Maggie, far from heeding his advice not to panic, dove for the ladder that led down from Jeremy’s massive bed.
Scrambling down it, she nearly tripped over the hem of her nightdress, but she recovered herself, and shot Jeremy an outraged look as he smirked at her near-hysteria.
“Oh, it’s all very well for you,” she hissed. “You have no reputation to worry about!”
“I take exception to that,” Jeremy said with mock gravity. “I am extremely conscious of your reputation. So conscious, in fact, that I shall ask Peters to act as lookout for Hill while you make your way back to your room—”
“No,” Maggie gasped. “Don’t—”
But it was too late. Jeremy was already calling for his valet to enter. The one-legged man did so, casting only a single, entirely incurious glance at Maggie. “Good morning, sir,” he said politely. “Miss ‘Erbert. ’Ow’s your shoulder this morning, sir? Is it still troubling you?”
“Not a twinge,” Jeremy replied calmly. “Peters, have you seen Miss Herbert’s maid up and about this morning?”
“Yes, sir,” Peters said. He had gone to the windows, and was throwing open the long velvet curtains. “I took the liberty of creating a diversion belowstairs that Mrs. ‘Ill is busy trying to clean up. If Miss ’Erbert wishes to retire to her own room, now would be an ideal time.”
Maggie hesitated not a moment. Her feet padding noiselessly on the parquet floor, she hurried to the door. She did turn, however, with her hand on the latch, to look back at Jeremy. He was sitting up in the middle of the great canopied bed, his skin very dark against the whiteness of the sheets. His eyes, however, shone bright as coins.
“Um,” Maggie said. Good Lord. This was extremely awkward. She had been sure—quite sure—that he would have mentioned something,
anything
about marriage, or at the very least, about
love
. She had
given
herself to him, after all. She was quite aware that most girls tended to wait to do that until after they were married. He had suggested going to the theater. But he hadn’t said a word about taking any trips toward the altar.
Oh, dear. How very presumptuous on her part to have even thought …
“Yes, yes,” Jeremy said, his lips twisted upward. “Go
on and run, then, little mouse, before the cat gets wind of it.”
Maggie, ducking her head so that her long hair hid her blushing cheeks, slipped from the room without another word. As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, Peters turned from the windows and said mildly, “Congratulations, sir. I see you finally managed to—”
“Careful, Peters,” Jeremy said, without the slightest rancor. “That’s my future wife you’re talking about.”
“Meanin’ no disrespect, sir.”
“None taken.” Perfectly content, Jeremy sank back against the pillows. Though it was February, he couldn’t help thinking that the sun had never shone quite so brightly, nor the birds outside his windows sung quite so well. “Peters, let this be a lesson to you. Man can achieve
anything
, with a little charm, ingenuity, and patience.”
“You are a model for us all, sir,” was Peters’s dry reply, as he headed straight for the whisky decanter on the sideboard. “The maid, though. That Mrs. ‘Ill. She’s goin’ to be a problem, sir.”
“Easily rectified, my good man. Easily rectified. In about an hour, you and I will head downtown and secure a special license. By this afternoon, Miss Herbert will become the seventeenth Duchess of Rawlings, and our good Mrs. Hill won’t be able to say a word about it.”
Peters shrugged, and splashed a generous slug of whisky into a glass. “Beggin’ your pardon, Colonel, but we might ’ave a slight difficulty securin’ that special license today.” He lifted the glass and headed toward the bed. Jeremy eyed him with a single raised brow.
“Whisky for breakfast, Peters?” he asked curiously. “Surely it’s not as bad as all that.”
“Yes, sir,” Peters said. “I think you’ll agree wi’ me that it is.” Shoving the glass into his employer’s hand, Peters unfolded the crisp pages of the newspaper he had held tucked under his arm—
The Times
, Jeremy noted—and presented him with the society page, across which blared the headline,
Military Hero Returns to London to Marry Indian Royal.
Jeremy brought the whisky glass swiftly to his lips.
“I just don’t know,” declared the Baroness of Lancaster. “The blue is nice, but I think white is more appropriate.”
“Oh, Mamma!” sixteen-year-old Fanny Lancaster wailed. “Only babies wear white, and I’m not a baby. I’m wearing the blue.”
“I just don’t know,” fretted Lady Lancaster. “It doesn’t seem right. Miss Herbert, what do you recommend?” Glancing over at the portrait painter, Lady Lancaster smiled tolerantly. Daydreaming, of course. Well, what else could you expect from a lady artist? Lavinia Michaels had said the girl had a tendency to drift off. Probably up all night at some Bohemian party or another. But that portrait she’d done of Lavinia’s niece! Perfection! One hardly noticed the girl’s double chin at all. “Miss Herbert?”
Maggie had been up all night, but not at any party. She still could not quite fathom what had occurred only a few hours before. She had made love with the Duke of Rawlings. Not once. Not twice. But three, possibly four times … she’d lost count after a while. It had been the most thrilling, the most exhilarating, night in her life.
Of course, when she’d sat down to her breakfast tray that morning, and opened the paper to the society page, which she habitually perused for potential clients, she found that it had been the most humiliating night in her life, as well.
Well, at least now she knew why he hadn’t proposed.
“Miss Herbert?” Lady Lancaster peered through her lorgnettes
at the young woman perched on the end of her chaise longue. The girl looked all right—slightly peaked, maybe, from keeping such odd hours—but otherwise quite presentable in a dark wool visiting dress. Her hat was jauntily pinned to a saucy little confection of curls on top of her head—not at all the look for someone of Lady Lancaster’s class, but quite appropriate for a pretty Miss Herbert. Still, what ailed the girl? She’d been staring fixedly at the same rose in the carpet for nearly five minutes.
“Miss Herbert,” Fanny said, with another petulant stamp of her foot. That got Maggie’s attention, especially since Fanny had managed to rattle the Dresden shepherdess on the mantel.
“Yes?” Maggie asked brightly.
Ah, there, Lady Lancaster said to herself. She’s back.
It took only a few minutes of effort on Maggie’s part to convince Fanny that white was really the only appropriate color for a young girl having her first portrait painted. That done, the women decided on a mutually agreeable time for the sitting—Tuesday next at one o’clock—and then Maggie gathered up her sketchbooks and crayons and bade the baroness and her daughter adieu.
Out on Grosvenor Square, the crisp winter wind brought some color to Maggie’s otherwise pallid cheeks. She took in a few deep gulps of the icy air, hoping to clear her head before catching the omnibus and returning to her studio. She felt as if she’d had too much to drink the night before. Granted, she’d only had a few hours of sleep, but she’d gotten by on less in the past and not felt so gloomy. Well, she supposed that finding out that the man to whom one had lost one’s virginity was actually engaged to marry someone else had a way of dampening one’s spirits. If only, she said to herself, for the thirtieth time at least that day alone, her mother were still alive. Lady Herbert would know exactly what Maggie ought to do.
The truth was, Maggie had no one to whom she could turn for advice. None of her sisters were speaking to her, but even if any of them were, she couldn’t possibly have shared
her problems with them—they would have been horrified beyond all belief. She knew good and well what Hill, who adored Augustin for all the good deeds he’d done her mistress, would have to say on the matter. Conversely, she knew that if she turned to Jeremy’s aunt Pegeen, who had remained Maggie’s staunch supporter throughout all of her family trials, she’d find herself being urged not to give up on Jeremy. There wasn’t a single impartial person to whom Maggie could turn.
Late that afternoon, back in her studio, Maggie gazed moodily at a portrait she was finishing up for the show on Saturday, a painting of a pair of towheaded toddlers, sweetly smiling while clinging to the neck of a long-suffering greyhound, and didn’t notice the door behind her swing open. She jumped when she heard a throaty voice behind her purr, “What is this? The ever-cheerful
Mademoiselle Marguerethe
, looking
triste? C’est impossible!”
Maggie glanced over her shoulder, and managed a small smile when she saw Berangère Jacquard leaning in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest. Dressed as usual in the height of Parisian
chic
, though she was going nowhere more stylish than her own studio across the hall from Maggie’s, Berangère made a tsk-tsking noise with her tongue.
“What is this?” she demanded, slinking into the light-filled studio. “I thought you Englishwomen did not allow yourselves the luxury of sulking.”
“I’m not sulking,” Maggie said with a sigh. “Well … not really.”
“Aren’t you? Then you are doing a very good imitation of it,
princesse.”
Berangère curled her lip at the painting Maggie was sitting in front of. “Ugh!
Quelle horreur! I
suppose they are little earls,
non
?”
“A marquis,” Maggie said. “And his baby brother.”
“But of course. How proud their
papa
and
maman
must be. Little brats. You ought to have painted them with their fingers up their noses, where they undoubtedly are, the majority of the time.” Dismissing the painting with a shudder, Berangère strolled over to the windowsill, where Maggie kept a bottle of red wine for just such occasions. Pouring
herself a glassful, Berangère went to a low divan, piled high with pillows, and sank down onto it with a delicate sigh. All of Berangère’s movements were deliberate and graceful, like a cat’s. In fact, that’s exactly what she reminded Maggie of: a sleek, sly little cat, not at all unlike the Princess Usha. While Maggie herself was nothing but a great, galumphing dog.
“Now,
princesse,”
the older girl said, after taking a sip of wine. “Tell
Tante
Berangère what is making you look so positively
malheureuse
.”
“Oh, Berangère,” Maggie said miserably. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Ah,” Berangère said. She looked down into her wine glass, noticed a piece of cork floating in it, and delicately removed it with a long index finger. “This would not have something to do with the fact that your precious Augustin got his
nez
bashed in last night?”
Maggie gasped. “How did you hear about that?”
Berangère waved a dismissive hand. “La, who has not heard of it? It is all over the hallways.”
Maggie groaned. The building in which their studios were situated was an old one, run-down, and filled with other painters and the odd sculptor or two. Maggie and Berangère, being the only women renting studio space in the building, were sources of constant speculation by the other artists, their activities faithfully reported on by those who traveled in similar social circles.
“Oh, Berangère,” Maggie said, dropping her face into her hands. “What am I going to do?”
“Do?” Berangère sipped her wine. “About what,
princesse?”
“Why, about Jerry, of course!” Maggie lifted her head, smoothing back a tendril of hair that had come loose from her coiffure, and leaving a streak of violet across her smooth white forehead.
Berangère smiled tolerantly. “And what is the problem with Jerry, now,
princesse
? He is making water behind the divan again?”
“
What
?” Then Maggie started to laugh, in spite of her
misery. “Oh, no!” she cried. “No, not
that
Jerry. Not Jerry the dog. I mean Jeremy Rawlings!”
Berangère knit her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “Jeremy Rawlings? This is the soldier who broke the
nez
of Augustin?” At Maggie’s nod, a knowing look spread over Berangère’s pointed face. “Ah,” she said. “Things become clearer to me, now. Jeremy Rawlings. I have heard this name before.” Berangère tapped her front teeth thoughtfully with a long, manicured fingernail. “Where have I heard this name?”
“In this morning’s paper, I wouldn’t doubt,” Maggie said with a sigh.
Berangère raised a fine blond eyebrow. “
Pardon
?”
“His engagement to the Princess Usha of Jaipur was announced in today’s society page.”
“Ah,” Berangère said knowingly. “Yes. Now I remember.
That
is the Jerry for whom you have pined all these years I have known you?” At a hesitant nod from Maggie—she didn’t like admitting to being in love with Jeremy, let alone having been
pining
for him—Berangère went on. “I see. No wonder you look so
triste.
He has come back from India with a royal bride, broken the
nez
of your fiancé. and you do not know what to do?”
Maggie nodded again.
“Pfui!”
said Berangère, a curious noise she always made when she was incredulous about something, a small explosion of lips and breath that invariably sent the golden curls of hair upon her forehead flying. “I always thought you were too polite for your own good,
princesse,
but I never thought you were
stupide
.”
“I’m not stupid,” Maggie said defensively. “I just don’t know what to do. I’ve never been in this situation before.”
“Never had two men fighting over you before?” Berangère looked shocked.
“Ma pauvre princesse
! Then, truly, you have not lived. It is the most delightful thing in the world, to be fought over. You must try to prolong it as long as possible.”
“Are you insane?” Maggie glared at her friend. “Berangère, this is
serious
. Someone … someone tried to stab
Jerry last night, and I think he suspects it was Augustin.”
Berangère sat up, her pretty features alight with excitement. “Really?
Très romantique
!”
“Romantic?” Maggie shuddered. “Berangère, it was awful.”
“Awfully
romantique
! Do you think it was Augustin?” Berangère looked perplexed. “I would not have thought Augustin was the murderous type. Duel, yes. But murder?
Non
. Still, with that red hair, one cannot be sure of anything … .”
“Berangère!” Maggie buried her face in her hands. “It isn’t funny, and it isn’t romantic. Someone tried to kill Jeremy last night, and I can’t help thinking—”
But Berangère interrupted her. “
Nom de Dieu
,” she said, and something in her throaty voice caused Maggie to raise her head and eye her uncertainly. Berangère was staring at her, round-eyed with astonishment. “You and this Jerry. You made love.”
Maggie’s jaw dropped. “Berangère!”
“I cannot believe it.
Ma petite princesse!
No wonder Augustin tried to kill him.” Berangère applauded enthusiastically. “How was it? Did you like it very much? Isn’t it lovely?”
Maggie stared at her, round-eyed, not even attempting to deny it. “How did … How could you …
tell
?”
Berangère shrugged elegantly. “You glow.”
Horrified, Maggie gasped, “I don’t!”
“You do,
princesse
. I am sorry to tell you so, but you do. Only a fool—or a fiancé—would fail to notice.”
“It just happened,” Maggie cried, covering her face with her paint-spotted hands. “Oh, God, Berangère, it just happened! I didn’t want it to. I never expected it to. And he told me he wasn’t engaged!”
Berangere snorted. “Don’t they all?”
“But Berangère, I believed him! He told me the Star of Jaipur wasn’t a woman. He said she was a rock!”
“Now,” Berangère said incredulously, “I have heard everything.”
“Oh, I’ve made such a mess of things!” Maggie couldn’t stifle a sob. “Oh, I know I brought it all upon myself, and
I don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy. I was so sure—so very sure—that he meant to marry me! I don’t—I just don’t know what came over me!”
“I do.”
Maggie looked up, blinking back tears. To her surprise, Berangère was standing beside her, a glass of newly poured wine in either hand. She handed one of the glasses to Maggie before gently guiding her over to the divan, and then sitting down beside her—a move that took some maneuvering, due to the size of both their bustles.
“I know exactly what came over you,” Berangère said. “
L’amour
. Let us drink to it, shall we?” She clinked the edge of her glass against Maggie’s, and then downed a good third of its contents.
Maggie took a hesitant sip from her own glass, though she’d never in her life drunk wine before teatime. But she’d never lost her virginity before, either, so she supposed the occasion warranted it. To her astonishment, the hearty burgundy felt quite nice going down, warm and nourishing. She took another sip.
“Then you …” she asked carefully. “Then you don’t despise me utterly, Berangère?”
“Despise
you?” Berangère, thoroughly surprised by the question, came as close to spilling a drink as Maggie had ever seen her. “Why should I despise you?”