suited is motherhood—”
“Yes, dear,” Lady Herbert interrupted. Her smile was tolerant. “We’re all quite aware of your feelings on the importance of motherhood. But I believe your father’s primary objection to Maggie’s going away is just that she’s the youngest of you girls. She’s the only one still at home.” Lady Herbert smiled fondly at Maggie, who was squinting
up at the cherry blossoms overhead. “We none of us are quite prepared to let her grow up just yet.”
“Well, you’re going to have to let her go eventually,” Pegeen said. “I mean, if she’s to come out next season.”
Lady Herbert made a suffering noise as she lifted a piece of cake to her lips. “And if I know Maggie,” she sighed, after she’d brought the fork back down to the plate in her lap, “she’ll hate every minute of
that
.”
Pegeen did not laugh. “Of course she’ll hate it. A girl like Maggie—”
“A girl like Maggie won’t last a minute in London,” Maggie mimicked, annoyed that everyone was talking
about
her, while no one talked
to
her. “The
haut monde
will rip her apart. The other girls will snicker at her, because she’s too tall and too loud and has paint under her fingernails, and the men, if they pay her any mind at all, will be disgusted by the fact that she uses words like
carnal
in public conversation.”
“Oh, no,” Pegeen cried. “Surely not, Maggie! Why, you’re so very pretty, with all of that dark hair, and those big brown eyes. You’re far prettier than the eldest Smythe girl, and look how well
she
married … .”
“What does it matter what she looks like?” Anne asked pointedly. “The minute Maggie opens her mouth, the room has a tendency to empty. She’s far too outspoken—”
“She’s not,” Pegeen protested. “She merely states her mind. She always has.” She turned her head to smile back at Maggie. “That’s why I like her so.”
Anne, however, was doing anything
but
smiling at her youngest sister. “She says the first thing that pops into her head, without a thought to the consequences, and generally when no one has asked her opinion in the first place.”